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.
May 12th, 2008 at 5:53 am
I’m glad to hear that other people are doing this too. I started up a WM-esque campaign because of the nature of the group I just met.
About 20 of us got together using Meetup.com and I was actually a bit surprised with the turnout. Well, I’m one of the two people that volunteered to run a game for the group and I figured that a Western Marshes-style game would work best, especially considering that the number of players was going to vary from session to session.
I ran my first session last week and even with 12 players it turned out pretty well.
You can check out my basic setup at: http://www.jadettman.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Games.WeirdTales
May 12th, 2008 at 7:13 am
My own game seemed to drift toward the West Marches model before I even came across this site as players graduated, changed jobs, etc. The West Marches articles were really a godsend for me, as corralling a group of three regulars and six or seven occasional players was an exercise in hair-pulling. There’s only one thing that I’m really having to tweak in my game, though, and it’s that the setting (based on books, our last DM was lazy) is irrevocably colonized and enforcing “the adventure is in the wilderness, not the town” is sometimes difficult. Rather than toss our old game, I’ve been limiting the amount of information that might keep the party/parties in town and focusing less on what goes on there; the brawler getting into a barfight because he has nothing to do while everyone else shops is no longer an actual get-the-minis-and-roll-for-damage battle, etc. I’ll try toning up the law (or possibly the organized crime in lawless areas) inside towns in the future, but do you have any other ideas about breaking the wilderness motif?
Thanks and keep up the good work,
~Joe
May 12th, 2008 at 9:32 am
Great post! Any thoughts about what to look for in a system for a sandbox game? I’m going back and forth between 3.5e D&D and Savage Worlds. On the one hand, D&D is all about loot and I have about a billion resources for it. On the other, Savage Worlds is way, way faster to prep. Help!
May 12th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
“I’ll try toning up the law (or possibly the organized crime in lawless areas) inside towns in the future, but do you have any other ideas about breaking the wilderness motif?”
I can think of easy ways to turn settled areas back into wilderness pretty fast. Say you have towns and villages scattered in the frontier area. A major war erupts far away on the eastern borders of the kingdom (outside the game region, literally the opposite side from this frontier), and the monarch pulls most of the local troops to go fight. He doesn’t have the manpower to patrol/defend this region and still defend his eastern borders. A minimal force is left in the main town (the game homebase), enough to keep it safe (maybe) but not reach beyond it.
Some settlers stick it out, but after the first town gets overrun by hungry manticores people clear out and fall back to the safe regions. The civilized border retreats and you’ve got wilds once again, with the intriguing addition of recent abandoned homes and towns (which monsters rapidly creep into of course). This could all happen in a matter of weeks.
You could even take it a step farther and say that one of the heroes’ prime activities is finding refugees lost in the wilds (or refusing to leave) and escorting them back to safety. The lost settlers are the hidden treasure.
May 12th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
“I’m going back and forth between 3.5e D&D and Savage Worlds. On the one hand, D&D is all about loot and I have about a billion resources for it. On the other, Savage Worlds is way, way faster to prep. Help!”
I’ve only played a little Savage Worlds but I’ve been playing a lot of Agon recently — very similar to your vaporators in most respects.
Crunchy rewards and detailed character progression is very useful for motivating players in this kind of game, and D&D has that in spades. I think you’ll lose a little player motivation with a less granular system (aka your players may be less rabid), but that could turn out to be a good thing. Just make sure your heroes aren’t going to “max out” too easily — you don’t want players having no where to go once they have d12’s where they want them.
There’s also the lethality question. The specter of death was a critical part of West Marches. You need serious consequences for player choices to have meaning. A victory is hollow without risk.
I am absolutely curious to hear how it works.
May 12th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
I plan to try out a West Marches-like game when D&D 4th Edition is released. I have noticed a few problems that maybe someone (Ben) can help me sort out though.
1. With 4th edition, you have three “tiers” of gaming. I think a WM game will work fantastically for the first 10 levels, but the flavor of the Paragon and Epic levels might make things a bit harder. With players likely to be jaunting around the planes and with powers that often read “once per day, when you die…” it seems like it might be harder to motivate players with purely dungeon based adventures. What sorts of ways might some of you address this? Grandiose dungeons such as lairs of dead gods, or maybe something totally different?
2. How did you get a game like this started? I don’t so much mean handing out a treasure map, but rather how did you organize the first sessions? I plan on just generally feeling people out and then letting them know how the game will work and leaving the rest up to the players but part of me thinks there needs to be some additional push in the beginning.
3. I know Ben discussed it briefly, but how do you get players back to town effectively? Did you design most of the dungeons to be fairly small ordeals, allowing plenty of time to get back, or were players specifically requested to head home near the end of a session progress be damned? I’m wondering if adventures will feel rushed if every session tries to end back at town.
Overall I’m really excited by the ideas in West Marches and I really hope I can get a game off the ground. We’ll see in a few months if my own game ever gets out of the conceptual stages. If it does I’ll be back to post a link!
May 13th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
We’ve got our own Basic D&D version of this going along - http://redbox.wikidot.com/ - but right now we’re just 4-5 players, though if we keep going maybe it will grow. If any readers are in New York City, give us a holler on the site’s forum…
May 14th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Draconian law enforcement inside town, coupled with zero enforcement in the wilds outside town, also helps.
