The World of The Lost Lands, First Impressions

[MNblockhead]

Frog God Games just released the PDF files for their system-neutral setting book, The World of the Lost Lands, to those who supported their Kickstarter. Since I'm overseas and away from family, reading through it is great way to ring in the new year. I'm sure there are others who backed this Kickstarter that are active on EN World and I'm looking forward to reading your thoughts about the book and how you plan to use it in your games. The following are some of my initial impressions.

First, a bit about where I'm coming from in regards to The Lost Lands setting. I never head of Frog God Games or its predecessor, Necromancer Games, until recently. I went a long time without gaming, missing most of the 90s and the first decades of 2000. Greyhawk, Dragon Lance, and homebrew settings is where we adventured in the 80s. When I got back into the hobby with 5th edition, my first two years of 5e gaming were run in a homebrew setting I created, followed by Curse of Strahd. As my CoS campaign was wrapping up, I started looking for a megadungeon where I could run an old-school XP-for-GP dungeon-delve campaign and, serendipitously, FGG kickstarted a re-release of Rappan Athuk for 5th edition.

I love the Rappan Athuk and am running my current campaign in it. But as I prepare my sessions I often find that I want more information about the wider campaign world. Reading it I could tell that there was depth of history, lore, and geography for the wider world in which Rappan Athuk is set. There is a wealth of hefty campaign books set in The Lost Lands, but there was not an overall introduction to the world as a whole. Until now.

The Lost Lands is a Massive world built on 40 years of gaming and scores of publications. The major continents, cultures, peoples, important locations, history, and pantheons are brought together in the 516 pages of this tome. The book is divided into five chapters and two appendices:

• Chapter 1 - Overview of the Lost Lands. This chapter covers the overall world geography, cosmology, weather, climate, methods of time keeping, calendars, and technology of the setting.
  
  • The planet on which The Lost Lands is found is huge. Roughly twice the size of our Earth, with a circumference of 50,400 miles. This allows room for a wide range of societies of various levels of technological development, kingdoms of different races/species, and vast unexplored areas of wilderness.
    
    
  • The book focuses on the two main populated continents. As detailed as this setting book is, however, it makes it clear that there remain large areas that are outside the known world of the settings. The lost northern continent of Boros is not detailed, it is either covered under glaciers now, or perhaps beyond the ice the ancestors of the people who formed the first great human empire may remain. It is up for the DM to decide. The islands scattered throughout the ocean south of the main continents is also not detailed.
    
    
  • The larger cosmology is barely touched upon and consists of only two paragraphs. The planet orbits a sun and has two moons. Other planets and other planes are hinted at, but the book mostly leaves it to the DMs to decide how they want to handle cosmology in their campaign.
    
    
  • The calendars have been published in other books, but it is nice to have them together in one source. One thing I miss, however, is the system of time tracking described in Rappan Athuk that cleverly takes the game mechanic of rounds and turns and makes them part of the actual setting by creating a system of time tracking based on the "lengths of spell durations as observed and meticulously recorded by court magi in the early days of the Kingdom of Khemit. These carefully measured time periods were later applied to the practice of commerce in the form of rented time on a public millstone." (Rappan Athuk 22). I'm wondering if they left this out of the book to make the book fully system neutral.
    
• Chapter 2 - Peoples of the Lost Lands. This chapter covers the major human and non-human groups, as well as the languages of the lost lands. Overall it is about what I expected, but I do wish it included tables of common names. I'm guessing that they left that out because they have other setting and adventure books that detail specific regions and cities of The Lost Lands, which already contain detailed name tables.
  
  
• Chapter 3 - A Brief History of the Lost Lands. After having read through the detailed timelines in Rappan Athuk, The Borderland Provinces, Bards Gates, and the timeline appended to this book, it is nice to finally have a concise and easy-to-read history of the realms to give context to all the detailed histories contained in the other books. Like everything in The Lost Lands, there is a lot of juicy detail in the history and timelines, but the time spans and geography is so vast that GMs will have no problem filling in details and making the setting their own.
  
  
• Chapter 4 - Religion in the Lost Lands. This section was a little disappointing. I anticipated having more information about the religions of the Lost Lands. So many of the adventures in The Lost Lands involve the politics of major religious organizations and machinations of demonic cults. But this section is only one page with an appendix listing the major pantheons of the world. The book explains the sparse details provided by stating: "A full discourse on the gods of the Lost Lands is beyond the
  scope of this volume and is expected to be addressed in a future publication." So, for the time being, I'll have to rely on the seeds sown throughout other Lost Lands publications.
  
