West Marches: Running Your Own
Alarming fact: brave GMs all over the place are taking up the torch and starting their own West Marches games. Scary isn’t it?
I’ve already had some private email conversations about how one would actually build and run a West Marches of their very own. Maybe you’ve got the bug too. Early symptoms include a desire to build vast wilderness areas and enlist hordes of players to explore it. Sound familiar? Then read on for a few (hopefully) helpful tips:
make town safe and the wilds wild — Having the town be physically secure (walled or in some cases protected by natural features like rivers or mountains) is very useful for making a sharp “town = safe / wilderness = danger” distinction. Draconian law enforcement inside town, coupled with zero enforcement in the wilds outside town, also helps. Once you are outside the town you are on your own.
keep NPC adventurers rare — Or even better non-existent. It’s up to the players to explore the wilderness, not NPCs. As soon as you have NPCs going on adventures of their own you move the focus away from player-initiated action. NPC adventurers also makes it harder to explain why interesting things weren’t already discovered — players love being the first to find the Horned Tower or the Abbot’s Study. Keep this in mind when you devise the background for your region. Is it a newly opened frontier? Or is adventuring just something no one in their right mind does in this world (the West Marches premise)?
build dungeons with treasure rooms, locked rooms, pockets of danger — A solid party may be able to wipe out the primary critters in a dungeon, but there should always be spots that are a lot harder to clear. On those rare occasions when a group _does_ manage to clear a dungeon or crack a treasure room, they will stand on the tables in the tavern and cheer, not in some small part to brag to the other players who weren’t on that sortie.
appear passive — The world may be active, but you the GM should appear to be passive. You’re not killing the party, the dire wolf is. It’s not you, it’s the world. Encourage the players to take action, but leave the choices up to them. Rolling dice in the open helps a lot. The sandbox game really demands that you remain neutral about what the players do. It’s their decisions that will get them killed or grant them fame and victory, not yours. That’s the whole idea.
provide an easy lead to get new players started — Once players are out exploring, each new discovery motivates them to search more, but how do you get them started? Every time I introduced a batch of new players I gave them a very basic treasure map that vaguely pointed to somewhere in the West Marches and then let them go look for it. Whether it was the dwarven “treasure beyond bearing” or the gold buried beneath the Red Willow, a no-brainer “go look for treasure here” clue gets the players out of town and looking around. Of course once the players are in the wilds, they may find that getting to that treasure is much harder than it looks.
the adventure is in the wilderness, not the town — As per the discussion of NPCs above, be careful not to change the focus to urban adventure instead of exploration. You can have as many NPCs as you want in town, but remember it’s not about them. Once players start talking to town NPCs, they will have a perverse desire to stay in town and look for adventure there. “Town game” was a dirty word in West Marches. Town is not a source of info. You find things by exploring, not sitting in town — someone who explores should know more about what is out there than someone in town.
let the players take over — Don’t write game summaries, don’t clean up the shared map. You want the players to do all those things. If you do it, you’ll just train them not to.
competition is what it’s all about — Fair rewards, scarcity, bragging rights — these are the things that push the game higher. You could have a “solo” West Marches game with just one group doing all the exploring, and it would probably be a fun and pleasant affair, but it’s _nothing_ compared to the frenzy you’ll see when players know other players are out there finding secrets and taking treasure that _they_ could be getting, if only they got their butts out of the tavern. (Hmm, is this why I get a kick out of running Agon? It’s true, I’m a cruel GM.)
require scheduling on the mailing list — It doesn’t matter whether a bunch of players agreed to go on an adventure when they were out bowling, they have to announce it on the mailing list or web forum (whichever you’re using for your scheduling). This prevents the game from splintering into multiple separate games. If you notice cliques forming you can make a rule requiring parties to mix after two adventures. Conversely if you notice players being dropped from follow-up sorties too often just because some people can’t wait to play, you can require parties to stay together for two adventures. That forces a little more long time strategy in party selection, less greedy opportunism. Season to taste.
