Davvy's guide to West Marches
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 31 ธ.ค. 2021
- Fun Fact, I made this video months ago but never had a good place to put It In my schedule.
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The biggest thing I take away from West March as a concept is to use it as a management method for larger friend groups (8+ people). This way you can allow that the total player count is variable and set up smaller one shot sessions. Add in some out of game story telling like a town crier as a news feed of events and you can actually tell a ongoing story that not everyone need to always partake in.
Stupid question here, are they new player friendly? I’ve played a whopping 3 sessions I’ve eggs course of 3 years and every time I try to get a group together it fall through. I want to dm myself but I both want to be a player to get a good understanding of how the game works and it just looks really fun.
The Forged Concordance moderator here - thanks for the shout out! We're stoked you had a **awesome** time hanging out in our server!
I may have to look this up eventually
AN* awesome
I'm actually interested in joining, since I have...alot of character concepts I've been dying to playtest!
Do you have a discord server?
Does the Forge Concordance still run ?
I'm in a Westmarches for PF2 that a friend of mine organized (both as a GM and a player). The way we run it, it's mainly about homesteading, exploration, and gathering resources. Not really an overarching quest, but still builds up in the world. If you don't play for a while, you might come back and found out that some group set up a new outpost that you can start out from for your next expedition. It takes place in a relatively unexplored land, and you go through tiles of terrain, record what you find, and then report back when you've mapped out enough and get paid for your recordings.
That said, cause of this, it's very survival-oriented, and has a lot of combat focus, so it's missing certain kinds of encounters and is lighter on roleplay. Social characters don't really have much of a chance to use their abilities (not by virtue of it being a Westmarches, but just cause it's a survival oriented game). It's a great sandbox for testing our character concepts and for learning the system, but it does miss out on the personal investment at times.
I've kinda hit the point where, after missing out on a few sessions due to lack of energy, my character is now underleveled so I can't easily participate, and catch-up doesn't feel fun. (PF2 is very much balanced around the party being very close in level too.)
This is exactly what I'm trying to put together.
What I would have done with your underleveled character is first take a look at how difficult my adventures are; if your character was the only one who was dying then maybe it's just not challenging enough or the DM is being too soft.
Overall having more variety in character power levels and just not balancing encounters makes the challenge of the setting and the adventures be something that the players will need to adapt and rise up to meet.. breaking the autodrive and making the setting something that demands respect.
Next, I'd run adventures at a lower level more often... really the game starts to go downhill around level seven or eight anyway, so getting back to the first two tiers of play should actually be a breath of fresh air and an opportunity to develop separate storylines which can coexist simultaneously (really making a town or area feel more like a living town)
Then, I'd think about inviting more players and/or DMs (if the DMs can show understanding and respect for the spirit and details of the game so far and its setting/mysteries)
@@hellsente7826 The issue with an underleveled character is everyone else is higher leveled. You cannot balance Pathfinder 2e around too wide of a party spready--the highest leveled person probably should be at most 2 levels away from the lowest person. The way encounter building works, if it's not properly calibrated, it means the lower level player is constantly crit and dies in one shot, or the high level players can nearly one-shot everything you encounter.
Encounter balance in PF2 works great when everyone's the same level, but it's rough at disparate levels. This isn't 5e where you can use a low tier mob for a huge range of levels-PF2 is very tight with its applicable level ranges. Something that's 4 levels above a player will maybe be hit 30% of the time, and likewise it can have as high as a 50% chance to *crit* that same player, hitting on a roll of 3 or higher. So if you have an imbalanced party, the applicable range of levels for creatures you can use gets much, much smaller, or in severe cases can be completely tossed out the window. At that point you can't just adjust some stats because it immediately will get way too hard or way too trivial for a part of the party, unless their bonuses are inconsistent vs each individual party member (which the players would notice the handicap, and also it'd be obnoxiously convoluted).
The only way to fix it is either A: boost characters up directly and give them free catch-up levels, or B: people make new characters to play at the lower level. There still may be a deadzone where the starting level is too low but the most popular level for other players is too high.
Also, as mentioned, I'm a GM too. I'm not the main GM so I don't have the final say on house rules and ideas, however.
