TheRPGSite

Hi, just to let you know a bit about me. I've been DMing(GMing really) off and on for many years of my life. I've recently stumbled upon an approach called "The West Marches" I can't seem to find anything about it on the website and was wondering what everyone thinks about it. It seems a bit too good to be true. The basics are you create a town that acts like a safe area for the players, and they proceed to venture outward into a wilderness which the DM essentially generates seemingly at random whilst the only map of the area the players have is a communal map they make themselves. I'm asking you guys specifically because I've been burnt by DM advice online before and I don't have a group to test this with. Also a friend of mine is thinking of DMing a game and if this could help him I'd like to tell him about it.

Here are some links one is the author's blog, the second it matt colville, and last is the dawnforged cast . There's even an actual play podcast about it but ya know too much content there.
http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/78/grand-experiments-west-marches/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGAC-gBoX9k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9L3qtpV9gwo

It's a very famous approach which encouraged a renaissance in sandboxing. Personally I find it works best if the town base is also an interesting place with living NPCs, contra to Ben Robbins' approach.

Main thing, you need a good detailed wilderness map with encounter tables and seeded dungeons. It is not a low prep affair. There are lots of free resources out there though, eg Rob Conley's Blackmarsh and many good free adventure modules at basicfantasy.org

Thank you for replying. I've just had trouble with sandbox games in general and thought this approach might help. Usually my players just kind of end up meandering about the town even if I end up setting some adventures there. It's gotten to the point where I just freeze up adding detail anywhere in the adventure. Anyway Back to the topic I seem to remember a few 3.5 wilderness supplements out ages ago. Can't remember what they were called but I think I had one for swamps.

I played in an explicitly West Marches-themed dungeon crawl game and had fun.  And I ran a less-explicitly West Marches inspired hexcrawl and dungeon crawl game and it went well.

One thing I now think was missing from both experiences was a true open table, with genuinely different groups running in the same world.  Supposedly Gygax at one point was running D&D six nights a week, for whoever showed up.  Could be twelve people, could be one trying to solo, and he'd run for it.

What we ended up with in both cases was one night a week with the same small core group of people, and a larger number who dropped in and out as they were able or interested.  And that works as far as it goes, you just always end back in town so people aren't teleporting in or out of dungeons, or having other people play their characters.  The problem was there was no catch-up mechanism for new players.  Once the die-hards got a level advantage they kept it.  And there's nothing wrong with a few levels difference in old D&D, but at around a 4 level difference it becomes unfun for the starting players.  And I didn't figure this out until the after-action, at the time I stuck to my guns on starting at 1st level.

Quote from: Alamar;1099918I've just had trouble with sandbox games in general and thought this approach might help. Usually my players just kind of end up meandering about the town even if I end up setting some adventures there. It's gotten to the point where I just freeze up adding detail anywhere in the adventure.

I always start a sandbox game with a defined quest.  To avoid railroading it should be something the players can succeed or fail at, and something they can walk away from if they choose, but do start them with a mission and not "what do you want to do?"  Because at first they don't have any information about the world or the game, "what do you want to do" is not actually an informed choice, it's just a coin toss.  So start them with something that gets them going, and as time goes on hopefully they'll start to pick their own goals.

Also, I recommend putting a regional map in front of them at the very beginning.  It can be very sparse, home base town, starting mission location, plus a couple other dungeons/locations/missions you have in mind for later, but you want them to have that in front of them from the start. Encourage them to write on it as they discover other locations or terrain features.  I was a few sessions late getting my map out, and it did hurt my momentum because it then took several more sessions for my players to start using it themselves.

Personally, I don't find sandboxes good for most RPG groups. I know this is UNSPEAKABLE HERESY online, especially in the OSR community, but most players aren't proactive. They expect the GM to provide the direction of the campaign.

However, I fucking hate railroading and I demand the lazy ass players to become proactive.

Here's my meet-me-halfway solution. Every campaign has some overarching threat, maybe multiple. NPCs are on the move and they are gonna FUCK SHIT UP if they are not stopped. Instead of spending time on adventures, I spend time on the NPCs, the directions and steps of their plots, their arc of actions, and cool locales of importance. I don't tell the players what to do or where to go, but since they know shit is gonna hit the fan, they run around the map trying to outsmart and outmaneuver the NPCs.