  
• Chapter 5 - This is the meat of the book. It covers the major realms and settlements of the various regions of the known world with detailed maps, local histories, local religions (which helps make up for the overly brief chapter on religion), trade and commerce, loyalties and diplomacy, government, military, major threats, wilderness adventures, and city descriptions. For each region or location that is covered by other books they helpfully provide a reference to it.
  
  I am especially happy that they have kept the format that they use in their other Lost Lands books, where each city and region has a first-paragraph stat block listing the ruler(s), government type, population broken down by race, common monstrous threats, major languages, religious attitude (which states their attitudes on religion in general, e.g. "pious, tolerant" versus simply naming religions followed), resources, currency, and technology level.
  
  One thing that is noticeably missing from the city/region stat blocks in this book, however, is they don't list the maximum amount of gold available for selling loot. I find that very helpful in other Lost Lands books, especially in the type of campaign I'm running. I'm guessing that they kept this out to keep it truly system neutral. But I'm so used to it, and have come to rely on it, that I'm disappointed that they didn't keep the convention in this book.
  
  
• Appendix 1 - Timeline of the Lost Lands. This contains a lengthy and detailed timeline, something that is a familiar feature in FGG books. It may be too much detail for some, but I love FGG timelines. They inspire the creation of quests and provide a nice way to throw some lore into research and roleplaying that is easy to look up.
  
  
• Appendix 2 - Pantheons & Gods of the Lost Lands. Your basic table of gods divided by region/culture. It is nice to have, but the problem for those new to the Lost Lands is that it just seems like a derivative hodge-podge. Yet the cults and religions are some of the more rich content in the Lost Lands, fleshed out scores of books and decades of play. All that is lost in a simple table like this. I'm really looking forward to their book on the religions of The Lost Lands and hope it is completed soon.

After a break, I'll continue this thread in another post with thoughts on my personal thoughts on the pros and cons of this book.

 

[MNblockhead]

One criticism I expect some to make about The Lost Lands is that it is another "kitchen sink" campaign world like Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, or Midgard. For me, this is a feature not a flaw. I think most DMs are looking for campaign words that they easily make their own and run whatever kind of campaign that fits into the genre of the system they are running. The Lost Lands is great for that. I like that it has a huge volume of content that you can lean on and draw from, now all in one book. Yet, you don't feel that you are a bit part in someone else's larger story.

So why chose to adventure in The Lost Lands versus another setting? I'm interested in what other fans have to say. For me, I came to love the setting from its adventure and region books. Bill Webb's love for old school gaming and his lovingly curated world built through thousands of hours of gaming in, and the fact that it remains primarily a single creators vision (though a many talented writers and designers have contributed to that vision) gives it a certain feel that I don't get from the Forgotten Realms, for example.

Another reason to consider The Lost Lands, however, is that FGG is going to open the setting up to creators who want to publish material set in it and they are working on releasing the setting in World Anvil. I believe that last update I saw was that they were on track for a late-January release. Having such a flesh out setting in a cross-references, hyperlinked format that can easily be shared with players will be an amazing resource.

 

[aco175]

I have looked and this and the Scarred Lands reprint as possible new worlds to play, but keep coming back to FR. I find that the history and knowledge from years of play makes it easier for me and my players to get along with it.

 

[MNblockhead]

I have looked and this and the Scarred Lands reprint as possible new worlds to play, but keep coming back to FR. I find that the history and knowledge from years of play makes it easier for me and my players to get along with it.

I get that. I think if you are already immersed in the Forgotten Realms (or Greyhawk, or Midgard) there probably isn't much of a reason to make a switch. I would however, recommend looking at some of FGG's adventures and city books, which you could fairly easily put into a FR campaign.

 

[aco175]

they are working on releasing the setting in World Anvil. I believe that last update I saw was that they were on track for a late-January release. Having such a flesh out setting in a cross-references, hyperlinked format that can easily be shared with players will be an amazing resource.

This last part looks like a great like a great idea. I would like to see how this progresses.

 

[Zaukrie]

Looking forward to seeing what someone can do with World Anvil, when they have the time/resources.....I have a world there, but it's mostly for me to fix something I'm writing....