The interesting thing about PCs is that they have agency, and will rapidly become larger-than-life, like rock stars or founders of companies, travelling the world when nobody else would, and generally doing things that most people wouldn’t even think of doing.

The end of the blood mist is what spurred them into action, and adventurers may inspire other wannabe adventurers, until eventually the initial leap of faith needed to strike out on your own may no longer be needed. If there’s a pool of potential adventurers that your players can dip into when their character dies, maybe their next PC could be older and have an interesting background. Failing that, the older adventuring types could be teachers.

You need to be careful about what you say about the world and the number of adventuring groups in it, because that will impact your campaign. The longer it’s been since the Blood Mist vanished, the likelier it is that adventure sites will have been found and artifacts claimed. And the more adventuring groups there are, the likelier it is you’ll have to worry about them as well as monsters and sorcerers with demons.

This may be a post-post-apocalyptic world, without e.g. feudal Lords who can project power significantly, but it doesn’t mean the world is a blank slate. Each village has its geography and history that will inform how they feel about their neighbours, and how adventurers may behave. Humans in Harga are almost certainly going to get drawn into fighting Zytera and Katorda; dwarves will explore the ancient dwarven roads (both underground and overground); orcs are almost certainly involved with the Viraga’s plans. You might manage to make common ground with the humans in Harga to take down Krasylla, but relationships with other adventuring groups is always going to be somewhat fraught.

Still, if the PCs aren’t bastards and there aren’t too many of them, they can become an example to all and a power to be reckoned with. That’s almost more important than just taking down the Big Bad.

Gracenotes:

If you’re worried about PCs dying, maybe don’t kill them; older PCs have a plausible reason for already having XP, and have much more interesting Dark Secrets; half of all the villages on the map will significantly feel the impact of an able-bodied person leaving to go adventuring; killing just a few Rust Brothers regularly will have a significant impact; if Arvia has adventurer friends your PCs can’t just kill her for being so entertainingly annoying; the Rust Brothers might set up a bunch of fake adventurers.

In a world with plentiful magic, magic items are no longer surprising, but just part of ordinary life, which means the rich will have the best magic. It’s a bad idea to say that you can make magic books of knowledge, or make magic items if you don’t fear magic mishap because you’re already dying: that would mean the Ravenlands would be full of them, and we know that they’re not.

Talking of stuff from D&D that doesn’t belong in this game, having monsters that can only be hurt by magic weapons makes magic weapons uninterestingly mundane. Spells that make traveling easier and more luxurious introduce entrenched privilege that doesn’t belong in a post-post-apocalyptic game where nearly everyone is starting from scratch.

If we look at what the game suggests should happen instead, we should make sure creating a grimoire is really hard so they stay rare and impressive; following the pattern of the magic items created by/for the ancient elves, it should take a lot of time to create a magic item and/or they should always have limitations, by necessity or design. Maybe some magic items were created by / born from events, fairy-tale-style?

Once we’ve done that, we can lean into what makes Forbidden Lands magic items special. They never let you become superhuman; they always have drawbacks, which if not unfortunately rubbish can be a great source of roleplaying; there’s always a story about them, which makes them feel special rather than randomly-generated; and because they have a personality, they’re now an extra NPC you get to play with.

So if your players get loot which isn’t quite what they wanted, that’s the best of experiences. “It just works” is boring. “It works but…” is amazing.

Gracenotes:

If some monsters can only be hurt by certain magic items, you’ve invented combat golf; it’s actually refreshing that Zertorme knows how to adventure; grimoires should feel weird; did the ancient elves make their artifacts or were they given them?; limitations of evil artifacts maybe weren’t considered limitations by their creators; there are so few magic items that a scholar somewhere is trying to become an expert on them all; “I’m sorry, the weird sword wants to say something”; disadvantages that are qualitative rather than rules-based.

Most worlds don’t have rifts open to a demonic world, but once you have one, you’ve got a struggle that’s going to last for a while. Leaders matter, whether it’s sacrificing one in a shocking manner or a leader bringing their people behind them, and in the Ravenlands this means Zygofer. It looks like Zygofer is both the sacrifice and the leader, by his indecision between order and chaos embodying the problems besetting the Ravenlands.

Gracenotes: someone like Zygofer was inevitable, an incursion of excess order would be equally weird, order-vs-chaos metaphysics could mean the Forbidden Lands get even swingier, how likely is it that your players are going to be peacemakers?, even if you disagree with me, Zygofer should try to sacrifice / marry Kalman Rodenfell

There isn’t necessarily one obvious person in charge; everyone’s gone their way, not necessarily well, and all villages should be really, really weird. The world is so empty and wild that encountering a herd of bison could be a significant challenge, but the PC group might be basically the only one. If everyone else is busy, a focused PC group might be able to do serious damage.

Your neighbours have the same stuff as you, so ancient trade ports are now ghost towns. Probably only dwarves trade regularly; other kins’ trade is probably limited to small, valuable foodstuffs, or one-off deals for PCs building strongholds to impress people.

Of course there’s alcohol, but it’s for local people, not travellers. The smith doesn’t have a pile of ready-made swords. If you want horses you might need to find someone who’s got a gryphon problem.

Anonymous thievery or, worse, slavery, are out for lack of people; similarly, if you manage to conquer another settlement you can’t keep it. If you find anything like this going on, it’s out of desperation or because of individual preference.

Either game balance, the map or the armies in the Alder wars let us estimate the population of Ravenland before the Blood Mist, and things probably got worse since then. There’s not many people left.

Zytera+Kartorda have coins, but that’s very much an exception. Most villages have more informal arrangements.

Salient points:

• An early population estimate of Ravenland
• Maybe being left alone could lead to bright ideas?
• Bloodlings will probably leave windmills or watermills alone

Counter-intuitively, it’s probably in the Southern hemisphere.

Noteworthy issues: what do the mountains do to rain, and what does that mean for the climate?