For instance, my Mazes & Minotaurs campaign is simple. Somehow Zeus has been poisoned and he will die unless an antidote is found...but which god was involved in this crime? Apollo claims not to know, but his prophecy is the cure (and truth) exists within the Archipeligo of Mists a chain of islands surrounded by clouds that obscure them from the vision of Olympus. Zeus gets weaker with each passing of the moon and the gods are squaring off against each other. Thus, our heroes have taken a three ships to the Archipeligo in their quest to save Zeus.

I don't determine where the PCs go. They do it all because its all about saving Zeus. So every session is about covering territory, learning from NPCs, gaining info by doing favors for NPCs and finding clues to piece together. And yelling SHIELD WALL!!!

Mazes & Minotaurs is a FREE RPG and its got a cool island generator and I didn't do much more than roll dice to create the archipeligo and then seeded various places with cool NPCs and imagined 3 different ways to achieve the cure for Zeus (each with its own nasty price). Also, I made 3 conflicting stories about how Zeus got poisoned so I'm not even sure which one is true or what god/goddess did it! I'll let that emerge in the actual play.  
http://mazesandminotaurs.free.fr/

BTW, Kevin Crawford of Sine Nomine Publishing offers kickass tools for sandboxing. He wrote Stars without Number (scifi), Silent Legions (horror), Godbound (epic fantasy), Scarlet Heroes (fantasy), and Other Dust (post-apoc) and half of each book is mostly sandboxing tools.

Here's his free fantasy RPG.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/144651/Exemplars--Eidolons

West Marches is literally Diablo. Or even Olaf's trading post from Pathfinder Kingmaker.

I'm not a fan. I prefer Persistent World.  WM assumes one branch that everyone eventually folds back into, it's very instance-based.PW assumes multiple branches along the trunk that may never interact -- it's very character-based. WM works best for one-shots. PW works best for campaigns, especially long-term.

Quote from: Alamar;1099913Hi, just to let you know a bit about me. I've been DMing(GMing really) off and on for many years of my life. I've recently stumbled upon an approach called "The West Marches" I can't seem to find anything about it on the website and was wondering what everyone thinks about it. It seems a bit too good to be true. The basics are you create a town that acts like a safe area for the players, and they proceed to venture outward into a wilderness which the DM essentially generates seemingly at random whilst the only map of the area the players have is a communal map they make themselves. I'm asking you guys specifically because I've been burnt by DM advice online before and I don't have a group to test this with. Also a friend of mine is thinking of DMing a game and if this could help him I'd like to tell him about it.

Here are some links one is the author's blog, the second it matt colville, and last is the dawnforged cast . There's even an actual play podcast about it but ya know too much content there.
http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/78/grand-experiments-west-marches/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGAC-gBoX9k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9L3qtpV9gwo

Welcome to the Site, Alamar!

I've always wanted to run a Western Marches campaign, but my players don't want sandbox; they actually demand stories. The ars ludi post you linked to is a classic. My favorite part is how the players drive the entire thing:

QuotePlayers send emails to the list saying when they want to play and what they want to do. A normal scheduling email would be something like "I'd like to play Tuesday. I want to go back and look for that ruined monastery we heard out about past the Golden Hills. I know Mike wants to play, but we could use one or two more. Who's interested?"

I envy any GM who has players that are so interested in the game that they actually email about it between sessions! I also like the part where one group was filling in a map at the tavern, and another group wanted in on the action:

QuoteWhen people heard about other players finding the Abbots' study in a hidden room of the ruined monastery, or saw on the map that someone else had explored beyond Centaur Grove, it made them want to get out there and play too. Soon they were scheduling their own game sessions.

Good luck, and Let us know how it goes.

I think sandbox or a western marches style campaign can have story. I basically only ever run sandbox in any system I use and my main thing is to create a lot of NPC groups and factions and to have some sort of world event or two going on in the background. The players basically just live in that world and can choose to interact however they want. The story emerges from taking part in a small window of events that are happening along side the massive backdrop of the world moving forward.

For western marches specifically, one thing I haven't been able to try yet is allowing players to drop in and out. The tricky part of that is I think you really need a system that allows for a pretty diverse power range in the group and has good support for players owning alt characters. I don't think a lot of the more modern systems would work well with that. They kind of all assume a single long running group and no character restarts.

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;1099976West Marches is literally Diablo. Or even Olaf's trading post from Pathfinder Kingmaker.

