Grand Experiments: West Marches

West Marches was a game I ran for a little over two years. It was designed to be pretty much the
diametric opposite of the normal weekly game:

1) There was no regular time: every session was scheduled by the players on the fly.

2) There was no regular party: each game had different players drawn from a pool of around 10-14
people.

3) There was no regular plot: The players decided where to go and what to do. It was a sandbox
game in the sense that’s now used to describe video games like Grand Theft Auto, minus the
missions. There was no mysterious old man sending them on quests. No overarching plot, just an
overarching environment.

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.

A secondary goal was to make the schedule adapt to the complex lives of adults. 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. If you can play once a week, that’s fine. If you can
only play once a month, that’s fine too.

Letting the players decide where to go was also intended to nip DM procrastination (aka my
procrastination) in the bud. 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. It was gaming on-demand, so the players created
deadlines for me.

Setting: Go West Young Man

The game was set in a frontier region on the edge of civilization (the eponymous West Marches).
There’s a convenient fortified town that marked the farthest outpost of civilization and law, but
beyond that is sketchy wilderness. All the PCs are would-be adventurers based in this town.
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). Between sorties into the wilds PCs rest up, trade info and plan their
next foray in the cheery taproom of the Axe & Thistle.
The whole territory is (by necessity) very detailed. 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. There are dungeons, ruins, and caves all over the place, some big and many small.
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).

PCs get to explore anywhere they want, the only rule being that going back east is off-limits —
there are no adventures in the civilized lands, just peaceful retirement.

The environment is dangerous. Very dangerous. That’s intentional, because as the great MUD
Nexus teaches us, danger unites. PCs have to work together or they are going to get creamed.
They also have to think and pick their battles — since they can go anywhere, there is nothing
stopping them from strolling into areas that will wipe them out. If they just strap on their swords
and charge everything they see they are going to be rolling up new characters. Players learn to
observe their environment and adapt — when they find owlbear tracks in the woods they give the
area a wide berth (at least until they gain a few levels). When they stumble into the lair of a
terrifying hydra they retreat and round up a huge posse to hunt it down.

The PCs are weak but central: they are small fish in a dangerous world that they have to explore
with caution, but because they are the only adventurers they never play second fiddle.
Overshadowed by looming peaks and foreboding forests yes. Overshadowed by other characters,
no.

Scheduling: Players Are In Control

The West Marches charter is that games only happen when the players decide to do something —
the players initiate all adventures and it’s their job to schedule games and organize an adventuring
party once they decide where to go.

Players send emails to the list saying when they want to play and what they want to do. A normal
scheduling email would be something like “I’d like to play Tuesday. I want to go back and look for
that ruined monastery we heard out about past the Golden Hills. I know Mike wants to play, but
we could use one or two more. Who’s interested?” Interested players chime in and negotiation
ensues. Players may suggest alternate dates, different places to explore (“I’ve been to the
monastery and it’s too dangerous. Let’s track down the witch in Pike Hollow instead!”), whatever
— it’s a chaotic process, and the details sort themselves out accordingly. In theory this mirrors
what’s going on in the tavern in the game world: adventurers are talking about their plans, finding
comrades to join them, sharing info, etc.

The only hard scheduling rules are:

1) The GM has to be available that day (obviously) so this system only works if the GM is pretty
flexible.

2) The players have to tell the GM where they plan on going well in advance, so he (meaning me)
has at least a chance to prepare anything that’s missing. As the campaign goes on this becomes
less and less of a problem, because so many areas are so fleshed out the PCs can go just about
anywhere on the map and hit adventure. The GM can also veto a plan that sounds completely
boring and not worth a game session.

All other decisions are up to the players — they fight it out among themselves, sometimes literally.

Sharing Info

Players sharing information was a critical part of the West Marches design. Because there was a
large pool of players, the average person was in about a third of the games — or to look it the
other way, each player missed two-thirds of the games. Add in that each player was in a random
combination of sessions (not even playing with a consistent subset of players) and pretty quickly
each player is seeing a unique fraction of the game. No one is having the same game experience,
which sounds philosophically interesting but is bad news if you want everyone to feel like they are
in the same game. Sharing info was essential to keeping everyone on the same page and in the
same game.

