Some are known landmarks (everbody knows where the Sunken Fort is), some are rumored but their exact location is unknown (the Hall of Kings is said to be somewhere in Cradle Wood) and others are completely unknown and only discovered by exploring (search the spider-infested woods and you find the Spider Mound nest). There are dungeons, ruins, and caves all over the place, some big and many small. The landscape is broken up into a variety of regions (Frog Marshes, Cradle Wood, Pike Hollow, etc.) each with its own particular tone, ecology and hazards. The whole territory is (by necessity) very detailed. Between sorties into the wilds PCs rest up, trade info and plan their next foray in the cheery taproom of the Axe & Thistle. Adventuring is not a common or safe profession, so the player characters are the only ones interested in risking their lives in the wilderness in hopes of making a fortune (NPCs adventurers are few and far between).

All the PCs are would-be adventurers based in this town. There’s a convenient fortified town that marked the farthest outpost of civilization and law, but beyond that is sketchy wilderness. The game was set in a frontier region on the edge of civilization (the eponymous West Marches). It was gaming on-demand, so the players created deadlines for me. Normally a DM just puts off running a game until he’s 100% ready (which is sometimes never), but with this arrangement if some players wanted to raid the Sunken Fort this weekend I had to hurry up and finish it. Letting the players decide where to go was also intended to nip DM procrastination (aka my procrastination) in the bud. If you can only play once a month, that’s fine too. If you can play once a week, that’s fine. Ad hoc scheduling and a flexible roster meant (ideally) people got to play when they could but didn’t hold up the game for everyone else if they couldn’t. My motivation in setting things up this way was to overcome player apathy and mindless “plot following” by putting the players in charge of both scheduling and what they did in-game.Ī secondary goal was to make the schedule adapt to the complex lives of adults.

No overarching plot, just an overarching environment. There was no mysterious old man sending them on quests. It was a sandbox game in the sense that’s now used to describe video games like Grand Theft Auto, minus the missions.

It was designed to be pretty much the diametric opposite of the normal weekly game:ġ) There was no regular time: every session was scheduled by the players on the fly.Ģ) There was no regular party: each game had different players drawn from a pool of around 10-14 people.ģ) There was no regular plot: The players decided where to go and what to do. West Marches was a game I ran for a little over two years.

Amazing slow downer lame download