What laws are being enforced? No PvP? No magic?
May 14th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
_What laws are being enforced? No PvP? No magic?_
It’s not really so much about exactly what laws are being enforced in town, and honestly I’m not sure I could tell you exactly what the town laws were in West Marches; but there were guardsmen and they enforced the law inside the town walls. I think it’s more about the demarcation between “the town” and “the wild”. In town you are (generally) safe; in the wild you are not. And even more importantly stressing the idea that “Adventure lies out there”. The goal is for the players to get outta town to adventure.
(In case it wasn’t clear I’m one of the West Marches players)
May 14th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
“In case it wasn’t clear I’m one of the West Marches players”
See? No truth to that rumor about all the West Marches players going irretrievably mad. At least a few are alive and well and adjusting quite nicely to normal society.
May 14th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
“I think a WM game will work fantastically for the first 10 levels, but the flavor of the Paragon and Epic levels might make things a bit harder.”
You’re right, the concept really works best for low level, but you could scale it up. If you just say “it’s a forest, but now it’s EL 25″ that’s kind of like the old “blue goblins look just like green goblins but are 10th lvl” shtick. Not good. It also doesn’t take into account high level powers like teleporting or leveling mountain ranges with one pinky.
But what if your West Marches is one of the planes of the Abyss with one safe bastion of good? Or a whole other planet? Go map that.
“How did you get a game like this started? I don’t so much mean handing out a treasure map, but rather how did you organize the first sessions?”
I should claim West Marches sprang from my head fully formed like Athena, but I’d be lying. It actually evolved after a few more traditional sessions kept running into the usual scheduling loggerheads.
I think you’re on the right track — tell the players very clearly what you have in mind (heck, make them read these posts). Definitely expect a little ramp up time as players get used to it. Some will embrace it right away and run with it, some won’t. Some may reject it entirely.
” how do you get players back to town effectively?”
Groups almost _never_ finished a dungeon in one sortie. There was a lot of exploring, getting in trouble, then “running into the swamp like little sissy girls” (to use a popular West Marches phrase). Retreat and regroup was essential.
If necessary groups could “camp out” and not return to town at the end of a session, but this imposes a serious scheduling commitment: those players can’t do anything else until they get that same group of people together and finish that adventure. They are effectively frozen in place. The desire to have their scheduling freedom motivated the players to get back to town more than any rule on my part.
June 7th, 2008 at 7:23 am
Thanks for this writeup. This is awesome.
June 13th, 2008 at 10:16 am
Two sessions into our SW version of West Marches. The good news is that everyone is loving the whole WM setup. The bad news is that SW doesn’t have Challenge Ratings, Treasure Tables and other well-developed GM tools for setting up your difficulty spread.
But so far it’s wicked fun!
June 13th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
“Two sessions into our SW version of West Marches…”
And in case it wasn’t clear SW = Savage Worlds, not Star Wars (though now that I think of it a Star Wars West Marches could be pretty cool…)
I’ve heard of several West Marches starting up but this is the first I know of that definitely isn’t D&D. Rock on cr0m! I really curious to hear how it goes in a less crunchy system, so keep us posted.
June 17th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
So far so good. My players love Savage Worlds for character creation. I love it because monsters and NPCs are very, very easy to prep. And since I’m doing a sort of “lost world/fantasy” thing, there are a ton of pulp monsters already made for me. The new system has opened up a big can of mystery, since nobody knows if the giant frogs slithering out of the swamp are fodder until they’re proved fodder, and the massive, slimy demon that carried off the retainer last night might just be unkillable without the right weapon… and what is that weapon?
On the not so good side, despite mega-support and encouragement from the SW forums, I haven’t figured out how to rate encounters. So far the players have *mowed* through the bad guys, even the big scary demon. The lack of crunchy gear and meticulously detailed treasure tables is probably also going to be a hassle–my free time for prep is limited.
On that subject, be warned that West Marches play has a lot of prep up front. But even two sessions in, I can already see how these maps and wandering monster charts are going to be useful for a long, long time.
June 18th, 2008 at 6:47 am
I’m loving the ideas of the “regions”, each with its own encounter tables, ecology, and “feel”.
I’m wondering though just how large each of these regions is? Were they hex based (i.e., each hex is a different region), or “one days travel” or variable? Obviously some of them were already known to the players, but when the PCs hit a new region, did you say “now you are entering the spider-infested woods”, or did you let the PCs figure out they were in a new region? If so, did they get to know the “official” name at some point?
I’m hoping to use the concept in my own GH sandbox game…
June 18th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
The regions were based on the terrain (as far as I could tell from the player side of the table) I don’t think there were any hexes or anything like that. That is “the Centaur woods” had its own encounter tables separate from “Pike Hollow”. And as for the size, I think that was whatever the appropriate size was, the mountains had a much bigger region then Pike Hollow, etc.
As for the player knowledge, a lot of the names for things came from the townsfolk and history (nobody really remembers why it’s called “Pike Hollow”, but if you dig around you might be able to find out why). Sometimes those names were clues as to what was there and sometimes not (no wizard around “Wizard’s creek” but there are Centaurs in the “Centaur woods”).