There were two main ways information got shared: game summaries and the shared map.

Shared Experience: Game Summaries

Players were strongly encouraged to chat about their adventures between games. Email
(specifically a list devoted to the game) made between-game communication very easy, something
that would have been next to impossible years earlier. This discussion theoretically mirrored
chatter between characters who had made it safely back to the town. Did you stumble into the
barrow mounds in Wil Wood and barely escape with your life? Warn other adventurers so they
can steer clear. Did you slay wolves on the moors until the snow was red with blood? Brag about it
so everyone else knows how tough you are.
What started off as humble anecdotes evolved into elaborate game summaries, detailed stories
written by the players recounting each adventure (or misadventure). Instead of just sharing
information and documenting discoveries (“we found ancient standing stones north of the Golden
Hills”), game summaries turned into tributes to really great (and some really tragic) game sessions,
and eventually became a creative outlet in their own right. Players enjoyed writing them and
players enjoyed reading them, which kept players thinking about the game even when they
weren’t playing.

Shared World: the Table Map

The other major way information was shared was the table map. When the game first started the
PCs heard a rumor that years ago when other adventurers had tried their luck exploring the West
Marches, they had sat in the taproom of the Axe & Thistle to compare notes. While trying to
describe an area of the wilds, a few thirsty patrons had scratched out a simple map on the top of
the table (an X here, a line here). Over time others started adding bits, cleaning it up, and before
long it had grown from some scratches to a detailed map carved into most of the surface of the
table showing forests, creeks, caves, ominous warnings, etc. Where was that table now? Gone, but
no one was sure where — maybe carried off as a souvenir, smashed in a brawl and used for
kindling, or perhaps just thrown out after it was too scratched to rest a drink flatly.

On hearing this story the PCs immediately decided to revive the tradition (just as I hoped they
would) and started to carve their own crude map on a large table in the taproom of the Axe &
Thistle. As the campaign went on all the PCs would gather around it, quaff an ale, and plan
adventures. In the real world it was a single sheet of graph paper with the town and the
neighboring areas drawn in pretty well, and then about four or five more pieces of graph paper
taped on haphazardly whenever someone wandered off the edge or explored just a little bit
farther. Because the map was in a public place and any PC could get to it, I brought it to every
game session for the PCs to add to or edit and kept a reasonably up-to-date scanned copy on the
web for reference between games. In the end maybe half a dozen different players had put their
hand to it.

Was the table map accurate? Not really, but having a common reference point, a shared sense of
what they thought the region looked like kept everyone feeling like they were playing in the same
world.

…
An intentional side effect of both game summaries and the shared map was that they whetted
people’s appetite to play. When people heard about other players finding the Abbots’ study in a
hidden room of the ruined monastery, or saw on the map that someone else had explored beyond
Centaur Grove, it made them want to get out there and play too. Soon they were scheduling their
own game sessions. Like other aspects of West Marches it was a careful allowance of
competitiveness and even jealously to encourage more gaming.

It was also important to me as a GM that players share knowledge because otherwise I knew that
no one would put the pieces together. Remember how I said there was no plot? There wasn’t. But
there was history and interconnected details. Tidbits found in one place could shed light
elsewhere. Instead of just being interesting detail, these clues lead to concrete discoveries if you
paid attention. If you deciphered the runes in the depths of the dwarven mines, you could learn
that the exiles established another hidden fortress in the valleys to the north. Now go look for it.
Or maybe you’ll learn how to get past the Black Door or figure out what a “treasure beyond
bearing” actually is. Put together the small clues hidden all across the map and you can uncover
the big scores, the secret bonus levels.

Recycling

Did you read part 1 and part 2 already? No? Go do that.

Running frequent on-demand games is a lot of work, but because the campaign was set in a fixed
region there were ways I could maximize the reusability of some material I prepared.