I'm not a fan. I prefer Persistent World.  WM assumes one branch that everyone eventually folds back into, it's very instance-based.PW assumes multiple branches along the trunk that may never interact -- it's very character-based. WM works best for one-shots. PW works best for campaigns, especially long-term.

Respectfully, I think you're missing the ability of a WM game to evolve due to both the presence of an intelligent, creative, DM rather than a computer program, and player input.  A West Marches style campaign is a living world.  Diablo is frozen in amber.  A fun place to visit, but you can't really live there.

Quote from: Aglondir;1099983Welcome to the Site, Alamar!

I've always wanted to run a Western Marches campaign, but my players don't want sandbox; they actually demand stories. The ars ludi post you linked to is a classic. My favorite part is how the players drive the entire thing:



I envy any GM who has players that are so interested in the game that they actually email about it between sessions! I also like the part where one group was filling in a map at the tavern, and another group wanted in on the action:



Good luck, and Let us know how it goes.

Why thank you. I first heard about you guys through the RPGPundit's videos. So far you've all been wonderful and thanks again. But yea one issue I have is the insistence on player feedback I've never had a group that interested in playing it.

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;1099976West Marches is literally Diablo. Or even Olaf's trading post from Pathfinder Kingmaker.

I'm not a fan. I prefer Persistent World.  WM assumes one branch that everyone eventually folds back into, it's very instance-based.PW assumes multiple branches along the trunk that may never interact -- it's very character-based. WM works best for one-shots. PW works best for campaigns, especially long-term.

Well it is consistent in the aspects of the world itself at least from what I can gleam. There is a section of the blog posts I linked that talk about recycling the maps especially in regards to the wilderness areas. I think most of the changing or living aspects come from the monsters and such wandering about and taking up residence in old previously cleared dungeons. Also on a different note since you mentioned them, can you believe how expensive those old Kingmaker books have gotten? I only have the first two and was thinking about finishing off my collection but I'll need to stop paying rent to do that. Hundred bucks minimum. They were pretty good but I don't remember them being THAT good lol.

Here is a link to that part
http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/80/grand-experiments-west-marches-part-3-recycling/

I really don't see why you would need to "sell" your players on a "West Marches style" game.   The only buy in you really need is for D&D.  Do your world prep, which should be fairly minimal.  Establish a home base, some hooks, and a few nearby areas.  Let them roll characters and turn them loose.  You can give each player a "hook" or explain to them that they need to go find them but I think the main hurdle is passing the motivation on to them.  It isn't your job as a DM to make them go out and do stuff.  As players, they are responsible for motivating their characters.  If they are more interested in self-referential play acting, rather than going out and adventuring, you might need to have a chat about what kind of game you want to run.

One 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?

Quote from: Brendan;1100073I really don't see why you would need to "sell" your players on a "West Marches style" game.   The only buy in you really need is for D&D.  Do your world prep, which should be fairly minimal.  Establish a home base, some hooks, and a few nearby areas.  Let them roll characters and turn them loose.  You can give each player a "hook" or explain to them that they need to go find them but I think the main hurdle is passing the motivation on to them.  It isn't your job as a DM to make them go out and do stuff.  As players, they are responsible for motivating their characters.  If they are more interested in self-referential play acting, rather than going out and adventuring, you might need to have a chat about what kind of game you want to run.

The whole not having to sell them on the world thing is one of the things I like about it. As you said I can just sell them on the game itself, do some world prep and give them hooks to lure them out into it. In fact one reason why I posted this thread though it kinda escaped my mind at the time was applying this approach to other games like Star Wars d6. Do you guys think this approach would work with that Game?

Quote from: Brendan;1100047Respectfully, I think you're missing the ability of a WM game to evolve due to both the presence of an intelligent, creative, DM rather than a computer program, and player input.  A West Marches style campaign is a living world.  Diablo is frozen in amber.  A fun place to visit, but you can't really live there.

Diablo is killing the big demon at the bottom of the random dungeon. I don't see what it has to do with sandboxing at all; it's a single story with no branches.

Quote from: Alamar;1100079The whole not having to sell them on the world thing is one of the things I like about it. As you said I can just sell them on the game itself, do some world prep and give them hooks to lure them out into it. In fact one reason why I posted this thread though it kinda escaped my mind at the time was applying this approach to other games like Star Wars d6. Do you guys think this approach would work with that Game?

