Forbidden Lands week (10 days long) begins today (July 10) at PaineFull-DM.com!

As it happens, Dave Thaumavore posted a YouTube about Forbidden Lands yesterday - I watched it this morning. In that video (link below), Dave hopes that Free League and Erik Granström will leave Alderland as an open book for GMs to develop their own ideas. It’s a good idea, but I happen to know that Erik Granström is nearly finished writing a book detailing much of Alderland. So, bad luck, Dave Thaumavore (good luck, too, though).

(Later this week, I'll talk about other online inspirations - including Third Floor Wars and interviews with Erik Granström and Henrik Rosenborg [illustrator of The Book of Beasts])

As is detailed in previous posts on PaineFull-DM.com (https://painefull-dm.com/2024/07/01/april-2024-casan-fundraiser-tarantis-a-reimagining/), I’ve been detailing my Reimagining of Tarantis. I’ve been thinking that I would place it in my version of Alderland for my Forbidden Lands games. I’m excited and curious how Erik Granström will detail the portion of Alderland where I want to put Tarantis and I’ve been doing a little hand wringing and worrying that my city won’t “fit” in Erik Granström’s vision. Dave Thaumavore gave me a great idea, though, that has some other adventure ideas sprouting up quickly!

Dave Thaumavore highlights that much of the lore presented in the books is to be assumed from an unreliable narrator and that’s built into the world. SO, I’m going to continue writing Tarantis, compare to whatever comes out in Mr. (Dr.?) Granstöm and make some adjustments as make sense. However, I’m going to make any grossly different bits the fault of an “historian / scholar” who takes their book far and wide. Libraries, monasteries, and places of higher learning all over have this scholar’s works in their stacks - yet nearly none of it is true. In some cases, the writings are vindictive against or praises of underserving people. In other cases, the scholar is making it up because they never experienced the place that they are writing about. I’m scheming about how to integrate the life of the “scholar / historian” with the places and the adventurers.

Here’s my latest regional map. I still have to integrate my Tarantis City map with the regional map and I’m still experimenting with how to best draw forested areas - and I need to play with watercolors.

MY regional map of northeastern Alderland - and MY Tarantis
Part of the Official World Map for Forbidden Lands

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