D&D 5E West Marches: Handling Return to Town

[Obreon]

Some of these suggestions are probably better suited to a town-and-a-dungeon game than a West Marches-style hexcrawl. Our solution back in the day was "keep playing until the PCs get back to town."

I thought about doing something like this, but it does run counter to one of the primary conceits of the West Marches game. I've got quite a few potential players for this but they're all casual gamers and attendance is likely to be patchy. I think it's fairly essential that we can have a different party for each session, and the "keep playing" or "basecamps" options prevent that.

I'd go with an "escaping the wilderness" table and just make it more generous than the "escaping the dungeon" one."

Yeah, perhaps this is the answer. As you say it does make sense for the return to be a bit easier, both in terms of the fiction (you know the way and the dangers) and narrative pacing (we've already told this story the other way round!)

Wilderness exploration -> a cursed fog either inhabited by monsters or causing madness, visible on the horizon
-> roving army of gnolls/orcs/goblins that could descend at any time, war-horns can be heard minutes before they appear

Cool, I like these ideas. I mean, at its simplest it could just be that being out in the wilderness at night is a *really* bad idea...but the warhorns thing is cool too

I don't think so. We would do 7 pm to 11 pm at which point the horn would sound. Then we have that last hour to wrap up. An hour is plenty of time to resolve one random encounter plus end of session discussion. Sometimes they'd even fish for a random encounter if they were close to leveling (go slow pace, track to find trouble, etc.).

So yeah, the issue I have is that we have some players who don't get back from work until 8pm; we have a 1 hour time zone spread, and we have some for whom a 12pm finish is pushing it a little. In the worst case we could easily end up with a 2.5 hour session - which means that it's going to have to be pretty fast-paced to be worthwhile. In true WM style, all housekeeping/downtime is done between sessions, and I'm anticipating doing a fair amount of quite aggressive narrative framing to keep us in the action, and a "decision countdown" in combat to prevent us getting bogged down. Even so, two fully-played wilderness travel segments may end up being too much....

 

[Obreon]

Thinking about this a bit more based on responses so far, 'm wondering along these lines:

• The wilderness is subject to some sort of terrible disturbances (meteorological? magical? other?) at short but irregular intervals - every few days normally
• The arrival of such disturbances can be predicted by some sort of indicator device - a barometer or a magical item that glows or somesuch). PCs have easy access to these somehow
• The device begins to glow/vibrate/sing/whatever at an appropriate interval of real time before the end of the session. Players know that they have a few hours to get out of the dungeon and start heading home before the wilderness becomes deadly

The questions this raises are:

1. How does the [whatever] stop at the frontier? The frontier in this game is a "soft" one consisting of a range of hills which separate the civilised corner of the continent from the howling wilderness beyond. The home town sits in a wide river valley that cuts through the middle of the hills and acts as a sort of guard post
2. How do those that live in the wilderness survive? There are lots of monsters but there are also beasts, savage tribesmen and the odd outpost of crazies/cultists/etc
3. Does the [whatever] affect underground? If not, what in the fiction would make it impractical for the PCs to sit it out in the dungeon somehow - particularly if it's a relatively small dungeon, they've cleared most of it and they have a defensible position?

I have a few vague concepts kicking around in my head but I'd be interested to hear if anyone has any cool ideas

 

[Valmarius]

The questions this raises are:

1. How does the [whatever] stop at the frontier? The frontier in this game is a "soft" one consisting of a range of hills which separate the civilised corner of the continent from the howling wilderness beyond. The home town sits in a wide river valley that cuts through the middle of the hills and acts as a sort of guard post
2. How do those that live in the wilderness survive? There are lots of monsters but there are also beasts, savage tribesmen and the odd outpost of crazies/cultists/etc
3. Does the [whatever] affect underground? If not, what in the fiction would make it impractical for the PCs to sit it out in the dungeon somehow - particularly if it's a relatively small dungeon, they've cleared most of it and they have a defensible position?

I have a few vague concepts kicking around in my head but I'd be interested to hear if anyone has any cool ideas

1. I've been working on a similar setup where a city is built within the bounds of a feywall. The crumbled ruins of an ancient wall split through the hills, and while it is now broken in so many sections as to make the physical wall useless, powerful enchantments are said to still keep out dark spirits.
2. If the [threat] is something malicious and sentient, people surviving in the wilderness could have given themselves over to worshiping the [threat].