Again there were rumors and talk around the town giving you clues about the area. And if you were smart you’d do a bit of research before hand to figure out more about the area you were planning on heading to. But in the end its exploration so you really don’t know what’s there. This is one of the things I really loved about the game was that it felt much more like actually exploring an area and finding things out. (See the discussion of the “Table Map” in one of the previous West Marches posts).
June 19th, 2008 at 7:32 am
Yep, Frost has the right of it. Size varied region to region. Centaur Grove was very small, Sacred Lakes was very large. It just depended on aesthetics and geographical logic.
The size and shape of your regions will directly determine game variety. If parties move through large blocky regions, they will have the same type of encounters for a while. If you have twisty / narrow / or intertwined regions, parties can easily move from one region to another, so more different encounter types in a shorter period.
Hexes are cool, but they create the illusion that if you’ve been in the hex you’ve seen everything in the hex. If you use them you should keep them very small (half mile hexes are better than 5 mile hexes).
I didn’t use hex maps, just free movement and distances. It kept things organic and made it easy to get lost / disoriented, which was good. To track movement I just got distances and bearings from the party (”we’ll march southwest for 2 miles”), checked to see if they were going the way they thought (wilderness lore) and then drew the vector on the map to see where they actually were.
(Frost also has the dubious honor of having both the first and last PCs to die in West Marches. Go figure.)
June 19th, 2008 at 7:42 am
cr0m said:
“So far the players have *mowed* through the bad guys, even the big scary demon..”
That sucks. You want danger. It makes player choice meaningful.
“The lack of crunchy gear and meticulously detailed treasure tables is probably also going to be a hassle–my free time for prep is limited”
Cheat — use tables from another game system to generate item concepts (”an ivory buckle in the shape of coiled snake”) and then assign monetary values that work inside Savage Worlds. There have to be about a zillion random treasure table supplements built since D&D was born — since you’re just using descriptions it doesn’t matter how old the tables are.
You could even just steal the treasure system from D&D 4e wholesale — the only thing you would have to tweak and/or ignore would be magic items.
“On that subject, be warned that West Marches play has a lot of prep up front. But even two sessions in, I can already see how these maps and wandering monster charts are going to be useful for a long, long time.”
Absolutely right.
June 19th, 2008 at 9:49 am
Thanks much for the info; it’s very helpful. One thing eludes me still, though; how clear was it to the PCs when they transitioned from one region to another? Could you go, for example, from the Centaur Wood to the Spider-Haunted Forest and not realize you’d done so? Or were the regions geographically discrete (i.e., once you hit a patch of hills it was all the same region until you entered a different terrain type)?
Another point; obviously the western marches weren’t an unexplored, never-before-inhabited wilderness. Otherwise there would be no ancient ruins. Was there an in-game explanation for why civilization retreated, or was that just a mystery left unstated?
June 19th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
The region transitions were pretty much as discrete as they are in real life. That is, sometimes it’s pretty clear and (relatively) sudden: “You step out of the tree-line into the high mountains” and other times it’s a gradual transition: “as you go further north in the forest, towards the mountains, the ground begins sloping up and gets hillier”. For the gradual transitions, I’m betting that Ben either called that 3 regions (forest, hilly forest, hills) or simply combined the encounter tables (probably with weighting for roughly where you are, e.g. closer to the forest is still mostly forest encounters).
But from the player perspective, the important thing is that there was never a point of transition, no sign (or GM) saying “welcome to the Spider Swamp”. It was much more like actual exploring. And remember that we often did not know the names for an area or if we did it was more hearsay and guesswork. So usually it was more like:
GM: The trees start thinning out as you go west and the ground is getting wetter until you are having to carefully pick your way around mudholes and puddles.
Players: Ahh I bet we’re getting into that Spider Swamp that old man mentioned
Player: I’ll write that down on our map
GM: And then maybe a bit less than mile later it turns into a swamp beach as it hits the bay.
Player: Crap, that must not have been the Spider Swamp then since I think he said it was bigger and further north-east of the bay (where I thought we were). Guys, we’re lost!
As for the “where did the ancient ruins come from” that was part of the interesting history that we were trying to uncover as we explored. And, in my opinion, one of the cooler aspects of the game. While there was a lot of ancient mysterious ruins that required a lot of investigation to figure out there was also history that was not really secret or hidden, just that you wouldn’t know to ask about something before finding something (ruins, etc). We came across an old ruined monastery , found nasty scary stuff we couldn’t handle just yet, and went home. Back home the PC cleric went and talked to the head priest and got the story about how it was overrun some time ago (80years or so??). So the cleric then decides that he’s going to try and get back the stuff that was left there.
Or the simple case of the empty plinth we found out in the moors near the foothills that we found out (with a little research after returning to town) was where the statue of the “Red Duke” used to stand in memorial of the great battle where he drove the goblins back and basically making this area safe(-er). But that was a long time ago and obviously things have declined a lot (the statute is gone).
And of course some players were more interested in figuring out the history then others.
June 19th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
“Was there an in-game explanation for why civilization retreated, or was that just a mystery left unstated?”
