[West Marches] Characters going back to town at the end of a session

[Condé]

Hello everyone,

I am preparing a West Marches campaign with a friend of mine. I have participated in some West Marches myself as a player and think I know how it works pretty well... BUT I am looking for ideas to justify the characters have to go back in town at the end of a session.

It is the classical: Undiscovered wild island with a lot of danger. The map is pretty big so the further Hexagones are definitly going to be too far away for the characters to go by foot.
We already planned to make some teleportations devices for the characters to travel faster to certain points.

IDEAS / EXAMPLES

For example, having a floating/flying base could be cool... Or a way to travel by flying, that way they could go in the square they want and not waste time traveling for when hexagones are too far for these characters to go by foot in one session. But it would ruin the exploration aspect, obviously.

Why not make the atmosphere of the island really different and characters only have the time of the session in oxygen or something like that. So if they are not back in town in time they would suffer suffocation until they die.

Or maybe they can only go adventuring on day light because the night is so dark you cannot see anything and evil forces awake... So they can only go by day and have to go back in town at night.

Characters' base is a mage tower with a bunch of portals and characters can discover "waypoints" and activate new portals to travel faster?

A lot can be done here to be honest. I would gladly take new ideas and/or your experiences.

METHOD

I am still not sure of the best way to manage the travel part either.
What we are aiming is : one session a week for each DM maximum. No character can do 2 sessions in a single week. We already have enough players to do that, in theory.

From your experience or your point of view, is it better to:
- One day of the week is adventuring, the rest is downtime?
- You can travel a maximum of 7 days in a session. The rest is downtime? (If there is some days left in your week)
- Something else?

[InvisibleBison]

I think the best way to approach this is to just tell your players that it's part of the intended gameplay loop for them to return to town at the end of each session. If you try to force it by some in-universe phenomenon, you're running the risk of the players finding a way to overcome or work around that phenomenon.

[Doctor Despair]

I think the best way to approach this is to just tell your players that it's part of the intended gameplay loop for them to return to town at the end of each session. If you try to force it by some in-universe phenomenon, you're running the risk of the players finding a way to overcome or work around that phenomenon.

There's no reason it really couldn't be both to satisfy verisimilitude.

1. It's a very ingrained part of adventuring culture that you return to town at the end of your quest to reorient for the next one. Only unhinged idiots try to stay away from settlements for extended periods of time.

2. Legend has it that those staying out of town for extended periods of time can catch the attention of Eldritch Things We Know Not Wot Of, and even seasoned adventurers are known to go missing after leaving to spend extended periods of time in the wilds. Survivor bias suggests that these are probably just tall tales, but every guild has a few people who will swap stories about strange things they've experienced during their longest treks, and the inexplicable feeling of being hunted.

3. Meta: please go back to town after quests unless we talk about it. It makes DMing this kind of campaign hard if you don't.

[Condé]

There's no reason it really couldn't be both to satisfy verisimilitude.

1. It's a very ingrained part of adventuring culture that you return to town at the end of your quest to reorient for the next one. Only unhinged idiots try to stay away from settlements for extended periods of time.

2. Legend has it that those staying out of town for extended periods of time can catch the attention of Eldritch Things We Know Not Wot Of, and even seasoned adventurers are known to go missing after leaving to spend extended periods of time in the wilds. Survivor bias suggests that these are probably just tall tales, but every guild has a few people who will swap stories about strange things they've experienced during their longest treks, and the inexplicable feeling of being hunted.

3. Meta: please go back to town after quests unless we talk about it. It makes DMing this kind of campaign hard if you don't.

I would try to avoid the meta part. I played in a West Marches where it was indeed purely meta and had to manage the turning back to town into the time we were outside. So if we went too far and couldn't make it in time, bad things happened.

I think it could had more versimilitude and it is funnier overall to have an explanation for why instead of just a general rule.

[InvisibleBison]

There's no reason it really couldn't be both to satisfy verisimilitude.

1. It's a very ingrained part of adventuring culture that you return to town at the end of your quest to reorient for the next one. Only unhinged idiots try to stay away from settlements for extended periods of time.

2. Legend has it that those staying out of town for extended periods of time can catch the attention of Eldritch Things We Know Not Wot Of, and even seasoned adventurers are known to go missing after leaving to spend extended periods of time in the wilds. Survivor bias suggests that these are probably just tall tales, but every guild has a few people who will swap stories about strange things they've experienced during their longest treks, and the inexplicable feeling of being hunted.

3. Meta: please go back to town after quests unless we talk about it. It makes DMing this kind of campaign hard if you don't.

Sure, there could be plenty of good reasons why adventurers wouldn't want to stay out of town for too long. But the issue is that there's no reason why "too long" has to be the same as "the amount of time covered in a single session", and in fact tying bad things happening to the length of in-universe time that people are out of town makes always turning back at the end of the session make even less sense in-universe. After all, if previously the group was able to stay out of town for eleven days without issue, why would they decide that it's time to head back after three days this time?

Ultimately, session-length is a meta-game phenomenon, and attempting to turn it into an in-game phenomenon is bound to produce some ludonarrative dissonance.

[Kol Korran]

I once planned to run a West Marches campaign, and though the idea fell through (Due to RL reasons) myself and the 2 other DMs also sought an In-world explanation. We came up with the following:
The region to explore is a n old fabled continent, of which there are old rudimentary maps, from a bygone age. The continent was protected by powerful magic which prevents exploration- a sort of a hazardous magical field, which quickly decays any outsider entering it... the continent has living beings in it which are unaffected. Only outsiders (PCs and other fellow NPCs) are affected.