@@Zedrinbot Context of subject: your issue with underleveled characters. My issue with Pathfinder.
There is an option which you’ve apparently banished a priori: embracing deadliness. Not balancing.
I haven’t played Pathfinder very much, but in recent decades (yeah, I know right?), roleplaying combat has become formulaic, and Pathfinder (Path: can’t find your way off her?) has become sort of legendary for railroading along with optimized builds.. but the problem with being prescribed by challenge ratings is in 5e as well.
That problem has gameplay and playing the game done for us by the rules of the game. You’re not playing it, it’s playing you.
Doesn’t have to be that way.
What’s another way?
Well, a campaign can be designed around encounters being generated (and focused and flavored by the DM) by what’s in areas. Some areas will have much higher chances of encountering challenges very likely not survivable if treated as a direct engagement of combat. Some areas will have encounters where the players will rarely be challenged at all in direct combat (and yet, the philosophies of Tucker’s Kobolds are there for us, and the weak monsters can learn and when motivated provide really dangerous situations). Even dungeons can be organized ahead of time (and evolve/change with the world’s situation)
This requires an entirely different focus than what your discussion seems to contain. Scouting and exploration become a really key part of the game and through it the immersion in the setting. Being really careful about whether or not to start a battle becomes more natural. Disengaging from combat and things like movement or evasion become very important things which you don’t really just handwave anymore on the way to ushering players along the railroad. Player driven stories (even though the characters will admittedly be shorter-lived) become normal.
This is the way of gaming into which that was once called “Westmarches” was born, in a time long before MMO gaming servers.
In that style of game staying alive definitely wasn’t guaranteed. The player characters who survived became heroes and appreciated the help of allies… indeed, needed them, to continue the quest against big bads or to conquer and hold territory.
I question why you didn’t feel you were having fun in your earlier campaign examples. I’d never tell you what you should find fun or not, but could it be because you are more focused on the road that the mechanics of the game have laid out before you than you are focused on rising to face challenges which aren’t bound by formulas of combinations of numbers?
What would happen if you broke your routine?
@@hellsente7826 Your advice really isn't helpful in the slightest, I'm sorry. Your takes are kinda predicated on a misunderstanding of the situation and (limited) context I was describing, and still kind of are. I've only described so much of the situation, extrapolating too much is going to give you the wrong ideas.
Also, this is also pathfinder 2e, not 1e. On note of deadliness, there is nothing gratifying about routine deadly encounters, the group unanimously agrees. We've already had encounters from the roll tables the main GM created, that numerous times were way out of our league. Nobody finds it fun when not only are you completely unable to harm the target, but you can't even outrun them. It just becomes a "time to stop playing the game" encounter. (Such table results have since been adjusted.)
There's a weird insistence on running certain gaming styles (e.g. hyper deadly, or pure roleplay, or whatever have you) and I'm never going to understand it or why people insist upon drastically altering an existing table's preferred style. It feels like a sister form of the Mercer effect.
@@Zedrinbot Oh, there's definitely fads, and I'm definitely trying to illuminate a different way to look at styles of gameplay for you and anyone reading this :)
I'm partly wanting to gently push the consideration of different ways on you, and partly hoping for more understanding of your own.
Part of what you were writing described what I see as the best parts of Westmarches (both old-school and MMO Discord server chatrooms and perhaps everything between); the exploring, homesteading, acquiring resources... but then things are dominated by combat encounters and ruined by difficulty. There's a missing factor or two which I suspect has something to do with DMing style or PF rules mechanics.
To me if you're doing the exploration right and you're invested in the town, then the story should carry the game
This isn’t a sponsored video or anything, but I had a lot of fun with The Forged Concordance, and if you’re looking to get into a WM server, their sign-up process isn’t the *most* intuitive, but they’re the group I had the most fun with.
disboard.org/server/663292841182625803
I moderate over on TFC, thanks for the shout out ^-^
Glad you had a good time with us
@@feelmypuddle4963 Now give me free loot like we promised
Of course, message the owner we'll get you set up with a few legendary items
I see your little back alley deal going on here tsk tsk
West March is the best way to run evil characters Suicide Squad style. Or just any “here’s a handful of special operatives that aren’t part of any one team or unit. We’re sending them in for this job.”
