Hello folks! I'm a total newbie when it comes to Forbidden Lands system, but I "THINK" I'm about to run a game on Sunday, so here I am, asking you for some clarifications. See, I've been reading through the core books and there are a few design choices that made me rather… confused.
Game seems to focus a lot on Survival. There's this really nifty Resource Die system for Food, Water, Arrows and... Torches. That immediately tells me that light will be an important and scarce resource in this game — just like in classic Dungeon Crawls, where Light was as valuable as gold.
From what I understand, there are basically two "Time Scales" in Forbidden Lands: Quarter Days for Hex Traversal and Quarter Hours for Dungeon Exploration. Seeing that Torches require Resource Die to be rolled every turn/15 minutes, I can only conclude that Torches are intended to be used while Exploring and not while Traversing the global map. And for Exploration, that seems just perfect. I can easily imagine it in play: You tell players “Okay guys, you move to the next room — who’s gonna roll for Torches?”, and the entire party holds their breath as Jon rolls their last D6 torch die, all while the exit from this bloody mines is nowhere to be seen and the footsteps from corridor behind them are getting louder.
That would be all good, if not for one thing that breaks everything and makes my heart bleed — Oil and Lanterns. Those things are not only cheap, but they last for the whole Quarter Day instead of Quarter Hour (this term, by the way, was never actually defined in books, even though it’s used the whole bunch in Bitter Reach and the entirety of two times in Raven’s Purge). All that makes Oil Lanterns perfect for both Hex Traversal and Dungeon Exploration.
Then… what is the use for torches at all? Like, literally — why make them special by incorporating them into Resource Die system if there are immediately replaced by Oil Lanterns? Cause Resource Die is pretty elegant and abstract system — probably the smartest design element that I’ve seen in the entire book. And Oil Lanterns are not part of it, instead relying on same old, same old Inventory Slot system. Am I being an idiot or is it just really counter-intuitive design decision that kind of destroys one of the main tensions of dungeon crawling — struggle to keep the light going?