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West Marches: Handling Return to Town
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<blockquote data-quote="Obreon" data-source="post: 7227032" data-attributes="member: 6815225"><p>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". </p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>Things to be careful of once you put the "end of session threat" into the fiction:</p><p></p><ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">How can you be sure that the PCs will always be aware of its imminent arrival, no matter where they are?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">How does everyone/everything that lives in the wilderness survive when the cold front comes in? </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">What stops the players doing the same?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">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.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">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.</li> </ol><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Obreon, post: 7227032, member: 6815225"] 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: [LIST=1] [*]How can you be sure that the PCs will always be aware of its imminent arrival, no matter where they are? [*]How does everyone/everything that lives in the wilderness survive when the cold front comes in? [*]What stops the players doing the same? [*]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. [*]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. [/LIST] 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. [/QUOTE]
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