Comments on: Grand Experiments: West Marches (part 4), Death & Danger

By: Links of the Week: September 26, 2011 | KJD-IMC - KJDavies "In My Campaign" Articles

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 20:06:50 +0000

[...] http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/81/grand-experiments-west-marches-part-4-death-danger/ [...]

By: Medriev

Medriev — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 11:23:11 +0000

Belatedly can I say what a superb series of articles this is. The West Marches campaign, for me, is easily one of the most inspirational and innovative concepts in fantasy roleplaying.

Many thanks for sharing it.

By: Geoff

Geoff — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 21:12:35 +0000

How did you handle varying PC levels — if some people played more often (or just survived better) and ended up higher level, were they segregated from other people due to level discrepancies?

By: Dredly

Dredly — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:57:03 +0000

I’m working on background and details to begin my own “West Marches” style campaign, all the players I’ve told about it are very excited. The only difference is we will be doing it entirely online w/ Skype and MapTools, It should be a blast!

Personally I’d love to see an example or 2 of the tables you used for the encounters, also if the camp is ended the picture of the “real” map vs the “table map” would be really cool as well.

Thanks for an awesome idea

By: Justin Alexander

Justin Alexander — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 10:18:37 +0000

@Gumby: When I pitched a similar campaign to my players they got so excited they went out, talked to their friends, and were recruiting in more people. I haven’t even finished prepping the minimal material we need to get started.

I actually have difficulty imagining why a player WOULDN’T find this concept incredibly cool. But if your players aren’t excited by the idea, then it’s quite possible that it’s just not up their alley.

But if you think they would like it — even though they’re not really embracing the pitch — then try easing them into it. There’s no reason the start of a campaign like this can’t look a lot like a standard campaign. (Or, rather, the start of several normal campaigns.) Encourage information swapping and then ease them into the idea of spontaneous “pick-up groups”.

By: Gumby

Gumby — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 04:45:20 +0000

What was your original “pitch” to sell them on this idea? It seems hard to believe that many people would be interested in gaming with different people on different days in different areas of the marches all the time. I just don’t see how you can sell something like this without basically saying “This is going to take you way, way out of your comfort zones, but I swear that’s a good thing and you’ll have fun. Please, please show up and risk your time and effort on this ludicrous idea! Really… please… don’t ignore this idea!”

Not that I don’t love the idea; I love it, but that’s from a GM perspective and I can’t see it from a player perspective.

By: ben robbins

ben robbins — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 01:24:56 +0000

“what state was your west marches in for beginning play? Complete, or fleshed out just to the points where the PC’s couldn’t conceivably pass? Or, alternatively, what would you suggest doing?”

Unless you hermit-up and prep for 3 years before playing (not recommended) it’s unavoidable that you’ll start out incomplete. That’s part of the reason why planners are required to specify a flight plan when scheduling a game — you know where they are going and whether you need to flesh out details for that area (which in turn saddles you with deadlines, also part of the design).

The trick is to not change details based on who is going. Build as though you had no idea who was playing. If you planned on the barrow mounds being EL 5, make them EL 5 regardless of whether the first group to go there is 1st or 10th level.

Building “blindly” requires a little mental discipline but gets easier with practice.

By: Fie

Fie — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:20:11 +0000

A question from a stripling DM: what state was your west marches in for beginning play? Complete, or fleshed out just to the points where the PC’s couldn’t conceivably pass? Or, alternatively, what would you suggest doing?

By: Yahzi

Yahzi — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 06:24:44 +0000

Pure genius!

By: ben robbins

ben robbins — Fri, 02 May 2008 03:32:09 +0000

At first we had people restart at 1st level, but about half way through the game we started letting people make new characters at half their old level (rounding down). When the game was very low level it was less of an issue, but eventually it meant that when you died you couldn’t really go back and explore the area you had been interested in or adventure with the same characters as before, at least not until you gained some levels. Restarting at half didn’t absolutely change that, but it made it easier to catch up. On the other hand that forced mix was part of the charm.

By: Ryan Stoughton

Ryan Stoughton — Thu, 01 May 2008 22:11:18 +0000

Ben, one more question about death. If I was say, 15th level and got (irretrievably) killed, is my next character automatically 1st level, or can I make say, a 10th level character?

By: ben robbins

ben robbins — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 05:41:18 +0000

“Thanks for your West Marches writeup; excellent work, very insightful. Any chance for more on this project, i.e. some example campaign notes, or session writeups?”

All that stuff would actually look rather mundane — the interesting part about the game was how it was run, how the players participated, not the notes that made it. The maps would just look like typical maps, and the dungeons would just look like fairly ordinary dungeons.

That’s also part of the beauty — building your own West Marches is actually quite easy. You just have to _refrain_ from adding in tricksy plot stuff and mysterious NPCs, and then dump game control on the players. The players may have a hard time adjusting at first (seriously) but once they get comfortable it runs itself.