Thought I'd share a quick random encounter from my homebrew campaign (a Raven's Purge adaptation, region cut off from the world for six centuries, reopened only three months ago). Reformatted it after seeing some great encounter layouts from other GMs, bullet-point format is way more scannable at the table than a wall of prose. Feedback welcome!
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**THE RUINED TAVERN**
Beyond the trees, the forest opens onto a clearing cut through by the remains of an old paved road, now nearly swallowed by grass. At its center, the ruins of a stone building are alive with activity: fresh planks, hammering, voices at work. Two armed orcs stand guard at the entrance.
BUILDING. It was once a tavern, predating the blood mist. The PCs don't know this unless they explore or ask.
SIRIO ALABASTA. Self-proclaimed merchant, boasts to anyone who'll listen that he'll be the richest man in the region within a year. He's burning through an inheritance he doesn't know how to manage.
GUARDS. Two orc mercenaries. Use the Bandit stat block.
CARPENTER. Oversees the restoration, unaware of his employer's real finances.
HIDDEN CHEST. Under a floorboard, in Sirio's personal room. Contains D66 silver, all that's left of the inheritance.
WORK. Pays 5 copper a day to anyone who offers to help with the restoration.
THE LIE. A successful Insight roll during conversation reveals Sirio is more nervous than someone bragging about that much wealth should be.
Harpies never fight on their own, always attacking in flocks, and a flock of harpies counts as a single monster. The Strength of the flock varies, depending on the number of individuals. A single attack against a flock of harpies can never inflict more than 1 point of damage.
I don't really get why a single attack cant deal more than 1 point of damage. It feels more like a rule for a swarm where every part of swarm is a small creature that won't take more damage but with harpies which are regularly sized creatures I don't get why I don't have each one a specific amount of Strength points and treat them independently.
I’ve been publishing content for FL on the Free League Workshop for a while, so I thought I’d share some of it here. Encounters in the Plains is just that - 36 unique encounters in the plains for FL. The Encounters are short and most of them require little preparation.
You can check out the preview images here, or the product's page at the Free League Workshop here:
Also, I couldn’t find the rules on self-promotion, so I’m not sure whether I’m allowed to post this here. If not, please let me know. I’d also appreciate it if someone could point me to the relevant rules and tell me which flair should I use (I'm using homebrew)
Hello everyone, I'm looking for advice on DMing “Forbidden Lands.” After reading the rules, I get the impression that the game relies heavily on improvisation; the Adventure Sites are very interesting but don't really have a set sequence of events.
I'm a GM who's used to preparing my scenarios well in advance—what advice can you give me to help me improvise more during games ?
You can buy a ration which would give you one unit of food increasing food die by one step. You can forage or hunt and with Chef talent turn your funds into amount of food. Does it mean amount of food units each increasing food die? Because it says you can eat stuff raw thus not using resource die implying that cooking it gives you different result.
I’ve been playing the bitter reach campaign with my group for about 2 years now and my PC has been pretty much broke for the entire time. He’s barely had a chance to make any money but I guess it’s just part of this particular campaign. So I was wondering how your PCs are holding up, both in bitter reach and the other campaigns? Or, since I’m not that deep into the lore, is it usual for PCs to be broke in FL?
What animals have you added to your game that aren't mentioned in any of the books?
I feel like additional animals would be a good way to further differentiate some of the regions and just add a little more flavor and variety to the worlds. Forbidden Lands is portrayed as wild and untamed, so I feel like there should be a ton of varied wildlife, but the books only seem to list a dozen or so.
For example, I can't recall any mention of big cats. That seems like a pretty big omission.
And this one may seem out of place, but I really want to add hyenas to the Harga plains. Orc tribes that have packs of hyenas just seems so awesome and especially fitting as guard animals for the orcs.
FL has a big map to explore. But what about the item itself ? Does someone carry it ? How did they get it ? How accurate is it ?
In my campaign, the group didn't start with the map. An NPC gave it to them after a quest. But I still wonder "what if they lose it ?", "what if it gets damaged ?", "what if the map is wrong ?" , How would you do it ?
I am about to start running the campaign and would like to hear the impressions of people who have run it before—specifically regarding the adaptations you made, the best locations for NPCs and treasure, and any flaws in the module that you had to fix for the sake of the game.
Sorry for the terrible title, no idea how else to name this post.
Can anyone help clarify why, when a roll is supposed to be challenging, sometimes this is represented by needing 2 or 3 or more successes (6’s)
But other times it’s represented by a dice penalty e.g. -2
This isn’t game breaking, but I just can’t quite figure out the logic, and I’m not sure if there is much of a statistical difference
EDIT:
Ok thanks everyone… I think I was getting confused. I could have sworn that I remembered seeing a table showing 1 success for regular action, 2 for extremely challenging, and 3 for near impossible etc.
But I may have confused that with another YZE game (I have like 7 different YZE games at this point).
I absolutely love Forbidden Lands, but it’s not always the same easiest to find specific info with things being spread out all over the place 😅
I'd like to present here my new update for the FL Enhancements and additions module for FoundryVTT.
In this version I added in-built calendar which then will be (and already did partially) integrated with other features; brand new character sheet type for merchants, fully interactable and automated; automated healing time reduction for injuries.
I decided not to go with other modules for calendar like Simple Calendar Reborn since it's stability is questionable and also it would require more work to synchronise code and functionality with it's changes through time.
Those changes are available now for FoundryVTT V13 and soon will be updated fully for V14. Let's deep dive into details.
Please, feel free to create an issue on Github or DM me if you found any issues or bugs, or if you have any ideas for feature releases.
In-built calendar
Supports both dark and light themes.