Well Star Wars d6 by default has a single story goal - Fight the Empire. Other SF games like Traveller, Stars Without Number, White Star etc would be easier for West Marches exploratory play I'd think. Although you could probably do something in the Unknown Regions after the defeat of the Empire, with the First Order (or similar) a lurking threat but the PCs focused on exploration/discovery. You'd need some kind of hyperspace route map.

Quote from: S'mon;1100124Diablo is killing the big demon at the bottom of the random dungeon. I don't see what it has to do with sandboxing at all; it's a single story with no branches.

Yeah, that was basically my point.  I don't see how West Marches can be compared to Diablo, except in the most superficial manner.  They're apples and oranges.

Quote from: Brendan;1100126Yeah, that was basically my point.  I don't see how West Marches can be compared to Diablo, except in the most superficial manner.  They're apples and oranges.

Agreed - I was disagreeing with Promethean.

Kingmaker was designed to have a sandboxy exploration element, but requires that the PCs have a goal of territory development; it's not a full sandbox, which would allow the PCs to set their own goals.

I've run multiple Diablo D&D campaigns. Tremendous fun!

On its face, Diablo I is a random dungeon involving one town where the goal is to slay the Major Demon.

However, its a town in a world, and people come and go from that town, many with agendas of their own, many representing various forces within the kingdom and many from without. Also, the dungeon and the town have a strange symbiosis of their own.

It's a great megadungeon because the PCs are on a very defined quest (kill Diablo), but there are many potential routes to that goal and tremendous opportunity for the DM to bring the town to life. There are also plenty of secrets among the townsfolks so while you are not hexcrawling per se, there is a LOT of exploration of the social landscape.

Quote from: Dracones;1100036IFor western marches specifically, one thing I haven't been able to try yet is allowing players to drop in and out. The tricky part of that is I think you really need a system that allows for a pretty diverse power range in the group and has good support for players owning alt characters.

Shadow Of The Demon Lord is what you want here.

Alternatively, my system in my sig. Or go for NWOD. Or even EOTE. Maybe SW? Power gap isn't as big as in traditional D20 systems.

In essence: stick with point-buy, dot allocation or group levelling.

Quote from: Brendan;1100047Respectfully, I think you're missing the ability of a WM game to evolve due to both the presence of an intelligent, creative, DM rather than a computer program, and player input.  A West Marches style campaign is a living world.  Diablo is frozen in amber.  A fun place to visit, but you can't really live there.

I'm not discounting such a GM but, like myself, they are so rare as to be completely discounted as even a supplementary argument.

WM and PW both inherit from LW. As I said, WM is instance-based. PW is character-based.

PW is more ambitious (i.e taxing) and involved (i.e more admin) than WM for that very reason. Each character is their own campaign (catchy slogan: The Character Is The Campaign). You're running a meta-campaign when doing PW. It also favors games that are also RP-heavy (which WM doesn't given it's approach)

Additionally, PW can be run GMless. You must have a GM for WM. With PW, you can tell the players to fuck off and go RP (while you do a cheeky bit of admin) and they can even do their rolls, coming to you as a judge if need be. Downside of this is you need to trust your players to behave like adults and put trust in them to handle things autonomously.

Another example: Adventurer's League is a WM game. The hub is the downtime aspect between games instead of some specific location.

Quote from: Alamar;1100070Well it is consistent in the aspects of the world itself at least from what I can gleam. There is a section of the blog posts I linked that talk about recycling the maps especially in regards to the wilderness areas. I think most of the changing or living aspects come from the monsters and such wandering about and taking up residence in old previously cleared dungeons. Also on a different note since you mentioned them, can you believe how expensive those old Kingmaker books have gotten? I only have the first two and was thinking about finishing off my collection but I'll need to stop paying rent to do that. Hundred bucks minimum. They were pretty good but I don't remember them being THAT good lol.

No need to link. Familiar with the material. WM became big because of Matt Colville. I remember when he first started out doing D&D history years ago. That series in itself is ancient history now, hahaha.

A word of advice on doing an LW game: treat your players as disposable. Because that's what they are in that type of game. If you can't handle the DIDO aspect, you're hopeless out-the-gate.

And yeah, Pathfinder's gonna do that. If it's a beloved game, price goes up. Getting to the point though where I can afford that markup and it not hurt at all -- trying to get that Real-Life Feat called "Minted" (interested in getting "Improved Minted" too but that might cost me an Alignment shift...

