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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fortuitous" data-source="post: 7511130" data-attributes="member: 6786950">For those unfamiliar with a West Marches game, it's a style of sort of shared world, open pool approach to games. You get a group of players and GMs together, make a shared area map - say a chunk of space, or a planet, or for a fantasy game it might just be "the borderlands" - either way, it's mostly unexplored. You create a shared hub area - a town or whatever the players can be from - and then any GM can run for any group of people who have time. It's supposed to be a way of helping people who don't have fixed schedules get a chance to play, as well as meet new people and get their feet wet GMing.In theory, the way it works is like this - the hub has a few rumors to start with. A player says "Hey, I want to check out that old industrial moon on square x-23. I'm available Thursday at 4pm for about 5 hours - anyone else able to make it?" And they get together a few players, a GM throws in an offers to run it. Thursday, they run and find out it was a moon where they made prizes that went into boxes of pancake and waffle mix. Unfortunately, the industrial workers were abandoned when the company up and fled, and now the planet is a hotbed of a fanatical warrior religion called the Jemima's Witnesses who are stuck there. One of the players writes up a report, or a rumor for the rest of the Hub. A week later, a different player says "hey, I want to contact the advertising department for the pancake company - I think this could be the basis of a intergalactic bloodsports TV show funded by the parent company." A different GM from the first decides to run with it - he says he's available Sunday in the morning. They get a different group together, maybe there's a player from the first group, maybe not - and they go do the mission for the advertising company to set up a bloodsports arena on the old abandoned moon called Pancake Wars. They write up a report, or some rumors. This continues on - the Pancake Wars plot line might have a few different GMs running for it, it might intercept other events going on in the area, might feature completely different teams.In theory, you end up with a pool of players and GMs who are running for each other, exploring this shared map and shared world, doing one-off missions that build into greater shared stories. It can be really cool when it works - the problem is that you can end up with a lot of people saying "boy that sounds cool" joining the discord, then just lurking there so you have 50+ who have never said a word, never tried to play a game, and give the whole place an intimidating ghost town feel. You can also end up with a GM who ends up only playing with a single group of players for the most part. It's the type of thing that can be really awesome - but you have to have active players who are willing to help avoid some of the pitfalls.</blockquote>

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