fear the social monster — This is the big, big grand-daddy or all warnings: even more so than many games, West Marches is a social beast. In normal games players have an established place in the group. They know they are supposed to show up every Tuesday to play — they don’t have to think about that or worry about whether they “belong” in the group. On the other hand West Marches is a swirling vortex of ambition and insecurity. How come no one replied when I tried to get a group together last week? Why didn’t anybody invite me to raid the ogre cave? And so on and so on ad infinitum. The thrilling success or catastrophic failure of your West Marches game will largely hinge on the confidence or insecurity of your player pool. Buckle up.
Running your own West Marches game? Post a link in the comments so everyone can take a look and grow green with envy. I’ve got some links I need to post but if you hurry you can beat me to it.
Hey! I stumbled upon this blog maybe a week ago and I’ve already got plans to start a West Marches style campaign within the next week and a half – that’s how impressed and inspired I was with the concept.
I was trying to get in touch with you to ask a few specific questions as to how you handled certain aspects – is there any way you could email me or I could email you and ask you a few questions I have?
Thanks!
[...] to Ben Robbins’ suggestions, before I can run a session, I need to have the [...]
Apart from the multiple/variable adventuring party aspect of it, I’ve always run my campaigns “sandbox” style since picking up the hobby back in the ’70s with “Keep on the Borderland”.
As far as maps go, I give my players a “map of the world” which is essentially a prop, a WYSIWYG, which contains all the information the PCs would have about the world at the start of the campaign. For my first homegrown campaign ever, this was a 8″x11″ page hand-drawn with a style lovingly stolen from Tolkien.
Now I have technology — for my latest campaign, I’ve drawn a map in Fractal Mapper and imported it into Photoshop. From there I have mutiple layers so I can create a player map (the prop which has only the info I want the PCs to have) and a DM map. One layer is a hex grid — I can toggle the grid for normalizing into hexes. The hexes make it easier to compute distances and travel times (1 hex = 10 miles; it’s a no-brainer), and they also serve as convenient demarkation points between different regions / encounter areas. In essence the hexes define the granularity of the world “behind the screen”. One interesting area (“dungeon” in the most generic sense) per hex is sufficient, credible and keeps me from “bunching things up” — the whole point is to wave enough carrots over the entire world to make the players explore it.
Would it be possible for you to post up some of your maps and area drawings (if you still have them)? I remember you saying that they were just normal maps and whatnot, but I personally really like looking at what other people have done for their organization/planning. Regardless of how uninspiring it is to you, to me it is something new.
Oops- yyour= your, Shaoul= It should
Well, the replies are as intresting as the articles themselves!
I am currently finishing up one campaign and starting to design another’ which will be rather sandbox style-ish, though on ilands (some populated and ordered, some in a struggle, and some abondoned. I am just hoping the group will start roleplaying better and will start using more creativity, otherwise they will either die ar get bored/
Kaeosdad- yyour idea is wondeful! Shaoul solve the problems I have with three of my 5 players!
I had just begun to design my own D&D 4e campaign when I came across the ‘West Marches’ articles. The setting is based on Melvin Burgess’ ‘Bloodtide’ novel, where a post-apocalyptic London (in an indeterminably distant future) is ruled by gangs and surrounded by unknown leagues of hostile wilderness. After reading all this, I figure it’s fertile ground to plant some WM-style gaming in.
So thanks to Ben and everyone who contributed here
You’ve all turned this into a great resource of ideas for DMs looking to try something different!
Pardon that – it’s inaccessible to others. As such, I’m posting them on reedwestmarches.blogspot.com.
Enjoy!
I just wanted to let those who are interested know that adventure summaries and character info for my West Marches campaign will be posted here:
http://sin.reed.edu/wiki/arg/West%20Marches%20Campaign%20for%20the%20Summer%20of%202009
We’re running the first two adventures today and tomorrow, so hopefully there will be interesting things up soon.
