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.
Ben,
Others have asked this question, but I’m going to ask it a little differently. How _big_ was your map? How many miles, or days of travel (whatever you were using to measure it)? How big were the various regions?
Ryan – Thanks for the pdf. I’ve been following that discussion on Storygames as well. I will be using BW as my system for the sandbox game.
This discussion is highly relevant to anyone trying to do “West Marches” style 4e.
http://story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=10373
Basically, don’t expect to have a 7-combat-encounter expedition take a single 3-hour session (I made this mistake in my first game). In my case it looks like 2 or 3 encounters rounds out a good 3 to 4 hour expedition.
This means that with 4e, we can’t make the players roll random encounters going through each region – any regions but the closest, just going there or back will eat a whole session. I decided to get rid of random encounters entirely from my version of the model and just build 3 combat encounters (1 on the way, 2 at the site) based on where the players say they’re going.
As a rule of thumb, I’m saying that if your level is higher than all the things in a zone, your party travels through it unmolested.
Well, I’m not Ben, but I put everything important onto 1 page and the players really responded to it.
http://tagsfolly.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/out-in-the-wastes3.pdf
If I could do it again I’d try for half as much text.
Ben,
How did you pitch the game to your players? What did you tell them? Thanks! I just found this series of articles. They are great!
ara
I’ve started running a West March style game. The wiki for the game is here:
http://westmarchsaga.wikia.com/wiki/Saga_of_Westmarch_Wiki
It’s a little unusual in that it is a online game, so sessions run a little slow. In the first 4 hour game, the delvers only managed to travel for 1 day and only had 1 combat encounter.
I’m also running it using GURPS, so I’ve had to do a lot more prepwork than most people. GURPS doesn’t have anywhere near as good a monster list as the D&D clones do, so I’ve had to create a lot more of my own monsters. So far, it’s been good.
The players haven’t been doing much to contribute to the wiki. I want to kick them, but I recognize that’s their choice.
@ #142, Cr0m:
Check out Jeff Rients Carousing Rules at http://jrients.blogspot.com/2008/12/party-like-its-999.html — they work pretty well for a WM-style game.
I had a lot more time to think about this and I’ve decided that most of the sites in the environment will be built for 1-2 encounters, and the random encounters will be less likely.
I’m aiming for an expedition to be 3-4 encounters, which is 4-5 hours of play.
Thanks Ben. I am using 4e, so the combats are about an hour each, and since the players schedule during evenings that means only 2 combats per night.
I wanted that play-to-win feeling and my player base was clamoring for it. I do find it a very good game, but I get the feeling that my parties won’t mingle much since they’ll be together for 4 sessions at a time. I’m highly tempted to solve the problem with a network of linked portals, though (and it’d fit the history of the setting).
[Ryan, I moved your comment to this thread, since it's where all the "how to" discussion is going on]
Because I set up my first dungeon about 3 days out from the town, and checked for random encounters night and day. At this rate an “expedition” to a pretty local place will take 4 or 5 sessions.
Four to five sessions? Yikes. There are only a few variables at work: either you have too many random encounters per day, fights are taking too long, or the dungeon is too far away.
IMO three days walk is pretty far for the closest spot — the closest locations in West Marches were less than a day if you knew the way, but could be two or more if you were wandering/searching for them. Of course those are level 1 or 2 areas, except for sealed higher level pockets. But that’s just personal preference. Your setting could have the nearest dungeons weeks away, you just need to speed up the process of getting there to make it work in a game session.
If you’re playing 4E, you may have to jettison small fast fights in favor of fewer but more involved fights. The system is not as geared to quick-and-dirty as 3E (which of course is slower than 1E, etc — you could run a whole fight in Basic in a matter of minutes, but of course you are making fewer choices).
Ben, my biggest stumbling block is setting up the map. How did you relate
days of travel : locations : random encounters?
Because I set up my first dungeon about 3 days out from the town, and checked for random encounters night and day. At this rate an “expedition” to a pretty local place will take 4 or 5 sessions. How did you work it out?
