With their ever growing slate of games, which now includes a good handful of fantasy titles, it could be easy for Free League’s Forbidden Lands to slip through the cracks. Still, if 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, hexploration 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 the nod 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 definitely ups the ante.

Between its blue faux leather covers you’ll find 28 brand new terrors to hurl at your players, all beautifully illustrated by Henrik Rosenborg. These range from the familiar, such as trolls of various persuasions, to much lesser spotted and deeply unnerving creatures like the Tupilaq, a sorcerous assassin crafted from the remains of dead creatures and taken from Inuit folklore. Elsewhere you'll find 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.

Importantly though every monster in the books comes with not just a set of handy tricks for turning PCs into chum but also a whole slew of extra material to make encounters with them go from just a punch up into a notable event. The Giant Spider’s entry, for example, clocks in at an impressive 8 pages. Alongside stats for the vile creatures in their several different states of development, you get evocative flavour text, snippets of lore those unlucky to encounter one may have heard before, and a healthy selection of random, and actually interesting, encounters that could easily be fleshed out into an entire session’s worth of play.

Art: Henrik Rosenberg

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. Whether it's the Imp, that can transform a player's head into that of a donkey's, or the Giant Spector who can stare deep into someone's soul and fill their mind with hellish visions of eternal torment, it's all good flavour filled stuff that both reduces cognitive load on the GM but also makes combat encounters more memorable, interesting and fun for all involved (well almost all). It's something we also see in Free League's other fantasy game, Dragonbane, and one that more RPGs should consider adopting.

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. Forbidden Lands is at heart a survival game after all, and what more brings home the glamour of outdoor adventuring than burying yourself in the guts of a recently murdered, many legged Skolopendra just to score some fresh faeces with which to smear yourself in (for a cheeky little attack bonus, you understand, not just for kicks).

Alongside the book’s beasts there’s also a whole section of novel GM tools to broaden your game. These include new rules for traps, magic items and journeys, plus there's 36 new random encounters to use when players are exploring the game’s hexmap. Much like the encounters in specific beasts entries these offer up a lot more than just an excuse for a rumble and 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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