Sweden and Free League seems to be hitting it out of the park lately with games like Alien, Mutant Year Zero, and a bunch of others. And I am picking up their fantasy entry, Forbidden Lands, because it looks fun and I saw this solo play video:
Well...you sold me. The simple modern mechanics, old-school presentation, plus the combination of resource management and random tables, in a game designed to have no-prep and with "legacy" elements where the map and world changes based on your play? Stickers to put on the map to make it your world? It can be played solo? Ok, sold. Sold!
The legacy elements are compelling. This actually makes me want to play. With other games, I get a world book, I get a game, and if I do nothing, nothing changes. If I try to change the world, the world book is still out there contradicting me. I know it is a strange position to take, but I do have too many world books that feel like they are forever set in stone.
Worlds Set in Stone
Traditional world books are not designed to change and morph as you play. My Pathfinder and Forgotten Realms world guides feel like worlds carved into tablets of stone, until the next edition comes out and things are changed - and set in stone again.
Some players like exploring established worlds, like sightseeing through Star Wars locations or something. There is a magic to "being there" and I get that. But for solo play, again, like character advancement that I cannot predict, having a world and campaign setting I cannot predict feels like finding a huge missing puzzle piece in my solo gaming life.
This? Want to start a new "game?" Buy the map pack again and change things up, or just print one out and pencil away. The game's world is built to change, which makes everyone's play experience different, but you are also writing lore and establishing the world every time you play.
The only world book I felt invited me to expand upon and build the world was the original Forgotten Realms gray box set (still epic) for AD&D before the NPCs of the world turned into GMNPCs through the books and everything got annoying and overused. That boxed set was such a disorganized mess of notes and articles it felt like an open-ended package of referee's notes you were free to use however you wish.
Stars Without Number, but Fantasy
Stars Without Number does something similar, and also has a similar setup. A galaxy that was cut off and forgotten, and the stars open up and you are some of the first heading out and finding things. Your star-map in that game will become the campaign and lore in your game, based on the random charts and planetary design systems.
Here? Same setup but fantasy genre. Simple rules, a create your world as you play legacy setup, and you can continue to create characters, have players drop in and out, and your world grows the more you play. The game invited you to play it, because every time you drop in and have fun, you are world-building. Even if you lose a character or entire party, that loss is a part of the world's story and you keep going. Create a new group and send them to find out "what happened?"
New Stories and Perspectives
Maybe what happened isn't what you think happened. It is your story, your world. Want to paint the fallen group as invaders who were up to no good? This is your story. If the previous group burned down a forest to kill marauding ent tree-creatures, you could flip the story on its head by creating druids and elves, friends of the forest, and paint that previous group as the bad guys and keep the tale going from a new perspective.
Every party you build, every session you play, builds the world from a new point of view.
Play as a bad guy and start an evil cult and mage tower, along with a marauding army. Conquer an area of the map and build a dark empire. Then turn around to create a force to fight them as heroes to free the lands. Whatever you want to do is cool, every story builds, and things keep changing. Very few games invite you to play as a bad guy, and then turn around and use them as the campaign's bad guys. And maybe, what you played and how you thought it went wasn't the real truth. Have fun with it!
There are rules for building strongholds, so if a group lasts long enough to build one, you could retire them, put the settlement on the map, and transition those characters to NPCs and you just filled out another piece of the puzzle. Your world expands. Use that new settlement as good guys, bad guys, destroy it and make it a mystery, let it prosper or fall into ruin or hard times, put new people in charge because of a plot, or use it however you want.
Have the old heroes drop in as NPCs to help out, hinder, or be the bad guys.
This is quickly becoming one of my most anticipated games of 2021 by far, and I can't wait until it gets here to see if it lives up to the hype.
NOTE: IF you are having trouble printing out the character sheets using Adobe's PDF viewer, try Foxit PDF viewer. I got that to print them without errors nicely.
No comments:
Post a Comment