@147 Harlequin, I’ve tried 4e and it’s not for me. Thanks for the rec though. The combats did seem more peppy!
In the West marches, did the PCs ever interact with the “outside” civilizations of the world, or was every interaction hostile?
Basically, I’m looking at skills like Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate (outside of getting the bloodied bad guys to run), and wondering if the monsters (kobolds, goblins, orcs, gnolls, etc…) ever communicated formally with the PCs? And, if not, how were these types of skills used considering NPC interaction in town was at a minimum?
Pretty hostile. There were NPCs in the wilds you could deal with, folks like the Mad Hermit, the Keeper of Bees or the Witch of Pike Hollow, or even bandits, plus some talking monsters like goblins if you wanted to try them. But those were a small segment of the game. Charter was exploration and danger, not diplomacy.
In town those skills were useful to speed things up (Want to find out what the guard knows about the bandits? Roll Diplomacy. Want to convince the gate guard the unconscious rust monster is dead so you can sneak it into town? Roll Bluff.)
Also, how did you use knowledge skills such as History – considering this is a unexplored territory, how did you handle history skills?
Taking a blanket “History of the West Marches” was right out. Entirely cheesy. History of particular topics, like “History of the Duke’s Wars” was fine and could lead to interesting snippets in some cases. But generally I was pretty strict about it. The idea is not to buy something that undermines the fun of the game — you want to go out and gather info, not just roll to get info.
As far as using up treasure, characters had a weekly “upkeep” cost in town that was scaled to level. So a 1st level character only had to spend a modest amount on room and board (and clothes and largesse) but a higher level character spent more. The key was the increase was voluntary — a 6th level character could be frugal and only spend as much as a 1st level character, but that determined how the people of the town perceived them, as either important figures or paupers. If you spend like a 1st level character, they see you as a 1st level character. You could also spend above your level to impress the townsfolk. 90% of the time big spending gave you a bonus to interactions, and 10% exactly the opposite (“grr, who does he think he is, throwing his gold around?!?”).
Tactical combat was an important part of West Marches, but of course different groups will have different preferences about that (let’s not get derailed into a 3E vs 4E discussion). The essential bit is that player decisions impact the results, that good choices help you survive and bad choices hurt.
And that’s a good reminder: some of these details of how I ran West Marches are just personal preferences. You might run it entirely differently. Just keep in mind the core principle: players are in control, they decide their own fate.
Cr0m, regarding this: “I ask because one reason my group stopped playing 3/3.5e was the glacial pace of combat. The other was the arms race of optimization for combat (”Hey guys, he didn’t take Weapon Focus! Haha!”).”
Have you tried 4E at all? I ask because I don’t think you’ve mentioned it, and it does shore-up those two issues in 3.5. Combat is fast-paced, and character optimization isn’t nearly as important (at least not in heroic tier). Also, all the classes are genuinely interesting and unique, which may keep your players interested.
@143 P Armstrong: I’m a fan of your blog! Thanks for the ideas for spending gold.
@145 Tommi: double-dipping gold for xp would definitely be popular among the players, especially considering the mortality rate. I’ll have to think about that.
The other reason I’m wondering about 3.5e is because I think eventually my players are going to want to play something other than the B/X classes. I’m the big nostalgia freak among them and I think they’re humoring me.
cr0m; how about gold spent in ale&whores (or the equivalent; any non-adventurous thing really, like paying for someone to build a house for oneself) turns into experience? Other adventurers selling maps? Every now and then, a wandering merchant with an interesting item or few. A skilled healer so that gold spent provides faster healing rates, maybe.
Michael,
4E skills are broad in scope and they encourage you to use them via the skill challenges (but there’s no reason you can’t modify or work outside that framework). Diplomacy allows you to parley with that band of orcs, history allows you to determine the origin of a strange artifact. Hell, in a WM style game, I’d think History would be king — (“Ah, this is the seal of old King Rockbottom — his castle must be close. The songs of old tell about a valley with a river running through it…”) Arcana, religion, nature, dungeoneering and the like all represent a character’s ability to “figure something out” based on those knowledges. Intimidate and bluff can even be used on monsters in creative ways (to scare them off or lure them into your trap).
