If you engage even a little bit in the online ttrpg scene, you will encounter the term "OSR." I have struggled with the Discourse around the OSR, because it has been hard to figure out precisely what it is and what it stands for. There is even disagreement over what "OSR" stands for--does it mean "Old School Roleplaying" or "Old School Renaissance"?
Maybe in part because of this ambiguity, nothing that I have encountered from from the OSR has really grabbed me. There is a segment of the OSR that in embodies an aesthetic position, trying to recreate the feel and look (often through the art style) of late 70s/early 80s ttrpgs, more specifically D&D. Probably the best example of this is Goodman Games' Dungeon Crawl Classics, with its Errol Otis art and focus on short character life spans, but there is also the more horror-oriented and sex-forward Lamentations of the Flame Princess. These games do a very good job at doing what it is trying to do--I fully acknowledge the craft of both DCC and LofFP--but playing them left me cold. That style and aesthetic was not the feel of D&D that I remember from first getting into the hobby, as I am a child of 2nd Edition AD&D, Forgotten Realms, and Dragonlance, all of which come after the early-80s touchstones of the DCC and LotFP aesthetic. So it didn't work for me on the level of nostalgia, and it doesn't really work for me on its own merits.
Then there are the games that are very self-consciously about the mechanics of early editions of D&D. Gotta say, I have even less interest here. It's not that those rule systems are bad or necessarily unplayable, but there is so much good design out there going in every conceivable direction that I don't really see the point of locking into a forty-five year old design as a core commitment.
Finally, there are a set of ideas about the play experience. The best articulation of this game-play focus is expressed by Ben Milton in a compilation called the "Principia Apocrypha":
"The more of the following a campaign has, the more old school it is: high lethality, an open world, a lack of pre-written plot, an emphasis on creative problem solving, an exploration-centered reward system (usually XP for treasure), a disregard for 'encounter balance,' and the use of random tables to generate world elements that surprise both players and referees. Also, a strong do-it-yourself attitude and a willingness to share your work and use the creativity of others in your game."
This is all very interesting, but none of these ideas never particularly fired me up and got me excited about running or playing in that context.
That is, until I found Forbidden Lands, by emerging Swedish juggernaut Free League (Fria Ligan) Publishing. Ben Riggs of the Plot Points podcast called the Forbidden Lands the "perfect rpg product," and that seemed crazy when I first heard him say it, but I get where he is coming from.
I mostly want to talk about the mechanics, because that where I think the game really shines, but I want to say a few things about the lore and setting. First off, the trailer video that Free League put together is pretty close to being the perfect introduction to a setting. Check this out:
Evocative, atmospheric, moody, informative without being overly long and expository--that video is great. Beyond the trailer, the setting walks the line between providing familiar fantasy RPG tropes (so it is accessible) and being distinctive and unique (providing a compelling reason to check it out). It also walks the line between fun-dark and obnoxious-dark. Here, I think there is something to the fact that this comes out of Sweden, and is the product of Swedish fantasy writers. I don't have deep experience with the Swedish fantasy scene, but Forbidden Lands feels different from English-language dark fantasy like Warhammer, and I like this version much better.
But the setting and lore of Forbidden Lands can be swapped out for other fantasy tropes without too much trouble (as, to be fair, the game acknowledges). The real magic is in the mechanics. Forbidden Lands is a gritty, survival-oriented wilderness exploration game at its heart. The boxed set (itself an old-school touch) contains a hex map showing the land forms of the titular Forbidden Lands, and a set of stickers for placing down cities, towns, dungeon ruins, and other examples of what the game calls "adventure sites." But, in between the adventure sites, the PCs go from hex to hex, deal with potential random encounters, and have to maintain their supplies. There are very clear systems for handling pathfinding, foraging for food and water, hunting, making camp, even sleeping.
