D&D Taught Me to Prep... Forbidden Lands Taught Me You Don't Have To

I’m running a Forbidden Lands campaign at 7:30 in the morning on Saturdays, which is ridiculous, but it’s a pile of fun.

The plan was originally to run through the entire Raven’s Purge campaign. That hasn’t happened.

What Happened Yesterday

They were on a river heading to a village called Serpent’s Fork. I prepped the thing they were getting to.

That’s not what happened. Not even vaguely close.

On the river, a random encounter was rolled. A boat coming down the river. A girl with blue plague in it.

They could have let it go by. They didn’t. They took her to the side.

Okay, just a quick random encounter, right?

No. The entire session was completely randomly made from a couple of encounters. Zero prep. I felt like I was actually playing the game as well as running it.

How It Unfolded

They ended up having to forage to find stuff to cure the plague.

Somebody messed up the roll for making camp, so it rained. They all nearly died of cold. Which meant they had to hang around longer.

Another random encounter: an orc wedding. An orc and a human getting married.

They went to see what was happening. Ended up joining. There was about to be a big fight - loads of orcs and humans didn’t want them to get married. You know, racism.

They ended up fixing this situation through the power of dance.

One of the guys - his character danced once in a bar and has terrible stats. It was going to go awful. He just smashed it. Every time he’s done this dance called the Turto, he’s smashed it.

So he went: “If I could get them to dance and show that the human could…”

It was this weird surreal Footloose moment. An orc teaching a human how to dance. The entire session was those two random encounters expanded upon.

The Journey Is the Story

This is what makes Forbidden Lands such a freaking awesome game. The journey IS the story.

In most games, the journey is what you do to get to the thing. But not here.

Our entire campaign so far has been: they found a place, created something, everything done with pretty much zero prep whatsoever.

Rethinking How Little I Prep

I’m normally a minimal prepper. I love the Lazy GM stuff.

But this is making me rethink how little I prepped.

The less you prep, the more you can enjoy it.

That’s a weird but wonderfully freeing concept.