Oh so like G.I. Joe or the League of Legends?
@@SobiTheRobot pretty much.
As a DM who’s helped run a West Marches campaign at my university for over a year now, I’d like to give some tips to all potential West Marches DMs so you save yourself from being bogged down from more prep work than necessary!
Make sure you spend a GOOD chunk of time before even starting the campaign to set down all the exact rules and expectations (i.e., what source books to use, XP vs. milestone, homebrew or not, etc.) of the game. I’d recommend at least a few weeks to maybe even a month to get that all ironed out, especially if you’re gonna run the game for a long time. Also, taking notes of what happened in your game may help the other DMs keep track of what’s happening in the campaign as a whole.
Also plotting out the world and creating encounter tables. I’m running a west marches game that’s very much like a hexcrawl, but once that prep work is done then setting up an adventure takes hardly any time at all. :)
Wait what? Do I not understand how westmarches work? Why would you run a long campaign in a server that has randoms every game? Isn't it just one shots?
you play west march dnd because you dont want to dedicate your time weekly.
i play west march dnd because i cant find group to play weekly.
we are not the same. "insert Giancarlo Esposito meme"
*sad lonely dnd player noise*
The majority of my early games **WERE** west marches. They're a fantastic way to learn the game in my opinion, since your characters can be flexible and you'll meet a lot of helpful blokes.
Hell, the creation of one of my longest running homebrew races, the Arcanids, was created IN one and that was the start of everything else.
You meet some good people and some egotistical twats but that's just how it is. Don't let it bother you and move on!
I came across this concept recently and have been infatuated with it. Mostly because I have alot of players but none of them have a consistent schedule.
This seems to be a perfect playstyle to use with Pathfinder 2e. That game is so mechanics heavy it’s pretty easy to tailor-make specific areas for specific levels, down to how much cash the party should earn. The idea was to make a map, make some quests and dungeons that lead you all over, and let the players go from there.
How to evaluate a west-march step by step
Step 0: Make sure NSFW and ERP is banned
Step 1: Make sure they have a level cushion, some of them will send you all the way back to starting level if you die
Step 1.5: If you hate level 1 like me, make sure starting level is 2 or higher
Step 2: Make sure you are okay with the available stat generation systems. In my case, I avoid any west-marches without point buy
Step 3: Make sure any homebrew systems, homerules and rebalancing aren't stupid or destroys all the builds you want to play
Step 3.5: Make sure character creation content you want to use is allowed on the given server, some ban published material outright
Step 4: If you actually care about lore, check the worldbuilding of the server and ask what kinds of backstories are allowed
Step 5: See if community is friendly over time (most are, as they usually ban toxic members)
Step 6: Occasionally re-evaluate if this server is the right one for you and try to avoid sunken cost fallacy
PS: I'm on TFC too, my character there is currently a half-orc psi-warroir fighter named Thulacar
I was on the Forged Concordance for awhile. Might go back, but I would have to cancel some of my games.
Thulacar is a great name. It sounds very cool.
Why avoid ERP? Do those communities have issues?
@@silkysnow6793 sometimes, it also narrows the audience you can reach. 😊
Part of a Pathfinder 2e west march server here. Pathfinder 2e emphasizes group play, and so far I've yet to encounter a player/character make it all about themselves. I highly recommend Pathfinder 2e regardless, but to each their own.
There is also the category of west marches we’re you have your group of 4-5 players and they decide what they want to do and when to do it , with only one DM , that is like “we will have a session when you have figured out a schedule for next session and what you want to do”
Is basically a more player centered type of game , with lees heavy lifting from the DM
That's what I think of. Traditional Westmarches. Not a "Westmarches Server".
The DM can do as much heavy lifting as they like, though... it just isn't guaranteed to ever show up in their sandbox and it's better left in the background.
A few things to note about Westmarch servers:
If they care about balance, there will be a few banned published options and you will have to use point buy or standard array for ability score generation.
When you sign up for a posted game, you might not get in. Multiple groups can sign up for the same game and the DM has to randomly choose which one to run for.
Downtime between adventures is a resource that you can use to improve your character. Someone can make bank by producing healing potions and selling them to other players.