Recycled Maps: Evolving Dungeons

Maps were a good example — I could pour tons of detail into wilderness maps because I knew
characters would be returning to those areas frequently. Even after some players had mostly
explored a region they still had to trek through it get to farther away areas. Plus since there were
lots of players there was always someone going to an area for the first time. Lots of return on
investment. Compare that to a normal game where the players might stroll through a region once
and never look back.

Interior maps of dungeons, ruins, etc. were also a very good investment, because even if a party
came through and wiped out all the creatures the floor plan did not change. Come back a season
later and who knows what will have taken up residence. Wipe out the entrenched kobolds and
next spring the molds and fungi that were a minor hazard before have spread into whole colonies
of mushroom warriors. Drive the pirates out of the Sunken Fort and its lonely halls become the
hunting ground for the fishy devils from the sea — or maybe the whole place is just empty. These
“evolving dungeons” were a key feature of the West Marches.
Recycled Danger: Wandering Monsters

Another massively useful tool was the venerable yet mockable wandering monster table. No,
seriously. Think about it: by creating a unique wandering monster table for each wilderness area
(one for the Frog Marshes, one for the Notch Fells, etc.) I could carefully sculpt the precise flavor
for each region. It made me think very carefully about what each area was like, what critters lived
there and what kind of terrain hazards made sense (anything from bogs to rock-slides to exposure
to marsh fever). They were effectively the definition for each territory.

Most tables also had one or more results that told you to roll on the table for an adjacent region
instead. If you’re in Minol Valley you might run afoul of a goblin hunting party that came over the
pass from Cradle Wood. The odds were weighted based on how likely creatures were to wander
between the regions.

For all encounters there was also a chance of getting two results instead of one: roll twice and
come up with a situation combining the two. It might be a bear trapped in quicksand, or a bear
that comes across you while you’re trapped in quicksand. Combining two wandering monsters
results is surefire way to come up with an interesting encounter.

Just having these detailed wandering monster tables at my fingertips meant I was always ready
when players decided to do a little “light exploring.” These tables got used over and over and over
again.

Players never saw these wandering monster tables, but they got to know the land very, very well.
They knew that camping on the Battle Moors was begging for trouble (particularly near the full
moon), they knew that it was wise to live and let live in the Golden Hills, and they knew to keep an
ear out for goblin horns in Cradle Wood. Becoming wise in the ways of the West Marches was part
of their job as players and a badge of merit when they succeeded.

Death & Danger

As I’ve said before (and any of the players will tell you) West Marches was dangerous by design.
Danger encourages teamwork because you have to work together to survive. It also forces players
to think: if they make bad decisions they get wiped out, or at least “chased into the swamp like
little sissy girls” (one of Karen’s best lines, back in the first days in the kobold caves, and a
recurring game quote).

It’s an open secret that every GM fudges sometimes, or glosses over closely checking rolls and just
hand waves things. It’s part of the art to do it well and gracefully. No such thing in West Marches: I
rolled all dice in the open, not behind the screen. If the dice said you sucked a critical, a critical you
did suck.

Did this lead to looming specter of sudden death? Yes, but having strong and fairly unyielding
consequences combined with a consistent, logical environment meant the players really could
make intelligent decisions that determined their fate — they really did hold their own lives in their
hands.

Of course for that to work the sandbox had to be built with internal logic and consistency that the
players could decipher…

Danger Gradients: Paths of Exploration

West Marches was intended to be a campaign environment, where characters would start at low
level (1st actually) and then push farther and farther out into the wilds as they advanced. When I
was creating the game map I marked each region with a specific encounter level (EL) to gauge the
kind of threats that were normal there. The logical pattern was a rising gradient of danger: the
farther you get from the safety of town, the more dangerous the land became.

In most cases there were no steep changes in encounter level as you moved from region to region:
if you were in an EL 3 area, an adjacent region would probably be EL 4 or 5 at most. This makes
good game play, but also matches game world logic: the goblins in the mountains don’t magically
stay on their side of the fence, some wander into Cradle Wood (the adjacent region) and some
even go as far as the Battle Moors (the region beyond that). Distance was generally walking
distance not “as the stirge flies”, so the far side of a mountain range might be quite a bit more
dangerous since it was effectively “farther” from town.