Yep there was, but the players didn’t even know to ask those questions when the game started. The less you tell the players at the beginning (and the more they find out during play) the better. Knowledge becomes an achievement and a reward for player-initiated action instead of a lecture dropped on you from the heavens.
Also keep in mind that there is more than one “civilization” — the Duke’s kingdom left ruins after they pulled back, the forbidden Fenris cult left different ruins when they lurked in these parts, the completely unrelated dwarven colonists left ruins centuries before that, and the ancient human warrior-kings left ruins and barrow mounds even before that.
Different civilizations only impacted certain parts of the wilderness, some very small and for very short periods of time — the dwarves only had a few hidden colonies, they never controlled the lands around them, and the Fenris cult was all about creating bolt-holes and secret temples to hide from their enemies.
“As for the “where did the ancient ruins come from” that was part of the interesting history that we were trying to uncover as we explored.”
Victory!
June 19th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
“The region transitions were pretty much as discrete as they are in real life. That is, sometimes it’s pretty clear and (relatively) sudden: “You step out of the tree-line into the high mountains” and other times it’s a gradual transition: “as you go further north in the forest, towards the mountains, the ground begins sloping up and gets hillier”.”
Yep, on paper they were quite distinct (just a line on a map) but in describing it I always tried to make it feel geographically real. That’s just me going the extra mile, right before I announce the party is lost and is (literally) going to have to go the extra mile.
June 19th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
> And of course some players were more interested in figuring out the history then others.
It’s worth pointing out that the history of the place was as much a part of the ecology as the physical environment. That is, history is not to be confused with “plot” or “quests” as that was not what West Marches was about. As interesting as exploring a new place on the map to see what’s there was to discover how it came to be that way or how the current inhabitants came to live in a place clearly built by someone else or the great moment of learning about the cosmology when we discovered ancient depictions of the god myths while desperately trying to find a back door to escape hordes of goblins.
June 19th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
Sounds very much like it had a “Wilderlands of High Fantasy” vibe to it. I am envious!
I’ve definitely got some things I’ll be viking for my own campaign. Many thanks.
I can see, for example, using that approach to wilderness regions to a city environment. Not just to describe “the foreign quarter”, as I have been doing, but different neighborhoods. Individual streets and alleys, even. A large urban area would probably be just as “ecologically distinct” as a large wilderness. Now that my home campaign is moving ever closer to my own version of the city of Greyhawk, I think it will be well worth my time to set up the city in a way similar to how you set up the wilderness of the West Marches.
Awesome, inspiring stuff.
June 20th, 2008 at 5:22 am
Man . . . just seeing this discussion gives me *shivers.*
I was one of the West Marches players way back when . . . and I’ve spent many an hour since the game closed up shop reminiscing about the brutality and awesomeness of the place.
One point that Ben made in his post that I think is really worth reinforcing is how transparent and fair everything felt in that game. If you got killed (and we *all* got killed at least once) it wasn’t because “the DM was against you” it was because that damn goblin with a scythe rolled a critical . . . or because you stumbled into an area way above your level and didn’t know enough to get out.
I can’t think of a single time in the couple of years we played that game that Ben really “bent” the rules (either for or against us.) It was absolutely brutal at times, but when we *did* accomplish something (like getting away from the Fenris cult or raiding Zurak Zill) we all felt absolute elation and accomplishment.
West Marches was the first “long form” DnD game that I ever played in, and it really colored my perceptions of what a game like this is *supposed* to be.
(I gotta go re read some game summaries. sheesh.)
June 20th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
How did you deal with level gaps among PCs? I have players that would whine endlessly if they were lower level because of not being able to play as much as others. I know this since I have been running a game with a similar style of scheduling for a while — only I DM 98% on the fly, so when the players in the bowling ally decide to game, they call me up and we play that night. Some players are cool with it (one was 2nd level in a 15th level party once), but others would give me a headache.
June 20th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
I’d love to read some of those game summaries. Are they online for public consumption anywhere?
June 23rd, 2008 at 4:32 pm
@ Benjamin
“How did you deal with level gaps among PCs? I have players that would whine endlessly if they were lower level because of not being able to play as much as others.”
It might not be a fit for your group. You can nerf things and just have everyone level equally (present and not present) but that waters down the rewards & risks for making your own decisions. If the party that risks danger gets wiped out, the player who didn’t show up doesn’t lose his character does he?
The deeper issue is that it mistakes something unimportant (leveling) with what is really important (getting to play). If you offered a player more experience points for not playing, hopefully they wouldn’t think it was a good deal.
If they are complaining about their quality of play being reduced because they are weaker than the other characters they are with, they should be mustering with characters near their level. In West Marches there were enough players there is almost always someone near your level, so if you were 2nd you found other 2nd lvl players, you didn’t go out with 7th lvl characters and weep about how powerless you were.
But I think all of this is beside the point. No matter what you do, if some people can play when others cannot there is a danger of serious jealousy. Some people cannot handle others having fun without them. See the “fear the social monster” point. It’s a big one.
