With their ever growing slate of games, which now includes a good handful of fantasy titles, it would be easy for Free League’s Forbidden Lands to slip through the cracks. But, whilst it might not have the fresh off the showroom floor feel of Dragonbane or the star power of The One Ring, this gritty “sandbox survival” RPG is a gem, albeit one whose lustre has perhaps been dulled somewhat by a thick coating of mud and blood. Whilst on the surface it trades in what could be considered fairly generic fantasy tropes Forbidden Lands’ darker tone, focus on strong-hold building, exploration and making sense of a land which for decades has been shrouded in a deadly blood mist, all provide plenty of reasons for giving it a go over any other classic fantasy game.

Anyway, five years on from its original release Forbidden Lands finally gets itself a standalone Monster Manual, or in this case Book of Beasts, to accompany the existing Gamemaster’s Guide and Player’s Handbook. Not that the game hasn’t been short of monsters to throw at your players with everything from Sea Serpents to shambling undead statted up in various books, but the Book of Beasts ups the ante somewhat.

Within its faux leather covers you’ll find 28 brand new terrors, beautifully illustrated by Henrik Rosenborg, to hurl at your players. These range from the familiar, such as trolls of various persuasions, to the much lesser spotted and deeply unnerving creatures like the Tupilaq, a sorcerous assassin crafted from the remains of dead creatures and taken from Inuit lore. Others are twisted variations on well known staples such as the Twisted Ents, rage fueled nature spirits corrupted by the land’s demonic corruption, or Greater Golems, animated stone prisons crafted for the spirits of Dwarven traitors, but importantly all come with a whole slew of extra material to make encountering them more than just a punch up but notable events in their own right.

Art: Henrik Rosenberg

The Giant Spider’s entry, for example, clocks in at an impressive 8 pages. Alongside stats for the creature in several different states of development, you get evocative flavour text, snippets of lore those unlucky to encounter one may have heard before, a healthy selection of random, and actually interesting, encounters that could be fleshed out into a session’s worth of play.

Most importantly, this being Forbidden Lands, each monster also comes with their own attack table, detailing a variety of specific and on-the-whole relatively horrible, unique special attacks the creature can make. It's something that both reduces cognitive load on the GM but also makes combat encounters more memorable and interesting for all involved, it's something we see in Free League's other fantasy game, Dragonbane, and one more RPGs should adopt.

Finally should the player’s walk away from one of these encounters victorious, something that is never guaranteed, then each entry also includes what resourceful players might be able to make from that particular creatures remains, this is a survival game after all.

Alongside the book’s beasts there’s also a whole section of novel GM tools including new rules for traps, magic items and journeys, and 36 new random encounters to use when players are exploring the game’s hexmap. These range from stumbling across a birthing manticore to mystical encounters with fiery shrubs and are a great accompaniment to those in the Gamemaster’s Guide. Finally the book also includes, for the first time, a simple but effective system for solo, or cooperative GM-less play.

We do love a good bestiary here at Wyrd Science, and it’s fair to say we’ve been spoilt in recent years but Forbidden Lands’ Book of Beasts is right up there with the best of them.

Writing: Andreas Marklund
Art: Henrik Rosenberg
Published by Free League

This feature originally appeared in Wyrd Science Vol.1, Issue 5 (Dec '23)

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