Mountains, rivers, valleys and similar terrain features divided up the West Marches, creating
separate paths of exploration. Players were free to jump around and explore where ever they
liked, but there was a tendency to return to previously explored areas just to see what the next
region out looked like. So if a party started exploring west into Wil Wood, they would probably
push into the Frog Marshes, then the Dwarven Caves, then the Notch Fells, each region harder
than the last. But if they explored north into the Moors, they would push into Cradle Wood, Ghost
Wood, then the Goblin’s Teeth and so on. Each region also held tidbits that revealed details about
the farther regions. By the time you reach the ruins in Harbor Wood you’ve hit lots of clues
pointing at their druidic origins.
Multiple exploration paths also meant that a player could level up exploring one direction, die
horribly somewhere high level (sorry Mike, two hydras was cruel), and then start a new 1st level
character and explore completely different areas. You didn’t have to go back to the same low level
areas because there were multiple low level areas (and multiple medium level areas, and multiple
high level areas, and so on).

The players never knew I had these potential exploration paths planned out, they just pushed
farther and farther into the wilds in whatever direction they started going.

Danger Pockets: Barrow Mounds & Treasure Rooms

Not everything in a region obeyed the overall encounter level — how exciting would that be?
Some regions had sharp pockets of danger, like the barrow mounds in the middle of the otherwise
pleasant Wil Wood.

By logic those pocket encounter areas had to be either sealed away or isolated somehow,
otherwise they would change the EL of the region around them. If the wights stay in their mounds,
the rest of the wood is still relatively safe. If the wights go roaming through the forest, Wil Wood
should just have a higher EL.

Usually these pockets were either easy to find and well known or hard to find and completely
unknown. This kept players from just bumping into extreme danger with no warning — they either
knew about the danger spot and could avoid it if they wanted, or didn’t know about it and would
only find it with searching, in which case they knew they were unearthing something unusual. If
they were smart that would be enough to get them to proceed with caution.

Dungeon design was also a little different than normal. In a traditional game the adventurers
sweep through a dungeon and never look back, but as I covered in part 3 the ongoing environment
meant every dungeon was a permanent feature. Dungeons generally had the same or near EL as
the region they were in (for all the obvious reasons), but to make things interesting I designed
many of the dungeons with “treasure rooms” that were harder than the standard EL, well hidden,
or just plain impossible to crack. So even when a party could slog through and slaughter everything
they met, there was a spot or two they couldn’t clear, whether it was the fearsome Black Door,
the ghoul-infested crypts of the ruined monastery, or the perilous Hall of Swords. They usually had
to give up and make a strong mental note to come back later when they were higher level.

Lots of times they _never_ came back. They really wanted to, they talked about it all the time, but
they never got around to it because they were busy exploring new territory. Rather than being
frustrating each new “incomplete” seemed to make players even more interested in the game
world.

Was there actually good treasure in the treasure rooms? Yes, really good treasure. Every time the
players cracked one it just made them more certain that all those other sealed or well-guarded
rooms they couldn’t beat were chock full of goodness.

Postscript

In Gamist-Narrativist-Simulationist (GNS) terms, West Marches was gamist (make bad decisions
and you die, roll bad and you die) and heavily simulationist (if you’re in the woods in winter and
you have no food you’re in trouble).

An interesting side effect was that West Marches put me (the GM) in a more neutral position. I
wasn’t playing any scheming NPCs or clever plots, so I wasn’t portraying intelligent opposition and
didn’t have any ulterior motives. The environment was already set, so instead of making up
challenges that matched the party I just dutifully reported what they found wherever they went.
When I rolled I would freely tell the players what bonuses or target numbers they were up against,
so the players looked at the dice to see the result, not me.

In many of the West Marches games it really felt like the PCs versus the world with me as an
impartial observer. The players didn’t “see” my hand just the game world, which is about the most
any GM can hope for.

