Forbidden Lands vs Old-School Essentials
Compare Forbidden Lands and Old-School Essentials side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.
| Forbidden Lands | Old-School Essentials | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy | Fantasy |
| Tags | Sandbox, Hexcrawl, Gritty, Survival, Deadly, Exploration, Base-Building, Random Tables | Dungeon Crawl, Exploration, Hexcrawl, Deadly, Sandbox, Resource Management, Inventory Management, Random Tables, Vancian Casting, Strong GM Support |
| Core Mechanic | Roll a pool of d6s (attribute + skill + gear dice). Each 6 is a success. You can push your roll for extra dice, but risk damaging gear and taking conditions. Gear dice degrade on 1s. Year Zero Engine. | Attacks roll d20 against an attack matrix or an optional ascending Armour Class target. Saving throws meet a category target on d20. Ability checks roll at or below an ability score on d20. |
| Dice | d6 dice pool | d20 |
| Complexity | Medium | Low |
| Availability | Free quickstart | Free core rules |
| Runnability | 4 of 5 book tools | 5 of 5 book tools |
| License | Year Zero Engine OGL | OGL 1.0a |
| Third-Party Publishing | Not yet researched | Commercial publishing allowed — Open license |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Publisher | Free League Publishing | Necrotic Gnome |
| Year | 2018 | 2019 |
| Languages | English, Swedish, German, French, Spanish, Italian | English, Italian, Spanish, French, Czech, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean |
| Best For | Sandbox hexcrawl campaigns with stronghold building, resource management, and a dark fantasy tone. Great for groups who want to explore and carve out their own corner of the world. | Groups who want treasure-driven dungeon expeditions and open wilderness campaigns with fragile starting characters. |
| Highlights | Detailed sandbox tools and hexcrawl structure, stronghold building adds long-term goals, push mechanic creates meaningful risk, low-prep with random encounter tables and legend handouts | Treasure recovered from adventures provides most experience points, rewarding successful exploration over fighting alone. Reaction and optional morale rolls let encounters lead to negotiation or flight instead of automatic combat. Stronghold construction and taxation let accumulated wealth support a growing domain. |
| Considerations | Tightly tied to its Ravenland setting, push mechanic can frustrate cautious players, stronghold rules require the full boxed set, hex encounters can feel repetitive without GM preparation | Characters die at zero hit points, and failed poison saves are usually fatal. Demihuman characters combine ancestry with class and have lower level limits than human classes. Declared spells are lost if the caster is hit or fails a saving throw before acting. |