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Worldbuilding considerations for a West Marches sandbox
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<blockquote data-quote="Yora" data-source="post: 8378505" data-attributes="member: 6670763"><p>Here is the thoughts of the creator on the setting design of the original West Marches:</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Being someone who tried something out to see how it works, he's not the final authority on the subject. But this was written in hindsight after running the campaign, which elevates it above regular speculation.</p><p></p><p>Other sections of the exploration make it very clear that there was a quite large wilderness parties had to pass through to reach dungeons, and that each region had its own wandering monster tables. Unfortunately, he doesn't really say anything on how wilderness travel was done.</p><p></p><p>Interestingly, contrary to common belief, he never actually does say that the party has to go back to the town every time they stop playing and that adventures can't be played over multiple different days. (Where does that assumption come from?) But very fortunately, someone asked about this in the comments just two months ago (where I could immediately find it), and the response was that this was something left entirely up to the players:</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>As it relates to making the sandbox, this approach means you need to have both sites that are easily and quickly accessible, and sites that are further away in the wilderness. So players have the option to chose if they want to commit their characters to an adventure that will require the same group of players to get together several times, or if they want to keep the flexibility of having that character drop into a new short adventure any time they feel like. (Which should be established by the "expedition leader" when recruiting the party.)</p><p></p><p>My assumption is that players who want to have the maximum flexibility are probably also among those who play the least frequently, so having the dungeons close to the town be mostly low-level stuff shouldn't be too much of a problem. Having a kind of automatically refilling megadungeon easily reachable from the town could help with that. And of course, all of this becomes much less an issue when players can have multiple characters. Which was a fairly typical thing in the early D&D days, and I believe precisely because of this very issue. And this is where the "You can not have a meaningful campaign if strict time records are not being kept" meme comes from. The time records in question are probably notes on which characters left on adventures on which calendar days, and on what days they returned to be available for new adventures. Even if you don't track season, it can be important to know which dungeon was visited at what times by what parties, so one party can't "overtake" another party and reach certain treasures first by simply playing more often.</p><p></p><p>An interesting addition to all of this is the option for players to open up or establish new base camps deeper in the wilderness that can be used as alternative start and end points for adventures. That way characters of players who want short adventures can move their home base to more dangerous areas as they reach higher levels. That seems like the most practical approach to me. But of course, those forward base camps can also be portals connecting to the starting town, if that fits the style of the setting.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Yora, post: 8378505, member: 6670763"] Here is the thoughts of the creator on the setting design of the original West Marches: Being someone who tried something out to see how it works, he's not the final authority on the subject. But this was written in hindsight after running the campaign, which elevates it above regular speculation. Other sections of the exploration make it very clear that there was a quite large wilderness parties had to pass through to reach dungeons, and that each region had its own wandering monster tables. Unfortunately, he doesn't really say anything on how wilderness travel was done. Interestingly, contrary to common belief, he never actually does say that the party has to go back to the town every time they stop playing and that adventures can't be played over multiple different days. (Where does that assumption come from?) But very fortunately, someone asked about this in the comments just two months ago (where I could immediately find it), and the response was that this was something left entirely up to the players: As it relates to making the sandbox, this approach means you need to have both sites that are easily and quickly accessible, and sites that are further away in the wilderness. So players have the option to chose if they want to commit their characters to an adventure that will require the same group of players to get together several times, or if they want to keep the flexibility of having that character drop into a new short adventure any time they feel like. (Which should be established by the "expedition leader" when recruiting the party.) My assumption is that players who want to have the maximum flexibility are probably also among those who play the least frequently, so having the dungeons close to the town be mostly low-level stuff shouldn't be too much of a problem. Having a kind of automatically refilling megadungeon easily reachable from the town could help with that. And of course, all of this becomes much less an issue when players can have multiple characters. Which was a fairly typical thing in the early D&D days, and I believe precisely because of this very issue. And this is where the "You can not have a meaningful campaign if strict time records are not being kept" meme comes from. The time records in question are probably notes on which characters left on adventures on which calendar days, and on what days they returned to be available for new adventures. Even if you don't track season, it can be important to know which dungeon was visited at what times by what parties, so one party can't "overtake" another party and reach certain treasures first by simply playing more often. An interesting addition to all of this is the option for players to open up or establish new base camps deeper in the wilderness that can be used as alternative start and end points for adventures. That way characters of players who want short adventures can move their home base to more dangerous areas as they reach higher levels. That seems like the most practical approach to me. But of course, those forward base camps can also be portals connecting to the starting town, if that fits the style of the setting. [/QUOTE]
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