I'd have to disagree with Point Buy/Array being the signpost for "balance", a server can still be balanced with rolling, but with minimum totals/a certain amount of stats above a threshold value.
West Marches is not just 'D&D with a big party that mixes once in a while'. It is player driven. The players drives the schedule of the game rather than the DM prepping sessions ahead of time waiting for people to show up on game night.
Davvy, thank you so much for this. Having a video to link too rather than try to explain westmarches to all the people... It has saved a lot of time.
So I've played on a West Marches like server before, though it was built for another system (shadowrun, this is unimportant though) and also ended up being a staff member on it. This meant I ended up running plenty of games myself. And the thing that bothered me the most was that on my server (and idk how prevalent this is), once you have a game approved, you cannot change it based on who signs up.
This meant that if you were stuck with that 'one player' you couldn't alter the game to make it easier or more difficult to provide a challenge. And our server had this 'one player' who would steamroll every game with no threat to his character thanks to mechanical tomfoolery.
This alone is annoying, but not a deal breaker. What became a dealbreaker and what ultimately had me leaving was that this player basically treated me as a stepping stone for character advancement back when I was the only person running games. And they also signed up for every game. They weren't interested in a challenge, just advancing their character to be more and more unstoppable.
I think West Marches servers are a great thing, and even if I didn't they exist enough to prove they are useful. But with how much one player could muck everything up outside of games, it made me hate the system I once loved.
Smaller scale West Marches are much more manageable, one or two GMs and 6 to 10 players. Strikes the right balance of a GM being able to put focus on your character, without having to account for 50 other people. Typically in these kinds of West March campaigns, you'll need to have multiple characters at the same time. Your Rogue might be camping in a dungeon, but since the other two players aren't there this week, you and the four other people who could be there are playing back up characters doing a different adventure.
Though it does suffer from the people who are playing actually needing to have some consistency in their schedule. Unlike a Forum based West March game, someone just dipping out for a month can deny people finishing the adventure they want to play.
Hey there, thanks for the shout out to the TFC! Amusing to see that, never thought I would in your many, many videos. Glad you enjoyed your time!
I think if you wanted to have a character that actually had a sense of purpose going through each West March Game (hypothetically of course, I’ve never played a West March Game), then the best way to do it I assume is to have some sort of Gold Debt, where your character is trying to collect a bunch of gold to pay off some debt, or send money home, or something. It allows them to progress in a way independent of both level & DM… probably
Started a Westmarch a few years back and rn its my main way of playing dnd, I've been enjoying seeing so many characters interact
This sounds like it has two real strengths. Learning the game and meeting people [you like playing with]. If you've never played DnD and don't know anyone who plays, it's a great way to learn. If you're new to town, or just an introvert, it's a great way to meet people to play more DnD with; maybe even start a home game with one day. Meeting and seeing other people is a wonderful way to break yourself out of your shell
Hello from The Forged Concordance! PRAISE BE!
Always been interested in West Marshes but have crippling social anxiety and so this video was nice to see the other side of dnd. Idk if I’ll ever join one but at least this way I have an idea if I ever pluck up the courage. Nice video and happy new year Mr. Chapman
I've not even started watching yet and I'm excited to hear your take on this
Happy new year and hope the cold is gone! Thx for the explanation! Thought West march was a PvP tournament sort of thing
Yeah, this is pretty accurate. I've made a few good friends from West Marches but I like the intimacy and consistency of a home game! Also, Happy New Year Natha--er, Chappy!
Here from the TFC, great to have our server shouted out!
Hi Davvy. Thanks so much for the TFC shootout! I had no idea you were even on the server. I've just subbed.
In my opinion, the way a westmarches “should” (I put that in quotes, because there’s no way they should be played. This is just my favorite method) be played doesn’t make the adventures feel aimless, because a lot about playing a westmarches is that you as a character have to have ambition and vision, I.E. killing the king or building a mercenary company up or something like that. So the adventures you go on should help you move towards that goal, either by literally furthering your goals or by giving you loot and funds to help move towards it.
The Forged Concordance is really great. Extremely well-run and thorough. I highly recommend it.
