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.
I’m having the same problem in my game, I have one pc who has survived longer than all the others and he’s getting powerful. I’ve sorted out the loot inflation problem by creating situations where treasure is lost after the pc dies. For example, one day I rolled a goblin ambush on the random encounter table and started the fight. My pcs had never encountered a war band, so they didn’t realize they were enormous, on the first round three crossbowmen attack and the pcs scatter to fight them. Suddenly, they were surrounded by goblins and bugbears. The pcs fought for a while, but eventually a bugbear dropped a pc who had a serious magic item. The pcs had to run, leaving all the loot as they tried to escape. They still haven’t returned to search for the loot, which is good because it’s gone. I also have an encounter with a wyrmling coming up, if anyone dies the treasure will be taken to its lair, which the pcs have yet to discover.
There’s always the good old acid pit, too.
I hope this wasn’t asked before, but in our Co-GMd West Marches style game recently we were debating the issue of “loot inflation” in terms of PCs dying. How was that handled in West Marches?
If you have a near TPK, but one or a few PCs survive, what happens to the dead player’s stuff? It seems like over time the looting of the looters will get out of hand, and you suddenly have large concentrations of wealth in particular PCs. I don’t think any of the DMs having a problem with an imbalance in general, it’s just that at higher levels having an ally get killed off becomes more of a boon for other PCs.
Svafa, substituting skill challenges in lieu of start-to-finish last-man-standing combats is indeed the appropriate way to deal with fights you’d rather quickly roleplay in 4E. In 4E, healing surges are perhaps the most valuable daily resource, so having to spend a surge or two after losing a fight will apply appropriate tension without taking up too much game time. The nice thing about skill challenges (that the RAW doesn’t emphasize enough IMO) is that it’s a good way for the players to get creative with regards to what they can do with their skills.
For a 4E WM style game, I would try to restrict random encounters in the wild to skill challenges as much as possible and save the tactical skirmishes for pre-designed areas (dungeons or otherwise). This also reduces your prep and gives you more time to be creative — a skill challenge can be almost any hazard you want to have in a certain area, and all you need is a brief description, target number and number of successes required (along with XP for succeeding, and I do recommend giving half xp for failing). When it comes up, just let the players tell you what skills they want to use and *how* they’re using them, and if it sounds good, let them try.
“With that in mind, how did you script the higher level locations and encounters? ”
What about instead of the demon worshippers centered in one particular region, their ancient, hell-releasing seal could involve three separate stone crests in three different regions across the map, in a triangular shape. Eventually you would have to (or would be obligated to; it’s still a sandbox, but consequently letting them “do their thing” would populate the entire map with demon-monster encounters) eliminate them from each of the three areas before a set date (such as, maybe “in 3 months” or something). And of course, a different party could go out after a different one than yours, creating a sort of “separate, but with equal intentions” unity between them.
Very inspiring series of posts, Ben – they got me preparing a knock-off of West Marches of my very own. A question, though: the sandbox-model seems to demand any plots you have going on in the various locales to be focused on the immediate area instead of being world-alteringly epic. There might be demon-worshipers five days from Home Base, but if their plan is to conquer the region, this puts too much of a spotlight on them and their plans and steals center stage from the players.
With that in mind, how did you script the higher level locations and encounters?
Also, I’d like to add some ideas, might be useful for others:
West Marches connected with an idea that’s been bouncing around my head since I read “Heart of Darkness” this summer. Basically, that the PCs travel through various areas, further and further from civilisation, and that they can find information about surrounding areas in the place they’re at. The further a group is from a location, the more shrouded in rumors it will be.
For instance, while at Home Base, the only meaningful information on Spiderhaunt Wood would be “dangerous, huge spiders – don’t hunt there”. A bit closer, it’s “there are men in there that have made pacts with the spiders” and once in the woods themselves, you can discover werespiders or demented druids.
Of course, this works both ways: the people of Spiderhaunt Wood know a bit about their Goblin neighbours in the adjacent hills, but next to nothing about the Dwarven citadel in the mountains beyond. The PCs might even know more about the Dwarves than the locals, if the mountains are close to Home Base.
Me and a group of people are actually going to try to start a modified version of the Western Marches for our school this coming semester, but our big twist is that we are going to try to do a multi-DM world building exercise. Basically, we are all going to collaborate to create the world and the basic landmarks, but then if a group wants to go somewhere in particular, a given DM can volunteer to cover it and write out the big details. We feel like this may help reduce our work-loads and it should also create an interesting dynamic where people get to experience different DMing styles, which should show up, even in a universal world. Also, it will let the DM’s play to a limited degree as long as they did not participate in the design of a given location.
