We playtested Forbidden Lands today in Stockholm, with a group of English speaking players. Here's how it turned out:
1. The story (mild spoilers about the Weatherstone adventure site)
Starring Bro the orc druid, Naako the wolfkin ranger, Merry Poppins the halfling peddler and Switch the elf rogue.
Yesterday, the party met another group of adventurers at the tavern, led by Esgar Farthing. They were heading towards castle Weatherstone and talked about it being the final resting place of some king... Surely there's treasure to be found if they can beat the other party there.
They leave the following day. The wolfkin's hunter instinct allows them to easily follow the other party's track (I gave them automatic successes on finding the path). I rolled 2 random encounters. The first one was a friendly elderly couple in a cottage. Farthing's party stopped there the day before. The peddler tried to manipulate the couple into giving him a bag left behind by the other party's bard. After trying hard and failing harder, he ended up offending the couple and left full of self doubt.
The second proved a little more thrilling. They stopped near a cairn that turned out to be the tomb of a prince from Alderland, fallen in battle. A successful Lore check also allowed them to know that the prince was probably buried with riches, and that alderlanders think tomb robbers are cursed by the gods.
Of course, this didn't stop them from robbing the tomb... Long story short, their evening camping turned into a fight with a Death Knight. Yep. Severely outmatched by a foe who happens to be resistant to mundane weapons, they did manage to beat the hell out of the walking corpse after a long fight and two critical wounds sustained.
At this point, they heard in the distance the rumble of hundreds of feet as Farthing and his one remaining companion fled in front of the army of undead they had awakened at Weatherstone in the meantime... They briefly met with Farthing but quickly decided to go their own way, convinced that the undead horde was after Farthing and would leave them alone. That was the end of the session! My plan was to run Weatherstone by the book, but the party never even made it there!
2. Thoughts on the rules
Character creation: Overall it's quite pleasant to go through the various options, though it involves going back and forth a number of times between the Professions chapter, the Talents chapter, etc. There should be a summary table for talents so that you don't have to read the whole chapter again when you try to pick one.
I'm not sure if the talents are well balanced. I know the game isn't supposed to focus on combat, but still Defender seemed much more useful than, say, Herborist.
Explaining the rules: The base mechanic is already quite complex, so you need players that are motivated and willing to go through a few minutes of rules explanations. Fortunately, my players were great. Since I wasn't familiar with the Year Zero engine, my explanation sounded like "So, hum, only the 6s count, except when you push your roll. Yeah, pushing your roll means you can reroll the dice that failed, except the 1s, and the 1s you get mean that you hurt yourself or damage your equipment. Except the 1s on the skill dice, they don't count. Hum. Now I'll explain your talents, for some of them you need WIllpower. Did I mention WIllpower? Yeah, you get that when you push rolls too." At some point, someone needs to make a checklist to help GMs explain the rules to new players. Or maybe that's just me being unprepared.
Weatherstone: we didn't really get to play the site, but I read it. The fact that you can awaken the undead anytime is brilliant and a lot of potential fun. However, it's really linear: from zone 1 you get to zone 2, then zone 3,... up to zone 10. That's not the kind of dungeon structure I tend to enjoy.
Using the rules: Checking a specific rule mid-game was a hassle, browsing through a pdf that has no cross-references or index so far. And the rules involve a lot of browsing, considering that there are small details, modifiers, random tables and monster stat blocks to bring up. It's definitely not something you can run without the book. Cheat sheets will be essential. I hope the system doesn't end up with the players constantly having to keep in mind the 5 different modifiers that apply to their rolls.
Fighting: It's advertised as deadly, and it is. It can also get quite complex, there's a lot to explain and a lot to keep track of. You probably get used to it, but there's a learning curve. Details can get frustrating when you have to spend actions drawing weapons, readying bows, getting up from prone. As mentioned by others, the endless dodge-prone-get up cycle can become problematic. Any RPG where I can get a turn in combat and nothing happens is a big downer for me. I'd probably end up houseruling a way for players to take an additional action per turn at the cost of a penalty (misery, willpower, or a -2 on their roll).
Getting hurt: the more you fight, the more you get hurt, the less you can fight. One PC ended up with Strength 1 and Melee 0 which also got frustrating... It turned out ok, but I'm afraid some fights might turn into endless drags if both sides get wounded and end up with low chances of success. To be fair, our combat was a drag mostly because a party of beginners shouldn't face a monster who's resistant to mundane weapons.
Say no to bullying: Disarming is easy and it's a fast action. Shoving is easy as well. Against a boss, the fight can turn into a succession of humiliating rounds with the boss having to spend their actions getting up and picking up their weapon. My players didn't use Shove but they did disarm the boss every turn.
Final thought: All in all it was a fun session and the players seem to like it, we might even play again sometime soon! But I think some aspects of the rules seemed a bit clunky, the whole thing could be better balanced and run much smoother.
3. Unanswered questions
When a monster takes damage, does it reduce the number of dice rolled on their special attacks?
When you get a penalty to a roll, is it deduced from your skill or your attribute dice? If it's deduced from your skill and the penalty is higher than your skill, what happens?