Quote from: Brendan;1100073If they are more interested in self-referential play acting, rather than going out and adventuring, you might need to have a chat about what kind of game you want to run.

See, this is where people get WM confused. As I said above, it's form of an LW. As is PW. WM should be called Instanced World (IW) as that would be more accurate. There is nothing mentioned in this thread so far that specifically makes it a WM other than what I've stated.

It's the same reason why in WM/IW you can have two parties do the same mission/raid and just restock the dungeon. You can't do that in PW -- once it's done, it's done.

Quote from: S'mon;1100135Agreed - I was disagreeing with Promethean.

Kingmaker was designed to have a sandboxy exploration element, but requires that the PCs have a goal of territory development; it's not a full sandbox, which would allow the PCs to set their own goals.

That's exactly why it's a WM/IW type. Setting player goals is an LW thing..

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;1100157No need to link. Familiar with the material. WM became big because of Matt Colville.
...
That's exactly why it's a WM/IW type. Setting player goals is an LW thing..

No, West Marches was big well before Colville. Colville talked about it because it was big, and had been for years.
I'm not sure of your terminology. I think what I do in my sandboxing is generally closer to your 'Persistent World'.  I did run Stonehell Dungeon for awhile hewing close to the West Marches model -  multiple PC groups, highly variable player base, no 'town game', trying to get players to make & use shared maps - but I'd say it was only semi-successful, and not as fun as the NPC-rich open world approach I think you mean by PW. Doing the latter now in Primeval Thule & going great guns. Can't really imagine most of the players roleplaying without me in the room though - got one thespian would do that, the rest expect a more trad GM/PC party dynamic.

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;1100157See, this is where people get WM confused. As I said above, it's form of an LW. As is PW. WM should be called Instanced World (IW) as that would be more accurate. There is nothing mentioned in this thread so far that specifically makes it a WM other than what I've stated.

It's the same reason why in WM/IW you can have two parties do the same mission/raid and just restock the dungeon. You can't do that in PW -- once it's done, it's done.

Promethean, you're redefining West Marches to be something very different than that what ~everyone else in the thread is talking about. (Your repeated use of abbreviations without introducing most of them doesn't help your intelligibility.)
West Marches is not instanced world. In west marches as originally formulated you very explicitly cannot have two parties do the same raid - once one does it, that's it, it's done. Some other opponents may later occupy the site, but it's not the same thing over again.

Where'd you get your definition? Try rereading the arsludi blog cited by the OP.

Quote from: Naburimannu;1100398(Your repeated use of abbreviations without introducing most of them doesn't help your intelligibility.)

Yeah. Promethean, I had no idea what you were trying to say. I gave up halfway through your post.

Quote from: S'mon;1099916It's a very famous approach which encouraged a renaissance in sandboxing. Personally I find it works best if the town base is also an interesting place with living NPCs, contra to Ben Robbins' approach.

Main thing, you need a good detailed wilderness map with encounter tables and seeded dungeons. It is not a low prep affair. There are lots of free resources out there though, eg Rob Conley's Blackmarsh and many good free adventure modules at basicfantasy.org

mmmm. Pretty much learned to play D&D this way. We, of course, started just with the Dungeons when we first started playing back in 1977. I remember getting out the dungeon for the first time and having the GM describe a simple small town where we were from, where we could go trade the loot we had found in the Dungeon. It was pretty much like Conan's  village from the first Conan movie. Of course we found scrolls, and spells, and magic items and tried to find a local wizard that could help us identify them, only to be told we would need to undertake a hazardous journey to the nearby "big city" where there was an ancient wizard who knew enough lore to be able to decipher the mysteries of the magic. My second character dies enroute to that city, cut in half by the pincers of a giant crab on a riverbank almost within sight of the town. About this time I became seriously addicted to our adrenalin-fueled gaming sessions.


My third character joined the party just in time to find a Dragon sleeping the it's lair, and we murderhoboed it viciously and ended up with magic items, jewelry, gems, and over forty-seven thousand silver, copper, and gold coins. Of course I had brought a backpack and three large sacks, and we had to split the party with a couple of us remaining to guard the treasure in the Dragons lair, and the rest of the party making a epic expeditionary trek to get our new found loot back to town. We bought a wagon and horses and hired a bunch of hierlings to help guard our newfound wealth, and then returned to town and immediately began building our own stronghold outside of town.

