The West Marches and Other Wild-Crawls

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > The West Marches and Other Wild-Crawls

mellonbread: Dec 20, 2017

I ran a couple sandbox open table exploration games. I learned that player continuity/turnover has a huge impact on how the game turns out.

In the first campaign I had a solid core of about five players who attended most games, plus the same number who dropped in and out. That meant that there was good transmission of knowledge - understanding of the map, the factions, which areas were dangerous, which monsters to watch out for, and what items were essential in the dungeon. It also meant that the end result wasn't much different from just running a conventional campaign with a fixed group of players.

In the second series there was much less continuity. About two thirds of the way through the game, I had 100 percent turnover from the first session. That meant there were sessions entirely filled with brand new players, who had no idea what was going on in a game world that had become very militarized and dangerous as a result of events from previous games. The players who maintained the shared maps didn't attend every session, so new players ended up completely lost in areas that previous groups had already explored. Which was all certainly realistic within the fictional game world, but also "punished" the new players for things they had nothing to do with. So it's important to have a method of onboarding people in the case of a completely new group.

The other thing to watch out for is how your advancement system affects what the players choose to do. If they get XP for treasure, they will not explore random uncharted areas if they have rumors about where the money is, and will not explore rumors if they have offers of paying jobs. They won't get involved in faction politics or do favors for NPCs, unless they're getting paid or they personally like the characters in question. Which isn't going to happen if you've got lots of players who are meeting all the characters for the first time. And the more dangerous the make your world, the greater the reluctance gets to doing anything that isn't profitable - leveling up is how you survive, sticking your neck out is how you get killed.

When it comes to NPCs and factions, the other question is whether they treat the player group as a faction in itself, or a collection of individuals they have relationships with. IE if a player character pisses someone off, is that NPC also pissed off at a completely new crop of players in a subsequent group? Or are they only upset with the individual player character who did them wrong? What about if they discover the association between the offender and the other players in-character? If your game doesn't feature factions heavily (such as exploring a depopulated wilderness) you don't have to worry about this one as much.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2021 01:16

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 12, 2024 05:41

mellonbread: Dec 20, 2017

aldantefax posted:

I think a classic game of this type does not feature politics prominently to start and the grasp of civilization only extends as far as the town itself - the wild is a wholly separate entity and zone conceptually.

This might be true in principle, but in practice, unless every monster is unintelligent and noncommunicative, "how do the NPCs feel about the players" will become important at some point. Unless you're completely restocking all your locations from scratch every time the players visit, or unless they kill absolutely everything they encounter, they're going to have repeat interactions with the wilderness inhabitants. Which means "do the monsters have affect toward specific player characters, or toward the party as a whole" is still a relevant question.

aldantefax posted:

I wonder, is it possible to run such a game and place the burden of keeping game world consistency something that players ought to do?

I don't see how this could work at all. If you're running an open table with players dropping in and out, that means the details of the world are constantly changing. Unless you mean that players should be taking notes about what happened on previous sessions, for future players to use. Which is something that should be encouraged and rewarded, since it's time consuming and not always fun to constantly write down what happens in-game.

Anisotropic Shader posted:

I am struggling to handle combat in an exciting way that isn't just purely fatal - I get that it isn't supposed to be 'combat as a sport', but maybe I just lack creativity because combat keeps coming up!

Reaction rolls. They're easy to dismiss as cruft that can be cleared away and ignored, but they perform the vital function of preventing every single encounter from going straight to combat. If the players want to turn everything into a brawl, they can still do that. But it's important that the system not automatically enforce it. I haven't read OSE in detail (I use the monster manual occasionally from the SRD) but I assume since it's a clone of Basic, it has some form of this system.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2021 23:17

mellonbread: Dec 20, 2017

Anisotropic Shader posted:

I think some of my fears about fatality might also be due to inexperience with running games where character death is an expectation. I need to find ways to make it so the loss of a character is obviously a drawback - but it doesn't kill a player's interest in the endeavor - something to do with starting EXP most likely, so they don't feel that they're doomed to grind through level 1 all over again if they die. I mentioned in the Retroclone thread that I've been having trouble with pacing awarding exp and I think that could be a compounding effect - it takes 5 sessions to get half way to level 1 and then you die. That's an enthusiasm killer.

I might have suggested this in the OSR thread already, but if not: the easiest solution to glacial advancement is just changing the amount of XP gained from treasure. Go from 1 XP per GP to 2XP, or 3, or 5. That way you don't have to go through all your dungeons and restock them with more loot.

Anisotropic Shader posted:

With regards to 'players set the schedule' - I've found it really hard to get players to do this: we have effectively just settled into two parties that have different time slots. I am planning to try and break this up somewhat by forcing them both to wait in 'town' until the other party returns so they can finally talk and cross-pollinate. Without a big pool of players (and enough DMs to support them?), I think the West Marches ideal of self-organizing parties doesn't work.

Players automatically sorting into groups based on availability is inevitable. I run games at a (non West Marches) open table and I find myself playing with the same people over and over, because they're the ones whose schedules overlap with the times I can run games. Multiple DMs certainly help with this - there's a mirror universe group of Australian users who play games in antipodal timeslots. At the end of the day, the DM's schedule is the limiting reactant, unless they make a serious commitment to being available whenever the players can meet.