I used to play in a West Marches server for a month or two while I was still figuring out my schedule. I really like the RP I had with some people in between sessions, but it showed me really quick that the players had different levels of engagement and (in regards to what you said about players wanting different things and the DM only considering level for balance) I had trouble meshing with some party members and whatever I RP’d came out as awkward when no one was bouncing off of me. There was also the favoritism displayed in the moderator PC’s versus the regular PC’s, one example being the mod having control over a dragon PC and her son, another PC where they had untold amounts of plot armor in their sessions.
I had a negative experience with West Marches that turned me off from the server, where they player had a hissy fit when his character died and pouted until the session was over, then groveled and grimed up until his new character showed up to town central.
He also got into a lot of ooc arguments from what I heard, and in the argument I had with him he missed the entire point of what I was trying to convey and just blew up into him calling me stupid in a subject I was knowledgeable on and he was unable to reiterate or elaborate on any of his points. The fact that the moderators kept him around despite all these debates and his errant cringe turned me away and I left the server.
That combined with some of the toxic experiences my other friend had in a different server, i don’t think west marches are for everyone.
Thanks davi for introducing this i never thought that it cud be played that way
Thanks for the content Davvy! Never knew what West March was til now. Gotta love the merc lifestyle, it's hard being world saving hero's all the time.
I never knew this was a thing this is actually really cool
Sweet! Thanks for the video. I've been looking to get back into the game.
My home group had a period where we had a reliable core of 4-5 people and then 4-5 people who could only drop in here and there. To keep those people involved, we started an in-person West Marches style campaign where everyone could design their own dungeons and one-shots. We ran a session every week on our normal game day, but people could organize sessions on the side as well, which was great for the people with unreliable schedules who couldn't make it to our regular session.
We also had multiple characters each, so if a player's characters were lower level than our main characters, we could run our lower level characters so that they didn't feel underpowered and out of place.
The pandemic kinda killed that campaign for most of us since it was just harder for us to run it online, and some of our players were already losing interest in it. The campaign also wasn't great for developing character relationships and character arcs. Me being a theatre nerd player, I was really hungry for a normal campaign where I could deeply explore the character I was playing. I'm glad the core group has moved on from our West Marches campaign, but it was perfect for that period of our group dynamic and definitely worth trying out if you have some friends that have trouble showing up regularly but still want to be involved. There's actually still a fragment of our group that's keeping the West Marches campaign going with some of their other friends.
The westmarch-esque server I run on just turned a year old a little while ago! :D
Most of this description doesn't actually sound like a West Marches game. The original, OG west marches only had one GM, and focussed primarily on exploration in a single world, not repeatable oneshots. The idea was that if on day X 5 people could play, they could play, decide to go exploring the ancient tomb that they heard about, and do that for a session. Then if they found hints about a lair in the nearby woods during that session, they could in a later session decide to go there, or if they didn't care enough, simply leave a hint for the other players so maybe some other group can check it out. I get that the original meaning has largely changed because everybody started using it wrong, but what this video describes is not a Western Marches campaign.
As a current DM of West Marches discord server that has been active for now 2 years, and marching towards our 3rd, I can say that it is a ton of fun! It can be complicated as hell at times, with a lot of work and standards on both sides of the table, but it's just good shit in general.
I've been saying this since early 3rd: If your build can kill the terrasque solo at a level below mid-30s (3/3.5 epic levels), the GM was playing the creature wrong...
Watched this video upon release and decided to join a WM to see what’s about it. I now have countless friends made over discord and hundreds of hours of play during the last year and a half. Thanks Davvy!!
West March campaigns are great- when they stay a west march campaign and your players are aware they’re getting into one, my experience of this type of campaign was messy.
I was originally in a regular campaign, wrote out a huge backstory and everything for my character only for a few players to derail the campaign completely after 2 sessions. The DM decided just to move us into his west march campaign he’d been planning instead, we got priority on joining the first session, this was my first ever campaign, I had no clue what I was getting into.
We had fun, the issue however is that we had all these well written and thought out characters that…didn’t really matter anymore. It was as a west marches campaign is - heavily combat based, everyone who came from the original campaign favoured roleplay- but continued as we liked our characters and had formed a friend group within the campaign (the dm didn’t like this, he wanted us to play with different people- but whatever)
Me and my friends were the highest level players as we joined the most, lower level players suddenly started wanting to join in our second semester of uni- and the DM shut the campaign down because he didn’t want to balance things or do multiple sessions a week.