Session Two: Woo! Killed my first player!
Allowed him to bequeath one item to a friend with his dying breath. The rest went to support his family during the hard times that are part and parcel of living in a post-Cataclysm world.
He’d died in a recent fight with some gnolls, and the party was choosing to rest in an abandoned dwarven mining facility. To keep things rolling, I had one of the gnolls come awake and surrender to the party, respecting their superior strength. The player got to play as the gnoll until such time as the party could return to town.
Much fun was had!
@ RoninFrosty — plain old Illustrator. Probably not the tool of choice for most folks.
@ Gumby — First off, congrats on your first session! Expect the players to take a while to get used to the new method. That’s normal. Be patient.
Secondly, it looks like I’m going to have a recurring “power player”. Not only is he the most “optimized” or min-maxed of the characters, but so far the player himself has signed up to play EVERY available session.
Two separate issues: first off, some players will always play more than others, and they may advance faster. That’s part of the model. Don’t make them play multiple characters — it kind of defeats the purpose. Enforce game world calendar. When that character is out adventuring, other characters have to sit in town and wait for him (the players missed a session, but time passed for the characters, right?). They may not want to wait.
The min-max thing is just like any other game. If it’s too much or exploitive, it’s no good. That has nothing to do with West Marches specifically.
“it looks like I’m going to have a recurring “power player”. Not only is he the most “optimized” or min-maxed of the characters, but so far the player himself has signed up to play EVERY available session. This means he already outshines the more moderate characters, and also means that he’s probably going to rack up experience faster than the other players, who can’t necessarily show up every single day. ”
Talk to the player and see if he is interested in running more then one character so he can “play as often as he wants, but not out-level everyone else”.
If need be you could point out that it is a lot nicer then “if you out level everyone else by more then 2 levels you can’t come until someone catches up”.
Or maybe it just won’t end up being an issue…
I don’t want to attract spambots to my forum, so I’m going to break up the URL of my game. It’s z3.invisionfree.com, followed by a forward-slash, followed by ARUGULA.
We just ran our first session yesterday, and it was AWESOME. All the players had fun, and I feel like I had a sum total of fun equal to all of their fun IN ADDITION TO the fun of making them fear for their lives (mountain lions), and the fun of seeing all my work and preparation pay off.
I have little fear that we’re going to continue having a lot of fun.
I have a couple of minor questions.
Firstly, I had to do a lot of nudging to get people posting to my forum, making plans, and showing up. I imagine this is normal; how long did it take for the “training wheels” as it were to come off, in West Marches itself or other commenters’ campaigns?
Secondly, it looks like I’m going to have a recurring “power player”. Not only is he the most “optimized” or min-maxed of the characters, but so far the player himself has signed up to play EVERY available session. This means he already outshines the more moderate characters, and also means that he’s probably going to rack up experience faster than the other players, who can’t necessarily show up every single day. I don’t fault him for optimizing his character, but I worry how the other players will feel seeing him in action.
As stated, it went swimmingly, I look forward to future games, and I think we’ll al have fun no matter what. If, however, Ben or others have the time, experience, or wisdom to advise me in this matter, it’d be appreciated.
Thank you so much, Ben, for sharing this campaign model with us. I have always liked the *idea* of a sandbox campaign, but I didn’t know how to give one any life or structure beyond “do whatever your characters want, guys!”
This has definitely inspired me to get my first campaign in my new world rolling, as I’ve been wondering what kind of hooks to use…but if I throw some hooks into a WM style game, I think it’ll be easy to pick up some of those for later use.
Also, I’m curious as to what type of map making software you use? I vaguely remember you mentioning it being a vector map, but I’m not sure that I saw the name.
In case anyone really is interested in seeing how things go:
http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/eastport
The first session is on Monday, with three players. I hope it goes well. =/
Sorry for not adding anything constructive.
But, dude! You need to know how awesome you are for taking the time to answer all these questions. I, and I’m sure many others, really appreciate it.