July 15th, 2008 at 5:43 am
Really fun to read all this stuff. A few questions:
What about EL variations in reverse? I could envision many situations where a level 7 party could be travelling through level 3 areas, whether it was because they got lost, didn’t know better or what region they were in, or were just extra cautious. Did you force them to play out really easy and unbalanced encounters? Or did you handwave the encounters and hint that they should go to harder frontiers?
Did you ever have a high level player go “slumming” and join a low level party making a very unsual dynamic? For example a level 9 rogue joining a level 5 fighter, wizard, and cleric because the higher level player felt like showing off or just happened to be free on the night the lower level people were playing. (or the lowbies convinced a more powerful friend to help)
Did you ever have unusual party makeups (ie 3 clerics, a wizard, and a sorceror) because they were the ones that got together that day?
Did you scale the encounters the party faced based on how many players were showing up? For example if Monday 7 players were showing up and heading for an EL 4 area, and Tuesday 2 players headed to the same area, did both groups find 4 CR 4 monsters or did the Monday group find 6-8 monsters and the Tuesday group find 2 or 3 monsters?
What was the highest level obtained?
July 16th, 2008 at 10:47 am
I am late to the party, but wanted to throw out some thoughts and questions.
I’ve been contemplating a good ol’ fashioned Basic Fantasy RPG sandbox game reminiscent of the Wilderlands of High Fantasy myself, but the whole DM procrastination issue has been pushing it back and back for about a year now. I’ve really disappointed a handful of people who really wanted to be playing rather than talking about playing, and this has really lit a fire in my mind and under my posterior to get back to it.
I love how this setup solves the scheduling problems. One thing I see, though, is that in a smaller group you might have problems if someone can’t play at all until their character returns to town. How about using the entourage approach with a group like this? I can see one potential issue with it; players can basically “ditch” a set of characters in a dungeon and never bring them back in favor of other characters. I’d hate to institute a real-time (or game-time) limit where after that limit their characters just die in the dungeon for whatever reason.
As I said, I have a handful of people who would like to play (I could probably count exactly two at this point, thanks to my procrastination) but obviously I would need more. Were the people you were playing with your regular playing group, or did some join just for the West Marches games? Did you have regular drop-ins where somebody brought someone along to try the game out?
How did you recruit players? I think that this would be great for recruiting, though. People who want to try the game out can come and sit in on a couple sessions and get hooked. Even better, they can have an opportunity to play with a couple of different groups.
Taking the small group problem along with the entourage approach causes a second problem: what if a player can play several sessions with various characters and has a problem with metagame information? Something else I would love to avoid, apart from the talk on the mailing list.
Also, how many players were there when you played? Did you ever do any one-on-one games? Did you ever have a dozen or more folks around the table? What was your average?
If there weren’t NPC adventurers, then did the players not pick up henchmen? Were hirelings available to be shield-bearers and men-at-arms and treasure-haulers, or was it PCs only?
Did you normally play this at your home, or another location, or was it a traveling roadshow?
Have you heard about anyone running a game like this online only? (Play by chat/IM/Skype/virtual desktop)
July 17th, 2008 at 9:04 am
Do you think a WM campaign could work without a clear looting/treasure hunt goal?
Could it work with only a exploration goal?
I ask because I am tempted of trying it with the Dreamlands of Call of Cthulhu.
The players could go on expeditions into the dreamland and wake up at the end of each session, but I wonder what could keep them going there again and again.
July 17th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
@ Restless
One thing I see, though, is that in a smaller group you might have problems if someone can’t play at all until their character returns to town.
My gut instinct is that having multiple characters dilutes the immediacy of exploration and survival — part of the game is picking and choosing where to go, not being able to be in two places at once. If people can only form a small party because most of the other adventurers are still out of town, it _forces them_ to rethink where they can safely explore.
Were the people you were playing with your regular playing group, or did some join just for the West Marches games? Did you have regular drop-ins where somebody brought someone along to try the game out?
It started with people I’d played with before or who hadn’t played but wanted to try, but once it got rolling existing players were bringing in new recruits all the time (friends of friends, or someone they knew who they thought would be fun). I never recruited anyone after that. There were several people who popped in, played a few games, but never joined in full-time.
Taking the small group problem along with the entourage approach causes a second problem: what if a player can play several sessions with various characters and has a problem with metagame information? Something else I would love to avoid, apart from the talk on the mailing list.
Even if a player has good intentions it’s hard to keep straight one characters experiences from another, which again is why I’d be against multiple simultaneous characters.
It’s also an issue when characters die and come in with a new character, but that’s usually easier because they are chronological (everything with the old character was in the past and easier to compartmentalize).
Also, how many players were there when you played? Did you ever do any one-on-one games? Did you ever have a dozen or more folks around the table? What was your average?
The average was 4.1 players (plus GM of course) and the highest was 9, which was a mess because the players were very disorganized. There were only a handful of solo games, and those were for special occasions.
If there weren’t NPC adventurers, then did the players not pick up henchmen? Were hirelings available to be shield-bearers and men-at-arms and treasure-haulers, or was it PCs only?
Basically no. The idea is that the wilderness is very dangerous. No amount of money can ensure your survival, so most townsfolk would not take that risk.
Did you normally play this at your home, or another location, or was it a traveling roadshow?