Any thoughts?
On that line of thought, I have been toying with a simplified fight system for 4E. I saw something somewhat similar elsewhere, but the gist is that it becomes a series of skill checks or attack rolls. The players are given a number of skill checks to make and need to at least pass half to win the encounter. If they win they (may) get treasure and some exp; if they lose they get nothing and (may) take damage. However, each passed skill check does give a little exp, and each failed skill check causes some damage to the character. Skill checks could be modified through powers, action die, or similar. The base DC would be determined by the level of the party and/or the level of the zone. Here’s a basic example:
The party is attacked by a group of 5 Goblins. They must make 10 skill checks, and must pass at least 6 to come out victorious. The DC is 15 as this is a low level area, and the damage they take for failing is 10 hp. The players go in some predetermined order.
-So, our Rogue goes first. He makes a base attack roll and manages a 17. That’s 1/10 passed.
-Next is the Fighter, and he decides to use an At-Will to mark his opponent. He manages a 15, and now will take the damage from the next failed check (his “mark”). That’s 2/10 passed.
-The Warlock goes next and fails with a total of 12. However, the Fighter takes the 10 points of damage due to his mark. That’s the third attempt.
-The Cleric takes his turn and gets a 9. He takes 10 points of damage (the Fighter’s “mark” is a one-time thing). That’s the fourth.
-The Ranger gets a natural 20 and passes his check. That’s 3/10 and the fifth attempt.
It then starts back over at the Rogue. After all 10 skill checks, they manage to come out with 6/10 and win the encounter. They get a little bit of extra exp and move on.
As you can probably tell it’s a little more than a simple “roll and beat this number” from the marking portion. I’m thinking you might get a +1 for using an Encounter and a +2 or +3 for using a Daily. Plus, you might be able to do some AoE attacks to count one roll toward multiple checks on a success, but only one check on a failure.
Anyway, I realize it’s not entirely on subject and not well fleshed-out, but any thoughts on the subject would be welcome, especially concerning applying it to a WM-style game. I’m considering adding such a system for higher level parties traveling through areas they easily out-level (i.e. level 4-5 in a level 1 area), and then only at the players’ option. Hopefully cutting some travel time and allowing them to spend the majority of their encounter time on the areas they were aiming to explore (whether overland or dungeon crawling).
I was recently inspired while playing Etrian Odyssey (old-school-style dungeon crawler for the DS) to convert an old 3/3.5 campaign into an open-ended exploration game (most likely for 4E). A friend pointed me here (likely due to Penny Arcade), so I’ve made my own venture through articles and blogs while adding a few comments along the way.
I do have a few questions and thoughts though.
First, being inspired by Etrian Odyssey, I’m considering a retirement system that would allow a player to retire their character and gain some benefit on a new one. I have a few ideas for how it might work, but was looking for a little insight from outside our playing group. I know Pfaff mentioned something of the sort (possibly on his blog), but was wondering if the original WM considered such a system or whether others experimenting in the same style had such a system.
My own plans are that on retirement the player explains what happens to the character (through narration, short story, whatever). They then reroll starting with 1/3rd their former character’s experience (thus a level 9 starts at level 3). The main intent was to stop progression at level 12 and possibly level 10, and to help keep the player base near one another in level.
Extra bonuses might be that the retired character might open a blacksmithing shop, alchemy lab, chapel, or similar where the active characters would receive a little more benefit than the town previously had to offer.
Second, while I realize that random encounters are essential, I’m wondering what others think on speeding them up and/or simplifying them. I’ve read a number of different ideas and responses along these lines over the past few days, and even in this thread. I’m mostly interested in how others think this would affect a WM-style game, and not necessarily how it might be done.
I’m adverse to the idea of removing random encounters, as they are essential to this sort of game, but I don’t have as much time to play as I did even 2 years ago.
Hi Ben,
Two questions: You talk a lot about your encounters tables. Where did you get them from? Or did you make them yourself? If so, can you show us an example please?
Also, what ways did you use to give players information about the zones ahead? I can imagine getting rumors in town, and encountering letters and books and runes, but since most is wilderness, what other ways did you use?
