West Marches Campaigns, Explained
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- Опубліковано 29 чер 2024
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Ben Robbin's Blog Articles about his West Marches Campaign:
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Scheduling Conflicts? Not anymore! Get 20 of your friends together for some fantastic D&D Shenanigans in a campaign style focused on running bite size adventures in the wilderness! - Ігри
After seeing Matt Colville's video on west marches style games. I ran a "west sails" campaign. I took all of my players across three games I was running and threw them on a pirate ship.
It was the best thing ever. I used the ship as the means of conveyance and home base.
I sort of thought of it as star trek dnd. The sessions typically started and ended on the ship whenever possible, whoever wasn't present stayed with the boat and the party that was present was the away team.
We used discord for communication and the party kinda assigned themselves roles for keeping maps, writing logs and managing their inventory.
Worked brilliantly, the party bought into the gimmick of being a pirate crew, including electing a captain that was the person who "called the shots" to me the DM. Would highly recommend.
Did a similar thing with a spelljammer. Great stuff
I know this was posted a long time ago so I hope you'll read this, but this was a great pitch and I'm totally going to do this!
I do have a little practical question: how do you deal with maneuvering the ship if it's the home base? Do your players plan where the ship sails before the next session? Can it move all over the map?
Since normally the home base is static I was curious how you played with a mobile one. I've never played these types of sandboxes, so maybe you could enlighten me.
Also, bonus question: it seems way more difficult to weave the backstories of 10 characters (more if players have 3 each) into the overarching plot. Did you try to? Did it work?
Thank you so much for the inspiration!
I've run this two years ago and it remains one of the best mastering experiences of my life.
20 players interacting with eachother, creating rumors about dungeons they could not defeat and hoardes they did not loot. High level characters offering their services to the highest bidder. One player even wrote a monster manual about the creatures of my setting. And all of it because it was beneficial to them , not to me ! It's the only time I had players planning their incursions in the wild and thinking about party composition, because they knew they weren't the heroes, and they could very well arrive to a dungeon only to find out it had already been looted. Great stuff, epic and immersive (it's a lot of work compared to a normal campaign, and it's very different)
Holy Crap dude that was a wonderful pitch for West Marches. I'm sold. That sounds like you're running a MMO almost!
@@CVBartosh The original dream that lead to the development of MMOs was "What if you could play a Westmarches RPG game on the internet?"
@@nicholascarter9158 right on. Makes sense. What excited me about MMO was the sandbox promises that they offered. I ended up gravitating to TTRPGs overtime as MMO would consistently fall behind their promises. I have big hopes for the integration of AI and video games though.
The 1e method of 1gp = 1 XP is a great way to get players excited to count their own gold.
West Marches is how the original games used to be played. Arneson's Blackmoor, and Gygax's Greyhawk both were this style. I love it when new generations find old ways of playing again as they get deeper into the hobby.
Not true. Open table play isn't the same as west marches. West marches as we know it via Ben's blog is a subset of open table style play.
@@EricVulgaris And the differences are? Everything that is mentioned in West Marches existed in open table so I'm not sure what differences you're referring to.
@@Giantstomp WM *specifically* refers to player organizing of sessions and sessions being self contained (and the starting town being safe) as mentioned in the original blog. While folks could join a game group early on, those stipulations weren't present..their games were more continuous and recurring while being open for ppl to join. Hope that helps!
@@EricVulgaris But both Gary and Dave's games also had all those aspects. Even in the part where players helped with the story direction, I think that the only difference is the term, and the WM insistence on the town is a safe place. Otherwise, they are remarkably similar. I think what Ben did more than anything was codify it, and get it out to the masses, which is important. Most people then, and even today, are not familiar with this style of play because it's not what has been made popular in the media.
Also worth mentioning is that Gygax's original games in Lake Geneva were available to whichever players showed up that day and he enforced rules such that the PCs would always return to town after a session or require a similarly "safe" location to return to until the next session. He was a pretty big stickler on tracking downtime. While there are some minor differences in the style of play it really was the prototype for the West Marches.
I started a West Marches game in 2019 but it's changed as time has gone on. Nobody really liked having to wrap everything up in one session, as it felt limiting. So we started doing adventures over two or three instead. Now we have a group who are permanently off in one section of the map with a second base of operations, and two other groups who are spending more time nearer home base. The characters do still mix, but less often now. The main thing is everyone's still having fun.
It's been interesting seeing how things have developed.
A friend is currently running several campaigns like this, all taking part in the same world in different areas. Depending on who shows up, we play whatever group of characters matches up. So we each have 3-4 characters and while casual, we are able to influence the world as a whole, which will affect and interplay with the other groups of characters. It's incredibly interesting to play characters that are slightly antagonistic or downright opposed to others in the various groups. It's chaotic, fun, casual, and flexible. Highly recommend. Thanks Baron for the introduction to this concept some players may not have known about!