Then we went back to doing a regular campaign, this would have been okay if I didn’t base my entire character on their abilities during combat…they basically weren’t themselves anymore.
They lasted a few sessions, they died once, got brought back- and I booted them when the DM’s harsh sanity system fucked them up when I wasn’t in session.
I’ve been playing Dnd for a while now and even DM myself and my Lord that DM took advantage of me being a new player, the worst was peer pressuring me into selling my soul during the west marches to a hag, I didn’t hear the end of it from my party.
3:25 that is absolutely fine if the character has a code and follows it if you follow it he helps more and if you dont follow it he doesnt help you as much thats literally a friend supported vs a friend not supported.
I actually have a character idea who I didn't know would be perfect for a west march untill this video told me what a west march is. (She's a farm girl ranger who's just fun)
Fairy Storm Sorcerer/Bard who is adapted from a literary character of mine, whose source version is very much averse to forming emotional attachments and very much in favor of peacing out whenever she feels like it because she can fly at Mach 3 so later losers.
Played in a west marches campaign for a couple of months. While it's not my ideal play style, I did enjoy it. It was cool to meet a lot of cool peeps in my area I didn't know before and we all participated in some big battles for our level. Still enjoy home games way more
This assumes westmarches are only on servers. My first westmarches campaign was in person and that was the original intent of westmarch
this sounds like aa actual fun version of adventurer's league.
happy new year
Funny enough I met some of my good friends I met were through a westmarch server and it ended with us all beating an Eldritch horror, our ranger became a god and our characters are now high level NPCs in another campaign.
I love playing west marches because it allows me to see how a class and sub class will play, and sometimes I don't want a backstory, I just want to murder hobo, and that scratches that itch
I part run a local West Marches community for my city and it's interesting what some differences get mentioned in this video. I'd never heard of one that replay the same adventures. We always wanted to only play in person but were forced online due to covid and only recently started having in person games recently. Also big fluxes in numbers due to this. Demand went far greater than we had time to create games so a lot of DM burn out and people dropping out for a while due to not getting games. It stabled out a while ago but at one point while everyone was at home it was a real problem. We have been really lucky that all our players are character driven and we've only ever had 2 munchkins where their stats were their character. Our setting all started in the town of Oath's Rest where the guild is based and has branched out from there with exploration. There are a couple of other countries that exist and it's started getting very multiplanar as the highest mbers of the guild are most of the way through tier 3. We tend to have several big story arcs going at a time and a few smaller things going on. It's also player driven so a player can gain a rumour from previous quests and work with a DM to make one and go out to complete those rumours.
The second campaign me and my friends did was a west March style witch was good because four months after we started Covid happened.
I played in a West March. The DM's plot for a game i got in involved getting the treasure from a temple. In the temple it turns out it's guarded by a genie who will trade it for aging everyone 10 years.
My character was a 19 year old aarakocra. That 10 years is a death sentence, so my character refused. Instead he posted a challenge that he alone can grab the treasure before the genie can stop him and if he can, the party gets it.
The genie agreed, so my character busted out his movement abilities to dodge the genie, grab the treasure, and declare he won. The DM then one-shots my character, has the genie cut off the aarakocra's head, then proceeds with the 10 year trade anyways.
Useful information, though (given the title) I was kinda hoping for Tripitaka and Sun Wukong. Theirs is a heavily episodic tale as well- is that where we get the name?
After a *literal year* of having my group reschedule month after month, I'm looking in to the possibility of starting a west marshes campaign with a few DM buddies of mine.
One of my players invited me to a West Marches server to mess around and play a game here and there. There were literally hundreds of pages of lore and rules across multiple PDFs that was required reading to even sign up for a game. There was an elaborate point/token system that awarded players for certain actions in games that allowed them to have access to certain tiers of magic itema and bonus character features. There were massive guides for GMs on what they were allowed to alter in the world, what level moderator had to approve them, and how they had to be documented. I honestly tried to give it the benefit of the doubt but eventually I gave up and ditched that server. It was a pretty active group so I'm sure it's great for some people but it was overall just way above and beyond what I'm willing to dedicate to someone else's world.