Do you suggest coming up with an overarching mystery beforehand, or would the simple task of “What’s rotten in Lovecraft Country” suffice?
Do you mean that you tell the players? I’d say no. Part of their job is even deciding if different things are related. They’ll spend _hours_ building and deconstructing their own connections and conspiracies in their heads.
Starting up a WM-style game in Oxford. Wish me luck. =P
Keep us posted! I think all the second generation West Marches GMs are very curious to see each other’s games and how things work or don’t work for them.
The original WM game was run with D&D 3.5, right? How did things go regarding level disparity – was there ever a huge gap between the highest-level character and the lowest, and how did that affect gameplay?
D&D 3.0 — West Marches ended before 3.5 came out. Re level disparity, check out comments #34 and also #29 on this page (yes, there are now a lot comments to wade through).
Starting up a WM-style game in Oxford. Wish me luck. =P
The original WM game was run with D&D 3.5, right? How did things go regarding level disparity – was there ever a huge gap between the highest-level character and the lowest, and how did that affect gameplay?
Ben,
Thanks for the advice; I’m really excited about this and considering the hidden evils that populate Lovecraft country. I plan to use the campus or at least dorms as a safe space, and to seed campus life and the surrounding are with clues that will merit investigation: rumors of haunting houses, a chance encounter with ghouls late at night. As I understand it, the key part of the model is player control; scenario structure may remain the same but players choose where to go.
Do you suggest coming up with an overarching mystery beforehand, or would the simple task of “What’s rotten in Lovecraft Country” suffice?
@ AlbertCarruthers — Here are two threads that might interest you:
The West Marches model in CoC?
Sandbox Cthulhu
I think it’s doable, though establishing a safe zone like town might be a little trickier. I would expand the scope to be a city (Arkham?) or a county, not just campus. If you do that I don’t think you need “missions” the way you are describing them — in fact I think missions and fed plot hooks destroy the model.
Don’t make the characters part of an investigative order — let them form one if they want. Or not. Leave them in control. And part of the mythos (I think) is that hell never really openly breaks loose — some people see terrible things in the dark woods but it never happens in public on the 11 o’clock news, superhero-style, so that works fine.
Otherwise I think it could be a very, very good fit. West Marches was really always about finding things out first and foremost.
One other key conceptual shift: in West Marches you are exploring territory, but in a CoC setting you are putting together the pieces of the big puzzle. So even if someone sails off the map to Iceland to look at some ruins, it works just fine. You aren’t exploring the map, you’re exploring the unknowable truth.
“I’m personally not a big fan of rules heavy games; I don’t know if 4e is this way”
4e is way way less rules heavy then 3e (or 3.5e), and indeed any of the AD&D versions. It is more rules heavy then some other RPGs. The do have to fill 3 books with _something_, but much like the monster manual never really made the system “rules heavy” the player’s handbook has a LOT of space taken by magic item descriptions and power descriptions. The dungeon master’s guide takes a lot of space talking about types of players and how to “wing it” (along with a pile of crunch rules).
It plays a lot more like the “rules light” basic D&D games I remember from the 80s (not that it is really _that_ light, I mean you basically need a battle map and if not minis something to stand in for them…but it FEELS very rules light).
Then again, that may be just the way the groups I’m playing in run it. One of which is a “go in the dungeon and kill stuff” game, one of which is westmarches-like.
Hey Albert, just an idea, but if you were doing modern Cthulhu you could switch Miskatonic for like… Mishkavek university, on the edge of the giant “national park”-like no-go zone area near Chernobyl in the Ukraine. Apparently the whole place has gone back to nature and the radiation levels are in the “don’t live here, birth defects will be higher” rather than the “flesh peels off” level.
Ben,
Do you know of anyone who has adapted this to Call of Cthulhu? Your articles have inspired me to build this sort of world, but I’m personally not a big fan of rules heavy games; I don’t know if 4e is this way. I’ve toyed with centering the campaign around the incoming class at Miskatonic University. Ideally, the group would form some sort of mythos-investigating brotherhood.
