Hi guys,

two quick questions:

- About Forbidden Lands, I've read multiple times Free League is green, but what's your thoughts about the "She & he" section from the player book? Honnestly when I did read this for the first time in the Quickstart, I stopped reading and I knew I'll never buy it. Recently I saw that the "She & He" section seems to have been removed from the 5th printing at least. But as it remains in the Contents section, it's hard to know if it's willingly made, or a printing mistake. I'm interested in many Free League games, and I'd like to be sure I won't have to read pure virtue signaling sections if one day I buy a physical copy.

- About the new Conan: The Hyborian Age, from Monolith: do you know this company? What are your thoughts about the "Safety and Player Comfort" section from the Quickstart?

In both case, the She & He and the Safety sections would seem like obvious and trivial things for me. I know it may seem a bit ridiculous, but that's the point: I don't want to give my money to the people in these companies if they think they can, and have to, moralize me with this kind of trivial statements and signalings. Presuming I'm an asshole needing to be moralized when I pay for something, is a purely asshole mindset and behavior IMO. Or are they simply doing the minimal signaling to be let in peace by the crowd? Or am I just seeing evil everywhere? I just want to read and play good OSR-like and Sword and Sorcery adventures :/

Thx for your feedbacks

Subsidiary question: do you know an alternative to DCC? (ie really centered and conceived for pure dungeon crawling)

Quote from: Phil on January 01, 2025, 04:53:09 PM- About Forbidden Lands, I've read multiple times Free League is green, but what's your thoughts about the "She & he" section from the player book? Honnestly when I did read this for the first time in the Quickstart, I stopped reading and I knew I'll never buy it. Recently I saw that the "She & He" section seems to have been removed from the 5th printing at least. But as it remains in the Contents section, it's hard to know if it's willingly made, or a printing mistake. I'm interested in many Free League games, and I'd like to be sure I won't have to read pure virtue signaling sections if one day I buy a physical copy.

For those that were curious as I was, I found the section at issue in the Forbidden Lands Quickstart.

Quote from: Forbidden Lands Quickstart page 10 url=https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/267633/forbidden-lands-quickstartSHE & HE

Forbidden Lands takes place in a faraway
fantasy world, not our own world's past.
Therefore, we are not bound by the norms
and hierarchies of our history. The monsters
of the Forbidden Lands do not differentiate
between men and women, and neither does
the Blood Mist. To give both sexes space in
the text, but still be consistent, we are using
"she" to denote the GM and all nameless
player characters, while "he" is used for all
nameless NPCs. It might as well read "he or
she" in all these instances, but that would be
too unwieldy.

While it is a bit cringe, using she as the default player pronoun has been pretty common for many years now. It's a little odd that they're drawing attention to it like this, and the thing about "norms and hierarchies" as well as pointing out trying to "give both sexes space in the text" is weird, but the practice itself is pretty close to standard.

If that's your line for not buying something, I can respect that, but its not so much of a virtue signal in my opinion that would turn me off the product.

A far bigger issue in Forbidden Lands for me was how the races were handled. It frankly sucks to be a male halfling, orc, or goblin unless you're into humiliation (orcs) or cuckolding (halflings and goblins). Thankfully it's easy enough to fix without breaking anything if the GM wants, but it's annoying that things were done that way to begin with.

Other than the pronoun disclaimer, I didn't see any issues personally in FBL that would remotely worry me at least on the gameplay/character generation/art/rules side of things.   Admittedly, I haven't played much in the way of official adventures though as the short lived campaign I was in focused heavily on hexcrawl/exploration so I don't know if THE MESSAGE creeps into the various adventure/location lore.

Quote from: Brand55 on January 01, 2025, 08:09:33 PMA far bigger issue in Forbidden Lands for me was how the races were handled. It frankly sucks to be a male halfling, orc, or goblin unless you're into humiliation (orcs) or cuckolding (halflings and goblins). Thankfully it's easy enough to fix without breaking anything if the GM wants, but it's annoying that things were done that way to begin with.

I am unfamiliar with the setting.  Would you mind explaining this?

Quote from: Eirikrautha on January 02, 2025, 12:02:39 AM

Quote from: Brand55 on January 01, 2025, 08:09:33 PMA far bigger issue in Forbidden Lands for me was how the races were handled. It frankly sucks to be a male halfling, orc, or goblin unless you're into humiliation (orcs) or cuckolding (halflings and goblins). Thankfully it's easy enough to fix without breaking anything if the GM wants, but it's annoying that things were done that way to begin with.

I am unfamiliar with the setting.  Would you mind explaining this?

Orc males are big, stupid brutes that are easily angered. They also make up something like 75% of the orc population and have large tusks that give them a speech impediment. Females, on the other hand, don't have tusks. Despite being the minority, they aren't stupid like the males and so they run everything. They also mock males for their speech impediment, and some go out of their way to adopt names the males will really struggle to even pronounce. Males are presented as strong and proud yet they're completely subservient to female orcs.