It is interesting how much the West Marches concept has evolved since Ben Robbins coined the term - but he himself was just recreating what, to many, was "the default" style of play. So it's impossible to say the way you present it is "wrong," despite being... a good bit different from Robbins's game (which was being shared at about the same time as Justin Alexander's Caverns of Thracia game that was... basically a West Marches game, too. Because it was just "we'll go into the dungeon with whoever shows up." IE, the default style for much of the early hobby). Now we've got big West Marches servers with 100+ people and a dozen DMs, small shared-world communities with a couple dozen or so and a few DMs, and... more what the term originally meant: Ben alone just running sessions whenever his 16 or so players wanted to schedule them. No multiple DMs as you assume of the format now.
It's interesting how much shared worlds and West Marches games have become synonymous. Nothing wrong with that. I love both. This was how we did it in college. And, again, much how things were done at the dawn of the hobby. You could show up with your character to any DM in your friend group's game.
There's nothing wrong with having terms for these kinds of games, but i feel like we need more *specific* jargon for them, so that people actually know what's being talked about when people say "West Marches" - and i do feel that Ben Robbins's game *needs* to qualify as a West Marches game, whatever jargon gets settled on, as he coined the term for his game. And i feel like a video talking about them should delve a bit more into the different variants you might do, rather than present the large server version as the assumption.
I'm currently running a West Marches game because i wanted to play with friends around the world - some have expressed interest in DMing in the setting, but none have yet. So far it's just... a buncha players i like as people, and the ones who are engaged and ambitious end up being the ones playing. That was really all Ben was trying to do. You don't need a massive community. Don't need multiple DMs. You just need more people than you wanna fit in one party, and the desire to see them engage with the world.
I think next time I play d&d I'll try this. I've always had a hard time getting into only being a character but also I don't see myself as a DM, so I could probably do a one shot and play a one shot.
I used to be in a Westmarch game and I totally agree. Met many great players, but there was this one annoying player who would always bring new characters that were all the "super serious badass lone wolf warrior" but then whine and get frustrated that he couldn't keep up with people rocking lvl 10+ characters, when he would abandon his characters every time and start over at lvl 3.
tell me more, please. this sounds awesome. its as server, or something you can just look for on roll 20? i read comments and hopefully find answers. Davvy guide me please i could really use that d4 on this
played in a westmarches campaign with 11 other people so 12 total. my character became the guild go to crafter for weapons, armor, rings, cloaks, boots, potions etc. if i knew i couldnt make the bi weekly session i just posted "Demyx is in his shop, crafting x for amount y" ie lesser health potions for 60 gold, normal for 120 gold and greater for 200 gold. made absolute bank when i returned after a while (gm tracked all purchases the others did in my absence)
holy cow do you speed up your recording?
What is the music in the background? I hear it a lot but I'd like to use it in my game lol
Eyyy Davy played in the Forged Concordance! I played in that one for a while!
A thumbs up for the Hunt Showdown Redshirt.
Oh boy. Here we go.
This is what my school D&D club does.
I play in an in person west March game and I like it alot. Even though my first character died in my second session haha… oh and we play in the planescape setting so we can go anywhere in the multiverse. There are 14 players and 5 people trade off DMing with two tables at a time.
Do you think this style of game is good for a first time DM/a small party?
Good stuff.
It’s interesting that Davvy’s default assumption for running a game is online.
This dnd 5e only this works for day blades in the dark and pathfinder?
another thing great about westmarches is that its a extremly easy and non pressure way to try the game out for the first time.
Because you can jsut make 1 character play 1 game and when you dont like it just leave and not ply again.
But on the flipside because how unbalanced some westmarches games can be in power you will very likly play with players muchs tronger then you and not do much/have a worse experience.
also getting homebrew allowed will be near impossible but same problem with AL i guess
What's a good server for West Marches? Or place to find good servers if this place isn't the best to search in
I'm currently playing in TFC and having a blast! people are very fun to play and i don't remember any bad like really bad person i played with and i would most definetely recommend to people. Having a home game and being able to play at westmarches are great
But... that'll about do it... a do it theory!
first session in my first West March game, my Necromancer was framed by the LG level 4 Paladin (i was level 1) and had to stand trail and went to jail for 2 real life months. that was my best West March experince. West March are the most Toxic games i have ever played
I have thought of taking part in a style of game like this ( if fact a West Marshes style was what I proposed to group I run before I became the perma-DM several years ago ), but there is one thing now holding me back from joining a game. There is one group that I had played with before but have since stopped playing with really because two of the members of the group are Neo-Nazi's who pay the DM. It makes jumping into a game a bit hard when there is a chance that someone like that may be paying off the DM. Which is why I try to get to know those I play with more now and try to find a good match.