Big kudos to Mike, Gavin, Karen, Chris, Dan, Ping, Seth, Jem, Jen, Rob, Russell, Paul, Trey, Zach,
Roy, Tommy, Mike M, Charissa, John, and Paul G. I kept trying to kill them and they kept coming
back. What more can you ask for in players?

Running Your Own

Alarming fact: brave GMs all over the place are taking up the torch and starting their own West
Marches games. Scary isn’t it?

I’ve already had some private email conversations about how one would actually build and run a
West Marches of their very own. Maybe you’ve got the bug too. Early symptoms include a desire
to build vast wilderness areas and enlist hordes of players to explore it. Sound familiar? Then read
on for a few (hopefully) helpful tips:
Building It

make town safe and the wilds wild — Having the town be physically secure (walled or in some
cases protected by natural features like rivers or mountains) is very useful for making a sharp
“town = safe / wilderness = danger” distinction. Draconian law enforcement inside town, coupled
with zero enforcement in the wilds outside town, also helps. Once you are outside the town you
are on your own.

keep NPC adventurers rare — Or even better non-existent. It’s up to the players to explore the
wilderness, not NPCs. As soon as you have NPCs going on adventures of their own you move the
focus away from player-initiated action. NPC adventurers also makes it harder to explain why
interesting things weren’t already discovered — players love being the first to find the Horned
Tower or the Abbot’s Study. Keep this in mind when you devise the background for your region. Is
it a newly opened frontier? Or is adventuring just something no one in their right mind does in this
world (the West Marches premise)?

build dungeons with treasure rooms, locked rooms, pockets of danger — A solid party may be able
to wipe out the primary critters in a dungeon, but there should always be spots that are a lot
harder to clear. On those rare occasions when a group _does_ manage to clear a dungeon or crack
a treasure room, they will stand on the tables in the tavern and cheer, not in some small part to
brag to the other players who weren’t on that sortie.

Running It

appear passive — The world may be active, but you the GM should appear to be passive. You’re
not killing the party, the dire wolf is. It’s not you, it’s the world. Encourage the players to take
action, but leave the choices up to them. Rolling dice in the open helps a lot. The sandbox game
really demands that you remain neutral about what the players do. It’s their decisions that will get
them killed or grant them fame and victory, not yours. That’s the whole idea.

provide an easy lead to get new players started — Once players are out exploring, each new
discovery motivates them to search more, but how do you get them started? Every time I
introduced a batch of new players I gave them a very basic treasure map that vaguely pointed to
somewhere in the West Marches and then let them go look for it. Whether it was the dwarven
“treasure beyond bearing” or the gold buried beneath the Red Willow, a no-brainer “go look for
treasure here” clue gets the players out of town and looking around. Of course once the players
are in the wilds, they may find that getting to that treasure is much harder than it looks.

the adventure is in the wilderness, not the town — As per the discussion of NPCs above, be careful
not to change the focus to urban adventure instead of exploration. You can have as many NPCs as
you want in town, but remember it’s not about them. Once players start talking to town NPCs,
they will have a perverse desire to stay in town and look for adventure there. “Town game” was a
dirty word in West Marches. Town is not a source of info. You find things by exploring, not sitting
in town — someone who explores should know more about what is out there than someone in
town.

let the players take over — Don’t write game summaries, don’t clean up the shared map. You want
the players to do all those things. If you do it, you’ll just train them not to.

competition is what it’s all about — Fair rewards, scarcity, bragging rights — these are the things
that push the game higher. You could have a “solo” West Marches game with just one group doing
all the exploring, and it would probably be a fun and pleasant affair, but it’s _nothing_ compared
to the frenzy you’ll see when players know other players are out there finding secrets and taking
treasure that _they_ could be getting, if only they got their butts out of the tavern. (Hmm, is this
why I get a kick out of running Agon? It’s true, I’m a cruel GM.)

