What is a West Marches game?

[Eyes of Nine]

I want to know what West Marches discord's y'all were in. Its something I've always wanted to do but its hard to tell a good game apart from the mediocre ones, especially when it comes to a nebulous "discord."

I've participated in two different West Marches campaigns run by Jason Lutes of Freebooters on the Frontier fame (and if you are an indie comics fan, Berlin). He had discords for both. A ton of stuff happened on those discords.

 

[overgeeked]

Here’s Mystic Arts on West Marches. He ran a game in that style for two years with 50 players. Well worth checking out.

 

[Retros_x]

Here’s Mystic Arts on West Marches.

Off-topic, but Mystic Arts truly is one of the best newcomers to TTRPG content creator scene. I really dig his videos. A lot is "basic training" for DMs, but presented in such a good way that even as an experienced DM its just a joy to watch. And you still get to know some new tricks, at least in my case.

 

[MacDhomnuill]

Ever since I've heard of the idea, I've been fascinated by it. How it the "one-shot" nature enforced? Does it never happen that real-life time runs out and the PCs are still in the "dungeon" or still in the wilderness?

I ran a westmarches style game in high school (long before the term west marches existed) i was mostly running games in the after school games club so I had 2 hours once a week for a discreet adventure. The formula was the same 1) start at base location university, village, pub, castle, starship whatever the PCs had set up shop in. 2) players present head out to do a task/fetch quest/explore/heist. And finally and most importantly 3) session always ends at the home base, there were rare exceptions. What this allowed for was next week I might have a different group but they always started together. This set up let me run Cyberpunk2020, traveller, TMNT, and a couple other games with a rotating group of players and a constantly evolving “world” as the various PCs did thing that changed the world those were incorporated into the setting.

 

[Distracted DM]

Ever since I've heard of the idea, I've been fascinated by it. How it the "one-shot" nature enforced? Does it never happen that real-life time runs out and the PCs are still in the "dungeon" or still in the wilderness?

At the end of the session, you go back to town- there's no choice. It requires either a weird narrative mechanic (you're in a toxic magi-zone and can only spend so much time out adventuring before you're yanked back by your automated detect-o-porters), or everyone just accepts the conceit to gameplay that that's what happens for the game to work, you head back to town at the end of the session- the latter was never a problem for us.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

At the end of the session, you go back to town- there's no choice. It requires either a weird narrative mechanic (you're in a toxic magi-zone and can only spend so much time out adventuring before you're yanked back by your automated detect-o-porters), or everyone just accepts the conceit to gameplay that that's what happens for the game to work, you head back to town at the end of the session- the latter was never a problem for us.

There are some well-loved adventuring sites that absolutely want to leave at the end of the adventure: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/407138/the-toxic-wood

 

[Reynard]

You could build the "return to town" into the setting: maybe the sandbox is a continent, planet, dimension or epoch away and the "recall bracelets" allow you to travel there and summon you back after a period of time (aka the length of the session).

 

[overgeeked]

I ran a westmarches style game in high school (long before the term west marches existed) i was mostly running games in the after school games club so I had 2 hours once a week for a discreet adventure.

Yeah. A lot of people did. Including Arneson and Gygax. That’s why the old books say the game is for 5-50 players. Ben Milton talks about this in a video I posted. The name is new, the style of play is as old as the game itself.

 

[David West]

Time management needs to be emphasized heavily in a West Marches game. If you have 6 players going into a dungeon and not leaving, then a second group containing crossover players can't reuse those same characters in the first game in the second, so they would need secondary characters to be able to participate. This makes me wonder if this will be how CR does it, with everyone having two characters available for play or some other way to compensate for missing and participating players whose characters, by the timeline, are occupied.

 

[Reynard]

Here’s Mystic Arts on West Marches. He ran a game in that style for two years with 50 players. Well worth checking out.

I have never encountered a YT personality before whose voice and appearance were so mismatched that it made it hard to actually watch. Wow.

Not a bad discussion, tho.