I'm getting ready to (hopefully) run a campaign for the Mothership RPG (horror in space, a la Alien or Event Horizon). But this video just gave me an idea I may need to ponder; a 'West Marches' on a colossal, abandoned space station, with the town being replaced by a large exploration ship with a large crew. Said crew would be the pool of player characters to draw from. Forays onto the station would necessarily be time restricted (space suits with limited air supplies) and dangerous, requiring frequent returns to the... *ahem* Mothership.
Absolutely love this MS is one of my favorite rpgs
West Marches is epic. I don’t think you mentioned that some West Marches campaigns can be so large that there are multiple DM’s running games in the same world at the same time. Super cool concept. Want to start a West Marches campaign Baron?
Nice. We do this. Multi DMs, same universe. A fantasy version of the Pacific Northwest. Cascadia. King in Portland, Elves of the Olympic Penninsula, The Dwarven Halls of Hood, and Broken Top (Mt. Saint Helens) where the Big Bad lives, the Lava Lord.
We send each other notes of each session, and the world is built this way. It's just me and one other for now, but we'll have more soon I'm sure. We rotate DM's. We only create 1 session at a time, so things are building organically.
The only thing I prebuilt was the location names, which is easy because it's based on the real world, and the nature of the Big Bad. He has minions all over, we've met like half a dozen now.
Good times. Very Gonzo.
EMBRACE THE CHOAS. 🙂
Yep. This is what I do. Episodic. Return to base after every session. Everyone is part of the same adventure co. We have 10 players, the biggest game was with 6. We rotate DM as well.
seems like rotating dms could create conflicts of interest
@@connortonight I think I know what you mean, but I'm not sure? Could you clarify? Do you mean, like, they'll be unfair to certain players to boost their own or something? Essentially a 'campaign' like this is a series of one shots, with a big bad and consistent NPCs kinda tying everything together.
Think Star Trek instead of Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones. Each new sessions starts a new mini adventure.
Anyhoo, it's been fine so far. We've had DMs as young as 11, and I'm the main one, I'm 43. Our players are ages 6 to 43.
@@josephbradshaw6985 I believe the concern comes more from the idea of behind the scenes links between seemingly isolated events. And sharing that information with other player-DMs will now know of it and subconsciously influenced to dig deeper (or worse; metagame) during what otherwise seems like an isolated problem.
TL:DR: doesn't sharing the DM seat pull the curtain back too far to keep twists a secret from majority of players
@@OlieB Not really. Play is episodic. Not serialized or planned out far in advance like that. It's planned session by session, often on the fly depending on what the characters want to do.
We aren't doing adventure modules or anything. We are making it up as we go.
@@josephbradshaw6985 no ofcourse, but there's only so many isolated bandit attacks or goblin clans until you start thinking up a behind the scenes baddy who's responsible for it that higher level groups can start tracking down and stopping. But if more than 1 DM are running sessions involving the consequences of their Machinations, then bringing them into the fold removes the surprise value once their characters uncover it for real
We always played this way in the 70s. Gamers would show up on game night, and whoever showed up took part in the adventure (which was set in the same campaign world, week after week). Sandbox campaigns lend themselves readily to this type of play. As William Dvorak says below: "I love it when new generations find old ways of playing again as they get deeper into the hobby." A great example of history repeating itself.
I'm digging this man's suit game.
I've been on a West Marches D&D server for about 2 years now and honestly it is the funnest time that I have had in D&D
Lol, I'm just starting a campaign in The Grand Duchy of Karameikos. I've set it in the north of the duchy in a place I called the Orók Marches from the Bieruń Keep and I'm using Keep on the Borderlands as a guide (I'll be changing parts of it). I just bought it from DriveThruRPG.
You can still have large dungeons in a West Marches campaign; they will just take several forays to fully explore. This also encourages good mapping and note taking, and sharing of information between players. Ben Robins even describes placing certain obstacles that cannot be passed until the PCs have reached higher levels and gained access to better spells or abilities, or placing clues in one dungeon that reveal the existence of a secret section in a previously explored dungeon. Dungeons can also become "re-stocked" when new monsters move in. In these ways you can actually re-use dungeons and other locations multiple times.
I've ran 3 of these. I have some resources I can share around organizing a discord and how to track time in/out of sessions. Ultimately they're fun and would do another in a heartbeat, but I hate the one drawback: The one shot adventure nature of sessions really dampens characterization and depth. Roleplaying around a swampy campsite threatens our limited time to accomplish our sessions goal of the treasure of the frog lord.
yeah dnd really isn't a great system for this. everything takes way too long
Literally just created a Discord server for a West Marches game and this video answered SO many unanswered questions myself and my fellow GM's had. Thanks again for the great content!
I've tried joining a few but they were either false starts or it was the same dedicated few going on all the adventures and the rest of us were left behind.
If you're accepting more people I'd love to give it a try.
@@theophrastusbombastus1359 you’d be ground floor! Though we’re running Dungeon World, not DnD.
(Sorry for the accidental self promo Baron)
Another thing to mix in to a west marches game is the idea of a rotating DM. This requires more coordination among those who are running games, both for lore and mechanical consistency, but allows DMs to also participate as players, as well as for the group to play even if one of the DMs is busy. It also means that it's not just one person who is on the hook for designing all of the dungeons, npcs and explorable areas.