I have also been using classic D&D (B/X in my case) for a WM-style campaign. Mortality rates have been high in my game as well – classic characters are fragile.
As for gold – as you say gp’s are an end unto themselves with gp = xp.
Other uses, in order of immediacy, are:
- retainers (as you mention, they go through a lot of them);
- information (buying the Captain of the Guard drinks to find out if he knows anything about the abandoned monastery);
- donations (the party will be popular with the local high priest later);
- spell research (everyone should be interested in the M-U coming up with some new spells to help);
- magic item creation (far in the future); and
- building a stronghold (also, far in the future).
Nice to hear of another classic D&D game!
Hi Ben/Frost/other WM players,
How long were your typical sessions? How many encounters were typical? I ask because one reason my group stopped playing 3/3.5e was the glacial pace of combat. The other was the arms race of optimization for combat (“Hey guys, he didn’t take Weapon Focus! Haha!”).
Did either cause a problem for WM?
Also, I’d like to take a moment to plug my own WM-style game (the url linked in my nickname). I tried a sandbox last summer using Savage Worlds, but the system didn’t have the crunchy incremental boosts needed to keep players hungry.
This spring, I started up again using Redbox D&D, and it’s been a massive success. Two regular groups of players and loads of exploration/note comparing and competitiveness. Nothing like a system where the amount of loot recovered translates directly into xp for driving play.
The only hiccup is that they haven’t explored much of the wilderness. They keep heading back to the same two dungeons. On the other hand, now everyone shivers when someone mentions “the rope bridge”, LOL.
The combat is very fast, as is prep. My only dissatisfaction is the lack of anything to strive for other than xp. Mortality rates are high among PCs (45%) and ridiculous among henchmen (65%), and there’s nothing to buy after you’ve made your first 1,000 gold pieces.
Hence my interest in 3.5e for this style of game.
In addition, I do have another question:
In the West marches, did the PCs ever interact with the “outside” civilizations of the world, or was every interaction hostile?
Basically, I’m looking at skills like Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate (outside of getting the bloodied bad guys to run), and wondering if the monsters (kobolds, goblins, orcs, gnolls, etc…) ever communicated formally with the PCs? And, if not, how were these types of skills used considering NPC interaction in town was at a minimum?
Also, how did you use knowledge skills such as History – considering this is a unexplored territory, how did you handle history skills?
Hey guys thanks for the excellent responses. We’ve actually played two sessions now and I think the players are getting the hang of the “get back to town”. I’m also getting the hang of DMing and using navigation rules to determine whether the PCs make it to their intended destination or not. And, when rolling for random encounters, I usually give the PCs the option (so far anyways) to engage the encounter or not (perhaps they see them on the tree-line and have the option to attack or not).
I definitely didn’t mean “save points” in the sense of ‘well, if we die we can reload the game here’. No. I meant it like you suggested – the PCs find a place, hack some trees down, get some stone, refurbish the tower, and build it up into an outpost. I’ve actually already had players wanting to add to the town – building churches, etc… I’ve let them run with these ideas thinking it would make them more invested in the world and simply fluffed it during their “downtime”.
I’m still working on developing a calendar – any suggestions for online tools to help with this?
Another thing I’m struggling with is the “Treasure Tells A Story”. I’ve been trying to flesh out the treasure by putting profiles on coins, tapestries with figures and places, a ring that alludes to a mysterious ring of trees, but I’m finding it hard to come up with unique ideas. I don’t know if this is because only a small portion of my world is fleshed out or if I’m just stumped.
Can I request a follow-up article from Ben “Treasure Tells A Story Techniques” or something?
Haha.
Thanks guys. You’ve really helped me make my West Marches campaign great so far – I think my players are having a blast and I owe a lot to the advice given here.
One quick comment that Tacoma’s msg made me think of:
It may be no fun slogging through the same old stuff. But again, once they get the hang of the game world, it isn’t that slow.