How does this sound?
The wilderness area is bound to the Unseelie court through ancient fey treaties and at certain times, when the planes are close, the dark queen of the fey steps through to the material realm. She has a knack for sensing and hunting down intelligent creatures that she can toy with, which spells madness or death for any mortal. Those crazed cultists and primal tribes who live out in the wilderness are granted amnesty from the queen, so long as they offer her tribute. The old Feywall marks the border that was set by the treaty, and despite her power the queen will not dare cross it.

The cool thing here is that cultists and tribes can have gathered up treasure hoards or prisoners as their tribute, giving the PCs something to liberate. Also, there are plenty of signs you could use for the coming of the queen, but the amount of time until she finds the party is vague. Once again, it's a soft barrier. The party should probably leave, and the faster the better.

 

[Staccat0]

I'd go with an "escaping the wilderness" table and just make it more generous than the "escaping the dungeon" one.

In theory it is much easier to retrace your steps than to explore new territory. So if the players are venturing into Kingsbarrow Forest for the very first time, they might need to make a bunch of Survival checks to not get lost, and they might hit a bunch of encounters (heck, they might not even make it to the dungeon during the session!). But once they've been there a time or two, they can probably make their way back out without too much trouble -- a low chance of a meaningful encounter, a moderate change of a quick-but-flavorful encounter, and a good chance of "you beat feet, and nothing interesting happens."

Yeah that's what I was thinkins. I'm so lazy I might be tempted roll the random encounters "with advantage" if they are retracing their steps rather than make a new table.

 

[Obreon]

How does this sound?
The wilderness area is bound to the Unseelie court through ancient fey treaties and at certain times, when the planes are close, the dark queen of the fey steps through to the material realm. She has a knack for sensing and hunting down intelligent creatures that she can toy with, which spells madness or death for any mortal. Those crazed cultists and primal tribes who live out in the wilderness are granted amnesty from the queen, so long as they offer her tribute. The old Feywall marks the border that was set by the treaty, and despite her power the queen will not dare cross it.

The cool thing here is that cultists and tribes can have gathered up treasure hoards or prisoners as their tribute, giving the PCs something to liberate. Also, there are plenty of signs you could use for the coming of the queen, but the amount of time until she finds the party is vague. Once again, it's a soft barrier. The party should probably leave, and the faster the better.

Wow. That's really cool - I like it. I had been drifting towards a magical barrier that more or less followed the geographical one myself for much the same reason. I'd been thinking that spending time outside the "protected zone" would expose PCs to some environmental effect that would eat away at their sanity at an unpredictable rate, but with very clear warning signs. After the "point of no return" a PC would become permanently insane and join the savage hordes. Over time, perhaps, doubt might be cast on which side of the barrier really saw things as they were... perhaps the insanity is on the part of the "civilised" people cursed to see the wilderness inhabitants as brutal savages

On the other hand, your suggestion has a lot more potential for tense horror + the concept of a pact with some larger power opens a lot of interesting possibilities for factions in the wilderness. Going to mull it over, but one way or another I think I've definitely got something I can work with here!

Cheers!

 

[Valmarius]

On the other hand, your suggestion has a lot more potential for tense horror + the concept of a pact with some larger power opens a lot of interesting possibilities for factions in the wilderness.
Cheers!

Happy to throw some ideas around! I like the addition of the fey queen simply because it puts a face, or a name, on the maddening effect. So even if you don't run into her, people are cursing her name whenever someone gets lost.

 

[David Corsalini]

I think I'll go with a mixed solution.

My game will be in a frozen land, at 30min/1hour from session end (yeah, like we will respect that) the weather is gonna get worse, it's time to go home!

If they manage to go back to town before session end, nice for them, they have control over what happens and can also snatch some extra treasure along the way.

If they are still in the wild when the session ends, I'll roll on a d20 table, the higher the result the better. At 1 they'll lose all their treasure and maybe suffer something that persists over sessions. At 20 they'll get home, safe and with all their money. Results in the middle will be calculated in percentage after they sell the stuff.
They'll need a guide: one pc that uses his survival skill as a positive modifier on the roll.
The number of hexes that separates them from home is gonna be a negative modifier on the roll (with a max, maybe 5?) [And i'd like to have dangerous hexes on my map, maybe they'll count as 2].
I'd like to introduce the concept of buildable/conquerable outposts, they could give a positive modifier on the roll.


Number of hexes might be a bad number, so maybe I'll throw a simple table with ranges (1-3 hexes: -1, 4-8 h: -2, 8-16: -2, etc)

 

[Obreon]

I think I'll go with a mixed solution.