Thank you,
Wim
Frost said:
There was never a competitive aspect (at least I didn’t see one) to West Marches, it was us (the PCs) versus the environment.
Frosty, I have to really disagree here. There was rampant competition. Competition for treasure. Competition for knowledge. Competition to level. Most importantly, the sheer competition to play more which is what made the game great except for when it turned into jealously, resentment and offline grumblings that others were playing and they weren’t. All this competition was because players cared a lot about the game (good!) but were also often insecure about it (not good).
So then, back @Thumper’s original question about the importance of competition. Sure, you could have a very fun “sandbox” game with a single, small group, but it wouldn’t be West Marches.
Healthy competitiveness amongst a large pool of players fuels the fire and keeps the game going at a very high pace. The players create a vibrant game community with constant chatting, creative game summaries and in our case, even poetry. People want to play as much as they can and make it the #1 priority in their social calendar. Tons of games then of course leads to even more fodder for the community.
The community needs a large pool of players to sustain itself and so when some become complacent, other players’ excitement inspires them and vice-versa. That said though, you have to start somewhere, so start with 3-4 players as long as you are open to growing it as new players emerge. Just make sure your starting players understand fully that this is the deal and your plan.
As for the unhealthy competition, I don’t need to explain it. Ben already did above when he warns, “fear the social monster.” All I can say is if you see it, do something about it and don’t wait around for its inevitable destructive consequences.
One note: Frost is correct that there were never formal parties. Certainly people played more with some than others out of familiarity or having characters closer in level – not unrelated aspects, but there were never formal parties. I would advise DMs to encourage or force players to mix it up.
As a corollary, I don’t think mixing levels is an intrinsic problem, and you really can’t avoid it either because people are just going to level at different rates if they play at different rates. I actually played a character 3 or 4 levels beneath the rest of the party in several games and my character ended up in danger and hiding a lot. But, I chose to go along to places more dangerous than I could handle so really couldn’t complain when they ended up being just that and neither could anyone else in the party. That’s the beauty of West Marches. So while this isn’t ideal for every game, for purposes of mixing it up and adventuring with a wide-variety of players, it worked.
Nice, Chris! I really like seeing the evolution of the tabletop map.
This post has inspired me — I’m gonna try to set up a Traveller game like this. It seems that Traveller is pretty well suited to this kind of set up, especially in that there’s no XP or leveling, so I don’t have to worry about power gamers being too high level to play with people who can’t play as often. The characters can “live” on a space station, and go exploring as they see fit, to other planets, each with its own adventures, politics, history, etc.
I’ll be interested to see how it goes, and if anyone is interested in following it, I’ll probably be using Obsidian Portal to track it. We won’t start till late Feb. though.
Our local gaming club (Heroes’ Guild of Maryland) is running a West Marches-style game called the Eastern Expanse that is open to all comers, so if anyone in the Baltimore area is interested, check out our forum and set up a game.
http://heroesguildonline.forumotion.com/eastern-expanse-the-maul-mattock-inn-f87/
Ben, if you get a chance, stop by and tell us what you think.
I noticed one other person who has run a GURPS campaign in this style. And I thought I’d contribute my own notes about how I ran one of my favorite GURPS campaigns in a sandbox style, and why I think GURPS is particularly well suited to this style of play when you’re running many groups/large numbers of players.
Firstly, my campaign was scifi, set in a dystopianesque future that combined elements of medieval romances, cowboy stories, and standard standard empires common to the pulp. This allowed me to make most weaponry and items basically slightly futuristic equivalents of medieval weaponry, while still having guns and other neat, modern items. As anyone familiar with GURPS knows, character point values are very important, and modern level items can be lethal very easily when characters barge into situations head first. Firearms do as much damage as one would expect, and even a single strike of a sword from a stronger enemy can kill. It’s a dangerous world. Then I play by the book. I have my own ration rules, and other things to make it grittier and harder.
But enough about that. The problem with GURPS is the lack of character progression in the sense of “leveling up.” Sure, you gain character points and cash, but those tend to give large rewards over long periods of time. And it can be difficult to reward players effectively. My solution to this was very simple, and I feel pretty standard. For one thing, ammunition for firearms was scarce, and finding any was a big reward cause you had bullets again (I strictly enforce ammunition rules). Ammunition is proportionally more expensive because of this, when buying from merchants – who often have very limited supplies in stock. I also use in-house maintenance rules to ensure that complex mechanical items (motorcycles, guns, the occasional airship that a player might build out of scrap) require an investment to maintain, but also offer powerful advantages. I also rewrote the weapons rules, so that the base firearms were weaker than standard (using WWI/II weapon stats as my base) and making things better than them real treats to find (since enemies were generally well armored, a weapon with higher than average armor pen was always welcome). I also chose to write out money, for the most part. Instead, I replaced those things with usable scrap metal and other mechanical items that couldn’t be bought or easily constructed. I did this for flavor, and used hidden value charts to keep things consistent.