Lots of different venues.
Have you heard about anyone running a game like this online only? (Play by chat/IM/Skype/virtual desktop)
I’ve heard plans, but no results.
July 17th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
@ Michael Cribbin
What about EL variations in reverse? I could envision many situations where a level 7 party could be travelling through level 3 areas, whether it was because they got lost, didn’t know better or what region they were in, or were just extra cautious.
By the time they were high level they generally knew the territory and were pretty clear where the low-level areas were, so it would be unlikely to be accidental.
If they were passing through familiar low-level areas to reach harder areas they were usually going fast not exploring, so they had fewer chances for encounters. When they did have easy encounters in old territory it gave them a nice sense of how far they had come power-wise (”remember back when these frogs chased us out of the marsh? Good times, good times… –zap–”). The fights were quite short, and critters tended to flee if they were getting slaughtered (like always).
(as an aside, it’s a common GM mistake to think players want every fight to be hard — sometimes it’s quite nice to have an easy win to show where you stand in the food chain)
Did you ever have a high level player go “slumming” and join a low level party making a very unsual dynamic?
Players talked about it a lot but rarely did it. One reason was that in D&D 3e XP was based on the level of creature relative to the level of the characters — bringing high level people meant the same critters were worth less, but you were just as likely to die if the creature attacked you not them (as proven through experimentation).
Sometimes the lower level characters were hot to bring the extra firepower (”Let’s bring Brag, the half-orc barbarian!”) but then cooler minds would prevail and they’d realize they’d get less XP and they’d be playing second fiddle. Same with the high level characters — while they were busy slumming other high levels were off exploring new territory.
Remember real world play time was always limited plus the in-game calendar was rigid — if you are out in the wilderness when another party is forming up, obviously you aren’t allowed to join.
Did you ever have unusual party makeups (ie 3 clerics, a wizard, and a sorceror) because they were the ones that got together that day?
Always. The groups were never predictable. Players intelligently tried to cover their bases but their options were limited. I suspect some characters took levels in cleric just to have some healing available — which sounds dumb, but since the game was strictly serious it led to very interesting “discovering your religion” roleplaying. Good stuff.
Did you scale the encounters the party faced based on how many players were showing up?
Never — that’s the whole idea.
What was the highest level obtained?
Two hit 7th, and neither of those players was on their first character. A bunch of other folks hit 6th.
July 17th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
@ Starfish P
Do you think a WM campaign could work without a clear looting/treasure hunt goal?
Could it work with only a exploration goal?
Definitely. West Marches was about reward for taking action. It was much more about getting XP than treasure (which was fairly sparse). That system can work with any game that has a concrete reward like character advancement.
The secondary reward was exploration / knowledge. The first reward (leveling) was really just a first-stage booster to get people involved — once they were hooked they were drawn as much by exploration and competition as they were by mechanically leveling.
You’d also want to make sure there were consequences for making bad decisions. It doesn’t have to be death, but there should be a downside for making mistakes.
I ask because I am tempted of trying it with the Dreamlands of Call of Cthulhu.
I think that’s a fantastic idea. I’d love to hear how it goes.
I also think West Marches would work really well for a Traveller-style space exploration game. It’s just begging for someone to run it.
The players could go on expeditions into the dreamland and wake up at the end of each session, but I wonder what could keep them going there again and again.
Well, what’s their motivation? Are they amassing mystical knowledge to learn the secrets of the universe? Exploring for personal Enlightenment sounds fairly Dreamlands.
July 17th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Man . . . just seeing this discussion gives me *shivers.*
Chris has the dubious honor of being the only PC to be killed by the other PCs. And that was his _nice_ character. So unfair…
July 18th, 2008 at 9:33 am
So, why’d you stop? Did the players get tired of it, or were you looking for a new game to run? Did you end it with a big to-do or did it just fizzle out? Was it too hard to schedule games (although it doesn’t seem that’d be the problem in this setup)? Did the Social Monster eat the game?
I do have to say, Call of Cthulhu in this sort of game would be awesome, even if you just had a large background going on over a small region and the players all belonged to some sort of informal society determined to investigate the dark happenings in their communities.
July 24th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
I’ve been running games in this style for years. It’s good to see a few others developing it as a concept though.
My current projects for this style of game include a steam-punk/fantasy setting in an ancient city on the edge of a newly developing empire. The city wants to maintain it’s independence and has been a rallying point for lesser cultures who are also trying to resist the growing empire. Situations for adventure in this type of setting would be political struggles against the empire, dealing with local problems in the smaller independent cultures and trying to find ancient relics in the wilderness beyond (so that they may be used in battle against the new empire.
My second project draws on a physical map of my home town, Sydney, Australia. With over 5 million people, and a number of very diverse cultures (middle eastern, asian, various european, native aboriginals). The theory is to run that style of game in a spirit world that exists alongside our reality. The dominant spirits and mythical beings in the otherland are based on the dominant local culture in the equivalent region of the “real world”. In pace where there is a heavy Egyptian immigrant population you may find mummies and sphinxes, while in the areas where the Chinese have settled you might find asian dragons, hsien and terracotta soldiers.