I was lucky enough to be able to do this with a group of 5 dms and 15 players, and it lasted for about a year. During that time, we would average 3 sessions a week.
We do this at mt work, currently there are only 3 rotating DMs out of the 12 people that have signed upto the West March campaign.
i would add to this that time keeping is very important here because the DM needs to know not only where everyone is, but when they are. This style campaign does not necessarily keep everyone together in time, which is one of the primary reasons for the stable of characters.
Nor do the adventures need to be short, or there not be overarching stories being told.
The time thing gets me confused... say the 'main' day is friday every week. So one week of time passes between sessions. If I have a pickup group play on wednesday, when the friday team comes in, is it more than a week gone by in game? Or do you attempt to resolve what the wednesday team did parallel time wise to the friday group?
@@tagg1080 Time-keeping is essential for a style that uses different groups of players, playing a 'stable' of different characters, on different days. It is suggested in the AD&D DMG that a 1:1 time ratio be used. For every day that passes in the real world, one day passes in-game. If the Wednesday evening group plunders a dungeon over two in-game nights, the Friday evening group may enter that dungeon, only to find that it has been emptied. If the Friday session then covers ten in-game days, the PCs from that particular adventure would be unavailable for the next ten in-game days. Yes, this also means that the world continues to live and breathe while players are away from the table, meaning that ending the session in a dangerous area would expose PCs to danger.
The importance of strict timekeeping and the 1:1 ratio can not be understated. It is the optimal method of ensuring meaningful cooperation or competition between both PCs and NPCs. Once you begin using it, you come to understand that everything logically follows from that mechanism.
Just to illustrate: If spell research takes an in-game month to carry out, the player is likewise unable to use that PC for a real-world month. This gives depth to the game, as one can truly feel the effort that goes into spell research. More importantly, the inaccessibility of that PC gives one the space to field other PCs in his 'stable.'
Once acclimatisation to this system has been successful, the campaign truly becomes all-encompassing. Players may then control high-level (N)PCs during downtime, shaping the world according to their wishes, cooperating with or competing against other (N)PCs. They then come back to the table to resolve the decisions made during downtime. One often wonders how a DM using this system could possibly juggle dozens of players, each with multiple characters, in multiple groups on different days. The answer is that through player input - made possible only with 1:1 timekeeping - the adventure in such an 'always on' campaign truly generates itself. The DM - who used to be called the 'Referee' for a reason - simply mediates.
@@brendanhewer I appreciate the post, but you didn't answer my question. Let me word it differently. If the Wednesday group takes 10 game days to do their adventure. When the Friday group comes back, are you saying the Wednesday group is working in the background when Friday group shows up? Or are you saying Friday group shows up and 10 more days have passed than they expected.
@@tagg1080 If we are taking Wednesday 26th October (today), that group is presumed to be away until approx. Fri 4th November. That Wednesday group may be in one particular wilderness hex or part of a dungeon on Fri 28th when the Friday group plays, and that is where they may be found. I apologise for this not being clear in the original comment. But yes, presumed to be working in the background.
@@brendanhewer interesting. Also makes more sense to label groups of players as a party and name them and stuff, because you have to track time of each like that. I just started a new game with 2 separate groups I will work on this. Thanks.
West Marches was also Gary Gygax's original style of campaign. Just a fun fact
Video game theory has crept into Dungeons & Dragons to the point where getting players to do more than show up around the appropriate time, behave in a minimum respectful manner and not be doing other things at the same time (i.e. phones/other games if virtual) is as bad as coordinating schedules. There's a heavy expectation on the DM to 'entertain' the players, much like if they were the XBOX or PC and running a video game. Personally, what I do for my weekly game is make it clear up front that for those who show up, there will be D&D. If the missing player lets me know beforehand, and gets with me during the week I can do a makeup session and make concessions so far as loot/events. Where this gets complicated in regards to West Marches is you're almost cripplingly dependent on the players taking the initiative to coordinate and be, for lack of a better term, extraverted with communicating and preparing on their own time and terms.
In days past, I participated in a 13 DM with over 40 player grand campaign in the West Marches Style. It ended with a massive event where you'd have rotating DMs at the tables narrating the climactic siege of the central city the heroes were all valiantly defending in different sections until a culmination of everyone doing their assigned party tasks to drive back the demonic horde. This was followed in short order with a pizza party and lots of wandering celebrations. I still look back fondly on those times, but in this virtual, watered down version D&D being 5e I don't think its all that practical. Your average player is probably a nerd, and an introvert to boot. The vast majority of players, in my experience, are hesitant at best to put a toe in the water with people they aren't intimately familiar with. You'd also need a critical mass of players and at least a few DMs with flexible schedules to even manage something like this, otherwise one of two results will happen.