I don’t think that you shoudl be “slogging through the same old stuff”. If the party is returning to an area they’ve been to before it should either be quick & easy (if they know the way really well); or it should be longer and more difficult. But this should not mean “the same stuff”, they may get lost and wander into a new & different area, find something else new (at least to them), or hit new encounters.
Unless they are doing something stupid like always heading out of town on the first day of the full moon into the wolf infested moors over and over again (a common WM tactic) they should be mostly getting new stuff. A different encounter, finding new stuff wahtever.
They just may not be getting to their ‘goal’, which may be ok if they are in the right mindset. Really these ruins that you just got lost and stumbled on may not be the ones you were looking for but they do seem interesting.
Mind if I chime in on the “save points” and “quick travel”?
If players want to build a safehouse, there’s no reason why they can’t, right? Get out there with your tools, fell some trees, dig some basement, etc. Or take over a dungeon space and re-fortify.
The problem is that if these characters don’t return to a central place (the town) they cannot group up with another team and go out elsewhere. If they’re in a safehouse in the forest, a player with his character in the safehouse could come to the game and wait just in case the other group comes by so he can join them. But that’s farfetched and the timing may not even be right. After all, Group 2 starts out effectively on the same day Group 1 does.
I hope you don’t mean that a “save point” would actually be a place where the game could revert to in case something bad happened
As for quick travel, on one hand I think it’s horrid and on another I think it’s worthwhile.
Con: The reasoning behind quick travel is that you can get there easier because you already know the way. If you do things how Ben describes, they will naturally get there faster because they know the way as players. And if they screw up, they will get there slower or not at all. It organically creates a quick travel system.
Pro: It may be no fun slogging through the same old stuff. But again, once they get the hang of the game world, it isn’t that slow.
I guess if they want to handwave the exploration (walking through something once doesn’t make it “Area Complete” and permanently eliminate fog of war), it’s up to you to humor them or not.
I think that scaling what is a “magic” item seems like a great way to work this into 4E. having the lower plusses simply be high quality and not necessarily ‘magic’ in the usual sense.
BTW, keep in mind that there does not need to be a correlation between item value & historical/plot significance. You could easily have a treasure that had a +1 sword and a rusty old sword hilt that had the clues to the location of ; if you are doing your job really well they will be just as excited about the rusty old hilt as they are about the +1 sword. Obviously the more powerful the item is the more likely that it has some story.
As for the “end in town each session”; (speaking as a player in WM) really that’s more of the goal one that’s very strongly encouraged. As you mention, a group may spend the session just finding the dungeon and if they are still in good shape why would they turn around and head back instead of going in?
Really I think this depends on how long a session is and how much you want to spend on wilderness encounters vs. “the dungeon” (whatever that happens to be). If folks are enjoying the wilderness encounters does it matter if they don’t get to the ‘dungeon’? If they are annoyed that they are spending so much time traveling and with wandering monsters, reduce the number of encounters and gloss over the travel more.
One other thing that may be contributing to this is if you are focusing a lot on the ‘locations’ and less on simple exploration. If a game is always about finding/getting to a specific location (i.e. ‘the dungeon’) then they will of course be impatient to get there (the random encounters can feel too much like delaying the “real” game). But if exploration of the wilderness is a goal then spending a whole game session “wandering around” is fun & productive.
Your mention of “save points” (what is this a video game? Oh right its 4e ) and quick travel times brings up one possible solution. If the group (or some members of it) have traveled to that location before they should have a much easier time getting there and avoiding encounters and so forth. Especially if they have some skill in wilderness survival (the wizard who just followed the ranger the last 3 times he went won’t be as much help, but if you take that ranger along you get there easily). This really made those skills much more important and makes things much more realistic. It’s better to take a skilled tracker/woodsman with you and there’s a real difference between trying to explore new territory and going somewhere you have been before. So the first time the group goes to the cave in the mountains they may get lost and spend a week looking for it (many random encounters); next time they actually find it, but are too wiped out & low on food to really do more than a cursory exploration, the next time they easily get to it and can do a full exploration.
