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View Full Version : The West Marches -- Advice?



Enix18
2012-05-02, 03:26 PM
I've managed to gather together a sizable group of D&D players at my University, and after having run a brief series of sessions with them they're all pretty eager to get back into the game when school starts up next fall. A few of them have expressed interest in a West Marches style campaign, and it seems to me to be an excellent idea--however, despite my DMing experience, I'm not entirely sure how to handle my first West Marches game, and as such I look to the Playground for advice.

The games I tend to run are much more story-focused, and they're often grounded in a small but distinct setting. The sandboxy nature of a West Marches game, coupled with the location-based adventure style, is somewhat foreign to me. (I have, for example, never run a real dungeon in any of my years as a Dungeon Master.) If anyone has any advice on how to handle the creation of interesting and open-ended locations for the players to explore, I would love to hear it.

Of course, any sort of advice is welcome. Have other playgrounders run or participated in West Marches style games before? If so, what elements made it especially interesting (or especially lack-lustre, as the case may be)?

Adam...?
2012-05-02, 08:02 PM
I started running a West Marches thing awhile back. And yeah, from what I've found, finding ways to get the players interested without a story is one of the big challenges. The way I see it, there main draws of a West Marches campaign are:
-A. Getting to play with a bunch of different people, with whom you can compete for treasure/experience/fame.
-B. Having interesting things to explore.
-C. Maybe some sort of overarching "plot."

I feel like having a large group is a big advantage here. When I ran this, I only had four players, so everyone was always present at every session. I think that kinda killed the whole thing, because it removed the competitive aspect of the campaign. A bunch of friends just going through a checklist of places to explore gets boring. Racing against your allies to check out places you think will have the best loot is exciting.

Making interesting places to explore is kind of a tricky process. The best advice I can give you is to look for inspiration (aka things to steal). DnD modules (or modules from any other game, really) are a good source, and there are tons you can download for free. I also recall seeing a thread on this site for "Interesting Location Ideas," or something like that. Steal anything and everything you can from books, movies, comics, or whatever. You can also just think of "what would make an interesting encounter?" and find some way to make it make sense in your world.

One thing I really wanted in my campaign was an overarching history for the PCs to explore and learn about. So I drew a basic framework that had three different nations, all with their own unique cultures and architecture, fighting in a giant cluster**** war. Ideally, the PCs would get to find bits and pieces of information about the nations in the ruins, and eventually they might wonder where the hell everyone went. Hopefully that information would have been interesting enough to inspire further exploration, but it unfortunately never got that far.

As for other elements:
-PCs will spend a lot of time wandering through the wilderness. Finding ways to keep this interesting can be difficult. Random encounters can only go so far, so it'd probably be good to work on descriptions, non-combat encounters, and other stuff. Personally, I was really bad at it, so I don't have great advice here.
-Interesting treasure is a great way to keep things competitive. A +2 sword is a nice thing to find, but if you miss out, another will probably show up. If the +2 sword happens to be a sacred relic from a lost order of paladins, and also lights up in the presence of evil creatures, it's much more unique. And it'll make all your friends super jealous. I also used West Marches to experiment with giving out non-standard treasure, like the above-mentioned sword that has a unique magic ability. Or rituals than can let you absorb a portion of the soul of a dead hero permanently give PCs different class abilities, or skill points, or ability score bonuses, or whatever.

Enix18
2012-05-05, 01:34 PM
Thanks for the advice, Adam.

Fortunately, the player base shouldn't be much of a problem. I've got six people who have definitely agreed to participate, and at least three others who have expressed some interest—and that's having not made any effort to recruit people yet, since the idea only just started getting tossed around this week.

I like the idea of some sort of overarching backstory to the setting. At the very least, it should lend some internal consistency to the whole thing, and perhaps once the players recognise the common threads running through various locations they'll be spurred on to further exploration.

Wilderness encounters, though, are really one of the things that I'm most worried about. I've never built a random encounter table before in my life, let alone put any major emphasis on the travails of travel in my games, so it's going to be a bit of a challenge.

Bayonet Priest
2012-05-05, 02:00 PM
Wow, I didn't realize that West Marches was a real thing. I thought our DM came up with this on his own. I've been playing in a West Marches 4e game online using Maptools since last fall. It's a really good type of campaign for an online game because you can have a lot of players who don't always show up to every session. We have about 8-10 or so with about half that many "regulars" who show up most of the time.

Not everyone plays every session so we wind up with a range of character levels and equipment. It's kind of interesting when everyone isn't the same level, I would have thought it would be a bad thing but honestly being 2 levels behind the party arcane powerhouse Wizard hasn't made my Warlock feel any less awesome.

It's funny that I see competition between players mentioned because our group is actually somewhat more cohesive than most parties I've played in even in more traditional campaigns. For the first half of the game we even followed my Warlock's communist approach to loot, alas that was reformed and now we just split the loot amongst whoever is present when we get it.

But yeah, I've really enjoyed this campaign. I've been so busy with school lately that I only just got to play again last Thursday after being gone for a month and it was a hell of a lot of fun. Also, turns out gnolls are pretty dangerous, who knew?

Kaun
2012-05-06, 10:34 PM
My advice is consider these points.

#1. Are you going to enforce the "Must return to town by the end of the session rule"

If so, consider how long your sessions run for and what rule system you are intending to use.

How much combat you are planing to have should be a key part of choosing a system.

If you aren't prone to playing long sessions (6hrs+) i would advise against using dnd 4e, the combats tend to be to time consuming and the game is a bit to gear focused to be really cohesive for West March style games.

Personally i would suggest giving savage worlds a try for this, the combat system is quick and the game lends itself well towards exploration and characters coming and going.

If your looking at 3.5 or pathfinder maybe consider the E6 system as the power level gap can become noticeable once players start passing 6+.

#2. If you are a DM who roles his dice behind the shield i would suggest rolling in the open for the West Marsh game. Risk vs reward should be a big motivator, if the players can see the dice falling before them you will find they are more likely to weigh up their actions.

#3. Don't flood the game with magical loot. Magic loot IMHO is best when its few and far between. If the players have to work hard for it they will treasure it more and it will really add momentum to the competition element.

Also make sure the best loot stash's are found in the deadliest areas, this will encourage people to plan trips into these areas.