Too few players leads to a core group that excludes others who are more on the fringe where it transmogrifies into more run of the mill D&D, or you only have one or two people who show up to every single session if one is posted to be available. Can West Marches work in this current virtual timescape? Yes. But, the lions share of players arent plugged into the larger discords and are off on their own in small groups. I consistently have ran as a forever DM sessions that last for 4-7 hours every Saturday over the last nearly 5 years exclusively online, and I struggle mightily to find new players. The few I do come across usually have baggage, bad habits, or other major issues that lead to them, with one or two exceptions, being given a variation of the "thanks but no thanks" talk after about a month of sessions that my regular players have to tolerate and put up with. It wastes time and stresses the players out, and there is a bit of a fear of new players that if something bad enough happens that is significant enough it could kill the active campaign. The whole starting a new campaign fresh every time you get a new player isnt fair to the existing group.
Either way, I like the idea of West Marches similar to how I like the idea of Adventurer's League. Different DMs, different players at different times. Personally, it ends up being more frustrating than rewarding, and the RP and overarching storylines built up over multiple sessions through dramatic tension and intrigue involving the consistent crew gets thrown out the window. Your average west marches session or adventurers league session is very cut and dry with everyone pressed for time trying to make sure they get to kill something in order to get a share of the loot before they scurry back to their respective holes.
Great video though with explaining the ideal situation you might come across with a West Marches, but how you need an embarrassment of riches players-wise to make it function.
I don't know what players you play with but, mine are pretty well motivated. I've had a player unleash a council of chronomancers from their prison (of his own accord). Also, I think part of the issue is the design of the game if you don't get any rewards for engaging why try? My semi-west marches game gives out fractions of levels as rewards. 1/4,1/3,1/2... for completing extra objectives ie: saving all of the miners (and risking their lives in the process) in one adventure gave them 1/2 level in stead of 1/3. In another the players destroyed the enemy bridge, train, and looted their supplies for the war effort creating a stalemate that shifted the political landscape (and netted them two xp bumps). There are also bumps down but that hasn't come up yet. If the players know ambition in side quests and group adventures will be rewarded they'll start to behave differently.
This sounds like a great playstyle for a superhero setting. Not every Marvel or DC comics or movie has the entire Avengers team or Justice League assembled after all, most of them follow a limited number of characters following a single challenge. So each adventure could have different antagonist working to mess up the world, and you can even invent flavorful excuses as to why you haven't been able to participate in the session ("my Cowboy-Man couldn't join the fight against Dr. Tornado because he was on Mars preventing demon cows from opening a portal to hell")
When I tell you I smiled seeing Harrow the Ninth at 4:01 :)
Excellent stuff. It is certainly a fun style of game, though it does require somewhat proactive players. I've found many players are more casual and just like to show up at the table and get to whatever the DM has planned. But, when you DO get the players who are vested and down with the full agency that the form allows for, the game can be magical. I agree with Keep on the Borderlands being a prime example, I love that module - it's such a great way for DMs to learn how to sandbox, but still has lots to offer for experienced groups and DMs as well.
If you read about ADnD, specifically how it was played at TSR and specifically what Gary talks about in ADnD 1e's DMG, a "Campaign" was just what a GM ran in that world, not about a party, story or whatever. Players had numerous PCs, and as Gary notes A GOOD CAMPAIGN CANNOT EXIST WITHOUT PROPER TIME TRACKING. In all caps. Hes very clear on it. Because the "campaign" is real time, save for combat. and Players could play sessions when they wanted, thus making weeks without a session potentially bad, as it means other players might take all the treasure. Basically an ADnD MMORPG
Its and older style than most think
Oh shit! I never realized Ben Robbins created West Marches!
My immediate thought went to safe rooms from horror games, and now I'm wondering if a game like this in a horror setting would be cool, where your characters can die fairly easily (and not end the campaign since there are others) in order to add stakes to the tense scenes. If you had a big enough community, you could have people hopping in and out with one time characters, or if you're working with a smaller group you can have people cycle in with new characters (perhaps after a certain time period). You could even game-ify the process itself, with going to more sessions resulting in greater risk to your PC, but also giving them more rewards if they survive.
A Dread Domain would work pretty well with this, wouldn't it? Characters usually find themselves inexplicably arriving in them with no idea how to leave.
@@Hugh839 Silent Hill? XD
Darkest Dungeon
So, basically Ben used Gary's old system of running a campaign. This is almost exactly as Gary described his campaigns, except he did not limit dungeons to 8 rooms, instead he made the players responsible for getting their toons to safety before the end of the session. If they failed to do so, they would be dead (conversely, you could allow a "return to safety" roll akin to a saving throw, with failure denoting demise in the unfriendly environment). Time between gaming sessions goes by at the same pace as real time, so if two weeks goes by between sessions with those characters, then it's been two week that has gone by in the game world for those characters. It's much like a MMORPG, but way cooler. It does mean the DM has to keep very good notes to keep timelines straight between parties, but it also lines up some potential PvP sessions if you can manage to get players from two parties together at once.
Great video Baron. More people need to cover this kinds of play, as I think it gets at the heart of what Roleplaying is all about.
This is great, wish I found the video sooner. I have been basically doing just this for the purposes of introducing new players to 5e, as it allows for a simple narrative and the players to feel free to swap out characters. I am running a campaign with family, and plan on running one with friends soon that will hopefully tie together unbeknownst of them all, and this style is working great for it. Glad I can use this video as reference.
