This is a tough comparison. Dragonbane does the whole 5E cinematic combat thing so well, but it is easier. It also has a Runequest feeling, and the game's name here is innovation while embracing the best parts of modern systems. The math is nearly nonexistent. AC? What's that? Roll under your skill with no modifiers if you want to hit. Conditions are rolling with a disadvantage on skill and ability checks. If you want a d20 game that plays fast and loose while tossing out all the tedious and obsolete rules in most tabletop games, Dragonbane is it.
Solo play here is beyond excellent, on the level of heroic one-man armies. You are buffed when playing solo, giving me an epic, larger-than-life feeling.
This is the beer and pretzels fantasy game to play.
Forbidden Lands? Both are excellent games. This is survival and hex crawls. Building strongholds. Slowly uncovering a world, hex-by-hex, while tracking supplies, foraging along the way, making use of cooking skills to extend the food you find, and sometimes dying in the middle of nowhere to put down a death sticker, and begin the life of a new adventurer to pick up the torch and continue the quest.
Forbidden Lands is a more in-depth set of rules. Where Dragonbane feels like the Basic D&D of old, which delivered fast and fun gameplay, Forbidden Lands feels like AD&D to me. They aren't the same system, as these rules are not d20 - they are more the traditional Year Zero rules.
Dragonbane does not make Forbidden Lands obsolete. It may be for some groups, based on preferences of play styles.
Forbidden Lands feels much more like the "detailed sim" but with abstract survival elements. There are more rules here, and that also allows you more freedom when exploring, traveling, and surviving. All of your skills matter. A party with balanced fighting and wilderness skills shines. If you want to assemble a team of experts that can go out 30 miles over unexplored land, fight through the wilds, take on a bluff-top fortress of vile creatures, live off the land, and survive the trip home - this is your game.
All while discovering secrets and uncovering the land's mysteries and those leading into the next adventure. Forbidden Lands is still remarkable and touches that Year Zero fantasy survival game the base system does so well. It reminds me of the old Avalon Hill board games that mix exploration, adventure, and survival. It is a "living campaign world" and leverages maps you change and make your own with each play - like a "legacy" game.
Dragonbane? Dungeon crawls with a d20 flair, and the legacy junk that slows the game down is tossed out. This doesn't concern itself with living campaign worlds or simulation but delivers dungeon fun quickly and with far fewer rules to learn.
Sometimes, I want the survival simulation and to play using that "full phat" ruleset. Forbidden Lands fills that need. Granted, this is not an Aftermath survival level, and many detailed tracking aspects are abstracted, but the result is the same. Forcing a march, traveling at night, or ignoring your supplies can kill you, but you may be required to forgo safety in a maniac race against time.
I had this happen in my Road War campaign, where a character was out in the middle of nowhere with a damaged vehicle, low supplies, and weapons out of ammunition, and I wondered if they would make it back home. In Cypher System, you can burn XP for player intrusions, and I had to burn three to make it back in one piece. This is the price I pay.
The stakes are much higher in a more strict survival game without player narrative influence. And when I turn survival video games on hard mode, I get that same experience.
Dragonbane gives me that D&D 4th Edition feeling. The game they promised us of heroes and sword swinging from level one, but this time with a higher-level play that makes sense and does not devolve into tedious grinds of knocking down 1,000 hit points and doing 30 damage per attack. We had high-level 4th Edition combats where we saw where it was going early and said, "Yeah, this isn't changing; you win. Next encounter." Anyone trying to sell you on 4th Edition as-is as a solution to your gaming woes with 5E has not played it above the 15th level.
The Wizards team has sold broken high-level games as an afterthought and box-check for the last 20+ years. The lower-level play is excellent, which gives them a pass for most players. MCDM RPG feels like the next chance at a 4E-style game done right, but we shall see...
Until then, Dragonbane fills the 4E niche for me quite well.
Dragonbane is a flatter power curve, but you go from average to extraordinary. You are not scaling to absurdly high math levels, but you start to pick up skills and abilities and unlock more power as you go. You get that rag-tag collection of a mix of classic fantasy races, human-animal hybrid heroes, and instant heroic action with many hard choices. The monsters are loaded with unique attacks and abilities, just like 4E, yet they aren't page-long blocks of obscure and mathematical stats.
Dragonbane feels like the action RPG where the monsters have these incredible scripted attacks, and the boss battles shine. This is more of a video game.
Forbidden Lands feels like Skyrim, where the game forces you to live in a living, breathing, dangerous world, and you need to live off the land to survive. This is more of a simulation.
Both are great, depending on my mood, and I don't need to play one or the other.
I can play both.
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