Goblins and halflings are two sides of the same race. It's possible for two halfling parents to produce a goblin child and vice versa. So the female halflings and goblins set up special places where the pregnant mothers go to give birth. This allows for babies to be swapped between mothers so that they have a child that matches their own type of kin. Men aren't allowed and the women don't reveal anything about the birth, and so the fathers never know if they'll be raising their own child or someone else's when the wife comes back with a baby.

As presented, it just doesn't add up. If orc males were the clear majority and were really as proud and short-tempered as they're supposed to be, they'd never put up with being treated so poorly by female orcs. And the idea of halflings and goblins being related is pretty cool, but there's no reason for the secrecy around the births. That's just mean-spirited in its execution and ruins what is otherwise an interesting idea.

Quote from: Brand55 on January 02, 2025, 01:01:38 AMOrc males are big, stupid brutes that are easily angered. They also make up something like 75% of the orc population and have large tusks that give them a speech impediment. Females, on the other hand, don't have tusks. Despite being the minority, they aren't stupid like the males and so they run everything. They also mock males for their speech impediment, and some go out of their way to adopt names the males will really struggle to even pronounce. Males are presented as strong and proud yet they're completely subservient to female orcs.

Goblins and halflings are two sides of the same race. It's possible for two halfling parents to produce a goblin child and vice versa. So the female halflings and goblins set up special places where the pregnant mothers go to give birth. This allows for babies to be swapped between mothers so that they have a child that matches their own type of kin. Men aren't allowed and the women don't reveal anything about the birth, and so the fathers never know if they'll be raising their own child or someone else's when the wife comes back with a baby.

That's... incredibly terrible. That doesn't even strike me as ideologically possessed, it mostly just screams "I'M QUIRKY" and violently jazz hands.

Thx for your replies.

Regarding the Orcs thing, I would not be negatively triggered I think. In the real world, there is a massive number of species where females are dominating males, including among mammals. So it makes sense for me to see this with green skins in an original setting (would be different if it was suddenly introduced out of nowhere in a pre-existing setting, as usual). The thing with the goblins and halflings is more surprising, if not creepy at the first glance, so I would be curious to read it in the book.

I'm happy to hear that aside the She & He section, there is apparently no forced messages in FBL. Meanwhile, in my mother tongue, using "she" for the GM and "he" for all non-named NPCs thoughout the book sounds like permanent signaling.

There is the Conan Hyborian Age section :

QuoteSafety and Player
Comfort
Though the original Conan stories are frequently
lurid and occasionally veer into uncomfortable
stereotypes of race and culture, there is no reason
that the tabletop experience needs to mirror
these elements. The Game Master and players
should establish the boundaries of comfort for
the content and behavior within the game, identifying
any potentially troublesome aspects that
will make players uncomfortable, at the risk of
spoiling their enjoyment of the game.
Various methods exist for establishing table rules,
whether safety tools such as X cards (cards that
can be shown when a subject should be dropped),
player checklists of undesirable topics, or a simple
conversation before play about potentially
problematic subjects. Not everyone has the same
limits, and these should be respected equally.
If a player doesn't want to experience scenes of
torture, cruelty, degradation, racism , sexism, or
something less obvious, the Game Master and
other players should respect that and adjust the
gameplay accordingly.

Ofc, it's even less a signal than the "She and He" section, and sounds even more trivial to me. So not really a prob. I'm more curious to know what are your thoughts about this kind of message. For me it's obvious not to be an asshole at my table, be it as a player or a GM. But ironically, where this kind of section seems to say "play with everyone, here is tools to achieve it", I would say "don't feel constraint to play with everyone", and if I know someone needs special accommodations like X cards, it's probably not someone I want to play with, and even less GM for.

Quote from: Phil on January 02, 2025, 05:37:33 AMThere is the Conan Hyborian Age section :

QuoteSafety and Player
Comfort

yea that section reads a wholly obligatory. "we have to put something about safety tools in or we'll get mobbed by bots on twitter" kind of thing. I still hate it and wish it weren't there, but at least its not asserting that if you play a Conan game in a way similar to a Conan story you're doing it wrong. That wouldn't turn me off of buying the book, despite how cringe it is.

Quote from: Zenoguy3 on January 02, 2025, 11:10:11 AM

Quote from: Phil on January 02, 2025, 05:37:33 AMThere is the Conan Hyborian Age section :

QuoteSafety and Player
Comfort

yea that section reads a wholly obligatory. "we have to put something about safety tools in or we'll get mobbed by bots on twitter" kind of thing. I still hate it and wish it weren't there, but at least its not asserting that if you play a Conan game in a way similar to a Conan story you're doing it wrong. That wouldn't turn me off of buying the book, despite how cringe it is.

It's totally cringe and unnecessary, but that game's main crimes are the shitty mechanics and bad writing.

I kind of get it for Conan since there's a lot of slavery and implied abusive things. So it's not a red flag IMHO given the source material. It's not decrying it as much as saying hey this is here but it's okay if you don't use it.

