The West Marches and Other Wild-Crawls

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

Anisotropic Shader: Nov 25, 2005; You're talkin' about what would basically be the most important model train layout of all time you realize.

Lumbermouth posted:

I'm going to be using OSE for my eventual Land of One Thousand Towers wildcrawl. I like both how dirt-simple it is and how equipment choices are just as important as spell preparation.

I've been trying to run a West Marches campaign using OSE, with a few tweaks here and there (mundane healing, 'subclasses' and new classes) and I think the straight-forward rules seem to split people into two groups - those that attempt to try things that aren't explicitly stated in the rules, and those that feel that their only options in combat are move and attack. 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!

I have found that the hardest part of prepping and keeping motivated is creating dungeons (as you'd imagine) - I was foolish enough to decide to run the campaign in a non-standard setting (Dark Sun inspired lacking most intelligent humanoids) and it meant I couldn't use the usual shortcut of repurposing dungeons to fit the campaign (plus this is my first real big campaign). But I've found using free dungeon maps and populating them myself is quite effective. My main struggle right now is creating treasure of the appropriate quantity and variety to not just be "you find another 1000 gold pieces). Does anyone know any good resources for randomly generating valuable alternatives to just heaps of cash?

In terms of other systems to support a West Marches game, I'd have to put forward Traveler - I don't think it is often played that way (outside of being a huge sandbox setting), but I think it has everything you need to run one.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2021 19:13

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 00:41

Anisotropic Shader: Nov 25, 2005; You're talkin' about what would basically be the most important model train layout of all time you realize.

aldantefax posted:

In the megadungeon thread I mentioned that a West Marches game has "lethality" in order to represent the dangers of the wild, but I think you can totally do a West Marches game that isn't lethal in terms of physical trauma. For example, taking a West Marches game but as you accrue damage instead you lose traits off your character sheet as your existence becomes erased to the point where you lose your sense of being.

Having some kind of "character loss" is an important thing that is further capitalized on in West Marches games because there is an implied dramatic pole of "safety" versus "danger" - the town represents the safety, but safety is boring. You will grow old, have a happy life, and die surrounded by families, but you wouldn't be a character in a West Marches type of game.

I think part of it is encouraging players from a mechanical perspective to actively seek danger. This seems to me the core conceit of most tabletop RPGs (one might argue that D&D 5e isn't dangerous enough mechanically) but it is surely amplified in this type of game.

I also think then that if you were running a game and you needed to encourage certain kinds of lethal encounters or risky maneuvers, if Old School Essentials takes off of an older make and model of D&D like B/X or something then you could award XP for risky things and also give people explicit mechanical direction in stuff to do. GURPS has 'combat cards' to help remind people what they can do, and Move/Attack is one of them (actually a different thing than just Attacking, because it limits your effective skill).

If you wanted to make combat more interesting, you may also want to examine your gameplay loops and game tone. If combat happens frequently, should it be exciting? The answer is probably yes, but maybe combat is a consequence of other things and it's more of a finality or a punishment (see: Shadowrun games where combat is messy, brutal, and if it happens on a stealth mission, something went very badly).

I think if I was going to do a proper West Marches campaign, it would need the following components:

- Clear motivation to go away from "safety"
- Clear risk categories to manage: travel logistics, battle logistics, and intelligence
- Mechanics to commoditize the sharing information between players and between GMs and the players
- Systems for the GM to procedurally generate either from outside-in or inside-out without overloading information

Boardgames like Gloomhaven have this on lock but they don't have a GM. Same with Mage Knight, which I think you could absolutely use as the seed for a West Marches game.

Part of the thing I think people miss in the widely circulated description of a West Marches game is that "the players need to set the schedule dynamically". I think this is a distinct thing for "The West Marches Grand Experiment", but not conceptually. I think it may be cargo cult oriented game thinking that points to players scheduling sessions instead of the GM, when really, everybody needs to be available or else there's no game...?

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.

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.

mellonbread posted:

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.

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.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2021 19:40

Anisotropic Shader: Nov 25, 2005; You're talkin' about what would basically be the most important model train layout of all time you realize.

mellonbread posted:

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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.

No worries! That's why I posted - I'm glad to get so much feedback. Adjusting the ratio of gold:exp is such a straightforward solution that it is sort of silly that I hadn't considered it.

I'm curious about this post though:

Dr. Sneer Gory posted:

I've toyed with West Marches-esque games in the past, but a big stumbling block I encountered was "What happens when the session ends in the dungeon?" I recall seeing something using a table or roll to see what happens if the players don't make it home safe, but I can't seem to find that at the moment.

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...

aldantefax posted:

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This post is great - the use of Dwarf Fortress to generate a continent is fantastic - I'd also recommend this article for anyone wanting to fill in a sheet of hex paper the old fashioned way. Its a good algorithm for creating a random environment that you can adjust to your liking.

aldantefax posted:

II. Presentation of the World in Data

Create the seeds for adventure by talking of places far and away.

1. Create a World Bible and present it to the characters in their first session with real characters (maybe after the Funnel). For definition purposes following the original prompt, I am calling this the Exploration Lexicon.

1a. For my purposes I would want to use something with a limited physical dimension format like a playing card or index card size that can be arranged somehow like a scrapbook, binder, or some digital equivalent of this.

2. Populate the Exploration Lexicon with the sheet generated from part I, 3. To keep things from being overwhelming, create an info card for only the hometown, the player group, and the surrounding areas that they have heard of, plus a randomly determined amount of places that are "Far Away". Don't put any details in to these cards, but you could use evocative imagery as part of the prompts. If you are making something for exclusively your table, use all resources available unless you have copyright issues (because you're streaming or similar).

2a. Players are responsible for checking in and checking out the Exploration Lexicon during every session. This means it will get busy very fast and this will be expanded on elsewhere on how to expand it. Give a guide to players on how to engage with this thing. Include your outcomes from session zero.

Could you provide a visual example of this? The idea reminds me of compendiums from RPGs where you get info on creatures when you kill them, or keep a collection of texts you've encounters. Is this analogous - but using a set of index cards and letting the players maintain it? I think this is a great idea - something like https://kanka.io/en set to allow the players to edit (but not create) pages could work to store all that info.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2021 18:39

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