The trouble is that Cthulhu is largely plot-based; the terrible things are hidden just around the characters, not off in the wilderness. Do you think this kind of campaign could succeed if I provided characters with particular hooks out of game and they decided which to investigate (your favorite professor has gone missing, freshman initiation into a club requires a night spent in the morgue beneath the medical building)?
I’m also concerned that characters would be too close spatially; if all hell breaks loose why can’t they get their roommate to come explore? HE may have a test the next day or something, but… it feels like it could get a bit thin.
Thanks for the quick response, Ben!
@ Ryan
Knowing what you now know, how much should a GM prep before putting it out to players that he’s ready for them to schedule session 1?
That’s a little hard to quantify Ryan, but I’ll give it a shot.
I recommend starting with one solid lead to get them out the door (treasure map, X marks the
spot), then let them bump into more info while they’re exploring. Have at least three regions drawn in rough outlines leading to or around that target. You don’t need a lot of detail, just a concept (the Stinking Swamp) and _solid_ encounter tables for each — those tables are really, really critical. Sprinkle in a few stationary landmarks (the Hag’s Hut, the Sunken Rock) which may or may not be very small monster lairs — two per region is fine for now. And of course the write up for the destination of the rumor/map/whatever.
The known destination establishes a vector of travel, so even if later on they could set out from town in totally different directions and explore yet-to-be-built regions, for now you know the flight plan.
If you have ideas for things you haven’t written up yet, you can seed clues — just make sure you don’t make it so clear the players make a sharp turn and walk to those new areas you haven’t written yet. Learning that a ruined monastery exists, but without any idea where it is, is a perfect clue — later the players may ask questions at the town church, but now in the wilderness they have no way to find it.
@ Stanley — Excellent! It’s a wonderful transformation isn’t it?
Do I let them keep getting the cold shoulder and having nothing happen? Or do I point blank tell them that they are wasting time? OR…and this just came to me…do I let the other players, who want to leave town, tell them to knock it off?
All of the above. You can speed up dead-end interactions by dropping out of verbatim roleplaying and just summarizing what the NPC says: “He says he doesn’t know anything about that.” If you keep speaking in character you are encouraging more roleplaying.
It’s tricky because sometimes you will introduce info in town. Here’s the key distinction: in the wilderness, digging may uncover unexpected things. Exploration is profitable. In town, if there’s information it will be on the surface, easy to get at. Questioning everyone in town will not get you more. In town exploration is not profitable.
Flat-out telling the players this is the model is not a bad plan.
How much did you have prepped before the first game started?
Knowing what you now know, how much should a GM prep before putting it out to players that he’s ready for them to schedule session 1?
How many rumors should I share with the player base so they feel like they can plan an expedition?
I am having A LOT of fun running my own West Marches style campaign using 3.5e. My players are having a great time, too. Though, at first, it took some time getting used to the idea of a “player driven” story. In many ways, I’ve discovered that the players have greater sense of achievement and, therefore, enjoyment at the table when they are totally in charge of their action.
I’ve seen a change in their demeanor. Instead of thinking, “What does the DM want us to do?” they realise that their decisions are their own. And I love that I don’t have to subtly guide players toward a specific course of action or adventure. The players discuss this well before a session via email (saving TONS of time during a session), and then write-up an adventure to suit their needs. I can work on each adventure knowing that it will get used–at least for the most part. (I hate preping stuff that doesn’t get used).
So, thank you so much for the inspiration!
I do, however, have one question (please pardon me if you’ve answered it elsewhere):
How did you break the players of the habit of roleplaying in town?
Some of my players keep trying to roleplay in town. While I allow a bit of last minute information gathering at the start of session (i.e. they can roll a Gather Information check to hear about any rumors, usually unreliable, about a certain site), some players will try to roleplay with NPCs for more information. I’ve had NPCs give them the cold shoulder, but this only seems to encourage these players even more: “What are you hiding?” “Why, oh town guard, do you not care about the ogres in the hills?” etc.
