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West Marches: Handling Return to Town
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<blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 7219781" data-attributes="member: 97077"><p>So my last campaign was basically a "West Marches" style in that there was a player pool and each session was its own expedition, often with different characters each week. Now, in my campaign there was just a single adventure location, a "mega-dungeon" at the center of a cursed forest. So each session basically followed this process:</p><p></p><p>1. Town Tasks (like downtime, kinda)</p><p>2. Wilderness Trek to Dungeon</p><p>3. Delve the Dungeon</p><p>4. Short Rests (optional)</p><p>5. Wilderness Trek to Town</p><p>6. End of Session Discussion</p><p></p><p>The fiction surrounding the dungeon was that it existed both in the real world and in another world called "The Shade." Once a week, for about 24 hours, the dungeon would reappear in the real world and be open for delving. So, effectively, each session was dungeon run with a time limit of, at most, 24 hours. Depending on travel time, which could vary, you'd have a certain amount of hours to delve and rest (short rests were 8 hours, long rests were one week). Regardless, at 11 pm in real time, I would sound the Thrice-Damned Horn which heralded the return of the dungeon to The Shade. Any PC trapped in the dungeon when it returned was rendered insane and became an NPC. So basically once the horn sounded, you need to wrap up what you're doing and get out.</p><p></p><p>Since the session was slated to end at midnight at the latest, this meant I had 1 hour of real time, more or less, to get them out of the dungeon, trek back to town, and resolve the end of session discussion. Which was plenty, even with a random encounter on the way back.</p><p></p><p>So the moral of the story is that it's perfectly doable if you plan for it and make sure that you have a cutoff in real time to make sure each session is self-contained. It may require some contrivances and player buy-in to make it happen, but with some work it can be made both cool and effective.</p><p></p><p> [MENTION=6801813]Valmarius[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6801219]Lanliss[/MENTION] both played in that game, so they might have some other insights.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="iserith, post: 7219781, member: 97077"] So my last campaign was basically a "West Marches" style in that there was a player pool and each session was its own expedition, often with different characters each week. Now, in my campaign there was just a single adventure location, a "mega-dungeon" at the center of a cursed forest. So each session basically followed this process: 1. Town Tasks (like downtime, kinda) 2. Wilderness Trek to Dungeon 3. Delve the Dungeon 4. Short Rests (optional) 5. Wilderness Trek to Town 6. End of Session Discussion The fiction surrounding the dungeon was that it existed both in the real world and in another world called "The Shade." Once a week, for about 24 hours, the dungeon would reappear in the real world and be open for delving. So, effectively, each session was dungeon run with a time limit of, at most, 24 hours. Depending on travel time, which could vary, you'd have a certain amount of hours to delve and rest (short rests were 8 hours, long rests were one week). Regardless, at 11 pm in real time, I would sound the Thrice-Damned Horn which heralded the return of the dungeon to The Shade. Any PC trapped in the dungeon when it returned was rendered insane and became an NPC. So basically once the horn sounded, you need to wrap up what you're doing and get out. Since the session was slated to end at midnight at the latest, this meant I had 1 hour of real time, more or less, to get them out of the dungeon, trek back to town, and resolve the end of session discussion. Which was plenty, even with a random encounter on the way back. So the moral of the story is that it's perfectly doable if you plan for it and make sure that you have a cutoff in real time to make sure each session is self-contained. It may require some contrivances and player buy-in to make it happen, but with some work it can be made both cool and effective. [MENTION=6801813]Valmarius[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6801219]Lanliss[/MENTION] both played in that game, so they might have some other insights. [/QUOTE]
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