Congratulations and beware..!!!

Yes, definitely. It’s supply and demand: if there are too many players you’ll have a harder time running enough games to let everyone play as much as they want. It totally depends on how often your average player wants to play versus how much you can GM. And if you let too many people play in one session, no one has fun (or everybody has less fun). We had a few eight or nine player games and they were pretty chaotic, so I capped party size unless there was some really good reason.

Think of how often you’re willing to run games. Say it’s once a week. If you’re willing to have an average of five players per game, you can accomodate 5 players in your pool if they all want to play every week, 10 if on average they’re happy to play every other week, and so on.

In other words, the GM has to be willing to play (player pool / 5) times more often than the average player does. Of course a teeny bit of over-demand is not so bad. Keeps the competitive spirit. But too much can lead to serious bad blood.

I had a waiting list to join for a lot of the campaign. There’s always the urge to bring in more people and share the fun, but sharing too much waters down the fun.

Great system. My dad raised me on 1st edition D&D as an ‘interactive storytelling’ from the age of 3. As I grew older I was able to participate in his real sessions which can only be described as open sandbox with a lethal reality. To this day I still prefer this style to all others.

I’m contemplating a ‘West Marches’ style and was wondering if you could pass along your large map as well as the contract you had all of the players agree to. I love the idea of a fractal map and have recently begun to use the ‘Fractal Mapper’ software to build my map for the setting.

I’ve had the pleasure of looking over a copy of the Microscope game. Have you thought of using that system to develop the campaign setting background for a setting they would later roleplay in? Great free-form system.

A fellow roller of the die,
-Jay

@ Mike: I made the maps in Illustrator, but during games I had paper printouts and just drew a line to plot the course the party was taking each hour of the day. So I always knew exactly where they were even if they didn’t. Make a little dot when they camp, put a date beside it if you want, then draw another line as they start marching the next day.

You said you used “just an open terrain map where I drew vectors to keep track of where the party was” and “I didn’t use hex maps, just free movement and distances”. It seems like you also mentioned zooming in and out.

Did you use vector mapping software, or was this just plotting vectors on a gridless paper map? If you used software, what did you use?

I have only run 2 campaigns so far so I am a fledgling GM. Vampire the Masquerade and now Pathfinder…Both were prepublished modules (NY by Night and _I still can’t believe they talked me into this_ The World’s Largest Dungeon). That 2nd one is the price I pay for being the most knowledgeable player of the group after our previous GM’s left for one reason or another. If you want to play, someone has to run it

I think I may try to steer my group towards this Western Marches/sandbox style as it is the style of play I am most used to. I first got into RPGs many years ago and had more fun playing in these style games than following plotlines and over-arcing stories.

I have read through the pages plus all of the comments on each of the pages and put together a good listed of tips and things to look out for. Especially since I only have a 3 player pool right now. But if they pass along the word to others, maybe (hopefully) it will grow. My planning begins tomorrow…

I’m trying to work out how to run a West Marches game in 4th edition (that’s not really important, but I’d like to give a big shoutout to the other 4e west marches guy, Michael Pfaf, for his great blog helping me out). The biggest hole I’ve noticed in the gameplay for attracting players is specifically centered around the kind of play archetype that would appeal to somebody who would like to play, say, a Bard. They want there to be more “stuff” out there than just wilderness, and like, wars going on, or other citystates to visit to influence the politics or something like that.

What are some ways you can run a game that avoids being “urban” but still appeals to their sensibility of wanting to make a prolonged impact on the world? They want to build it, shape it, mold it… not just discover it. And there’s not a lot of opportunity to achieve that out there on the West Marches, at least I can’t find it. Any ideas? Am I sniffing up the wrong tree altogether?

I have chatted to @chicagowiz a couple times asking him for advice and bouncing ideas off him. A big pool of folks running and playing in sandbox style games could be really cool.