Beyond these things, I found it conducive to make the “dungeons” and encounters very clever, always requiring strategic thinking and different situations. Extensive use of traps helps, since combat in GURPS can be over in the blink of an eye if you’re shooting at each other. This made combat situations very rewarding for PCs, as they had to carefully overcome difficult challenges. Then, I built the world in great depth, defining attributes for regions and areas so that encounters followed logically and there was always a sense of discovery about the history of this world. I would engage in storyarcs from time to time, but these plots usually lasted only a few sessions and were intended to be like “season finales” for the PCs.
The last thing I liked was the nature of the GURPS system and how it makes level disparity a non-issue (for the most part). A 50 or 75 pt character (my base point values for the campaign) can still take out a 100 pt character, in general. And skills (which should be exploited to the fullest) a 50 pt character has may not be possessed by a 100 pt character. Ergo, even for the most difficult challenges (taking down an ancient, mechanical titan to harvest the processor in its head, for instance) could benefit from the addition of low point characters to the group. This also meant, with my 9-14 players who played at least semi-regularly, that they could always group up with other players and head out without feeling horribly gimped. (I’m also stingy with points, rarely giving more than 3 per session, so characters don’t grow too terribly fast).
@Mark Langsdorf: As for prep time, it didn’t take much. I’d advise you to have generic concepts of “standard enemies” in mind for your different regions, and then just outline their vital statistics. After all, the players don’t need to know that the enemies don’t conform to the same point value rules as players. You just need to make them convincing and standard. For instance, for an normal gun-toting bandit enemy, I simply assigned HP and FP, and other absolutely vital stats, then gave him a score in firearms [Type]. Usually 11-13 as 10 tends to be average. More complex enemies received more complex treatment, and I emphasized role playing over just running around murdering everyone.
@Thumper:
Is the “competitive” nature of having multiple parties a big enough draw
There was never a competitive aspect (at least I didn’t see one) to West Marches, it was us (the PCs) versus the environment. The closest it came to that was that sometimes when a group had found something interesting, but wasn’t “finished” with it, they might not tell everyone else about it. But even that usually didn’t last long since it was rare that the exact same group would go out together again.
Also I would not describe it as “multiple parties” – it was a large pool of PCs that would arrange themselves based on the schedule and what the plan was. I think I played with every other player in the game at least once, probably several times. This removed a lot of competition between the players.
I think one of the interesting things about West Marches for me was the fact that there was a large pool of players in the game. Each session was with a new mix of players but each PC still had a rich, connected history to the game. That and the fact that other stuff was happening in the game and things would change when I was not “there”. Reading the game summaries from a group that went out and realizing that the items in the cave they found were related to the Kinslayer sword I was (somewhat secretly) tracking down, made the environment seem more realistic.
So you will lose a bit of that if it’s the more standard same group of 4-5 players each session, but there’s still a lot of fun just running a sandbox environment where the players drive the action and plot and decide where they are going. In fact the first several WM games were just 4 of us playing until Ben recruited more people. Even then the sandbox style was really fun. Even your pool of 6 (5 PCs?) mixing it up should give you some of the feel of the full WM experience, and maybe you can get some more players. We found it was easier to get people to join the game since the schedule commitment is much lower – play when you can it’s no big deal and you aren’t blocking games if you can’t play.
I’m curious as to how well this would work with only a handful of people (just one party). My friends and I are newcomers to D&D, we all started with 4E Keep on the Shadowfell just last summer and have played a bit of Scales of War. There’s only 6 of us that play (and our usual sessions are usually 3 or 4 PCs).
Is the “competitive” nature of having multiple parties a big enough draw that only having one group would be a game-breaker? I suspect not, but it might make the world feel a little more stale. Has anyone tried with a small group, is it even worth attempting without finding more players?
Oh, and Mr. Pfaff, I read through your blog, it answered a lot of questions I had about a 4E version of West Marches. I look forward to more posts! The mountain range on your group’s map with a big “NO!” arrow pointing at it made my day.