Do I let them keep getting the cold shoulder and having nothing happen? Or do I point blank tell them that they are wasting time? OR…and this just came to me…do I let the other players, who want to leave town, tell them to knock it off?
@Ben – there is still basically one group – but they come/go as they can, so there’s only about 2 or 4 people who show up regularly with people who vary in their attendance. I haven’t been able to get a truly separate second group started up, but I’m always trying.
The new “characters” have gone where the older ones had started, they’ve not gone back to the bridge. There is much muttering about revenge at level 6
I had some good suggestions about how info would have probably been carried back and forth, hirelings, the two survivors, etc, so for now, I’m probably going to let that go unless its REALLY egregarious, then I’ll ask for a justification on how that could be shared. It would have to be really specific because, like you say, it’s going to get annoying and I don’t feel like being a conversation policeman. I’ll mention this next game.
@kaeosdad – I had a similar grumble and I sat them down and pointed out that 1) they had explored maybe 25% of a dungeon and hadn’t found “phat lewt” yet, so they weren’t going to see a lot of treasure/xp from fighting wandering monsters. 2) They’ve dipped their toes by poking around alot, but they are gaining XP, roughly 200 to 400 a session – which may not seem like a lot, but there are usually 5 to 9 players a session.
First off I wanted to thank you for putting up this series of article, like many I also launched a west marches style campaign mine is called No Heroes and its going pretty good so far. You can check out our campaign wiki @ http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/no-heroes
Anyways so far one problem I encountered this campaign is that my players felt I was stingy with the xp rewards and suggested that I reward xp for role playing. After nearly breaking my brain about it for a week almost I finally came up with a solution that I posted up on my blog here: http://symptomsofmadness.blogspot.com/2009/04/roleplaying-rewards-solved.html
I bring this up because I think this might help with the meta gaming problem of character knowledge. What I plan on trying out this upcoming session is offering the players a 15% bonus to their xp for roleplaying that is to be rewarded at the end of the session. Whenever a player breaks character or meta games or causes a disruption by off topic chatter and the dm catches them the bonus lowers by 5%. This gives them 3 strikes and hopefully will encourage players to stay in character and focused on the game. Also for players who get stuck in situations where they might want to ask the group out of character for advice or to get together and strategize also out of character they begin a session with meta tokens which can be used to “pause” the game for 3 minutes or until the players are ready. Meta tokens are handed to the players on a one token for every two players ratio.
I think this could help encourage players to stop using out of character knowledge and to stay in character for the whole game.
@ Chgowiz — I think I remember you saying you still had a mono-party at this point (i.e. you do not have different groups of characters adventuring separately). Is that right?
If so, there’s no motivation for outside information sharing when everyone in the game was at the table — it doesn’t really serve any purpose between the players, it’s just documentation. Without separate adventuring groups it’s just homework.
Yes, out of character info can be annoying, but after a TPK you might be better off cutting the players slack and letting them get back in the game. Don’t put the cart before the horse, right? Or instead, encouraging the new characters to go somewhere different, not right back to places their last characters explored. West Marches players will remember the disaster at the Lizard Mound — one party got wiped out (“…and they never came back” another WM catch phrase meaning no info came back because there were no survivors) so those players made new characters and went off and explored other places. In a separate session a totally different group of players, who only knew some people had gone to X and never returned, went to the Lizard Mound to find out what happened and wound up wiping the place out, avenging the fellow adventurers they had never met.
Question for the West Marches players:
With the recent TPK and new characters, we’re running into some “metagaming” issues where players know XYZ, but their PCs shouldn’t/wouldn’t. I had to actually step in at one point and shut down the conversation, as a person was recounting something a former dead character knew and was relating to the new character. In general, given that we might have some (a lot) of 1st character turnover, I’m curious how you handled this in your games.