require scheduling on the mailing list — It doesn’t matter whether a bunch of players agreed to go
on an adventure when they were out bowling, they have to announce it on the mailing list or web
forum (whichever you’re using for your scheduling). This prevents the game from splintering into
multiple separate games. If you notice cliques forming you can make a rule requiring parties to mix
after two adventures. Conversely if you notice players being dropped from follow-up sorties too
often just because some people can’t wait to play, you can require parties to stay together for two
adventures. That forces a little more long time strategy in party selection, less greedy
opportunism. Season to taste.

fear the social monster — This is the big, big grand-daddy or all warnings: even more so than many
games, West Marches is a social beast. In normal games players have an established place in the
group. They know they are supposed to show up every Tuesday to play — they don’t have to think
about that or worry about whether they “belong” in the group. On the other hand West Marches
is a swirling vortex of ambition and insecurity. How come no one replied when I tried to get a
group together last week? Why didn’t anybody invite me to raid the ogre cave? And so on and so
on ad infinitum. The thrilling success or catastrophic failure of your West Marches game will
largely hinge on the confidence or insecurity of your player pool. Buckle up.

Running your own West Marches game? Post a link in the comments so everyone can take a look
and grow green with envy. I’ve got some links I need to post but if you hurry you can beat me to it.

Secrets & Answers (part 1)

Writing about world-building in the expansion to Microscope got me thinking about West Marches
again (more on that in part 2), so I’m taking a break from my kickstarter to answer some questions
that have piled up.

Some of these ideas I’ve mentioned before but never elaborated on. Other bits are things I’ve
never talked about at all. Because I know lots of people have played or wanted to run West
Marches games of their own, I’ve tried to clarify which choices were critical to making the concept
work and which were just personal preference. Because there is more than one way to march
west…

The Player’s Handbook

Even though I wrote the blog posts in 2007, the actual campaign was years earlier. We started
West Marches at the very beginning of 2001 and ended in 2003. 3rd Edition D&D had just come
out and we used it for the entire campaign (3.5 wasn’t released until after the game ended).

West Marches character creation followed one very simple rule: you could only build characters
using the original Players Handbook. No classes, races, feats, nothing from any other source. And
because everything in the Players Handbook was allowed, I could just say, “If it’s in the Player’s
Handbook, it’s good” without having to look over anyone’s shoulder or screen characters.

Even religion worked that way. Need a god? Just pick one of the friendly faces in the book, read
the tiny paragraph and you’re ready to go. Want to buy something? Check the price on the
equipment list and spend away. The only caveat was that no one sold alchemical crap like
tanglefoot bags and sunrods for the simple reason that I hated faux-technology stuff. Get a torch
or get a wizard!

Using just the Player’s Handbook made life simpler because there were no debates about whether
to allow X, Y or Z in the game. It wasn’t even an issue. But even more importantly it started players
on the right foot by putting them in the driver’s seat. They didn’t need to ask me to approve
anything. If they had the Player’s Handbook, they could make their own decisions. It put them in a
West Marches mindset before they even started playing.

Every Square is 5 Feet

The idea that the Player’s Handbook was inviolate, that it was a bedrock you could trust and swear
upon, started with character creation but it ran right into game play. Specifically, combat.
Unlike every previous version of D&D (and I mean every single previous version), 3rd Edition did
not require judgment calls just to run a simple melee. You didn’t have to ask the GM whether you
could get past the lizard man to attack the chief this round or who your fireball would hit. You
could just look at the battle map, count the squares and make your move. You could open your
PHB, read a page from the combat chapter, and know exactly what you could do and what to
expect.

If you started with 3rd Edition or later, this may not seem like a big deal. Trust me, it was. Huge. It
fundamentally transformed how D&D was played. As a GM, it meant I could set up the situation
and then kick back and let the players decide how to tackle it. They didn’t have to ask me what
they were allowed to do each round or hope I ruled in their favor.

Without this fundamental shift, West Marches would not have been possible. Or it would have
been a much weaker shadow of itself. Players could never have felt that they were really in control
of their own destiny if they had to play “mother may I” in every battle.

