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.
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?
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.
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!
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).
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.
@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, 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.
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.
@147 Harlequin, I’ve tried 4e and it’s not for me. Thanks for the rec though. The combats did seem more peppy!
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?
[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).
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).
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.
@ #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’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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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?