I would not say that they “have to head back to town”; but it should be encouraged. Especially as groups got to higher levels (and could survive in the wilderness longer) we did get into situations where we did not get back into town by the end of the session. In that case that group had to game together again and they were not able to mix in with other groups until they get back to town (of course). They are paused until they can game again, which should really push them to set up the next game ASAP. This sort of thing can make the scheduling tricky and makes the game time calendar complicated for you to keep track of. I think our rule was that if the group wanted to pause and play a second session they had to schedule it at that game, and if it looked like it might be too long until the next session then they had to head back to town.
One interesting thing about the calendar is that if group A has a game session where they spend 2 weeks exploring and return to town, in most cases they just advanced the game calendar by 2 weeks. The other players not in that game were resting/studying in town. It is sometimes possible for group B to say they want to go out and do something during that 2 weeks, but in most cases once group A comes back and announces to the town that they found X or whatever that’s pretty much set the calendar. Of course if group B scheduled their game before group A played you can make sure that this works out. But of course when a group goes out and pauses, they have not really advanced the calendar and other groups can schedule games where they leave town the day after they left or whatever. But then working out the return dates can be tricky.
So really the “must return to town” is about scheduling and keeping the game calendar sensible.
Of course Ben probably has a better perspective as the person who kept the calendar.
You’re right. Perhaps the +1 items have simply less historical value (in the Treasure Tells A Story sense), and the high-end items (+2) are more flavorful and have greater ties to the world. The +1 might be all the weapons forged by the great dwarven master Kurjo, but that one +2 out there might be his masterpiece.
Excellent idea.
I do have another question for Ben and Frost – or whomever.
My players are having “issues” with the whole, “end in town at the end of each session”. They have ideas like, save points (forward bases) they can crash at closer to the wilderness, quick travel (to places they’ve been before), and they are also worried about time constraints and getting to a location and finding it and then having to head back to town before exploring it.
I’ve explained that they might spend a session simply finding a dungeon – and it’s motivating for them to come back and play again so they can loot it before someone else. In addition, I’ve explained that if they do “pause” out in the wilderness, they can’t adventure with other folks who go out during that same time.
Did you have similar complaints? How did you handle the “end at town” rule? Did you have paused groups? How did you handle that? Were there ever “forward bases” parties could rest at relatively safely (they’ve had ideas like clearing out a fort or something and requesting troops from the Duke to “hold it”)?
Any suggestions, advice?
Michael, you can always downgrade the color of those +1 items (e.g.: exceptional quality, no particular lore save in the collective sense perhaps (elvish longswords of great antiquity…)). By RAW they only pawn for about 50gp and doing so won’t cheapen your world (“…His Grace the Duke adds it to his collection…”). Meanwhile, you can save the +2 items-of-bad-ass-property for the great rewards. They won’t need more than +2 anyway, and even +1 is “enough” to push-through the baddies most of the time.
[...] August 25, 2009 Uncategorized Leave a Comment So, after getting some advice from Ben and Frost, I’ve decided that magic items should be rare, but because of 4th Edition’s reliance on [...]
Ben, thanks for the kind remarks about the blog. You’re right, I just need to jump right in and get things going. A couple players have set up a game for this Wednesday so I’m pretty hyped about it. Thanks for replying to my questions/concerns and coming up with the excellent concept.
Thanks for the feedback guys. Honestly, I’m torn because unlike 3E, 4E has the math of magic item bonuses “built in” to the math and without the +1 sword, a 6th level fighter just doesn’t match up with monsters of that level. I’ve considered just giving a flat +1 to all defenses, attacks, and damage at certain levels, but I don’t see that really being a fix considering other items will still be sought after and created.
So, I guess I’m going to have to allow magic items (considering they can be created with a ritual available to PCs). There’s little to no way around it. But, one thing I can do is this – I have a level cap of 10. Perhaps the really “rare” items, the ones there might be only one or two of are level 11 and higher (items the PCs can’t craft) and maybe even a relic or two.