My concept had been that if it’s not written down somewhere (wiki/list, notes) or not shared, then its not known, but as some players have complained, real life and their perceptions of the world make it hard to partition. What do you think?
I have to speak up here. I am currently running two traditional style games while deployed for my second tour in Iraq with other soldiers from my unit. We are having some SERIOUS scheduling conflicts and I am considering pulling everyone into a WM style game. Thanks for the inspiration and the re-motivation. This site is amazing.
AzaLin- my email is rjjr71@yahoo.com. Email me and I’ll reply with some details.
81 – Peccable: I was really fired up by a book by Goodman Games called ‘Points of Light’, and I would recommend it to you as a source of inspiration. Despite the 4E blurb on the cover, it is a very old-fashioned product — it is in fact very reminiscent of the old Judges Guild stuff, hexmaps and all.
As a DM I like hexmaps for the convenience, although I would agree that the players should just start with a blank piece of paper and take it from there. Fight On!#4 also features a neat section of the Wilderlands; it can easily be goldmined for your own map(s).
(And if you need numbered hexmaps, I must strongly pimp Hexographer. You can find it here: http://inkwellideas.com/?page_id=160)
I love this concept. Thank you for sharing it Ben. I’m going to start building my own version of the WM this weekend!
Thanks for the replies!!!!!! Every piece of advice has been taken to heart!
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Peccable:
Actually, I’d love to see your maps also, if your willing. I can’t give the expert feedback, but i’d still love to see them.
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Ron:
To clarify-
2. Knowing what to look for when searching for a wolf den is one thing, getting there is a different story, yes?
-I’m unsure how to use this though; it ties in with describing exploration, which i guess is somethign else i should have asked about. How should I be describing a forest exploration, versus when they’re looking for the den, and how do I handle it if they don’t have nature and they find a hint that the den is there? do they pass it by, or do i give them a hint? if i give them a hint, isn’t that the same as recognizing the spot using nature checks?
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BEN:
I read the thread you indicated;
Yeah, the encounter was quite foreshadowed. Lots of dead bodies nearby, a captive kobold who tried to refuse to explore that area of the dungeon, a sign indicating ‘dogs,’ and they fought the same creatures when level 4 in a previous campaign and had a tricky time of it then, and there were less dogs that time. There was also 8 alcoves, etc, so they had pretty good warning that there were more than the two they saw initially, especially sicne they heard growling from the alcoves.
We played again tonight and the party didn’t leave the dungeon- they fought ghouls this time (not many) and the rogue is dead now. They say they plan on finishing the dungeon without waiting until they’re stronger… They totally believe they can pull it off, despite 4 deaths in 2 sessions in a 3 p layer party (raise dead scrolls, all used up- part of the dungeon, cause it’s a tomb and the scrolls are for posterity)
Given this, I anticipate TPK by next session, or the one after. I didn’t pull any punches this second time, that’s why the rogue died (there was a scroll of raise dead in one area- the rogue died twice actually, for good this time, with a coup de grace). However, if they luck out, because of xp for surviving these ridiculous encounters, they could level enough to pull it off after a couple of sessions. It’s a level 6 dungeon! ONE of them has began acting far more cautiously, but also will not give up. Their perserverance is admirable…
Ben:
First of all — thank you so much for this series of articles. The Western Marches idea has really sparked my imagination and I’m planning on running a WM-style campaign myself.
A question on detail: you mention that there’s a lot of up-front work, but that the concept’s designed to allow you to minimize that, with the real detail coming once player’s have registered a flight-plan.
I’m running into big-picture-detail issues, myself. I really want a coherent backstory/history for the ‘Marches’ and I like some of the ideas I have, but I’m coming up short with how detailed the immediate areas/regions around town should be. Is a general overview and a few landmarks enough, combined with the random-encounter tables? Or were your wilderness maps initially more detailed?
If you’re at all interested, I’d love to forward some of my maps and get your feedback.
Thanks again!
-d-