I’m planning to run a table-top version of the game in this west-marches style of play, but intersperse it with monthly live-roleplaying sessions in which the intrigue of the setting can be more carefully developed.
August 2nd, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Sorry if this was answered elsewhere and I missed it…
How “big” was the Marches when you started? How many regions and had many dungeons had you “roughed in”? I realize that you waited until an expedition set out for an area to detail it, but you had roughly mapped out some regions and picked locations for dungeons already, right?
Do you think the size (number of regions/number of dungeons) should be based on something? (e.g. size of the player pool) Is it relatively fixed? (e.g. you need at least X regions to give enough choices, but more than Y is choice overload) Or is it arbitrary?
In the end, how many regions and dungeons were there?
August 4th, 2008 at 3:39 am
@ Robert Fisher
How “big” was the Marches when you started?
Do you think the size (number of regions/number of dungeons) should be based on something? (e.g. size of the player pool) Is it relatively fixed? (e.g. you need at least X regions to give enough choices, but more than Y is choice overload) Or is it arbitrary?
The size of regions varied a lot, so it would be hard to say. Most were about the same size, but then there were some “micro” regions and some “mega” regions. The micro regions usually just highlighted one thing — pretty much a monoculture like the Centaur Grove. The mega regions were big enough that they could have whole subregions within them.
You absolutely should have basic terrain sketched out in a full radius around the town, otherwise you have fuzzy grey areas when people look out of town. Not good.
Ideally you want to start with enough regions to make it clear to the players that they have a choice. If they look out from the city gates and just see the rolling expanse of the Black Hills, it’s easy to think one way is the same as another (a faux choice). But if they look out and see a forest, a marsh, some hills and desert, they can see they have real choices right off the bat.
August 4th, 2008 at 3:56 am
@ Restless
So, why’d you stop?
It was the social monster. It’s a fine line between “extreme enthusiasm” and “destructive obsession.” The game worked for over 100 sessions (which isn’t bad) but eventually the trouble outweighed the fun. But your game doesn’t have to turn out that way…
September 1st, 2008 at 8:06 am
Hello,
Thirst things thirst: excuse my french.
(…)
Ha, ha, ha.
(…)
Sorry
No, serious, i’m french so, please, excuse my poor english level
I am actually running a West March session since the first days of july.
And its bloody cool: my players really enjoy this “old school game”, i don’t have a lot of work to do (well, actually, all the work is already done: a few days of work before the first game and no more after that) and the all concept is working like a charm.
So i really want to thank Ben for the inspiration (i’m a hudge fan of this blog).
I use a 3.5 OGL-based -mécanic of my own for this game.
The system is, in fact, deeply inspired by the concept au E6.
It’s low and gritty fantasy.
I could see that Ryan Stoughton is reading this blog so i want to really thank him too for this simple but genial idea.
A question : am i the only one thinking that West March and E6 are naturally fit for each other ?
September 5th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
@ Islayre d’Argolh
A question : am i the only one thinking that West March and E6 are naturally fit for each other ?
In another comment I mentioned that the game stayed in the low-level range the whole time (the highest character ever was 7th).
I think low-level works quite well for this kind of game. Higher level abilities like teleporting, scrying, etc change the dynamic of exploration. High level West Marches could work, but you would have to take these abilities into account. It would be a different kind of challenge.
September 22nd, 2008 at 1:02 pm
I started sketching out my own WM-style game for Savage Worlds a couple weeks ago, and we’ll probably start playing in another month. So I’m totally jazzed to play, and the players themselves aren’t quite sure what to think about this “plot-less” roleplaying style that I’ve been hyping so much. A couple questions for you, Ben:
How important was food and water in your game? I have a strong desire to make my characters mark off rations and hunt for fresh water, which is something I’ve never really bothered with in most fantasy games. It seems to fit very well with the survival/exploration theme.
How often did the PCs get lost? You made a reference to the required Wilderness Lore roll to get oriented…I’m wondering how often they botched this initial bearing.
September 23rd, 2008 at 11:49 am
@PatrickWR
> How often did the PCs get lost?
We got lost _all the time_.
Unless we had been somewhere several times before (or it was an easily visible landmark) we would usually expect to spend time finding it and/or lost on the way. One of the things I really enjoyed was navigating with landmarks and not always taking a the direct route (you’ll get lost unless you follow the stream/cliffs/coast/ridgeline/etc!).
Getting lost is also a great way to explore. Fun quote from one game:
Ranger: To get there I think we need to go about an hour north, then an hour east, then an hour south, then about an hour west…..
@PatrickWR
> How important was food and water in your game?
We tried not to spend too much time with accounting and encumbrance, but it was definitely a factor. When heading out of town we would say how much food we were bringing and then we’d keep track of the days. And if you got lost in the winter you could be in real trouble! Folks with Survival (i.e. hunting) skill were nice to have along because they helped in not getting lost and in foraging for food. As much as I normally dislike this kind of nit-picky accounting I think you need it to really get the feel of being lost (or trapped somewhere*). Best is to use very simplified accounting so it doesn’t take much time itself but still allows lots of concern about food and/or water running low.