A friend is prepping for a hex crawl, and I think it will be very good.
Idea: what about a West Marches style game focusing on a war?
Swapping character groups is swapping focus on different squads in different parts of the front.
Rumors of successes and failures spread along the lines, and the conditions along the fronts react accordingly.
The fun thing about this is you could, in theory, create a complex story as a result, you just have to develop it over more sessions.
And if the players were all up for it, you might even be able to have moments were PCs from different "parties" meet and interact, and you maybe could do a "Veteran with a crew of rookies" arc at some point. Could be fun.
City variant of this reminds me of Monte Cook's Ptolus.
I've been running a successful west marches campaign with around 10 players for over 2 years. Having players at least thinking about backup characters is top tier advice for when they inevitably get themselves in too deep 😅
You forgot the main problem: who has enough time to GM that much? I'm also not entirely convinced that the whole "uncovering the map" thing actually works that well for a large player pool, it's almost better with a fixed group. Cause when you're an active player and working on a particular mystery/dungeon/etc. but have to take a break for a month or two, you'll come back to every rock having been turned over and nothing left to explore for the low lvl characters who were left behind. At least that's my personal experience.
I'm actually thinking of trying to adapt Ryuutama (think Studio Ghibli meets Oregon Trail) to a West Marches style campaign. Works a lot better for our schedules, and I can run it with a bigger group of friends, just at different times. Also maybe stealing stuff from Wanderhome to put in collaborative worldbuilding. I feel like it'll help with GM prep time, guess I'll find out.
I love the idea but, it would be a very different style of game since ryuutama is about travel in a way not even older editions were. Hope that turns out well though because traveling through a collaboratively built world dealing with less dungeon crawly missions would be extremely different.
I'm doing a westmarches, my 'green zone ' is a tamed wilderness island about half the size of Connecticut. It has 3 mega dungeons tho, and some other stuff to do besides. Once a party can buy a boat the real game begins.
*raps fingers together menacingly*
Been running one for 3 years. It has been great and tiring. I started at college and I opened it to anyone and everyone. I mainly ran in the summer but last year we had a lot of activity too. Last night was my 94th adventure I ran for them. But we have many DMs, 11 to be exact. The pool of players is 30 but 20 active ones. We have a range of 13th- 18th level characters so things are getting wild!
Great summary! Thanks.
I think Ben made it poplar and the term West Marches stuck but we had been playing this style from the beginning. I can remember my local hobby shop in the 80s running this style of game for players. I've owned/operated my own FLGS since 92 and have always "Themed" Campaigns were multiple groups and different RPG rule sets share in the same campaign over the themes course. Everyone influences everyone's games and players often swapped tables. I believe Arnesons Blackmoor Campaigns were this way as well. He often talked about it during his class sessions (was an adult student at Full Sail 99 to 02).
I have run two west marches campaigns. The first, fairly successful, the second, is struggling. These kinds of campaigns work amazingly if you have highly motivated players. The biggest struggle I’ve had is that it seems all the players are either too busy with life (to the point that there is only ever one player available on any given week) or those that are free are too timid to take the initiative and reach out to get a game scheduled. It ends up being a game of chicken where everyone is waiting for someone else to step forward and say “I would like to go an adventure!” And so no one does. It’s gotten to the point where I’ve started saying, “Ok, I am running a game this Friday, any who want to play are free to join.”
Then I end up with 1 “definitely coming” and several “maybes”. By the time Friday rolls around, the definitely and a few of the maybes cancel and then the last couple maybes keep me on the hook until a few hours before the game where they either cancel or I end up running a one player game.
I’ve considered scrapping the campaign, but there are a few players who really like their characters and seem excited to play. but everyone is just so busy. Downsizing to a regular game doesn’t really seem to be an option either because schedules of those excited players just don’t line up (which is why I started the campaign in this way in the first place).
I started playing in the 1e days with what was always a very small group of available players. We seldom had a consistent DM, so this style wasn't practical. But what we did consistently was that each player had multiple characters, usually 2, sometimes 3, and it made for a better experience. I learned to play the game with 2 characters, and the idea of only one per player was a novelty to me for a long time, altho we played that way on occasion. It works very well when there's only 1 or 2 or maybe 3 players available, and it keeps the DM from feeling the need for beefing up the party with NPCs or limiting the adventures to something only one pc can handle. And I think it would work well in this style of play too, in a case like yours. A regular game night (or several, if you have time) is a must, even if you don't get to play every week, tho it might take time to figure out which night works best for most of your potential players. If you can get access to a 1e DMG, it has tons of excellent advice that can help, better than almost any other book I've ever read. Good luck!
everyone should try this style of play at least once.
I have been playing in a West Marches text based Discord Server since 2020, it has been the best experience of DnD I have and one of the first time I am able to enjoy the entire growth of a character. We have several DMs from all over the world and each one of us tell great stories! It would be awesome to have you there @Dungeon Masterpiece
This is perfect timing! I'm planning a westmarch for University which starts in a week!
I'm actually running one of these right now!