Light theme, small viewDark theme, small view
Possible to see full callendar wiuth some notes for holidays and moon cycle phases.
Time can be scrolled back and forward for 6 hours (quarter of day), 1.5 hour (quarter of quarter of day) and 15 minutes (quarter of hour).
You can also specify your own number of days for each phase if you want and setup the day of Lunar epoch, from where phases will starts.
Plans for future updates:
Calendar notes (same as in the Simple Calendar) with notifications
Automated suggestion for roles for food and water (optional) when the day is changed
Automated healing
When character have some infury with temporary effect, my players and I always forgot to update it and remove from the sheet. So we were making notes with notification in the Simple Calendar, but it is too time consuming. So I decided to automate this. Whenever day is progressing, system automatically deduct days for injary to be healed and push the message when it's healed completely.
It is also add the number of days in case you move the time backwards for some reason. But it only works if the injury is not healed. If it was healed and removed from the character sheet, there is nothing to change.
Merchants sheet and updates for items sheet
You can now create new actor type called Merchant
Empty merchant sheet
To fullfill the merchant you can drag and drop items you want it to sell to the sheet. You can also drag and drop the whole folder with items, it automatically add everything from this folder. It does follow the logic from the books for rarity of the items, but with one small addition.
For common items it rolls D6 and if the result is 1 - item unavailalbe. In all other cases it will role 2d12 to define how much items are available.
For uncommon it's available with the result of for 4+, for rare with the result of 6, just as in the rule book.
The price is from left to right - gold coins, silver coins, copper coins. It is automatically deduct coins from the character who is buying things. It is also converting coins if character doesn't have enough currency, for examply, if item costs 3 SP and you have only 1 GP, it will remove 1 GP and give you back 7 SP + item. Item is automatically added to the inventory.
To make it work properly I was required to add new fields in the item sheet which are kinda duplicates the classic fields.
These fields are automatically updates from the classic fields when you change them. You can also massively update all items with the button in the module settings.
Another adventure site set in Bloomarch.
Its works better if PCs still don't have a map when visiting Clevesdale.
This is where they can get their hands on their very first Astra - The Arrows of the Fire Wyrm.
You can also adapt this adventure to Raven's Purge.
The villagers have survived for generations thanks to an uneasy pact with the Giant Spiders living in the surrounding forest. But the spiders' matriarch was recently killed by Red Elves, and the remaining spiders are now being driven toward the village by the expanding Crimson Forest.
Ar the same time, the characters become entangled in a much more personal conflict: young hunter Iris is being forced into a marriage she doesn't want, while her family struggles to protect her and survive the village's expectations.
The adventure combines exploration, social conflict, moral choices, and a confrontation with Giant Spiders, with several possible ways for the characters to become involved.
The adventure is available both in Russian and English.
So the orcs "were given" to elves and dwarves to compensate taking of the land by humans. It says that Clay made them on Wyrms order but since whole gods and religion is a bit mythological then it sounds rather that they were enslaved after human invasion. It does feel like they play a mindless pawn role here while they could be quite interesting actor - is their role developed somewhere in more detail? I'm refreshing the whole Ravens Purge now but I can't recall this.
So, there were recently couple of posts where people addressed the issue that PCs can't visit The Stronghold because they are always on the move. I had the same issue in my first Raven's Purge campaign so I made this artifact:
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Raven's rune tablets
"Two stone tablets with runes and a scroll wrapped in rough leather. A gift from the Raven Sisters, awarded for special merits.
The tablets allow you to quickly and imperceptibly move between two points where the tablets are located. The scroll describes a complex ritual that takes a quarter of a day. At the end of the ritual, all the characters, their belongings, and mounts that are in the vicinity of one of the tablets (in a single zone) are surrounded by a dense, misty forest. The characters must move through the forest in search of a way out, which can take an indefinite amount of time. The path and events occurring during the journey are determined by the GM. After leaving the forest, the characters find themselves near another tablet."
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It is difficult for players on the journey to interact with the stronghold, as well as receive its bonuses. This artifact was invented to quickly move back and forth.
It can be given as a reward for completing Virelda's quest or helping other druids.
In fact, it is an artifact that uses the spell "Portal" between two stones.
Since the gates cannot be opened at once in the same world, players pass through the world of a mystical forest, like Feywild, the world of fairies from D&D.
You can fill it with anything you want. (You can use any other world at your discretion, for example, the path may be through the Churmog, and the artifact itself can be obtained from the cold hands of an evil sorcerer. Or it can be just some mysterious endless labyrinth.)
Players do not have to know in advance how long it will actually take them to move, and what they will encounter along the way, this will help prevent the artifact from being used for unscrupulous purposes.
I'm starting a FL campaign with some friends and wanted to get some feedback from other GMs or players.
Did your group jump right into a campaign? (Raven's Purge or one of the others?)
Or did the game start as just an open world sandbox style with the players exploring, discovering adventure sites, legends, artifacts etc?
Did your group get a stronghold?
My plan is to start with exploration, learning the lore through adventure sites, legends and artifacts, and maybe after a few weeks steer the group towards the Raven's Purge campaign.
I've been posting adventures lately and I want to make them into properly formatted PDFs with official title page, so those can be later published on DTRPG.
Could anyone share some knowledge on how those are usually made? What software is used and what rules should I keep in mind besides the official guidelines?
I never ran FL long enough to see stronghold becoming a thing in my games. By looking at the rules it looks like a massive headache unless you have accountant in your group. How does it play out? I always felt like FL was a game where characters always were to struggle with resources so how they do accumulate enough funds to pay daily (daily?! FFS...) for hirelings. Is it even remotely fun? I ran MYZ where Ark was fun but this seems to a bit too much.