(* “Trapped somewhere” seemed to happen a lot too. I still remember the days trapped in a small room next to the Ghoul nest in the ruined monastery, waiting for the cleric to recover enough to wake up, heal us and get out; wondering if we would turn into ghouls from having to eat each other or from the ghouls outside the door. — Fun times.)
November 12th, 2008 at 10:11 am
Another quick question that might have been answered…or not; You’re talking about all of these named regions, and you’ve also mentioned that the characters are THE ONLY adventurers. In other words, no one else really knows what’s out there. So, and this might be kind of thick headed, how did you introduce a “name” of an area to the party?
If no one else has experience out there, and there are no real “maps”, then how does a character know that they’re in a place called “The Centaur’s Grove”?
November 13th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
@ Gamer Dude
The players started to ask that same question, which is a good thing.
They knew there were hunters from the town who ventured into the near wilds and there were rare individuals who lived in the wilds (like the Mad Hermit or the Keeper of Bees).
But more specifically, just because the lands were wild didn’t mean no one had never been there before. There were ruined monasteries and ancient crypts, all of which indicate people had lived in some parts. Then the question becomes: what happened since then?
Those were the relatively near areas: the farther out they got, the less anyone knew anything. The PCs did find human temples in the far-off Sacred Lakes region, but they were clearly from long ago and mostly forgotten in origin.
December 8th, 2008 at 8:02 am
But how did the players know that region was called “Sacred Lakes”, or “The Centaur’s Grove”, or “Harbor Wood”? Did they get them from maps, or old legends, or the indigenous bhuka?
And I’m dying to see more in-play examples of this sort of game. What about those links you mentioned a while back?
December 8th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
@ Inyssius,
We got the information from all sorts of sources. And because most of the area was populated “a long time ago” there were lots of old stories and legends. Sometimes we would hear of some mention of “the sacred lakes to the west” and then later while exploring someone would say “this area we’ve been wandering in sure has a bunch of lakes & temples; I bet this is that Sacred lakes area”. And from then on that area would be referred to as “the Sacred Lakes”. And there were people out and about in the wilds (bandits, other travelers, weird beekeeper druids, etc) who knew about the area.
There were old writings from way back when that would refer to various areas. Pretty much the only gaming that occurred in town was around plot hooks for going out on an adventure: the cleric finds some old records while cleaning the church that talk about the monastery “at the foothills of the goblin’s teeth mountains, just past centaur wood” so when you find the monastery you might guess that the wood you just passed through was Centaur wood.
And I think we “named” some areas ourselves simply by referring to it as “the frog marshes” or whatever from that point on. Since the adventurers were the ones coming back and carving the new information into the map (see “the table map” in the Grand Experiments: West Marches (part 2), Sharing Info post) even if they got it “wrong” (compared to what Ben had written in his notes, that is) that would be what stuck and everyone used from then on. Possibly to find out later that it was wrong, possibly it would never come up.
December 26th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
I just recently read through the West Marches posts. Just to make sure I understand, was the entire structure of the adventures location-based set pieces? There were no event-style encounters such as “the first night the party camps in the Black Hills they encounter 2d8 orcs” instead this was all handled by means of the random encounter tables?
Also, while there was no plot involved, were the characters given missions? If so, by whom?
December 26th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
There were no event-style encounters such as “the first night the party camps in the Black Hills they encounter 2d8 orcs” instead this was all handled by means of the random encounter tables?
Correct. Creatures in the environment reacted of course, so if you raid the kobold caves and flee you shouldn’t be surprised if a hunting party comes looking for you. Cause and effect.
Also, while there was no plot involved, were the characters given missions?
Nope. Well honestly it did happen once or twice, but that was a deviation from the model. There were also things like bandit bounties that anyone could try to collect.
December 27th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Just for interest sake, what scale did you use for your wilderness maps, 1 inch = 1 mile?
January 1st, 2009 at 2:00 am
Hey, I want to make my own Western Marches game to, but I don’t really know how to design dungeons. Also, making detailed fictional histories is another weak point of mine.
Could you give me some advice?
January 3rd, 2009 at 1:40 pm
@will
My advice would be to start out by looking at a lot of the source material (dungeon maps & modules and so forth) available online to see how they do things. You can also use them, whole or partially, in your game and also use them as templates for creating your own. But keep in mind that what’s out there may not always be better then what you could do yourself. Even a West Marches style game could still have pre-built modules in it with just minor mods to the material.
Really the dungeon design & fictional history part of the game is not that different in a West Marches game then it is in a ‘standard’ plot-driven game. The big difference (I think) is that you are not designing things around a specific plot or story, its more free form. So if you are already running a game, then the dungeon design & history part of it will not be that much different. But it is true that in a WM game the background history info can be much more important, so if you’ve been avoiding that in your current game that could be a problem.
But really, if you want to run games (WM-style or other) it seems like these are skills that you would want to improve. And the best way to get better is to just do it. Using a lot of pre-made material can help get you started with that; for example taking a pre-built dungeon map and then coming up with your own story/history that fits into your campaign. This lets you only worry about one part of it instead of having to design the dungeon and the history. And then you can work up to doing it all yourself. Also, IMHO, it’s fine to take ideas from books & movies and use them for your history, especially when you are just getting started running games.