I been running a hex crawl west marches game for my discord, I really love the style of people coming and going and having done all my prep work at the start. Now it’s on them to just explore the world.
I would love to run this style in an urban setting: imagine a hi-tech, endless, sprawling magic metropolis with different biomes, weather, etc.
I ran a game like this for 4 years with about 70 players and 3 separate nations that were all at war against each other. It was great. Currently renovating the setting, but I'll definitely be starting it up again soon.
I was in a west marches style game through discord, which had multiple GMs. Being one of the players whos schedule routinely failed to align with that of most of the other players and GMs, I found it difficult to connect with the other players, and build a sense of shared comradery left me feeling flat even when the game sessions were pretty fun. It was just hard to get a rhythm constantly playing with strangers who had very different styles and goals for their play.
I did it in my local game store and it was a success
Thanks for the that! That ist how I wanted to run my dark sun campaign (it had characters pools written in the rules) but in the end I only had 3 players. I might try that again.
Good stuff.
Awesome!
I've ran a few large West Marches campaigns over the last few years, and I cannot overstate how many issues crop up when you have multiple DMs and players. I play on Pathfinder 1e, and the way the system is designed is that 90% of the time you have a hard set rule; You can do this, you can't do this, you can do this only in X, Y, but not Z circumstances, etc... But the other 10% of the time you end up in situations where either the writers left something vague to leave to DM interpretation, or never bothered to think of how certain things might interact, anticipating that if problems arise that it's up to the DM to make a concrete rule then and there.
With multiple DMs, that all kinda goes out the window. Either you get all the DMs on the same page, or you end up with circumstances where DM#1 allows a powergamer's exploit to work, while DM#2 doesn't. Also, different DMs can end up giving different rewards that by themselves are quite innocent, but paired with other rewards from other DMs end up actually turning into a problem. Or you'll have players that are abusing a system that a singular DM would have noticed, but since the player is questing with different DMs, the issue doesn't really become enough of an issue in any one given session that the abuse flies under the radar.
I've been running these Westmarches on the same system for over 5 years now so my staff and I have most things nailed down to how we want them to be, but then anybody who wants to play with us has to read a 10 page changelog before they can even make their character, which is a pretty big ask for people who aren't even sure if they're comfortable with the Westmarches style to begin with.
But at the same time the flexibility is amazing, so, yeah.
I also run Westmarches PF1E, and I also have a big houserules document. Biggest houserule is that I run it as E6, because otherwise magic users can destroy the entire exploration system. It also has a benefit of keeping the most enthusiastic players who have lots of invested time and therefore are more leveled from being so strong that they can't play with weaker characters.
It sounds interesting, but I am terrified of that one Tuesday when the stars align and all fourteen players are free and choose to descend on the table.
I've always wanted to run a campaign like this. To me, it feels like the tabletop RPG equivalent of an MMORPG, with the added benefit of having continuity and consequences for events done. I think I would use the gritty realism rules for resting so that travel would be more dangerous, and I feel like if random items were given out, the players would form some kind of auction house to trade and get the items they wanted.
I'm in a west march discord server we have hundreds of people and multiple DMs. The idea basically is that we're an adventurers guild and DMs post job offers our characters can go to
I'm really wanting to set this up. I have 3 other DM's in my Sunday Group, and six newbie players over two game nights. We also know two other games going at the local Game Store. We've been talking about it, and just kicking it around is building more interest.
I'm hopeful. Pre-Covid there were no 5e games. Now there are several plus a big Pathfinder that just started last month.
Cool, i play in a "west marches" style pathfinder 2e game. I didnt know there was a proper word for the style!
I've run games with drop-in/drop-out mechanics built into the worldbuilding.
One had a guildhall and both a bounty-board and dangling plot threads. Player characters were infused with leyline energies, which granted them unusual abilities (the mythic system from PF 1e) but made their substantiality subject to unknowable forces.
One had another pair of campaigns, set in the same world in two different eras linked by wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff. These time shenanigans functioned, mechanically, kind of like the wacky canon undergirding the multiplayer mechanics of Dark Souls, and the campaigns were able to interact indirectly with one another.
I'd wager that the biggest threat to a long term campaign is DM burnout. Until recently, this was what happened to every single game we started. It would start off very strong and everyone was excited to play, we'd get to level 7 or so and the DM would be tired of running it, and it would die a slow painful death. About that time, someone else would have an idea for a game and start up something new. Rinse, repeat. Now we play adventure paths where a game has a definitive end, and when a DM needs a break, we switch to a different game for a few months (rotating between three DMs).
In addition to the tips, my friends and I started doing this with the Witcher TRPG by RTalsorian Games. We have five GMs and twenty or so players who are on and off on activity with RP channels and non VC sessions if games are filled. Usually players will either want to act our road trips from one location to the other with us having a random encounter system of rolling a 1d10 (1-3, Dangerous Locations, 4-5 Interesting Locations, 6-9 Chance Events, 10 Good Events) that generate whole sessions of making the journey more than setting out to a location, doing a thing, then getting a reward. This opens up a really cool avenue of players discovering lets say a Bandit Camp or a treasure guarded by some difficult monster, they write it down and then decide if they want to come back to that as a session of its own or later in the adventure.