In addition, all the items found in the world have history clues (good read on the Treasure Tells A Story blog entry) to hopefully make them more memorable and “magical” so to speak – make the flavor magical and the function functional.
There were magic items in WM? how come I missed that?!
(just kidding, _I think_ I remember seeing a magic item or two).
Seriously, I felt that the scarcity of magic items was a cool thing. Made finding treasure that much mroe interesting and special. I find that often in games you end up with a very analytical (and even bored) approach to magic items: “ok the sword we found is a +2, who wants it? I’ve got a +1 firebrand, lesse you have a +2 dagger, I guess we’ll give it to…”. It’s just another piece of equipment, instead of something “magical” and special.
Not sure how well this would work with 4E though.
Speaking of treasure and making it interesting & special, make sure you read Ben’s post “Treasure Tells A Story”. Having treasure that is also a clue to other plots and areas to explore really makes the WM/sandbox style of game great. If your players spend more time discussing who’s profile is stamped onto the coins and what that might mean then they do discussing how to split the loot you are in a great place.
This was D&D 3 not 4, so the assumptions about magic items were very different. In short: no magic shops. Magic items were very rare and precious. If you want mundane things like bushels of wheat, stay in town. If you want magic and mystery, go into the wilds and crack open some ancient tomb.
Likewise if the PCs are the only adventurers in the area (the West Marches premise), there isn’t much market to support anything like a magic shop. It’s a low-level game in a remote area.
One practical exception was the town’s apothecary, who in addition to cures for common ailments could brew up healing potions for a steep price. He had a limited stock, since he was making them himself. Needless to say, wise adventurers bought them when they could, at least until the PCs inadvertently threatened him with blackmail and drove him out of town…
By the way, very nice blog Michael. Don’t worry about being prepped enough — just start playing and see what happens. The whole model of on-demand gaming is to prevent you from delaying because you’re not sure you’re ready.
Got another question: How did you handle magic item shops? Was there a shop in the West Marches? If so, was anything available – or did you have random items, a percentage for a certain item, etc…? Was treasure randomly generated? Did an economy develop? For example, did people barter items they found for items other people found? Anything else you can tell me about the economy and magic items in the West Marches?
Thanks.
I’ve set up a design blog for my new West Marches campaign for anyone interested – here’s the link: http://porthavenholde.wordpress.com/
Yep, that’s basically how he started it. I believe Ben set up a list that we could use, and then told everyone that scheduling/discussions/game summaries should be sent to that. And that there would be no games run without a scheduling mail sent to the list.
Another effect of having the players drive the scheduling, that I’ve experienced when I GM and do this, is that it feels very different. Instead of trying to get people to come play this game you’ve created, they are coming to you asking to play. Seems like a minor thing, but its not.
Hey thanks for answering those questions so quickly. I’m so used to being the initiator as a DM, I guess I get into that mode easily. I’ll take both of your advice and avoid it. Good stuff.
How did you initially encourage the players to take initiative as far as the email list? Did you just compile a mailing list and send one email out to everyone to get it going or what?
Were there ever times when you didn’t really have a player ask to play but you wanted to keep things rolling?
You certainly could, but I don’t recommend it. If your players aren’t motivated, bring in more players.
Yeah. It’s a slippery slope you’re better off staying away from. It should be the players that want to keep things rolling. You can say, I have a lot of free time coming up, but I think beyond that, you have to obey the rule that the players initiate scheduling. If this core concept is undermined, the players will start having less stake in the game and get passive, the true death knell. Same goes for the DM writing game reports, maps or things in the player’s sphere.
As a player in the original WM, I can say with certainty that the best way to get existing players motivated is to play with other more motivated people — but first revisit Ben’s “Fear the Social Monster” section of this blog entry for it is so true.
So, are you using a real world calendar that simultaneously works in game, or are they separate?