I’m currently running a D20 Modern story-driven game, but shifting it towards a more sandbox approach has been on my mind since the beginning : your post (and the comments of others) have given me tons of ideas. I owe you all!
Congratulations, Ars Ludi. You’ve just been wanged by Penny Arcade. http://www.penny-arcade.com/2010/1/6/
@ James A Beggs
if you have different members rather than a single established group, what do you do if a set of players end the session “still out there” in the wild, and next time some of those players show up, and others do not, with some not involved in last session also showing up?
The key was that the scheduling was all done over email beforehand, so you know who is going to be there and it was simply forbidden to schedule a game with a mix of people “still out there” and people in town. If a party did not make it back to town then they had to schedule their next session as a group. That is they did not get to play again until they could all get together – this was the main incentive to the players to get back to town at the end of the session. And since they didn’t get back to town, while they were in schedule limbo the other players would be scheduling other games and going out and playing.
On very rare occasions there would be exceptions but for the most part it was just enforced that only people in town could join a “new” game session.
[...] the last West Marches post advises “be careful not to change the focus to urban adventure instead of exploration”, [...]
@ Stanley (#167) — That’s awesome Stanley! Kudos to you and everyone else running their own game.
What did you do to retain new players? I don’t like watching their characters die in the first session, but at the same time they did it to themselves. Yet I’d like recruit more people into the game.
Clear communication, which it sounds like you’re already doing. Tell them flat out that the world is not built to keep them safe, that they have to pick and choose their battles. Recruit the veteran players to help convey that message. It can be a rough adjustment for people used to adventures designed to adapt to them — it certainly was in the original West Marches. And some people just won’t like it. That’s cool, it’s not for everyone. So long as you’re clear from the start what the model is, they should have no reason to complain.
Telegraphing “danger!” can be a challenging. Showing the players something completely out of their league can be a better hint than things just slightly above their level. Players think “hmm, maybe we can beat a gargoyle…” but if they spot a thirty foot tall giant strolling through the forest in the distance, ripping out trees looking for things to eat, they are more likely to realize they have to pick their battles.
Also, don’t rely on players having Monster Manual knowledge. Not all players know what different monsters are more dangerous than others. If it isn’t really big, or they don’t see it do something scary, or a classic concept (aka basilisk, vampire), players have no way to know a monster is particularly dangerous unless someone says to them “avoid those things, they’ll kill ya…”
(its such interesting and fun dynamic gaming with different mixtures of PCs every session).
Yes it is! That’s one of the most fun parts, and a key ingredient of the West Marches. Constantly shifting parties keeps everyone on their toes (GM included).
@ Neil Carr
How long was a typical game session? Four, six, eight hours?
6-7 hours average. Some very long games. We often planned to quit by a particular time, but then people would get sucked in and stay late.
So while in a sandbox game anything goes and players can spend lots of time planning or do other non-encounter activities
Shift as much planning as you can to email. When players show up, it’s time to head out.
Ultimately what we’re trying to do is achieve a frequency of encounters that will allow most outings into the wilds to be done in one session. The players have a great deal of control of whether that is possible with their own actions, but the DM is in control of the frequency and percentage chance of encounters occurring. Basically, unless the players choose to be slow, wander, or get themselves into some kind of trouble, then the math should see them back at town by the end of the session.
Here’s my simple advice: make no plans whatsoever about how many encounters you have in a session.
Let it depend _entirely_ on what the players do. If they go somewhere that’s crowded, they may have constant encounters. If they go somewhere lonely, they could have zero encounters, but still do lots of exploring, info gathering, etc. I know it goes against normal GM instincts, but it’s how the model works.
Let the players figure out their own pacing — they should look at the clock and decide when they should turn around and head back to town (or stay out and force the group to schedule together for a second session). If you start doing that for them, you’re taking them out of the driver’s seat. Tell them that’s the deal ahead of time. It’s part of their job.
I’ve been in games like this before…. like, over 20 years ago. I’ve noticed that GMs have gravitated generally towards modular-like games for the most part.
For me, as a GM, I tend to run metaplot campaigns, where every session is towards some long distant goal: defeat Lord Sauron kind of stuff, and I’ve been told overall its my best work.
That being said, however, I’ve always wanted to run a sandbox like I had played in with other GMs when I was much younger.