The other mode is like the games, GM posts a contract of "go here and do a thing" players come in and sign up at that availability. The amount of weight that slides off your shoulders from not having to commit to a weekly schedule frees you up as a GM/DM so much
I run a psuedo-west marches game. I don't necessarily pick the adventure (I give out rumors but, they're free to do whatever and the group changes session to session) and the campaign is driven by the player action. Two (potentially region ending) crisis have been triggered by players and so far no one has figured out any deep secrets or resolved a crisis... so, good luck to the next group over winter. Lol
Edit: I also binned the idea of one safe starting location the region is just geographically small so you can hop on and guard a caravan in exchange for passage anywhere in a day or two.
An other benefit of a westmarshes stile game is that you can change DM from session to session
Curious if you've ever personally ran something like this, or have any plans to in the future. Good topic that i have my doubts on, but it does seem to solve than scheduling problem.
I've done it a few times.
I've run several West Marches and every time, they devolve to a single party playing regularly and everyone else not playing.
That's what happened to me. I put it on the players to recruit new players, but the regular players didn't want to do it, especially if it would dilute the playing time for them. So, yeah, it devolved from 10ish to the same 4.
The problem is that the DM can't be wasting their time recruiting and screening new players.
This is a great idea and I can think of a lot of ways to use this. If I was more skilled as a DM this would be great to play in a game store where you can get random people in for adventures. As for settings for the RP I have two ideas.
Adventure Guild
As you mention briefly in your video this would be great set up. Every player is member of the guild and come looking for jobs. Ones who don't show up are either doing a side adventure, healing, or just taking a personal holiday.
Age of Exploration
This setting I've thinking about for awhile but basically there is new lands that have been discovered and a small outpost has been set up. The players are colonist, explorers, etc. to build and let this land grow. So as they do their jobs they can build and grow their town with the efforts of the adventures. I know it can get a little non-PC but I feel like it offers a lot of plot-hooks and "what we could do different" scenarios.
This is good for longer session times... but I'm one of those guys with "not so much available time" each week. I try to keep my episodes quick and one-shot. 2.5 hrs is my max per session, so yes smaller room count is key. Good spew of info Baron.
WM throws out all my favorite parts of the game
Been running a West Marches type game for about 2-3 years now, and it works very well as long as the DM has a good head for improv and can toss out new ideas fast. It's tiring, some weeks, but so far it's also my players' favorite campaign they've ever done. And it's all because JIM CAN'T MANAGE HIS FREAKING SCHEDULE! ;D
I'm currently preparing to run a sci fi west marches campaign using solar systems instead of hexes. I created a random generator in excel to generate planets, aliens and encounters in what I hope will be kind of a Star trek-esque episodic exploration game. I'm interested to see how it goes.
Can you do a few more videos on West Marches style campaigns? It's a cool concept and I would like to understand more.
I had done something similar pre-2010. I had a job that I had to travel for and to get my DMing fix when I would be back I'd run a game with whoever was available. Let other also DM games so they wouldn't need to wait on me either. Had the rule to keep the game self contained jobs we got at an adventuring guild.
I've started playing in one recently and it's been a blast!
We aren't so much murder hobos as we are cowering slugs though 🐌
We are so squishy that a stray fart could kill us 😆
Two goblins? Better leave them alone in case we have a random encounter on our way home!
Geezer here.....
Seems like open table rules from back in the day. Great vid..
Gaming on.
I've been idly doodling some notes on mashing together hex crawler suggestions with 5e skill checks - for instance, turning the odds of being lost or running into a monster or a treasure into a question of skill tests on entering a hex or once each day. I was curious if anybody cared to share with me the fruits of more concentrated efforts toward this sort of thing. I was also curious about rangers. Do we allow a ranger just to be a particularly relevant character in exploration by negating the lost roll for each day or hex, or do we house rule it back a bit?
As you mentioned, this is pretty much old school, Gygaxian D&D.
If only my players were so motivated. My players like to play, but only if there isn't any expectation that they have to do something other than show up.
Not gonna lie I was confused if Westermarches are supposed to be crawl type games (due to its aspect of exploration) or episodic questing games (due to the amount of players involved and the bite-sized quests). As for the length of the quests id safely say you could get away in making one quest a two parter due to shenanigans outside of the game, even more so if the game is in an online environment.
What's different in the westmarches i played in is that you can only have one character.
I have just never seen a DM run a West March correctly. First most people don’t know the difference between a West March and a sandbox. Second the one time I did see a DM who understood what a West Match still ran it wrong. He showed and ran an adventure. Didn’t matter which direction we went, those monster miniatures got used. They quit after like a month too, as it was too much work.
So he just ran an old school campaign. This is how all of our campaigns worked in the early eighties.
I was thinking about doing this for awhile but putting the scheduling into the hands of players sounds like tossing a ball of string into a box of cats. Is it possible to just have a standing date and whomever can make it makes it?
This is how I have handled this style of campaign in the past. The game happened every tuesday for over two years.