You’re tracking game world time. Say it’s the beginning of the month in the game world. On Monday (real world) you get together to play and the party spends two weeks of game time exploring the swamps. On Thursday another party goes out, but they’re still at the start of the month, so the characters from the Monday game can’t join them even if the players are available to play that day.
It’s a loose process, so fudge when necessary. It just helps prevent some characters from going on every sortie. Remember, the people waiting in town don’t know when the other parties are going to make it back, so unless they have a really good reason to wait indefinitely they should just go.
A crude but effective motivator is rent: charge a standard upkeep cost for room and board in town. Sitting around for weeks doing nothing costs money. Then the characters try to get odd jobs in town while they wait. It’s tragic to watch. Would you hire Revor the axe-wielding barbarian to weed your garden?
Were there ever times when you didn’t really have a player ask to play but you wanted to keep things rolling?
You certainly could, but I don’t recommend it. If your players aren’t motivated, bring in more players.
Third, you mentioned the players providing game summaries and whatnot, and I think that’s great, but as a DM did you ever consider putting out brief snippets of info yourself?
When you start providing game summaries or organization of any sort, you are discouraging the players from taking on that responsibility themselves. I made that mistake in a previous campaign (Promised Land) and it undermined player initiative.
Really there are two very different types of updates — observable facts and unobservable reports. When you say the temple has been discovered, you are saying what the PCs say when they get back to town. That’s bad. If you say “party X returned to town at the end of the week” but nothing more, you are reporting something anyone in the town could see. That’s better, but I still wouldn’t get into that business.
If it’s an NPC announcement, like the Duke has put out a new wanted poster, you could do that, but again it’s even better if you tell players during games and they spread the word.
Fourth, as far as random encounters, how did you determine WHEN to roll to see if an encounter happened? Was it based on distance traveled “ok they’ve gone 10 miles, roll for possible random encounter”, time “ok it’s been 4 hours in game”, or something else?
I did time (X per day) with most terrain encounters ignored if you weren’t moving (quicksand does not come find you).
Fifth, how “small” did you map your regions? 1 mile increments? 5 mile? 10 mile? Etc…
I get this one a lot, but it’s entirely season to taste. I didn’t use a grid at all, as discussed elsewhere.
Right on.
So, I’m a little confused how the “calendar” works. You mentioned at one point that you tracked a calendar signifying when people were out adventuring and I’m having a hard time envisioning how this interacts with the game world. For example, if I track a calendar and I start my first session with a group of 4 and that session ends – I note on my calendar they went out adventuring. Right ok… But, how does that impact another party that goes out a week later (real world time)? So, are you using a real world calendar that simultaneously works in game, or are they separate? Any details you can spare would be great.
My second question pertains to player-driven scheduling. Were there ever times when you didn’t really have a player ask to play but you wanted to keep things rolling? So, perhaps instead of a player initiating the session, you did but simply by putting out on your email list something like, “Hey – I’m free Saturday. Anyone wanna go adventuring?”
Third, you mentioned the players providing game summaries and whatnot, and I think that’s great, but as a DM did you ever consider putting out brief snippets of info yourself? For example, I’m considering using a Twitter account to put out one or two sentence updates, such as “Eldirk Stormwind has arrived in town” or “The Lost Temple of Manatu has been discovered” – any insight?
Fourth, as far as random encounters, how did you determine WHEN to roll to see if an encounter happened? Was it based on distance traveled “ok they’ve gone 10 miles, roll for possible random encounter”, time “ok it’s been 4 hours in game”, or something else?
Fifth, how “small” did you map your regions? 1 mile increments? 5 mile? 10 mile? Etc…
That’s all I got for now. Thanks!
Mike
What Senor Frost said. Plus a lot of the original West Marches players read this blog (Frost included), so they can provide insight too.
@Michael Pfaff
Myself, I’d really like to hear what others are asking and what things other folks are doing. So unless there’s a reason it needs to be private, I’d love to see your question & the response you get. In other words please just post your question here. Other folks might have the same or similar questions and it could spark further discussions.
Of course this isn’t my blog, I’m just an observer, so this is merely a request/vote.