This document holds all my noodlings on what is required to create a “Western Marches” type D&D 5e game shared between the various groups of players I’ve collected over the past 18 months. It should allow significant “Ad Hoc” play and cross-pollination of players.

• There is no regular time
• There is no regular party
• There is no regular plot

Rule One: You are an adventurer because you feel a strong call in your bones to adventure. The boredom of a calm life doesn't appeal to you – you are driven to leave behind the safety of civilization and explore the wilds to make your name. Regardless of what drives you, you are driven. You choose where to go and what to do. There will be a handful of obvious choices, but you don't by any means need to take them. The adventure is in your hands.

The West Marches charter is that games only happen when the players decide to do something — the players initiate all adventures and it’s their job to schedule games and organize an adventuring party once they decide where to go.

Links:

• https://community.itmejp.com/t/the-west-marches-stevens-resources/478
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NW9mSaRCnLA&list=PLAmPx8nWedFXj-RMyHdOfK_-bDPqf1WWL&index=2&t=0s
• https://knightssemantic.wordpress.com/2016/06/01/the-west-marches-a-style-of-dd-campaign-for-large-groups/
• http://www.kenthedm.com/blog/2017/7/22/west-marches-repository
• http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/78/grand-experiments-west-marches/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/6wztlm/how_to_make_a_5e_west_marches_campaign/
• Hack Attack Document
• Escaping the Dungeon
• Terminology

We will use a GM committee to lay out the history and the rough map

I suppose this map is now just Pennsylvania.

Map, made up of Regions, each with its own Almanac which describes things like climate and geomorphs, made up of Areas, which is a piece of geography such as a hunting ground or island, Steadings which are settlements of humanoids (evil or good), and Sites which are points of interest including ruins and lairs.

Encounters which are made up of Discoveries and Dangers

Greater emphasis on creative problem solving rather than fighting

Several GMs

Each prepares their own “civilization” starting point - village, city, keep, etc

Each prepares a few early regions

The farther regions are more shared zones, and require GM collaboration

What miniatures do we all have available?

Don’t DO A LOT OF WORK - rely on the framework and the timeline

Create civilization, regions, rumors, and lore

Each of us will have NPCs

Add a chip/inspiration system to allow easy escapes / auto make death saves

Players may write down a question about their character to answer. At a long rest, do a scene to try to answer that question. If the table agrees it is answered, add to the inspiration pool. Overland travel http://theangrygm.com/getting-there-is-half-the-fun/ Unique Backgrounds Use Warhammer Fantasy career as backgrounds instead?

For just showing up and playing

For creating a one-page character backstory

For updating your PC stats and goals on the wiki

For writing an in-character log for the session

For bringing up a goal for exploration?

“Leading” an expedition?

Dividing up loot? Building a charter?

For helping another PC achieve their expedition goal

For finding something while exploring?

For discovering something cool?

For bringing treasure home from the wilderness

For writing content in the wiki

For being the GM

For sponsoring lower level PCs to adventure!

For building a stronghold and ruling?

For engaging in a scene with another PC

NOT COMBAT - The reward shouldn’t be just killing things

Maybe there is an XP “bucket” that all players contribute to and withdraw from?

Maybe the PARTY has a level?

You kill some goblins, but they are carrying dwarven-crafted weapons carved with symbols of a forgotten clan. Hmm, sounds like there’s an abandoned dwarven lair somewhere in this region. If you deciphered the runes in the depths of the dwarven mines, you could learn that the exiles established another hidden fortress in the valleys to the north. Rumors at town Wanted posters There were other kinds of bounties that cropped up in town: the local priesthood is paying gold for water collected from the Opal Caves to treat a spreading fever, or an apothecary who pays for certain herbs growing in the Frog Marches. These weren’t plots, just simple excuses to go out and maybe earn some guaranteed money if you found what you were looking for and made it back.

So a lot of the day-to-day organizing is going to be the same.

How sessions are scheduled and any mustering rules (how often a player can request a session, how session parties are formed). I recommend setting up a warhorn event for facilitating DM and player sign ups.

How campaign calendar/narrative is managed. Since you are doing a smaller scale shared campaign, you have more power over the overall narrative. You may give each PC a certain amount of Time Units to use in each Time Period (e.g. 28 days in 1 month that can be used for adventuring and/or downtime activities), or you may just say, “Each inactive PC accumulates Downtime while the active PCs go off and adventure.” Or something in the middle would be using narrative milestones where you just advance the calendar as necessary.

Rules for rewards. Specifically, rules for how magic items are handed out.

Downtime activity rules. I guarantee someone will want to make scrolls or potions, and probably even permanent magic items.

DM rules. Assuming you are splitting DMing duties. What DMs are empowered to do (such as, “How many magic items can they place?”).

What kind of tools are there for DMs who want to create a West Marches campaign? Is it done through a wiki page or facebook or something? What kind of things need to be on the random encounter tables, and do players get to see the encounter tables? Thanks for the help!

I think the DMG has some okay encounter tables.

My main recommendation is to set aside encounter balancing. I read a great article recently that suggested not trying to balance encounters against the party. Instead, create a thematic locale with thematically appropriate monsters to populate it, then figure out the relative challenge to the party and inform your PCs when they hear about it (and especially if they manage to sneak up to spy on it).

This works great for West Marches because (in theory) you are creating a world that gets more dangerous as things get further away. That means that any location you create should fit some distance out based on how dangerous it is. So if you just create a bunch of locations and start slotting them into the world.