My Diablo campaign had lots of Persistent World elements, as does my Open Table OD&D campaign.

For me, PW is the GM tracking what various NPCs are doing when the PCs did their thing, and of course, look for the ripple effect and weave that into how the PW has changed before the next session.

As my Diablo megadungeon drew many groups of treasure seekers, a chunk of my "wandering monster" tables were NPC adventurers and various rumors and events would occur as they pursued their own goals (and got bloodied, rich or dead) on a parallel track to the PCs.

As for my Open Table OD&D, the players who were present for the last session usually filled in the absent and new players, then I'd add anything their PCs would have experienced or heard during the downtime and away we went for more adventure.

Is an overarching story impossible with Open Tables? It's harder for sure. Big reveals are useless unless the bulk of the players present have played the bulk of the sessions. THIS is exactly why I prefer short campaigns over my Open Tables. I'd rather run 6 sessions where everyone commits to playing knowing we will experience the beginning, middle and end of the campaign arc. Hell, it's why I've run weekend mini-campaigns too.

Quote from: Alamar;1100075One thing that really keeps me away from West Marches is the emphasis on player involvement and feedback. The map making, multiple groups as some have mentioned, etc. It just sounds like more of that "Have the players do the heavy lifting, take the stress of the DM." kinda thing that has burned me before. Like the old "Have the players come up with a enemy and an ally in their backstory, then have these characters show up in the adventure." I tried that on the last group I ran and all my players scoffed saying they didn't like the extra work and accused me of being lazy. I even offered up some pregens for those roles and then they accused me of hijacking their characters. I just want to draw them into the world.

Back to the multiple groups thing. What do I do if one of my players gets it in his head that he can just kill one of those other groups or individual players and steal their stuff?

These just sound like awful players, not gonna lie.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1100989These just sound like awful players, not gonna lie.

Yeah, sandboxes aren't necessarily a good fit for all groups but some groups just suck in general and that group sounded pretty sucky.

For sandboxes not working something I've seen happen is that all of the PCs show up with backstories and goals, ones that are mutually incompatible (not when I was GMing). So you kinda have to smack them with a big crisis that they all need to work together on or the group just has no reason to exist.

What often helps is instead of a railroad set up a highway. Basically a nice clear road in front of the PCs that serves as a default if they don't take initiative or can't agree on what action to do next. But it's just a bit of pavement with plenty of off ramps and no fucking guard rails to keep the PCs from heading off where they want.

One thing that I've found works well is to give the PCs an upper class twit patron. He's happy to give them money to do what he wants which gives the PCs stuff to do, but he's such an obvious twit the the PCs will probably try to twist everything to their advantage and that's where the real story comes from...

Edit: missing the quote of all those Pw, AC, CE, Etc...

I thought I was the only one. I stop reading a few days ago for this thing.

West Marches (and Open table) is an awesome concept. I don't have first hand experience, but inspired on that article I created a open table for Star Wars (EotE). We had a blast for two years and we are considering re opening.

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;1100829And if you need to "re-set" every session, you've again eliminated any Persistence element out-the-gate, reinforcing the Instanced approach. You end up playing against the very strengths of the format.

You need to educate yourself. The person who coined the term West Marches deliberately created the format for enable play for people who had different availability. Some people could play rarely, some more frequently, and he needed a format that could handle that.

The "re-set" I'm referring to is when Bill, Kevin, and Kate are exploring the dungeons of the Gnoll King at the end of a session, and then the next session Bill isn't there but Jeff is. What do you do about the fact Bill's PC is still in the dungeon but Jeff's isn't? A format where the party usually ends up at a home base at the end of a session enables fluid player participation of the sort West Marches was created to support.