West Marches Campaigns, Explained

After seeing Matt Colville's video on west marches style games. I ran a "west sails" campaign. I took all of my players across three games I was running and threw them on a pirate ship. It was the best thing ever. I used the ship as the means of conveyance and home base. I sort of thought of it as star trek dnd. The sessions typically started and ended on the ship whenever possible, whoever wasn't present stayed with the boat and the party that was present was the away team. We used discord for communication and the party kinda assigned themselves roles for keeping maps, writing logs and managing their inventory. Worked brilliantly, the party bought into the gimmick of being a pirate crew, including electing a captain that was the person who "called the shots" to me the DM. Would highly recommend.

I've run this two years ago and it remains one of the best mastering experiences of my life. 20 players interacting with eachother, creating rumors about dungeons they could not defeat and hoardes they did not loot. High level characters offering their services to the highest bidder. One player even wrote a monster manual about the creatures of my setting. And all of it because it was beneficial to them , not to me ! It's the only time I had players planning their incursions in the wild and thinking about party composition, because they knew they weren't the heroes, and they could very well arrive to a dungeon only to find out it had already been looted. Great stuff, epic and immersive (it's a lot of work compared to a normal campaign, and it's very different)

A friend is currently running several campaigns like this, all taking part in the same world in different areas. Depending on who shows up, we play whatever group of characters matches up. So we each have 3-4 characters and while casual, we are able to influence the world as a whole, which will affect and interplay with the other groups of characters. It's incredibly interesting to play characters that are slightly antagonistic or downright opposed to others in the various groups. It's chaotic, fun, casual, and flexible. Highly recommend. Thanks Baron for the introduction to this concept some players may not have known about!

I started a West Marches game in 2019 but it's changed as time has gone on. Nobody really liked having to wrap everything up in one session, as it felt limiting. So we started doing adventures over two or three instead. Now we have a group who are permanently off in one section of the map with a second base of operations, and two other groups who are spending more time nearer home base. The characters do still mix, but less often now. The main thing is everyone's still having fun. It's been interesting seeing how things have developed.

West Marches is how the original games used to be played. Arneson's Blackmoor, and Gygax's Greyhawk both were this style. I love it when new generations find old ways of playing again as they get deeper into the hobby.

The 1e method of 1gp = 1 XP is a great way to get players excited to count their own gold.

You can still have large dungeons in a West Marches campaign; they will just take several forays to fully explore. This also encourages good mapping and note taking, and sharing of information between players. Ben Robins even describes placing certain obstacles that cannot be passed until the PCs have reached higher levels and gained access to better spells or abilities, or placing clues in one dungeon that reveal the existence of a secret section in a previously explored dungeon. Dungeons can also become "re-stocked" when new monsters move in. In these ways you can actually re-use dungeons and other locations multiple times.

Literally just created a Discord server for a West Marches game and this video answered SO many unanswered questions myself and my fellow GM's had. Thanks again for the great content!

I'm getting ready to (hopefully) run a campaign for the Mothership RPG (horror in space, a la Alien or Event Horizon). But this video just gave me an idea I may need to ponder; a 'West Marches' on a colossal, abandoned space station, with the town being replaced by a large exploration ship with a large crew. Said crew would be the pool of player characters to draw from. Forays onto the station would necessarily be time restricted (space suits with limited air supplies) and dangerous, requiring frequent returns to the... ahem Mothership.

Yep. This is what I do. Episodic. Return to base after every session. Everyone is part of the same adventure co. We have 10 players, the biggest game was with 6. We rotate DM as well.

I've been on a West Marches D&D server for about 2 years now and honestly it is the funnest time that I have had in D&D

This is great, wish I found the video sooner. I have been basically doing just this for the purposes of introducing new players to 5e, as it allows for a simple narrative and the players to feel free to swap out characters. I am running a campaign with family, and plan on running one with friends soon that will hopefully tie together unbeknownst of them all, and this style is working great for it. Glad I can use this video as reference.

We always played this way in the 70s. Gamers would show up on game night, and whoever showed up took part in the adventure (which was set in the same campaign world, week after week). Sandbox campaigns lend themselves readily to this type of play. As William Dvorak says below: "I love it when new generations find old ways of playing again as they get deeper into the hobby." A great example of history repeating itself.

Excellent stuff. It is certainly a fun style of game, though it does require somewhat proactive players. I've found many players are more casual and just like to show up at the table and get to whatever the DM has planned. But, when you DO get the players who are vested and down with the full agency that the form allows for, the game can be magical. I agree with Keep on the Borderlands being a prime example, I love that module - it's such a great way for DMs to learn how to sandbox, but still has lots to offer for experienced groups and DMs as well.

West Marches is epic. I don’t think you mentioned that some West Marches campaigns can be so large that there are multiple DM’s running games in the same world at the same time. Super cool concept. Want to start a West Marches campaign Baron?

Another thing to mix in to a west marches game is the idea of a rotating DM. This requires more coordination among those who are running games, both for lore and mechanical consistency, but allows DMs to also participate as players, as well as for the group to play even if one of the DMs is busy. It also means that it's not just one person who is on the hook for designing all of the dungeons, npcs and explorable areas. I was lucky enough to be able to do this with a group of 5 dms and 15 players, and it lasted for about a year. During that time, we would average 3 sessions a week.

I've ran 3 of these. I have some resources I can share around organizing a discord and how to track time in/out of sessions. Ultimately they're fun and would do another in a heartbeat, but I hate the one drawback: The one shot adventure nature of sessions really dampens characterization and depth. Roleplaying around a swampy campsite threatens our limited time to accomplish our sessions goal of the treasure of the frog lord.

I'm digging this man's suit game.

Great summary! Thanks.

I been running a hex crawl west marches game for my discord, I really love the style of people coming and going and having done all my prep work at the start. Now it’s on them to just explore the world.