No one is sure why. Most countries remember some great splendor and legends of great splendor tied to the continent, and the stories tell of some great conflict and terrible war, which ended abruptly. The various stories differ on many details, but agree only on one- The conflict ended with a terrible warning: The fabled continent is banned to outsiders, and anyone who dares invade- shall perish. Most believe the strange magic that permeates the continent is the implementation of the ancient warning.

But, that was a millennia or more ago. And time erodes even magic! Ever so slowly, the magic weakened by tiny fractions. A mage/ artificer/ arcanist group who explored the protective field, developed a peculiar device, holding special McGuffin crystals, that enables a person wearing them to survive in the magical field that envelops the continent. At least for a while... the crystal absorbs the magical energy, yet slowly deteriorates. But the wearer knows how much time is left.

However the mages made another improvement to their device! When the crystal nears it's limit and breaking point, the device uses the stored magical energy for a specific teleport affect, that sends the wielders to a specific location- A sort of magical beacon.

Now the mage/ arcanist organization decided to send for adventurers, mercenaries, and other dare-devils, death-wish-seekers. For a small investment, they would equip these treasure hunters each with such a device, and a crystal for their first voyage into the fabled continent. Once the crystal teleports them- it will sends them to their main hall where the specialized teleport beacon is stationed.

Of course, this wonderful opportunity to explore (and plunder!) these ancient, fabulous, long lost lands: (The following are what we had in mind, but you can feel free to decide what you wish):
# A return of the investment for the device in 3 months (We priced it as 5000gp, mainly to emphasize the money- investment theme of the campaign, and to create an initial pressure to "go out there, and make some money!")
# A price for the crystal for each trip ( A small enough sum of 300gp, but enough to ensure they don't play too safe in their scout and recon routines)
# A small percentage of the value of the finds. A mere 5-10%. Price of doing business, you know?

We also had the option of making "stabilizing points", which enable potential teleportation points in the region. But the parties first needed to find these spots,(with some clues in the field), eliminate hostile forces there (Usually places of major monsters), and transport the stabilizing device there. The teleportation ports created sort of bubbles in the field, which were themselves hazardous to the local life, and enabled easier "starting points" for the future.

Good luck!

[Anymage]

For a moment I thought this was 5e and wanted to recommend one of the rest redefinitions. On second thought I realized that there's no reason not to backport the idea. If you really want to drive home the idea that the wilds are dangerous, just say that setting up camp allows enough rest to avoid fatigue penalties, but that you need at least one full night's sleep somewhere civilized in order to get the full benefits of a fresh day. You can allow some minor recovery benefits for just spending the night sleeping somewhere (e.g: natural healing and recovery might help) and you can extend the amount of time required before abilities refresh, but just the ability to recover spell slots and similar limited resources should make the players want to return to town without any heavy meta-level reasons.

[Pugwampy]

My players use riding animals for long distances .
Yes warp gates are always a good idea .
Semi permanent camps , maybe a few hirlings
You just need a roof , food and some heals maybe a friendly druid npc could host the players ?

[Condé]

I wanted to thank you all for your participation.

Why I am looking for a reason to make them go back in town at the end of a session in the same town in simple.
You want everyone to be at the same place everytime a session end, otherwise they cannot participate in another adventure since, you know... They are not there. And so other characters cannot interact with them. Right?

[rel]

Yeah, It's a tough one. If one party has managed to get through 3 weeks of largely uneventful hex crawling in a single session, why does the next party have to scarper back to town after only 2 in game hours of looting the local dungeon, just because fighting the goblin sappers took a long time IRL.

Short of keeping it as a purely meta mechanic, you need something that strikes entirely at random and forces retreat on any party, no matter how skilled. And you need an easy method of escape, so if a combat takes longer than expected, and the party is sitting around deep in a dungeon they can still get back to town in the 5 real world minutes before half the party need to run off to catch the last train home.

No matter what you pick, both the ability to trivially retreat to town and the existence of something that can force anyone into full on retreat at a moments notice are major setting elements and greatly influence the theme and tone of a game.

While I've never come up with anything that I found fully satisfying, and so haven't been able to run such games very effectively, here's the closest I ever got. Hopefully it is helpful.

The Rapacia Effect
This is an unexplained phenomenon that affects groups of travelers in the Wild Lands seemingly at random.

While the cause of the effect is entirely unknown, the results are documented exhaustively. First travelers feel an oppressive quality to the air and a sharp increase in the buildup of static electricity.
Then colours seem to become more vivid and shapes warp and shift at the edges of vision.
Finally electric blue motes of energy begin to appear in the air, moving like driven snow. At this point, mundane equipment starts to permanently disappear, beginning with small and inconsequential items, and those recently found in the wild lands, but rapidly progressing to items of greater significance and abidance.
In the final stage a travelers vision fades into featureless white and they become increasingly disoriented. At this point a traveler will lose all sense of time and place and find themselves walking out of the Wild Lands, with the walls of Haven just in sight, completely stripped of all their gear and possessions.

Despite extensive study, no protection from the Rapacia Effect has ever been discovered, nor has any item been shielded from loss to it nor (despite rumors of lost gear turning up in Wild Lands dungeons) conclusively recovered.
Those unfortunate enough to encounter the effect have no choice but to retreat quickly to Haven before it can do any harm.

And encountering the effect while exploring the Wild Lands is inevitable, although how long it takes to manifest is greatly variable. While some explorers can wander for weeks and not come across it, at other times an unlucky party can come across it within hours of setting out.
Even when it is encountered, the speed with which the effect progresses can also vary wildly, with full manifestation sometimes taking days and other times scant minutes.

[pabelfly]

Why not just have players meet up with eachother outside of town at the start of session? It works well enough for my table. If you need to change party composition, there are reasons for party members to not be available for a session or to suddenly encounter the party