And I must say, being a very experienced GM now, overall this idea sounds very doable and fantastic. I just have to ask, however… if you have different members rather than a single established group, what do you do if a set of players end the session “still out there” in the wild, and next time some of those players show up, and others do not, with some not involved in last session also showing up?
How long was a typical game session? Four, six, eight hours?
Two friends and I are putting together a WM style campaign and we’re experienced with living games like Living Greyhawk and Pathfinder Society. In those games they are designed to be played in 4-5 hours, so we’re used to episodic play and enjoy it because we all are busy with our lives.
So while in a sandbox game anything goes and players can spend lots of time planning or do other non-encounter activities, we’re still trying to gauge a general idea of how many encounters one could expect in a session on average.
Living Greyhawk was around three encounters, and Pathfinder Society is around five encounters. Now those games are designed we prebuilt encounters, so it won’t line up with the randomness of sandbox play, but I guess I’m trying to figure out some mathematical average that can be aimed for with random encounter checks.
I’d imagine lots of encounters would be over quickly due to imbalances, with either players tromping the encounter or running away quickly. So a guestimate on my part would be that in a six hour session we’d maybe have 10 encounters, with some fast, some slow, a lot of them random, and some the players seek out.
Ultimately what we’re trying to do is achieve a frequency of encounters that will allow most outings into the wilds to be done in one session. The players have a great deal of control of whether that is possible with their own actions, but the DM is in control of the frequency and percentage chance of encounters occurring. Basically, unless the players choose to be slow, wander, or get themselves into some kind of trouble, then the math should see them back at town by the end of the session.
Do you have any advice on trying to achieve that kind of result?
@ Neil Carr
Gold – How much gold was handed out and what did the players use it for?
Treasure was generally pretty scarce. The players could answer better what they bought, but it was the usual array of masterwork-everything, scroll writing, and healing potions (when they could get them).
Many PCs who struck it big revelled in conspicuously blowing their money in town, earning fame and popularity with the locals. Wealth is a character motivator, but player’s are more motivated by XP. Treasure is best when it’s spent, so the player can get their character back to doing what they want, which is adventuring.
I can see an issue evolve where people are wandering around looking for interesting things and using the meta game of a GM asking for various skill rolls as a way to play “Battleship” in deducing where a hidden feature is. “Well, we know there is something interesting in the woods because the GM kept asking for spot checks. Let’s go back until one of us finally makes the roll.”
Nothing truly interesting was ever found with a die roll, especially not a passive check. Take a look at Don’t Roll, Think. Sometimes I used secret Wilderness Lore checks to see if parties were going where they intended, but never to discover new things.
I spent a good portion of yesterday reading through all of these posts, very inspiring stuff and reminding me of the good old days.
A few things that I hadn’t seen asked before:
Gold – How much gold was handed out and what did the players use it for? I can see with low level play that if you are a martial character then saving up for plate mail will use use up a lot of your treasure earnings, but outside of expensive armor what were people spending money on? I’m quite happy with the idea of no magic shop in town, but what “bling” did people get to purchase with their piles of gold?
Dice in the open – I’ve been playing this way for years which is a great way to keep up the drama and not descend into a pool of fudge, but what about all of those spot and wilderness checks? As a GM were you making secret rolls for players? I can see an issue evolve where people are wandering around looking for interesting things and using the meta game of a GM asking for various skill rolls as a way to play “Battleship” in deducing where a hidden feature is. “Well, we know there is something interesting in the woods because the GM kept asking for spot checks. Let’s go back until one of us finally makes the roll.”
Just wanted to reply to a lot of these 4th Edition sandbox comments.
I’m running a 4th Edition D&D West Marches Style Campaign and I’ve run into a few of the issues mentioned here, but I definitely would NOT change the system for anything. I believe the “dungeon-crawl” focus of 4th Edition suits the West Marches style very well. I have had to do plenty of tweaking and yes, some extra preparation.
Notably, I’ve modified the Treasure Parcel system a lot and I’ve had to spend a lot of time building custom random encounter charts. You can check out my West Marches blog – http://porthavenholde.wordpress.com – I’ve been writing in to specifically document my struggles with 4th Edition as a sandbox system.
I went from 4 players up to about 12 in a matter of weeks. We play about 2-3 times A WEEK. That’s how much my players love this game. I used to play weekly at the most. We’ve been playing for a couple months now and the highest level PCs are only 3rd level – that’s partly because of PC death that seems to run rampant.