My game will be in a frozen land, at 30min/1hour from session end (yeah, like we will respect that) the weather is gonna get worse, it's time to go home!

This sounds good - I was going to use something very similar to this originally. If you go down this route you need to find an "in fiction" way of signalling this if the PCs are e.g. in a dungeon. Depending on how they do things, they might end up spending a day or two below ground, or they might only be there for a few hours, so it slightly stretches credibility to say "you already saw the weather closing in as you went into the dungeon".

You can fix that problem in a number of ways - regulating how much time PCs can spend below ground (e.g. no underground long rests) or providing some sort of warning of what is going on above - but you will run into other issues as well. Once you place the justification in the fiction rather than just making it an external meta-game constraint, you need to be prepared for the players to ask lots of questions and try to work round it. It's a weird thing that happens in games - if you say "here's a bald mechanic that we're going to use to structure the game", most players will just accept it and move on, assuming it's not horrible. But once you dress it up in fictional terms, you've put it in their world, and some of the players will mess with it as hard as they can, even if they are just as aware of the meta-game justification for it. When you turn round and say "yes, I know you could in theory fortify that room and build a huge fire and camp out to avoid the weather but.... no... because West Marches", you end up breaking immersion a lot more than if you'd just left it at "everyone has to get back to the town at the end of the session because West Marches" in the first place.

Things to be careful of once you put the "end of session threat" into the fiction:

1. How can you be sure that the PCs will always be aware of its imminent arrival, no matter where they are?
2. How does everyone/everything that lives in the wilderness survive when the cold front comes in?
3. What stops the players doing the same?
4. What happens when the PCs get higher level/acquire magical abilities? At 5th level your wizard is going to learn Leomund's Tiny Hut and can in theory just keep resting/casting until the weather passes.
5. What makes town safe but the wilderness/ruin/tower 5 miles away not safe? Even if the dungeon is only a mile from town, you still need everyone back in the tavern at the end of play or West Marches quickly falls apart. The fictional compulsion to return to town has to be absolute.

In the end what I came to realise is that the Wilderness/Town distinction in West Marches is extreme and unnatural and consequently hard to map onto any sort of naturalistic phenomenon. In general, if you're going to put in the fiction, I think you're probably going to need some sort of magical explanation to get all the properties that West Marches needs it to have.

In my case there are zones in the wilderness demarcated by sharp magical boundaries. Each area is (at least apparently) beholden to a particular controlling entity of great power. Unless you have some special means of protection, the only way to live for any length of time in the zone is to pay tribute to/worship that entity - which entails a level of evil that would move a character instantly to NPC status. Otherwise, the magical influence of said evil presence will gradually impinge upon your consciousness over a period of hours/days; initially you'll just feel like you're being watched, but it will get worse, until the hallucinations start and eventually the apparitions attack. The specific character of the phantoms that torment you will vary from area to area for added flavour. The result is a highly factional wilderness with a ridiculously sharp evil/not-evil boundary. Later in the game (if we get that far) I have plans for deconstructing it - things are not quite as they seem - but for the majority of the game it provides a fictional justification that fits with the constraints of West Marches.

If you want to do the same with the weather, I think you're going to have to inject a lot of magic into your weather - and think very carefully about what's going to stop your players breaking it with magic of their own.

 

[David Corsalini]

Well, keep in mind that this is just some hand waving that I'll explain to everyone. We need to end sessions in the town, I'm gonna tell you when it's time to go home, otherwise this and that will happen.
I think that clear rules, even if they break the immersion a little bit, are better than an elaborate and breakable in fiction excuse.

 

[Obreon]

I think that clear rules, even if they break the immersion a little bit, are better than an elaborate and breakable in fiction excuse.

Couldn't agree more. It's fantastic if you can find a robust way to make it work in the fiction, but that's tough, and a clear rule outside the fiction is much better than a half-assed system within it.

I guess my point was that once you start including fictional explanations for these things ("weather's closing in"), even if it's just a bit of hand waving, there's a lot of potential for dissonance and it might be better to dispense with the fiction entirely in favour of the bare rule. The story about the weather draws attention to the fact that there's something to be explained (why do we all go home at the end of every session?), but on its own it isn't really robust enough to ensure suspension of disbelief, so it ends up feeling clunky. I feel like it's probably best to just exclude that whole area from the narrative entirely and leave it in the domain of the meta-game.