Apostol Apostolov's completed Forbidden Lands 2nd Edition magnum opus: an unofficial three-book overhaul built for harsher journeys, stronger campaign play, deeper setting support, and better tools at the table.
This is not an official Free League release. It is a finished fan-made manuscript set and companion toolkit for groups who want to run, expand, and build on Forbidden Lands with serious intent.
01-corebook/— the complete player-facing core rules02-gamemasters-guide/— the campaign, settlement, faction, and war-facing referee book03-book-of-beasts/— the expanded monster, encounter, and legend bookskills/forbidden-lands-*— repo-owned AI and GM copilot skills for building new material in the same game lineCHANGELOG.md— the version-by-version development recordLICENSE.md— the public rights and license notice for this repo
The core rules now stand as a complete campaign book rather than a thin adventuring chassis. Character creation, talents, combat, injuries, magic, journeys, strongholds, gear, heroic reference play, mercenaries, traderoads, and lifepaths all live in one integrated volume.
The Gamemaster's Guide turns the setting into a working campaign engine. It covers history, gods, kin, bestiary support, artifacts, encounters, adventure sites, villages, politics, and battles and sieges with enough procedure to run long-form play instead of handwaving the hard parts.
The Book of Beasts is no longer just a creature list. It is a creature, encounter, and legend book built to make the wilderness stranger, meaner, and more usable in play, with monsters that carry story hooks and table consequences instead of filling space.
From 1.0.0 through 1.1.4, this edition brings together the additions that turn the project into a full second-edition line:
- A complete three-book manuscript set: Corebook, Gamemaster's Guide, and Book of Beasts.
- Myths learned from sages, lost tomes, and grimoires, granting a growing Myth Die for narrow fields of secret knowledge.
- Optional Linked Rolls for carrying exceptional or failed results forward through complex plans and coordinated actions.
- Clear party procedures for stealth, surprise, and chases, with better-defined result quality and modifiers.
- A deeply audited Forbidden Lands skill suite for AI and Game Master coworking, with explicit methods for player psychology, sandbox and freeform campaign design, supplement architecture, adversarial balance testing, medieval authenticity, lore continuity, manuscript voice, and monster-driven situations.
- Apostol Apostolov's expanded Ravenlands setting library, with full-scale references for political rule, magical institutions, seasonal regional life, war and reconstruction, and long-term contracts or conflicts between settlements and monsters.
- A larger bestiary with new monsters, humanoid enemy bands, encounters, legends, and salvage.
- Full faction play and political campaign rules with territory, pressure, recovery, and long-term consequences.
- A mass combat system for wars, field battles, sieges, blockade, breach, and relief.
- A deep settlement game with villages, towns, jobs, petitions, carousing, rumor, and civic pressure.
- A crime and punishment chapter with investigation, ordeals, sentencing, weregild, sanctuary, and outlawry.
- A traderoad and caravan economy with cargo, markets, hazards, and route play.
- A mercenary company system covering bands, Named Men, contracts, loyalty, camp life, and multi-band Hosts.
- A lifepath generator that replaces thin backstory with a full pre-campaign life system of childhood foundations, profession and crisis paths, advancement, wear, and unfinished business.
- The Champion as a secondary martial calling reached through Fighter: selected on a 5–6 calling roll or offered through a GM-created formative event, with complete profession talents, formative events, and advanced lifepath tables.
- A seventeenth magical discipline, Demonic Magic, plus new spells across the wider magic engine.
- Path-based magical mishaps and broader magic integration clean-up.
- Expanded tactical combat with cut-in range play, brace options, shield pressure, morale, and monster reach.
- New general talents and weapon features that give polearms, shields, and spacing clearer jobs.
- Reworked critical injuries, added acid, cold, and swallow injuries, and clearer survival-after-maiming support.
- A local Reputation model that ties adventurers to settlements and first impressions.
- A harsher, more grounded hunting, weather, season, and spoilage pass for wilderness play.
- Stronger human-peoples chapters with clearer cultural, visual, and social differences.
- Better encounter, artifact, and adventure-site support folded into the Gamemaster's Guide where campaign play needs it.
- A cleaner route from crippling injury to retirement, retention, or NPC afterlife in the campaign.