Anisotropic Shader posted:

This is a good point - I keep getting caught up in "this room contains a monster so it has to attack!" and don't stop to try and characterize the enemy. Even stuff like the giant cockroaches and slugs that are being encountered currently can be made more interesting by using the reaction table as inspiration.

The other RPG tech you can add to reaction rolls is motivations. Even a single sentence jotted down with a monster stat block goes a long way - "Only eats things smaller than itself" or "Intelligent and social, but driven to a killing frenzy by the sight of blood", or "Fears fire, fascinated by shiny objects" will open up a whole world of behaviors more interesting than just "fight the player on sight. I'm pretty sure OSE also has a morale system that you can tie all this into. Even a very large cockroach isn't going to stand and fight a group of huge predators that come into the room carrying a bright light. I think you mentioned earlier that you were building your own setting, so you'll know more about the monsters and intelligent creatures that inhabit it than I could ever tell you.

I'm trying not to nitpick every sentence of your post, but all the issues you're describing are ones I've encountered myself, so I'm listing solutions that worked for me.

fashionly snort posted:

ok also also, I think a good west marches campaign should incorporate some board gamey elements (half sandbox, half boardgame?); I've been thinking of doing stuff like allowing my players to "invest in the town" in order to increase the starting level of future adventurers should their current crop die.

Investing in the town is great. The amount of gold players accumulate to get even a couple levels is more than they'll realistically spend on equipment and items. Buying "permanent upgrades" for their home base is a great way to eat up excess wealth, buy quality of life improvements for the players (like raising starting level) and making the players more invested in the setting.

fashionly snort posted:

oh and does anyone have any favorite programs for creating pretty hex maps?

I like HexTML

# ¿ Jan 11, 2021 23:14

mellonbread: Dec 20, 2017

Absurd Alhazred posted:

Could it be The Alexandrian's Escaping the Dungeon?

I've used this one.

Or, I "used" it but I never had to actually roll on it. Once I told the players that they needed to exit the dungeon before the end of each session, they did a good job self policing. They budgeted the time necessary to leave the dungeon into their exploration calculations, including possible delays if something unexpected and time-intensive came up, like a random encounter near the exit. A good rule of thumb was that if they had one hour left, and they weren't already on their way out of the underworld, it was time to turn around. And if that meant they got out of the dungeon with lots of time to spare, they could use that to talk with NPCs, visit the tavern, do faction or character stuff, etc.

On my end, I also made sure to add "stoppage time" to the session clock if I did things that delayed the group through no fault of their own. Like taking an emergency phone call, or calling a break to make another drink.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2021 23:57

mellonbread: Dec 20, 2017

Anisotropic Shader posted:

Is it expected that each (3 hour, for me) session should involve leaving, questing and then returning to the home base? I hadn't considered this - currently I am running each 'expedition party' as like a mini campaign - they head out, spend several (roughly six) sessions on the road and then make it back to the home base (with 300 exp each, ughhh). I can see how having everyone back at base between sessions might be a requirement for having a pool of PCs to intermingle and self-organize. Probably doesn't help that because of how I'm handling travel it can take hours to get anywhere...

If you're running three hour sessions and travel to/from the dungeon consumes most or all of a session, then no, there's no reasonable expectation that the players will get back to town by the ending. Unless you set up a system whereby players can move quickly through locations they've already explored, possibly with a reduced chance of encounters, to reach new areas. So moving through a few hexes and returning to town might take an entire session at first, but in future sessions you can traverse those hexes with a single die roll and expenditure of the appropriate exploration resources, leaving the rest of the session for exploring new areas or dungeon crawling or whatever was at the end of the original journey.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2021 20:27

mellonbread: Dec 20, 2017

ninjoatse.cx posted:

I kind of wonder if there�s a different system that could serve as an in between forum posts and live sessions. A discord chat type system, perhaps? I feel like this is a common problem someone else has solved.

Text chat based RPs last longer than play by post, but ultimately meet the same fate. It is very hard to substitute for the immediacy of everyone being at the table (virtual or physical) at the same time. Hex crawls let players drop in and out on a session by session basis, but they demand that all the players who are present for a session be present for that session, rather than leaping in and out of the discussion in mid-game.

I can imagine it working with a very different style of game, where the players control a caravan or large expedition, and gameplay is the players who are present voting on what decisions the caravan makes. But not if the players control individual characters, who need to be present for every encounter the group runs into.

# ¿ Aug 25, 2021 18:34

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 12, 2024 05:41

mellonbread: Dec 20, 2017

Hand-recruiting people you know and like from your existing communities is the gold standard. People you already talk to regularly already and enjoy interacting with. But obviously if it was that easy, you'd already have a group assembled. Public recruiting will always be a minefield. The best you can do is identify your favorite players from the larger pool and split them off into their own group that you maintain contact and regularly play with.

The fantasy of troupe style play is a large group that self organizes sessions whenever some of the members can agree to meet. In reality you usually get a handful of regulars whose schedules overlap, and a revolving door of guest players on the periphery who might show up for a session or two when they can make it.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2021 17:58

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > The West Marches and Other Wild-Crawls