I'm intending to try and run a West Marches style campaign for my next game. The wilderness map is coming together, I've got a bunch of interesting areas/locations with their own character/danger level, and I'm reasonably confident that I understand the mechanics of running it. There's one element that I could use some suggestions/input on, however: getting back to town. As with all West Marches campaigns, the idea will be that each session is a 1-shot, and characters have to get back to the town by the end of the session unless there's a clear commitment from everyone for a follow-up session within the next week.
As far as getting out of the dungeon itself is concerned, I'm intending to steal this from the Alexandrian - which I think does the job well. The problem is the wilderness journey back to town. Alexander is vague about this and says that, if need be, he'd do this by PbEm between sessions. I'm pretty sure that's not going to work for my group and it's not really the vibe I'm going for anyway.
I intend for the wilderness to be frightening and dangerous, with non-trivial encounters for the unwary. Handing waving the return to town would seem to undermine this atmosphere; on the other hand, however, I'm worried that having to do 2 wilderness journeys in a session is going to eat far too much time out of what may often be relatively short sessions - I can see it ending up as a rushed, anti-climactic end to a game - if it even happens at all.
At higher levels I think this stuff will sort itself out automatically - teleportation (either by spell or some sort of artifact/portal network), mounts, etc will probably render return journeys a non-event; but again, I'm reluctant to trivialise travel in the wilderness right from the beginning of the game by e.g. providing an auto-teleport back to town.
What do people think? Should I just suck it up and gloss over the return journey in the name of better pacing? Alternatively, if I do require players to account for how they get back to town, what should I do if they get out of the dungeon but run out of session time to do the wilderness journey? I guess I could have an "Escaping the Wilderness" table, but that seems pretty harsh on top of the dungeon version. Or I could do what I've seen suggested elsewhere and impose a GP / mile / level "tax" on an automated return - but it's not exactly an exciting mechanic and if it's enough to hurt I think that's just going to feel like a slap in the face for the players after they've managed to escape the dungeon....
As far as getting out of the dungeon itself is concerned, I'm intending to steal this from the Alexandrian - which I think does the job well. The problem is the wilderness journey back to town. Alexander is vague about this and says that, if need be, he'd do this by PbEm between sessions. I'm pretty sure that's not going to work for my group and it's not really the vibe I'm going for anyway.
I intend for the wilderness to be frightening and dangerous, with non-trivial encounters for the unwary. Handing waving the return to town would seem to undermine this atmosphere; on the other hand, however, I'm worried that having to do 2 wilderness journeys in a session is going to eat far too much time out of what may often be relatively short sessions - I can see it ending up as a rushed, anti-climactic end to a game - if it even happens at all.
At higher levels I think this stuff will sort itself out automatically - teleportation (either by spell or some sort of artifact/portal network), mounts, etc will probably render return journeys a non-event; but again, I'm reluctant to trivialise travel in the wilderness right from the beginning of the game by e.g. providing an auto-teleport back to town.
What do people think? Should I just suck it up and gloss over the return journey in the name of better pacing? Alternatively, if I do require players to account for how they get back to town, what should I do if they get out of the dungeon but run out of session time to do the wilderness journey? I guess I could have an "Escaping the Wilderness" table, but that seems pretty harsh on top of the dungeon version. Or I could do what I've seen suggested elsewhere and impose a GP / mile / level "tax" on an automated return - but it's not exactly an exciting mechanic and if it's enough to hurt I think that's just going to feel like a slap in the face for the players after they've managed to escape the dungeon....