Wait where do you have to pay for adventurer’s league? When I used to do it before the pandemic it was for free at my local comic book store
Where do they charge for adventurer league? Every place I've played/heard of has been free.
I ran a west-marches-like game at my lgs with mixed results almost entirely determined by the player quality.
I can't do westmarch servers because they typically are just too complicated to just get into
How do you find an ongoing westmarch campaign? The roll20 forums are not the easiest to navigate for this
My primary mode of play is Westmarch.
Main thing is the flexibility.
I just started something like this for our home game cause I'm getting asked if this and that can be made so.... go ahead make it. And you need at least 1 other player to go on this job with ya for a start
Are AL games supposed to charge? The FLGS i used to frequent used to host 100+ players weekly for AL for free :O
Seeing that style of game on Roll20 always unsure if I'd like it. Might have to give it a try once just to say I tried.
For me West Marches functions in any system or way of playing, however, i think west marches is way more functional in osr like systems with an exploring and hexcrawling purpose, it is a different feeling than playing a complete narrative campaingn of plot and sotry arcs. That said, I can agree with you in some of your opinions, but i think that if you use west marches in this other style of playing, and ou are compatible with that way of playing the game, you will have a tone of fun!
Sounds like West March is essentially nothing but MMO Side Quests on randomly selected servers every Quest while forever avoiding the Main Quest line from the very beginning on all servers.
suddenly the forged concordance surges with players XD any other good R20 West marchess?
This sounds like an amazing way to start playing, anyone know where I can find a good server for thisv
Thanks.
Before I started playing D&D, I had assumed that it was supposed to be like a West March by default for some reason.
Somehow, this all sounds like living worlds servers to me... Are they a kinda sub category of westmarch campaigns?
"Living worlds" and "Westmarches" are descriptors of gaming style. A "living world server" is a popular phenomenon which have communities based around them like in World of Warcraft or Everquest.
Most often today you don't see "Westmarches" without also "server"... but it comes from a traditional style of actual tabletop rpg campaigning. Even the word "campaign" comes from military endeavors... to conquer and acquire control of an area or thing. "Marches" were tracks of land on the border between different realms-- borderlands without firmly established rule.
In the past a Westmarches campaign meant that the players were establishing territory against challenges of different kinds... it was about exploring the territory and representing their home base in interactions. As the PCs made progress so their town/settlement or whatever it may be would develop and strongholds would be built or acquired. It was player driven and focused around exploring the setting and situations in that setting following a continuity.
"Living" meant that the players actions effected the setting. If your group killed the son of a neighboring barbarian tribe your town might have an interesting future. If your group also pisses off the ambassador to the other political neighbor then it looks like the DM needs to think about how he's going to handle siege warfare mechanics :D
Hey, just a heads up that for some reason your video's captions are automatically translated to vietnamese.
See, I like the concept of West Marches but I like my players having that narrative weight of being the heroes like Davvy said that you get with home games. The beat I've settles on is running too many games concurrent in the story and doing team up sessions when their stories intersect. But maybe I'll give these an earnest try sometime.
(Insert Anime Campaign Joke)
Was an admin in a west March server and can agree with basically everything he said. Had an amazing time till we ended up with folks that decided their fun was more important than others. Alot of sheet tampering and meta abuses. Ended up having a fellow admin making a spreadsheet to call them on all their stat changes/gold inconsistencies since xp /gold gained was all public and most purchases were in public rp. That being said I have never been a fan of adventurers league. They really have overcomplicated alot of things with their downtime being a big part of that though they may have fixed that in the newer seasons.
Did you know that Talon is responsible for 25% of First Bloods
Kept swapping between saying Marches and Marshes... and I've never known which one it actually is.