These sorts of systems are not new--early D&D products like the "BECMI" Expert set had similar systems. But Forbidden Lands puts a subtle twist on each of these elements, reducing the grind and fiddly-ness for the players and GM, grind and fiddly-ness which caused those mechanics to go out of fashion in the first place. For example, instead of counting individual units of resources like rations and water and torches (and arrows, too), those resources are expressed as a die--d6, d8, d10, or d12. Every time you have to eat or take a drink or light a torch, you roll the die; on a 1 or 2, you step down to the next lowest die type (i.e. d10 to d8). Roll a 1 or 2 when your resources are at d6, and you are out of the resource. Not only does this cut down on book-keeping, but it adds a dramatic tension to resource consumption--failures increase the chances of future failures in a downward spiral, and the more operationally-minded PCs will not be tempted to (or able to) tediously micromanage away resource scarcity.
While in exploration mode, the GM is encouraged to let events play out according to a well-designed set of random tables. What sorts of random encounters to do the PCs come across? What animals are available to hunt? What happens when they camp at night? No need at all for the GM to prep any of that--let the tables decide. The key feature here is that the random tables and systems-oriented, player driven action removes responsibility from the GM to craft a curated game experience for the benefit of the players. As the manifesto quoted above says well, I think, the outcomes of play are a surprise both for the players and the GM, in a way that doesn't happen in a more standard GMing experience. Also, and I think this is a key feature of Forbidden Lands, exploration mode in Forbidden Lands requires literally no GM prep. Between random encounters and the various (mis-) adventures of wilderness travel, it is possible for a GM to run an entire satisfying session with zero prepared, and not feel like he or she has to be constantly improvising and keeping the plates spinning.
But Forbidden Lands departs slightly from the old-school formula by mixing the procedural elements in with modular adventure sites. If the players and/or the GM get bored of wandering through the wilderness, the GM just plops down an adventure site and play focuses there. But, even here, the models we are provided in the core rulebook and in the expansion materials (I currently own the Bitter Reach campaign and the Crypt of the Mellified Mage adventure set, but there is also the Raven's Purge campaign as well) show off sand-box style design, with competing factions and goals that the PCs can insert themselves into. "The Vale of the Dead" in the boxed set could easily have been a rather boring paint-by-numbers dungeon crawl against a giant, but instead it has four or five different competing groups that can be allied with, and/or played off against each other. And each adventure site is set up with a rumor that is given to the PCs, which is a great touch for world building, but also allows the GM to situate these adventure sites into a broader narrative without forcing players into a narrative railroad (the Bitter Reach campaign is especially excellent at creating a overarching story while maintaining a truly open format). And it should be noted that there are robust random tables for generating adventure sites, though I would suggest rolling up the site prior to the session.
All of this is layered over Free League's "Year Zero" game engine. Forbidden Lands is likely the most complex and mechanics-driven of the Year Zero games, but the underlying dice pool system is easy to learn and easy to teach. The heart of Year Zero is the push mechanic--you basically have two chances to succeed on every check, but going to the second roll is going to cause some consequences for the PC. In Forbidden Lands, the consequences of pushing rolls is damage to your equipment and/or to your character. That might seem awfully punitive, especially as a PC is going to have only a handful of points before the character is "broken" and really bad things happen, but in return every point of damage from pushing rolls nets the PC a willpower point. Since Willpower points are the currency that powers most Talents (including all spellcasting), this creates an interesting feedback loop, in which players are incentivized to put their own characters through the wringer in order to do more powerful things. It also incentivizes PCs, especially spellcasters, to get "stuck in" to the other elements of game play, so that they can generate Willpower points to power their magic. So, in good old-school fashion, PCs in Forbidden Lands are in for a rough ride; unlike other old-school games, much of pain is going to be self-inflicted.
I'm still not super interested in most of the OSR games. But I am all-in on Forbidden Lands. For me, it takes the best ideas from that play style--especially the random tables and open sandbox-style play--and presents them in a thoroughly modern, innovative format. If you, like me, are or have been an OSR skeptic, this would be the place I would start to maybe change your mind.
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