The West Marches as a PbP: possible?

[Herobizkit]

I keep coming back to the series of blog posts about The West Marches.

In short, a DM decided to run a pure sandbox campaign using the "blank hex" style adventure coming up in PF's Kingmaker. He ran multiple PC's through multiple quests, mixing up the groups, planning adventures for players who decided that they wanted to play. In a way, he ran several groups of players against each other, exploring random hexes and discovering the map in "real time".

Here's the summary from the first page of the blog:

West Marches was a game I ran for a little over two years. It was designed to be pretty much the diametric opposite of the normal weekly game:

1) There was no regular time: every session was scheduled by the players on the fly.

2) There was no regular party: each game had different players drawn from a pool of around 10-14 people.

3) There was no regular plot: The players decided where to go and what to do. It was a sandbox game in the sense that’s now used to describe video games like Grand Theft Auto, minus the missions. There was no mysterious old man sending them on quests. No overarching plot, just an overarching environment.

My motivation in setting things up this way was to overcome player apathy and mindless “plot following” by putting the players in charge of both scheduling and what they did in-game.

A secondary goal was to make the schedule adapt to the complex lives of adults. Ad hoc scheduling and a flexible roster meant (ideally) people got to play when they could but didn’t hold up the game for everyone else if they couldn’t. If you can play once a week, that’s fine. If you can only play once a month, that’s fine too.

Letting the players decide where to go was also intended to nip DM procrastination (aka my procrastination) in the bud. Normally a DM just puts off running a game until he’s 100% ready (which is sometimes never), but with this arrangement if some players wanted to raid the Sunken Fort this weekend I had to hurry up and finish it. It was gaming on-demand, so the players created deadlines for me.

This would be an interesting endeavour in a PbP format - it's sort of what they're doing with Living EnWorld et al around here, except each adventure is tailored for the current group rather than having everything pre-set with multiple groups running the same adventure at the same time.

Thoughts?

 

[HolyMan]

I'm all kinds of confused, (nothing new ) so let me see what I get out of this.

1) You have everyone that wants to make a character.
2) They post what they are doing in the world and they need not meet up with any other players.
3) The world is one generic sandbox that gets molded as needed.
4) There is no grand quest, no end of the world coming. All the PC's do is go about there daily lives and "fall" into adventures.
5) What game system is best to handle this sort of play? Most I would think but asking the best, like top two.

Hmm.. I think it is a sound way to run a pbp, but your rules would need to be laid out and everyone should know that if something unbalanced comes up as DM you can nicks it. Loop holes abound.

Mark me down as interested I could use a game where I need not be a sword swinging hero. But an everyday man just trying to survive.

HM

 

[WarShrike]

I would also be intrested in this.

I run my table-top campaigns this way myself. There are missions or long term goals, but how the characters go about accomplishing them is totally up to them.

 

[Walking Dad]

Really cool, would like to play it, but who will DM something like this? I sounds of the workload of 4 regular games!

BTW: I think both Pathfinder and 4e could be used as a system.

 

[GlassEye]

I think this is a great idea. The blog is rather vague on the mechanics of how he worked all this out and there would likely need to be different changes made for the pbp style and limitations. He seems to rely heavily on random encounter tables (as does the Kingmaker AP, so far) and a lot of advice I've received concerning running a pbp suggests that one should limit combat encounters as much as possible. Doing this might alter the wilderness exploration feel too much, though. I'm just not sure. Maybe if the random encounters were given a strong purpose almost as if they are random quest-encounters. Again, just not sure.

Another issue would be the length of time it would take to get through a quest/exploration foray in pbp. The same characters would likely end up grouping together all the time unless they spent a lot of RL time having their pc's sitting around in the home base.

Regardless, I think it could be an awesome game and would be willing to give it a shot if someone decided to give it a try.

 

[Antithetist]

Seems like something that would require a really engaged and active bunch of players to keep it rolling, (it'd be particularly easy to just slack on posting and let it calcify, which is always a worry in any PbP game) as well as a dedicated DM. It'd also be important for everyone to be on the same wavelength and willing to work with each other's ideas, I guess, since it sounds like it'd be moving closer to collaborative storytelling than a regular D&D game.

All that said, it sounds like a neat idea.

 

[Vertexx69]

I have to say I'm in complete agreement with Ant here. Player driven games are really time intensive in the first place, and require an obsessive amount of creativity from all involved. When we can't even get most players to post 2 times a week here, let alone DMs, I don't see PbP (a format for people with no time in the first place) being the right pacing for this type of game. We just tried a player driven hex-explore game a few weeks ago and the DM lost interest after a week, even though all the players were really active.

 

[HolyMan]

What if...

1) Everyone made a character.
2) We have one big blank map (wilderness/forest) with everyone starting in a random hex.
3) We have a homemade random encounter chart.
4) People make a move when they wish, and roll on the chart.
5) DM/Co-DM runs encounter could be RP/Combat/Empty/Trap/special
6) While exploring "the forest" they can encounter other players and form parties.
7) If someone close by is in combat, another character could rush in to help.(Listen check)

Just brainstorming guys. And it's late so my mind is running amok.

HM

 

[Walking Dad]

I like it. I would propose Pathfinder as the system, so we could borrow from the sandbox ideas in the Kingmaker AP.

It also has Encounter Tables and Monsters listed by Terrain. Perhaps some restriction for races and classes. The 'human vs nature' theme is a bit hard with a druid

 

[Antithetist]

We just tried a player driven hex-explore game a few weeks ago and the DM lost interest after a week, even though all the players were really active.

Indeed, this kind of thing is very common, but I don't think it's impossible to find dedicated people in a PbP environment. I'm reminded of those big (20+ player) Greyhawk war RPs that went on a few years back here. As I recall, those were massively player driven, with each person taking on the role of a major power in the Greyhawk world and waging war, forging alliances, etc. There was a homebrewed tactical system for mustering troops, fighting battles, casting big ritual spells etc, but basically the whole thing relied on the dedication of the players plotting against each other, making plans and providing the whole impetus for the game. I'm sure that some dropped out or went inactive along the way, but basically the games seemed to be hugely successful.

So when I say that this West Marches-inspired game would need dedicated players, that is indeed a tall order, but I don't think it's hopeless.

Still, so far the unanswered question is, who will DM?