This repository is built so a GM, designer, or AI agent can do more than read it. The forbidden-lands-* skills are meant to help you understand the line, create new material in the same register, and keep your own campaign repository consistent. The lore skill also preserves Apostol Apostolov's custom-expanded campaign corpus while distinguishing it from published canon.
If your agent supports repo-local skills, copy or symlink the desired folders from this repository's skills/ directory into your own local skill path.
Common workspace-local destinations are:
.github/skills/for repo-scoped shared use.agents/skills/for repo-scoped agent workflows
Keep the folder names and each SKILL.md entry point intact.
Only carry over the Forbidden Lands skills you actually need:
forbidden-lands-bestiaryforbidden-lands-designforbidden-lands-loreforbidden-lands-medieval-authenticityforbidden-lands-synergy-analysisforbidden-lands-writing-voiceyze-design
| Skill | Use it for |
|---|---|
yze-design |
Build a new Year Zero Engine game for any genre; invent, transplant, and stress-validate mechanics from proven YZE primitives |
forbidden-lands-bestiary |
Mechanically native monsters, discoverable weaknesses, Lore Rolls, encounter situations, legends, ecology, and salvage |
forbidden-lands-design |
Integrated rules and supplements, player psychology, sandbox procedures, freeform play, playtesting, and campaign mechanics |
forbidden-lands-lore |
Canon, chronology, places, kin, factions, religion, regional life, magical institutions, war, monster relations, and playable information |
forbidden-lands-medieval-authenticity |
Material life, logistics, settlements, customary law, violence, care, barter, labor, and responsible realism |
forbidden-lands-synergy-analysis |
Dominant builds, stacking, narrative authority, spotlight, niche protection, loopholes, and campaign-pressure bypasses |
forbidden-lands-writing-voice |
Clear rules, usable GM guidance, examples, unresolved sandbox situations, fiction, and manuscript register |
- New YZE game for any genre:
yze-design - New region or campaign frame:
forbidden-lands-design,forbidden-lands-lore,forbidden-lands-writing-voice, andforbidden-lands-medieval-authenticity - New subsystem, profession, or house rule:
forbidden-lands-designandforbidden-lands-synergy-analysis - New monster or enemy band:
forbidden-lands-bestiary,forbidden-lands-lore, andforbidden-lands-medieval-authenticity - Campaign handouts and local color:
forbidden-lands-writing-voiceandforbidden-lands-lore - Full supplement quality pass: all six
forbidden-lands-*skills, withyze-designadded only when engine-independent construction is needed
If you want a clean local campaign workspace, a simple structure like this is enough:
my-forbidden-lands-campaign/
├── README.md
├── 01-region-overview/
├── 02-settlements/
├── 03-factions/
├── 04-adventure-sites/
├── 05-npcs-and-monsters/
├── 06-session-prep/
├── 07-session-logs/
├── 08-house-rules/
├── 09-rumors-legends-hooks/
└── .github/skills/
├── forbidden-lands-bestiary/
├── forbidden-lands-design/
├── forbidden-lands-lore/
├── forbidden-lands-medieval-authenticity/
├── forbidden-lands-synergy-analysis/
├── forbidden-lands-writing-voice/
└── yze-design/
That gives a GM a practical split between world facts, active prep, session history, and house material.
Useful workflow:
- Keep regional truth, factions, and place names in the campaign repo.
- Use
forbidden-lands-loreto stop continuity drift. - Use
forbidden-lands-designbefore committing a new rule, subsystem, sandbox procedure, profession, or supplement chapter. - Use
forbidden-lands-bestiarywhen a location needs new creatures, salvage, or wilderness pressure. - Use
forbidden-lands-writing-voiceandforbidden-lands-medieval-authenticityfor rules examples, letters, rumors, village situations, customary law, legends, expedition notes, and grounded material detail. - Track campaign changes in your own changelog so setting drift stays visible.
The repository also includes the root support documents that make the line usable as a working reference:
CHANGELOG.mdfor the development record from1.0.0to1.1.4LICENSE.mdfor the legal and rights framing of this unofficial repo- Front matter and cover files for all three books
- Encounter, legend, and reference chapters integrated into the books themselves rather than parked in loose working notes
Free League published the official Forbidden Lands Third-Party Tabletop Module License v1.0, dated March 31, 2026.
If you intend to publish, sell, or distribute material derived from this repository, read that license first and then read LICENSE.md in this repository.
This project is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Fria Ligan AB / Free League.