Rooting for the Players

Because the rules were well-documented and clear, there were lots of times when West Marches
combats would become fascinating (albeit life-threatening) tactical puzzles for everyone at the
table. We would all gaze down at the battle map (me included!) and ponder possible moves. Was
there a way the barbarian could zig-zag through the kobold hordes and pounce on the shaman
lurking in the back? (answer: yes, with clever manuevering he could avoid all but one attack-of-
opportunity) Could a totally underpowered rogue anchor the line and prevent the bugbears from
wrapping around and flanking the heavy fighters by just dodging like crazy instead of attacking?
(answer: yes. By holding her ground in a fight that was out of her league she averted a total party
kill at Zirak-zil) Could a staggered retreat get everyone out of the Hydra Cave in one piece?
(answer: no. Really, really no)

I’m not talking about telling other players what to do (coaching sucks), I’m talking about analyzing
the rules and the options after a player has declared a plan they want to try, but aren’t sure how it
will play out mechanically. Someone would say “hmm, could I get to the shaman without getting
clobbered by attacks-of-opportunity?” and invite the tactical huddle. These discussions levelled
the playing field as far as rules knowledge went. Someone could be totally new to D&D but make
reasonable decisions because if there were rules consequences they did not foresee everyone else
could (politely) help them understand the odds. Again: informing, not coaching. Characters getting
wiped out from making poor decisions was completely legit, but getting wiped out because you
misunderstood the rules was not the danger I was trying to promote.
And when I say I would be chatting and trying to figure it out just like everyone else, I mean I really
was. Once the combat was under way and the situation was pretty well understood, I often didn’t
have any secrets. When a creature attacked, I would happily tell players exactly what its attack
bonus was and roll the dice in the open. When a PC attacked, I told them the armor class they
were trying to hit. I didn’t tell them actual hit points but I was pretty clear about how wounded
something was. Most creatures in West Marches didn’t have weird or surprising abilities. You
could generally look at the battle map and see what was up, so I could chat and analyze possible
moves just like the other players did.

Being open about basic stats reinforced the idea that the dangers came from the monsters on the
table, not from me. Player decisions and the forces in the world mattered, not my whims. When
attacks were made, the players looked at the dice, not me. I could root for the players and even
help them understand how the rules worked in their favor and it didn’t hurt the tension of the
game even slightly. The combat rules of 3rd Edition D&D made that possible.

Layers of History

“Run the simulation in your head: who moved here, what did they build, what happened to them,
and then what came next?”

Logic is the cornerstone of a sandbox. If things make sense — if there’s an internal consistency to
what’s there and where things are — then players can make good decisions. Paying attention leads
to good choices and good choices lead to success. Smart characters survive and flourish.

Without it, the environment is just a guessing game of what the GM decided to put around each
corner. There is no way to make intelligent decisions. No fun and not fair.

So how do you make a world that makes sense? You build the history, because the past is what
determines the present. Yep, this is where Microscope and West Marches intersect.

Long before I designed Microscope, when I made D&D worlds I would imagine layers of history
one top of each other, jumping back and forth in my head to figure out what happened and how
all of that led to what was here now. Or vice versa: something you create in the present makes you
think “hmm, where did that come from”, so you dig back in history to establish its origin.

So when I sat down to make a simple little wilderness I named “West Marches” for some old
school adventure, did I just draw some dungeons and pick critters from ye olde Monster Manual?
No, first I figured out what was here before. Nothing super-detailed, just a starting concept for the
world and a skeleton of history.
Layers of History

A skeleton of history is your friend. Even the simplest outline tells you what belongs in the world
and what doesn’t, and that’s a welcome advantage when you’re trying to seed your wilderness
with some danger and points of interest. That’s two benefits, if you’re keeping track: it doesn’t just
make play better, it also makes it easier to populate your world.