5:58 Capra demon :D
Where's the link to Robbins' blog?
Seconded. Came to the comments looking for the link.
oh snap! Thanks for reminding me! I'll add it right now.
I currently do weekly one shots at my local game store and I'm wondering how much additional effort it would be to do something like this.
LET'S PLAY!
Like it
im currently running my first west marches style campaign. i made it so the players need to help create the safe zone.
I wonder how long sessions tend to be for people who use this style. Our sessions are usually 3 hours and it would be hard for us to complete even a basic quest in that time.
The only thing about this is it relies on the players taking initiative and discussing ideas outside of games... In my experience my players don't do this and expect to be led by the nose which puts a lot of pressure on me for planning.
I think you just convinced me to run a west marches campaign. Anyone here in the comments got any tips/advice for creating a setting for it?
Could you do one on play-by-post?
Also there is concern about meta knowledge. Who wants to keep track of what each character times each player knows about?
One thing I'd like to see you cover:
Why is roleplaying good or important? Like the purpose it serves in a sense
I mean Im obsessed and I have my answer but you literally went and studied for years and developed a nuanced knowledge to better talk about this stuff so you might have had to think about why more concretely
The purpose it serves?
That's a sadly terse answer, and will be likely very unfulfilling: "it's fun."
If it's not fun for you and your table, don't do it.
In detail, we do it also as a way to present information as if it were organically being discovered during the encounter. It affords us the ability to call for social checks, rather than just make a "socialization" roll.
In comparison, we don't make "combat" checks to see who dies and who loses 20% of thier HP, expend spells, and then ask the players what happened after the fact, so why do the same for combat?
@@DungeonMasterpiece yess that is definitely true
But I think fun is not one simple thing its a bunch of stuff. I guess I think it would make an interesting video from personal to societal, like what it is that draws you to it and why it's such a huge and growing movement / activity rn and why its been done in history before as well
Baron, you mean people need to get along so we can have nice things?
Does anyone have any experience of this with multiple DM's? I fell into the role of organising a community of players that I'm struggling to organise games for, as not many people are taking the initiative. I had thought that if I could figure out a West Marches style game that that had what amounts to a blank map and any DM who wants to run a game can grab any players that are available and play. We'd just need to centralise the information flow between games (collaborating on filling out a world map with the encounters the players met for example). It would be mixing West Marches and Adventures League, which would be a lot of work. But if there was some way to streamline it so no one person has to do much more than run a game and let everyone know how it went. Am I being too ambitious with this?
What are some examples of a sandbox like campaign that is currently available? I am aware of the Keep of the Borderlands is often run this way, any others?
5e starter box dragon of ice spire peak and curse of strahd are published by wotc and are run as sandboxes
I've just started DMing a West Marches campaign with a bunch of friends from work, and everyone seems pretty into it. However, I am having trouble wrapping up the sessions organically, in order to have the party return home. Do I suggest to the party that maybe it's time to go back to their town? Is it inappropriate to do this narratively? Thank you.
I've played in a DMed this style. It's fun, but boy it can be a LOT of work for a DM. Keeping enough content going for more than 4-5 players can be a daunting task. Sure the single episode adventures are fun and easy to crank out, but I find that this becomes pretty stale quickly. My players like more sophisticated story arcs. Mostly, everyone tries to resolve a session in one sitting, but sometimes you just end up with weirdness where a group doesn't finish within the desired time frame.
The unspoken part of this play-style is that the dungeon master has to have players that do self organize, and if they fail to do so, the dm just let’s them fail to do so and the game doesn’t happen.
Sound like a problem? Well, good news: rewards work as strong motivators. Just reward the player(s) that come up with the session and work and do the schedule wrangling with XP, Inspiration, whatever works. Experience is so SO potent in 5e as a reward because of how much stuff characters get from leveling up, every single player is gonna want it.
That's pretty likely to make people who just happen to have a restrictive schedule quit, though.
@@ms.aelanwyr.ilaicos How did you come to that conclusion?
@@jacobs483 In my experience, folks that fall behind under a "whoever is most unemployed is most rewarded" regime tend to resent the fact that they are falling behind as a direct consequence of their responsibilities.
@@ms.aelanwyr.ilaicos … what? What does being unemployed have to do with people wrangling?
What you are rewarding is not unemployment. You are rewarding “I am putting in effort to organize this and make it happen.”
Look the fact is that unless your friends all live or work in close proximity, somebody giving a damn enough to try to get everyone’s time to align is the only way you guys get to spend time together. and the person who does that to make dnd happen should be rewarded, because it’s extra work.
@@jacobs483 The unemployed person makes it to _every_ game. That's my experience, anyway.
But we're in the weeds. The bottom line is that a reward structure granting special favors for attendance looks an awful lot like a punishment structure for having other commitments 🤷🏻♀️
I just don't think friends need to try and create market pressures to play D&D. My experience is that tends to push people away. But hey, maybe your group dynamic is different.
didn't forget to link the sponsor or your patreon but where's the blog link?
Added!
I tried this with 8 players but the people who didnt show up for some sessions, just never came back. now im just doing a 6 player regular game.