I liked Free League's Twilight:2000 so much I pulled Forbidden Lands off the shelf to give it another look. The games are similar, using rules built off the same underlying engine, and I wanted to give this one another chance.
I also got the Forbidden Hero solo play rules to go along with this off Drive Thru RPG. This looks like a fun set of solo play rules (different from Mythic) that also has suggestions on how to make a solo game in this system flow a little better and be more survivable.
I do want to get back to Twilight:2000, but I felt like giving this game a go would be a fun way to start with this system and have some fun in a fantasy setting. I am waiting for a second set of Twilight:2000 dice as well, so until those come I wanted to play with this and see if it worked for me.
I never gave this game a fair chance, honestly. I sort of gave it a quick look, realized I needed special dice, got the dice, and moved back into a Pathfinder 1e campaign, which proved to be a mess to play solo. The initiative system killed that game, huge lists of initiative order written over and over again on scrap paper, and characters that could be created using Hero Builder and the printouts were page after page of data and notes. Pathfinder 1e and Starfinder convinced me that if I needed a computer program to manage my characters, the game probably was not for me. So I went back to B/X and bounced around some until the Alien RPG captured my imagination.
And I honestly started giving Free League's games more attention when Twilight:2000 arrived. What fascinates me about Forbidden Lands is the DIY map, and I bet if I give it a chance it will be a fun solo playthrough. I got these cool multicolor stickers off Amazon that I will number using a marker (before I stick them on) to use for my DIY map creation, and that will give me a better assortment of color-keyed locations for my adventures.
This way I can track dungeons, towns, the locations of pre-published adventures, and other points of interest on my map easily. I have a metallic gold marker around here somewhere so I will be able to use the black and dark purple dots as well for things, my feeling are towns since black with a gold number will really pop. Red will be dungeons, and white could be pre-published adventure locations. Gray could be gravestones. The other colors I will save in case I need them for other things.
Twilight:2000 does not feel like a "DIY map building" game, though it could be. The play-throughs I watched felt like "escape the map" games more than realizing, "Well, the whole world is destroyed, so doesn't matter where we start rebuilding." If I did a Twilight:2000 game with these sort of "legacy game sticker" map changes, I would likely use a mixture of stickers and plastic pawns (or wooden cubes) to track military units that move around the map, since there may be a tactical element to that game.
If a military unit was moving through the area a colored pawn could be the center of the unit's influence and that would likely change encounters in an area around the unit's rough location. Since military units in Twilight:2000 have to self-supply, they would need to setup cams to farm, scavenge, and base themselves out of for a while before they are able to move on. This idea may work for Forbidden Lands if there is a "tribal raiders" sort of thing going on, but it feels more appropriate for Twilight:2000 since there should be a feeling of push and pull in a more "tactical" feeling game.
If the war is over and nobody cares and you play that way, then you could just do DIY map locations as everyone gives up and begins returning home or settling in. Either way, Forbidden Lands was designed for DIY map play, and if I am ever going to use these 10,000 tiny stickers I need a way to start using them. Plus this will get me experienced with DIY map play and give me ideas on how to best manage and use these as I play.
Or you could say that a colored dot was a major encampment, number key it, and if it is destroyed, moves on, or stays put just make a note of it in your journal and keep the dot there as a record of the encampment and activity. That works too.
Either way I need a journal to make a note of what numbered dot goes with what encounter or location.
I wish Free League was doing more with Forbidden Lands, but I know they have a lot on their plate with their upcoming One Ring game (and just having gotten Twilight:2000 out). But then again, it is up to me to use what I already have and explore this world before I need anything else for the system.
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