We then located a super deep ancient Dwarven dungeon, with these seemingly endless spiral staircases cut deep into some nameless mountain and suffered our first TPK as our murderhobo party became hopelessly lost in the dungeon and were slain by vile creatures. It was only a matter of time before we ran out of food and starved though, so in retrospect, a quick heroic death was much better than the slow starving death of a coward. LoL.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1099965I don't determine where the PCs go. They do it all because its all about saving Zeus. So every session is about covering territory, learning from NPCs, gaining info by doing favors for NPCs and finding clues to piece together. And yelling SHIELD WALL!!!

Mazes & Minotaurs is a FREE RPG and its got a cool island generator and I didn't do much more than roll dice to create the archipeligo and then seeded various places with cool NPCs and imagined 3 different ways to achieve the cure for Zeus (each with its own nasty price). Also, I made 3 conflicting stories about how Zeus got poisoned so I'm not even sure which one is true or what god/goddess did it! I'll let that emerge in the actual play.  
http://mazesandminotaurs.free.fr/

BTW, Kevin Crawford of Sine Nomine Publishing offers kickass tools for sandboxing. He wrote Stars without Number (scifi), Silent Legions (horror), Godbound (epic fantasy), Scarlet Heroes (fantasy), and Other Dust (post-apoc) and half of each book is mostly sandboxing tools.

Here's his free fantasy RPG.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/144651/Exemplars--Eidolons

Now I think I want to try Mazes and Minotaurs, and I'd also like a look at Other Dust.

West Marches is a variant on an Open Table, the only difference is, the players decide what they are doing and when, and you have an idea who, so it's easier to prep for, then an Open Table where whoever shows up at the set time decides what to do when they get there.  Of course if the Open Table is based on a mega dungeon, that makes things a little easier.

Like a lot of cool “new” things, it’s just taking stuff people have done for years and putting a brand name on it.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1100462mmmm. Pretty much learned to play D&D this way. We, of course, started just with the Dungeons when we first started playing back in 1977. I remember getting out the dungeon for the first time and having the GM describe a simple small town where we were from, where we could go trade the loot we had found in the Dungeon. It was pretty much like Conan's  village from the first Conan movie. Of course we found scrolls, and spells, and magic items and tried to find a local wizard that could help us identify them, only to be told we would need to undertake a hazardous journey to the nearby "big city" where there was an ancient wizard who knew enough lore to be able to decipher the mysteries of the magic. My second character dies enroute to that city, cut in half by the pincers of a giant crab on a riverbank almost within sight of the town. About this time I became seriously addicted to our adrenalin-fueled gaming sessions.


My third character joined the party just in time to find a Dragon sleeping the it's lair, and we murderhoboed it viciously and ended up with magic items, jewelry, gems, and over forty-seven thousand silver, copper, and gold coins. Of course I had brought a backpack and three large sacks, and we had to split the party with a couple of us remaining to guard the treasure in the Dragons lair, and the rest of the party making a epic expeditionary trek to get our new found loot back to town. We bought a wagon and horses and hired a bunch of hierlings to help guard our newfound wealth, and then returned to town and immediately began building our own stronghold outside of town.

We then located a super deep ancient Dwarven dungeon, with these seemingly endless spiral staircases cut deep into some nameless mountain and suffered our first TPK as our murderhobo party became hopelessly lost in the dungeon and were slain by vile creatures. It was only a matter of time before we ran out of food and starved though, so in retrospect, a quick heroic death was much better than the slow starving death of a coward. LoL.

Sounds fun! :cool:

Robbins' approach has some notable characteristics such as the lack of any 'town game', the multi-party variable player setup, the shared map developed by the players (notionally at 'the inn'), and the emphasis on small scale wilderness exploration and small dungeons.

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;1100157Shadow Of The Demon Lord is what you want here.

I bought that ages ago but never really dug into it. I may have to give it a second look. I'm been chewing over wanting to maybe use ACKs for this for ages, but I tend to prep way more for an open campaign like this(design 5x the content and have players only go down 1 path of content/world), and ACKs is already design heavy so that was putting me off.

Quote from: Brendan;1100047Respectfully, I think you're missing the ability of a WM game to evolve due to both the presence of an intelligent, creative, DM rather than a computer program, and player input.  A West Marches style campaign is a living world.  Diablo is frozen in amber.  A fun place to visit, but you can't really live there.

Yeah, there's no reason why a sandoxoy game can't have story seeds and dynamic NPCs built into it, and then advanced and improvised by the GM as the game progresses.