I would say for those of you folks who are giving 4th Edition a shot, it takes a little effort – it takes a little finesse, but eventually those hurdles can be overcome and it really pays off with the dungeon crawl focus on tactical combat, interesting creatures and locales, and the slew of awesome player options and classes (this seems to help with PC death, because players are always eager to try out a new “build”).
Thanks! You know, I think I saw this on another website before, but I forgot all about it!
That is exactly what I do!
Well, maybe it’s just me, but this strikes me as a job for Triple Secret Random Dungeon Fate Chart of Very Probable Doom.
Hey, I started a sandbox game with Zodiac Final Fantasy RPG and just after my first game, I ran into a problem which persisted to my second game:
How do you get people to return to town before they end the session?
See, I’m running on OpenRPG, and trying to attract other people to the group (which was originally just 4 people by the time the first game started) The session ended abruptly with somebody starting a fire just inside the dungeon entrance and to make a long story short, people left while we were stuck.
To complicate matters, a few new players from other games in OpenRPG or who dropped by wanted in, and I wanted to grow the players so I tried to write them just for the second session.
The end result was that the second session is looking a lot like a standard game, and people quit the game even more abruptly, so we’re still in the dungeon with everyone thinking they’re all one big happy family of players.
Help?
After three sessions and a ton of work, I am now confident that 4e was a bad choice for me running a West Marches style campaign. This was made even worse because I tried to stay very strictly to the 4e rules. The net effect was not fun for me to run.
I think that while the West Marches style games need to be consistent, the still GM needs to have room to improvise and good tools for doing so. While certain things need to be fleshed out, if each session makes you go “crap! I can’t figure out when I’ll have time to prep this!” then something is probably wrong. I wouldn’t be surprised if the “thing that’s wrong” in my case was simply a lack of spare time – but if spare time is an issue for you and you’re thinking about running this way, learn from my mistake!
Big thanks to Ben for reminding me of a key feature I love about fantasy gaming that I had forgotten – the joy of exploration. It’s become all too easy to use published modules, focus on critters or characters, and ignore the lure of the unknown.
The group dynamics rising from this type of campaign are fantastic. They could definitely keep a GM on his/her toes – group competition, intrigue (is group A revealing an accurate map? – who got there first?), and interpersonal mayhem could be unleashed.
For those of you using Savage Worlds in your West Marches campaigns, I ran across Joel Sparks’ Advanced Dungeons & Savages. Great conversion from old school D&D complete with spells, magic items, & detailed classic character roles. It’s a free download (no registration required & no malware from my download) at Dragonsfoot — http://www.dragonsfoot.org/sw/
I also found a wealth of Savage Worlds materials at http://savagepedia.wikispaces.com/
Thanks to everyone here posting about their campaigns – it’s a great read!
Hey,
Just thought I’d drop in and say how my “Expeditions in the Northlands” campaign is going.
I have a pool of around 7 players now. It was around 11 but three people moved away or are too far away to make it regularly. One person played a few sessions then decided that kind of campaign wasn’t for him. We’ve been playing since last spring. Summer saw about a month hiatus of the campaign. But overall, players and myself–The DM–have been enjoy ourselves. One of my players set up an email list for everybody to use. So far its working great. The highest PC level is 3. I’m using D&D 3.5e.
Just as mentioned in the West Marches campaign, players do a lot of running away–but only after they get in over their heads.. I have had plenty of character deaths so far. Sometimes they run into things beyond their level. The most famous being the gargoyle in a nearby dungeon. While the rest of the dungeon was easy (even for 1st level characters), I planted this gargoyle at the entrance to a vault with the real treasure within. The gargoyle trounced them the first time (killing half of the group before the rest ran away). They had no weapons that could really harm it. Despite this, they came back a second time. It beat them again. The almost defeated it on a third try after a couple got to second level. Finally, some one came up with casting “magic weapon” on the fighter’s greatsword. The fighter destroyed the gargoyle in two hits. It was almost anticlimactic. But man, did the players cheer after that gargoyle went down!
Some players have complained how tough the campaign is. One player remarked “I can’t believe you threw a gargoyle at us a first level.” To which I replied “I can’t believe you went down the corridor after I told you how menacing the gargoyled looked and I certainly can’t believe you kept fighting the thing after it tore apart the fighter in the first round.” That player is no longer with the group.