Quote from: Brand55 on January 02, 2025, 01:01:38 AM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on January 02, 2025, 12:02:39 AM

Quote from: Brand55 on January 01, 2025, 08:09:33 PMA far bigger issue in Forbidden Lands for me was how the races were handled. It frankly sucks to be a male halfling, orc, or goblin unless you're into humiliation (orcs) or cuckolding (halflings and goblins). Thankfully it's easy enough to fix without breaking anything if the GM wants, but it's annoying that things were done that way to begin with.

I am unfamiliar with the setting.  Would you mind explaining this?

Orc males are big, stupid brutes that are easily angered. They also make up something like 75% of the orc population and have large tusks that give them a speech impediment. Females, on the other hand, don't have tusks. Despite being the minority, they aren't stupid like the males and so they run everything. They also mock males for their speech impediment, and some go out of their way to adopt names the males will really struggle to even pronounce. Males are presented as strong and proud yet they're completely subservient to female orcs.

Goblins and halflings are two sides of the same race. It's possible for two halfling parents to produce a goblin child and vice versa. So the female halflings and goblins set up special places where the pregnant mothers go to give birth. This allows for babies to be swapped between mothers so that they have a child that matches their own type of kin. Men aren't allowed and the women don't reveal anything about the birth, and so the fathers never know if they'll be raising their own child or someone else's when the wife comes back with a baby.

As presented, it just doesn't add up. If orc males were the clear majority and were really as proud and short-tempered as they're supposed to be, they'd never put up with being treated so poorly by female orcs. And the idea of halflings and goblins being related is pretty cool, but there's no reason for the secrecy around the births. That's just mean-spirited in its execution and ruins what is otherwise an interesting idea.

Thanks for the summary!  That's ... something.  I mean, it reads like the worldbuilding of a ten year-old, who doesn't quite understand how all that family and procreation stuff works.  Just weird...

Quote from: Brand55 on January 02, 2025, 01:01:38 AMOrc males are big, stupid brutes that are easily angered. They also make up something like 75% of the orc population and have large tusks that give them a speech impediment. Females, on the other hand, don't have tusks. Despite being the minority, they aren't stupid like the males and so they run everything. They also mock males for their speech impediment, and some go out of their way to adopt names the males will really struggle to even pronounce. Males are presented as strong and proud yet they're completely subservient to female orcs.

Goblins and halflings are two sides of the same race. It's possible for two halfling parents to produce a goblin child and vice versa. So the female halflings and goblins set up special places where the pregnant mothers go to give birth. This allows for babies to be swapped between mothers so that they have a child that matches their own type of kin. Men aren't allowed and the women don't reveal anything about the birth, and so the fathers never know if they'll be raising their own child or someone else's when the wife comes back with a baby.

As presented, it just doesn't add up. If orc males were the clear majority and were really as proud and short-tempered as they're supposed to be, they'd never put up with being treated so poorly by female orcs. And the idea of halflings and goblins being related is pretty cool, but there's no reason for the secrecy around the births. That's just mean-spirited in its execution and ruins what is otherwise an interesting idea.

I don't have a problem with something like this. That's not how I envision halflings and goblins, it's kind of a weird take on them, but it makes enough sense to me that a fantasy race has different social and sexual norms from humans. The core idea that halflings and goblins are actually the same creature is an interesting premise. While I suppose it's possible the baby-swapping culture is someone's elaborate cuckolding fetish, it seems more likely that it started with, "What of halflings and goblins were actually the same race?" and that got carried out several more steps.

As for orcs, don't underestimate how much the male of the species values the female. In a mating economy that's as lopsided as 3 men for every woman, the women are calling the shots. That's just how it works. If it's 3:1 in favor of men, the men are similarly empowered to make demands. Beating up a woman who made fun of your speech when there's 3 men for every woman is how you get your nuts stomped by every other man in town.

I was interested in these points so I flicked through the GM guide description of these two races. While the thing is straithforward regarding orcs (indeed females are basically dominating in this kin), it's a little bit more subtle regarding goblins. There is a kind of short mythical origin explaining this in the first place, but there is also physical similarities not uncommonly shared between goblins and halflings, so it sounds more like two phenotypes of a same kin rather than simply Primula Brandybuck hidding to Drogo Baggins his true son is Skarsnik King of the Eight Peaks. But more importantly, it seems (not sure as I'm not at all familiar with the setting) that aside the big picture provided by the base game, these backgrounds are always more or less a  mix of myths, just-so-stories, and maybe real facts here and there, depending on the GM taste. If I'm correct, it would indeed be easy to consider these things as old stories people are telling regarding the origin of Halflings and Goblins, but are simply baseless, without breaking the game.

At the bottom line, I'd probably won't consider these points are related to any oriented messages from the authors. It's rather very basic and non-restrictive lore written to be easily homebrewed, though it may indeed sound simplistic or far-fetched depending upon your sensitivity.   

Forbidden Lands is dark.  The descriptions of some of the kin is meant to be darkly humorous.

For instance, Halflings

QuoteEveryone is happy and tubby in your family
They sing humorous songs in the inns, and
drink and smoke, but when darkness falls they
vomit in the flowerbeds and go home to beat
their children.