a cursory introduction

The full release of THF&P is getting so close! While you wait, why not enjoy the quickstart rules? This digest sized, 52 page PDF has everything a group of friends need to play a level 0 adventure: the rules, character creation, the sheets, a minigame, and even an adventure! Check out a preview by clicking HERE, or purchase it for $3.50 by clicking HERE.

The PDF is bookmarked, and it contains link to random background parcel generators in both the bookmarks and the text. This guidebook contains several background packages for quick play, but using the random generators the PDF links to you can create a background parcel from all the material available in the full release!

the system

TFH&P uses a modified core mechanic from Shadow Of The Demon Lord. To resolve tasks you roll a single d20, add a modifier if needed, and add or subtract a number of d6 gifts and gags (called boons and banes inSotDL) to determine your success. Different from its cousin, however, TFH&P has a graduated range of outcomes: a 1 to 4 is a flop, a 5 – 9 is a fluke, a 10 – 15 is a favor, and 16+ is a fortune. Your gifts and gags come from the grades you have in your subjects, or skills. This core mechanic is called the Question & Answer roll and it covers virtually every challenge in the game, whether you’re hiding from a Monster, brawling with some highway robbers, or using a magic trick to grow legs on the mayor’s house.

the setting

The entirety of the world, from one edge of the map to the other, is covered in thick copses of trees, haunted ruins, crisscrossing creeks, and rarely traveled highways. When not giving pause to the occasional town, the forest is full to the brim with strangeness; a gang of Raccoons and Rats might leap from an alley with their pistols drawn to demand your purse, Ghosts bring up vegetable gardens on the grounds of their lonely estates, and travelers might be drawn to a night’s rest by following the gentle smell of a pie cooling in a window. Brigands terrorize the road in broad daylight, a band of Dogs take up as funeral musicians, woodwitches trade lies over drinks and cards, and folks everywhere seem to constantly be readying the place for whatever the next celebration may be.

Adventurers have their choice of three types of Forest Dweller! There are the aloof and ever pragmatic People, who’ve been dropped into the laps of other dwellers by The Stork and are bit out of place. Animal Folk are the most commonly encountered dweller, and they are the walking and talking civilized relations of the more wild animals of the forest. Finally there are the Ghosts; becostumed spirits with a penchant for the supernatural and a curiosity for exploring the similarly strange Forest Hymn.