In fact, I’ve noticed that new players have a rough time. They have a tendency to charge into situation and get themselves in over their heads. And this usually leads to character deaths. It fact, my main problem with this “West Marches”-style campaign is retaining new players. They don’t have this “old school” mindset, thinking that encounters are balanced in their favor. They either soon realize that teamwork and problem solving are needed to overcome certain situations, or they quit the group.
Veteran players (that is, players who’ve been around 3+ sessions) usually act with caution. And they love it, because they know they earn what the get.
What did you do to retain new players? I don’t like watching their characters die in the first session, but at the same time they did it to themselves. Yet I’d like recruit more people into the game.
(its such interesting and fun dynamic gaming with different mixtures of PCs every session).
Thank you Ben. I hope we can meet someday, I owe you a beer, sir!
@Nick – I think there is a myth to the idea that one has to write reams of information before one can start a sandbox campaign. It is true that one has to do preparation, but I tend to be a “just in time” preparer – I try to stay about 1 to 2 games ahead of the players. With multilevel dungeons, that’s easier – those can soak up about 4 to 5 sessions, easy. One of my dungeons has seen about 10 sessions and they’ve not finished 2nd level! Of course, it’s a dynamic dungeon where it can and will be restocked.
If my players decide to head out somewhere that I’m not prepared for, then I have broad brush-strokes of about 2 weeks travel already established (vague ideas) and I ask for a few minutes (about 15) to prepare. They don’t know if I have detailed stuff or not (a couple of things I do because I got so “wee” about the idea, I had to detail it out…) but I have been known to also let the dice tell the story of what they find.
Congrats Chgowiz! I read your 20th session post and it definitely sounds like you’ve gotten the knack.
@ Nick – A sandbox dungeon could work, but you would definitely want lots of entrances/exits to avoid absurd bottlenecks, parties stepping on each other, etc. It wouldn’t hurt to move the first encounters several branches past any entrance (so you don’t even see spiders until you’ve gone down a few hallways).
@ Ara
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?
I’m trying to figure out how to answer this in a useful way. Regions were not evenly shaped and rate of travel varied based on whether the party was exploring or rushing through a known area.
In very crude terms, most adventuring took place within 5 days travel of town. Most low-level places were a day or two away, scaling up as you moved farther away. The longest expedition on record (that I recall) is a party that went all the way to the Sacred Lakes and then explored/camped out for weeks. No one ever expected to see them again.
But don’t do it that way just because I did. Physical distance only matters in proportion to the difficulty of travel (random encounters + how much detail you spend describing overland travel and pathfinding). You could have the nearest action five weeks away so long as it was easy to summarize traveling for those five weeks. Personally, I prefer smaller.
Nick, the mega-dungeon idea is a great one — a distilled sandbox experience where the competition between the various conquerors and cartographers would be most fierce, and every player would have every incentive to play as often as possible. I like it a lot. IMO, it would be less prep work, and were I to run a “proper” WM game outside my little circle, I would take that approach due to the instant accessibility of dungeon crawling.
Also for anyone playing 4E, the DMG2 just codified the inherent bonus house-rule: goodbye vanilla magic items.
I’ve been hearing about these “Western Marches” campaigns for a long time now, but never came here to read up on them. The idea is genius, especially for watching all of the players interact as players and as characters.
Anyway, I’m a big fan of mega-dungeons. I think that a mega-dungeon campaign could be run in the Western Marches style, and I think that it would be fantastic. The single greatest problem that I see is that DM/GM preparation would have to be massive before the campaign even started. I’m curious to hear what anyone else thinks.
Hi Ben! I wanted to drop you a note that the Dark Ages campaign, styled on West Marches, just celebrated its twentieth session. We’re about 9 months into it, averaging about 2 to 3 sessions a month – we’ve had two interruptions due to illness and my father’s passing. I’m up to two groups, with about 8 to 10 core players in total. I’ve had 21 people play in the campaign so far, several one-shots, a few threesie/foursies and the rest are pretty hard-core now.
The players are around 2nd to 3rd level – we had one near TPK that reset everything. They’ve finally started really wilderness exploring. There are 3 main areas they’ve been working on, with two others that are starting to get interest. 99% of the advancement of “the story” is player driven or random encounter driven. They’ve explored roughly 40% of my initial “2 day out” maps.
I wanted to pass this note on and say that if anyone wants to trade tips/tricks or their own long-term ideas for a West Marches style campaign, I’d love to start that dialogue.