Forbidden Lands
Forbidden Lands is Free League's dark fantasy sandbox TTRPG: a Year Zero campaign game about dangerous travel, scarce resources, strongholds, and open-ended exploration in the cursed Ravenlands.
Dark fantasy sandbox • 2-6 players • Needs Gamemaster • 4/5 complexity • Strong campaign support
Forbidden Lands is one of the clearest picks for groups that want fantasy travel, scarcity, and open-ended map play to matter every session. Its best campaigns feel like dangerous expeditions: rumors point outward, the map keeps opening up, every pushed roll risks real fallout, and the stronghold rules give long-form play a practical home base instead of a vague promise of future importance.
It is a worse fit for tables that want forgiving heroic fantasy, low-bookkeeping one-shots, or a story path that reliably tells the group where to go next. Forbidden Lands expects players to choose their own direction, live with hard consequences, and sometimes retreat rather than win every fight.
What the game is
Designed by Free League Publishing, Forbidden Lands is a dark fantasy sandbox built on the Year Zero Engine. The default campaign premise is simple and strong: the cursed Ravenlands have become traversable again after centuries of isolation under the Blood Mist, and the player characters are among the raiders, rogues, and fortune-seekers trying to profit from that opening before rivals, monsters, and old powers do.
The result is not a chosen-heroes fantasy game. It is a game about risk, hunger, weather, rumors, old ruins, faction pressure, and the practical question of whether the next hex is worth what it may cost.
Publication history and editions
The current line still centers on the original 2018 core boxed set rather than a replacement edition. The line launched with the core game and Raven's Purge, then expanded with The Bitter Reach in 2020, Book of Beasts in 2022, and The Bloodmarch in 2023. As of July 5, 2026, Free League is still selling the core box, quickstart, and the major expansion line from the same product family.
What you need to play
The Core Boxed Set remains the main starting product. It includes a Player's Manual, a Gamemaster's Guide, the Legends & Adventurers booklet, a large hex map, and stickers that turn the map into a campaign record. If you want a lower-commitment test, Free League's 152-page free quickstart includes rules for skills, combat, and travel plus the Weatherstone adventure site.
For groups that know they want a campaign, the practical buying path is core box first, then a campaign book once the table understands how much structure it wants. The line is available in print and PDF, and the core box purchase on Free League's store includes PDFs delivered through DriveThruRPG.
Major campaigns, supplements, and modules
Raven's Purge is the foundational campaign: a broad, non-linear conflict built to be discovered rather than followed scene by scene. The Bitter Reach pushes the game harder toward hostile-weather survival, adds the Champion profession, and expands snow, cold, and fuel procedures. Book of Beasts is more than a monster book: it adds encounter material, harvesting, traps, alchemy, and the line's official solo-play support. The Bloodmarch opens a weirder western frontier with new magic disciplines, monsters, and another open campaign frame.
Digital tools and VTT support
Digital support is unusually solid for a sandbox line of this type. Free League sells the official quickstart as a digital entry point, and the store currently lists official Foundry VTT modules for the core set, Book of Beasts, Raven's Purge, The Bitter Reach, and The Bloodmarch. That makes it easier to run the game online without giving up the campaign map, encounters, and reference material that make the line work well.
Core rules and play structure
Forbidden Lands uses a d6 dice pool built from attribute, skill, and gear dice. A 6 is a success. The distinctive twist is the push: you can reroll non-successes, but 1s start damaging attributes or gear. Because the game also uses those attributes as a kind of injury track, pushing for success is never free. Willpower, which fuels spells and many signature abilities, is tied to that same risk economy.
That core loop supports a broader expedition structure. Travel, foraging, hunting, making camp, weather exposure, and random encounters all have procedures, but the game's better sessions do not feel like accounting exercises. They feel like the map is answering the group back.
Characters, roles, and advancement
Characters sit in a deliberately familiar fantasy frame, but the game makes them feel less like protected protagonists and more like competent but vulnerable adventurers. Advancement is meaningful without turning the campaign into a superheroic power climb. Characters broaden through talents, gear, reputation, and stronghold play more than through giant numerical jumps.
That matters at the table: the campaign can deepen for a long time while still preserving caution, scarcity, and the possibility that a reckless fight will go bad.
Signature mechanics
The standout ideas are the push-your-luck resolution, the physical campaign map, and the stronghold arc. The push mechanic turns ordinary failures into decisions. The map makes exploration visible and cumulative. The stronghold rules give the campaign a reason to care about territory, resources, and what happens between expeditions.
What play feels like
At its best, Forbidden Lands feels like a long wilderness campaign where choosing the route is as important as surviving the destination. Groups spend time weighing rumors, deciding whether to press on while tired or hungry, judging which enemies can be negotiated with, and learning that survival often matters more than victory. The random tables add texture, but the real pleasure comes from the way logistics, danger, and discovery all push toward the same mood.
Running the game
The prep burden is moderate rather than light. Forbidden Lands gives the Gamemaster strong tools: travel procedures, encounters, adventure sites, faction pressure, and campaign books that are built for non-linear play. What it does not do is remove judgment. The GM still needs to pace rumors, understand what nearby powers want, and keep consequences moving once the party starts leaving marks on the map.
Combat and injuries are also unforgiving enough that tables usually need a session or two to internalize the game's expectations. If your group assumes every fight is a fair fight, Forbidden Lands can teach that lesson harshly.
Campaign fit
This is a strong long-campaign game and only an occasional one-shot game. The quickstart can support a trial session, but the full line shines when the group has time to build routes, grudges, allies, and a home base. The system can handle replacement characters, yet the campaign structure clearly rewards continuity, memory, and slowly accumulated local knowledge.
Reception and awards
Critical reception has been strong for years, especially around presentation, map-driven exploration, and the way the Year Zero chassis supports survival fantasy without feeling archaic. Reviewers repeatedly praise the boxed set's production values, the sandbox freedom, and the push-your-luck risk economy. The most common caveats are that the Blood Mist premise does not always feel fully reconciled with every lore detail, and that some groups need time before combat and travel procedures feel effortless.
At the 2019 ENNIE Awards, Forbidden Lands won Gold for Best Cartography and Best Production Values, plus Silver for Best Rules and Product of the Year.
Where it is strongest
- It gives fantasy travel real stakes instead of treating journeys as filler between plot scenes.
- The stronghold and campaign-map layers reward long-form play in concrete ways.
- The push mechanic creates tension on routine checks without needing elaborate subsystems.
- The official line supports several different campaign moods without abandoning the core identity.
Where it can frustrate groups
- Players who want breezy heroic competence may bounce off the injury, scarcity, and retreat-first assumptions.
- Groups that dislike procedure can find the travel and resource layer more present than they want.
- The setting pitch is stronger than some of its fine-grained logic, so lore-first readers may notice seams.
- One-shot groups may not get enough payoff from the map and stronghold systems.
Content and safety notes
Expect lethal violence, mutilating injuries, starvation and exposure pressure, faction cruelty, and a generally bleak dark-fantasy tone. The game is less interested in shock than in attrition and danger, but it still benefits from a clear table conversation about injury detail, brutality, and how grim the campaign should feel in practice.
Best starting path
If you are unsure whether the game fits your group, start with the free quickstart and run Weatherstone. If the table likes the travel pressure and the map-first structure, move to the core boxed set. Add Raven's Purge when you want a full open campaign, and reach for Book of Beasts if you want more creatures, GM tools, or the official solo rules.
Research notes
Last checked: July 5, 2026.