It seems to me that primary appeal of a West Marches campaign is for a group that has trouble meeting regularly. My group of busy guys with families is fortunate to get even two sessions a month, with once a month more common. That's how hard it is to get DM + at least 4/5 players together. If the DM has the time, I could see a West Marches campaign that plays say three times a month, with each player managing 1, 2, or 3 sessions. That sort of thing is a big PITA to run in a storydriven or a persistent dungeon campaign. You need to be able re-set back to the home base at the end of every session.

Quote from: S'mon;1100310No, West Marches was big well before Colville. Colville talked about it because it was big, and had been for years.

You're not understanding: The modern generation (arguably equal to or exceeding the size of 3e base) of D&D know about WM/IW due to Colville. For instance, D&D 5e has a massive base on Discord and the vast majority who mention WM/IW inevitably link back to the Colville video. The rest link to the blog or just heard it from a friend.

Quote from: S'mon;1100310I'm not sure of your terminology.

Nah, it's just 'cause you have no reference -- you haven't seen it in action (words clearly fail me so far), same as some of the others in this thread. You should have shown up when I was still doing the club in London! We certainly had more than the odd Gen-Xer in our games. :; (in fact, we had at least a couple of baby boomers over the years... fuck me...)

Quote from: S'mon;1100310the NPC-rich open world approach I think you mean by PW.

Quote from: S'mon;1100310Can't really imagine most of the players roleplaying without me in the room though - got one thespian would do that, the rest expect a more trad GM/PC party dynamic.

You don't even need NPCs like that. You just need a healthy number of PCs which are the more "active" type of player. As I said, if you haven't seen it in action, you're not gonna be able to "see it". Although saying that, I always have "large" games (10-ish PCs avg) which are DIDO (drop-in/drop-out) and, as I advised above, treat players as more-or-less disposable (at least their first couple times at my table) so I can do PWs with little trouble as its a natural fit.

Haha, now you mention thespian, certainly had a handful of actors over the years in my games. But I even had a lawyer who did a strikingly good portrayal of his character's descent into darkness (actually unnerved the shit out of another player who was like "that was too good") -- great guy.

Quote from: Naburimannu;1100398Promethean, you're redefining West Marches to be something very different than that what ~everyone else in the thread is talking about. (Your repeated use of abbreviations without introducing most of them doesn't help your intelligibility.)
West Marches is not instanced world. In west marches as originally formulated you very explicitly cannot have two parties do the same raid - once one does it, that's it, it's done. Some other opponents may later occupy the site, but it's not the same thing over again.

Where'd you get your definition? Try rereading the arsludi blog cited by the OP.

No I'm not. I'm simply cutting through to how it works in practice. Even Kruger below mentioned it being a natural fit for Open Table games (and, if I read right, considers it a essentially a raid factory not dissimilar to my own perspective). And Spin straight analogized Instanced World to a megadungeon same as I did (but some posters got caught up in the Diablo ref, didn't pair it down from that).

Each abbreviation I use I longform, somewhere in the post (the first time its used or where relevant).

Most everyone in this thread isn't talking about WM/IW purely -- they're talking about sandboxes in general, what they'd "hope" IW plays out as and then mix-n-match games with varying levels of success. Which is fine (and in fact, exactly how a forum discussion should go down) but claiming otherwise when only so far myself and 2-3 others are even trying a little bit to more cleanly define the reality of the different formats and "get into the weeds" is a little disingenuous.

Again, the definition from the blog does not reflect the modern reality. WM certainly hews closer to my IW reconciliation when executed in real-life.

Quote from: Dracones;1100570I bought that ages ago but never really dug into it. I may have to give it a second look.

Go. Host. It. The hell are you doing wasting the gold sitting on your shelf! :eek:

Quote from: Haffrung;1100584Yeah, there's no reason why a sandoxoy game can't have story seeds and dynamic NPCs built into it, and then advanced and improvised by the GM as the game progresses.

It seems to me that primary appeal of a West Marches campaign is for a group that has trouble meeting regularly. [...] You need to be able re-set back to the home base at the end of every session.

No-ones saying you literally can't have an ongoing story in a sandbox. What I am saying is that IW doesn't fit with an ongoing narrative for the very reason you just mentioned: "trouble meeting regularly". Story is not the main strength, it's not even a consideration because it's not the point. And 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.

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.