Start with three or four independent layers of history. Just a simple concept, not too much detail.
This is the local history of the region, but it might reflect larger world events. Or not. For West
Marches, my layers looked like:

Duke drives back the goblins, settlements push into the wilderness and then fail

Dwarven exiles migrate here and build colonies far from home

Dark ages of the “Barrow Men”, scattered feudal lairds, clans, and primitive warrior-kings

Remnants of the god-wars, end of the sacred age, forgotten gods

That’s descending chronological order, with the most recent (and therefore most visible and
known) events at the top, because that makes more sense to me. Farther down the list are things
buried in the past, dwindling into myth and legend. The ruins from those elder days are the most
worn down and picked over, while the remnants from the top are the most recent and fresh.

Each layer is completely independent and pretty far apart. The Barrow Men kings were mouldering
bones in their mounds by the time the outcast dwarves of Black River came looking for hills to hew
into new homes. Most importantly (for my plans for the West Marches), each of those layers of
history left its imprint, but was also largely wiped away, letting the region revert almost entirely to
wilderness by the time another period started.

More stuff happens in between those layers, but these are the big bookmarks, the key phases of
the past that shaped this region.

Armed with just those very simple ideas, I can draw inspiration for what to put on the map and I
know why things are the way they are. Now when I’m fleshing out the Rotting Oaks and I feel like
an empty area needs some kind of interesting landmark, I can say to myself: “hmm, the settlers
would not have gotten this far from Minol Valley, but the dwarves would have come through here
when they built their second hall in the Lonely Hills, so a Dwarven marker stone or an isolated
tomb of someone who died along the way would make sense.” Boom, problem solved.
I could even have multiple layers of history built one upon the other in a single location. I know
there are goblins in Cradle Wood because they are the remnants that were pushed back by the
Duke’s armies decades ago. The kings of the Barrow Men were here before, so the goblin lair
could be an old ruined keep they found and infested. But in the caverns beneath it are the ancient
holy caves that the warrior-kings feared and held sacred, remnants of the gods whose names men
have forgotten. Now I’ve got a dungeon with three distinct strata of source material to work with.
Yeah, that’s a very literal “layers” example, but you get the idea.

The action in each layer of history doesn’t have to be spread evenly across the map. Some events
might sweep across the whole region, but others might only affect some areas while the rest
remains untouched. The dwarves colonized a few key areas and delved deep there, but most of
the West Marches have no dwarven ruins, though I could still put in dwarven treasure and relics
that could be found nearby (you read Treasure Tells A Story, right?)

And just like Microscope, your history is not going to emerge all at once. You may start with a
mere skeleton (and like I said, you should really try to start with something simple), but as you
keep playing you’ll figure out more detail and nuance, which will inform what should be in the
world and why. You might even think of new layers you want to add, or maybe you just explore
what you’ve established more and more.

Game Master: Keeper of Secrets

Part of my old D&D philosophy was that, by definition, the GM knows more than the players. You
create a bunch of stuff, but instead of telling the players, you hide it. You don’t lecture them about
the world: they explore and figure things out. Or they don’t.

In most of my campaigns, I kept major secrets for *years and years*. When the players figured it
out, their minds were understandably blown.

Even if the background I made never came out, knowing it changed my attitude as a GM. Things in
the “present” felt more real, less like things I had just made up, because they were outgrowths of
the hidden history. That changed my mannerisms in play. I knew what the players were seeing
were just pieces of a larger puzzle, so I treated the setting with gravitas and respect.

I don’t think that’s the only way to GM, but for West Marches, where you want players to think
and deduce, it’s a perfect fit. If secrets are hard to uncover, then when the players figure things
out it’s a victory. They can be proud of their success just like winning a fight (q.v. finally discovering
the Abbot’s hidden study after a half dozen different sorties missed it).

So all these layers of history you’ve made: *don’t tell the players about them*. Don’t even want
them to find out. Which is a very appropriate attitude for all West Marches GMing, where as the
GM you really should not really *want* anything. Let them explore and experience and figure it
out, if they’re interested. If they’re not, that’s fine too, because that’s not what they’re there for.
The world will still be a better, more consistent place for them to tempt fate and dare the
unknown because of the hidden history.

A Survivor’s Story

Lo and behold, after twenty years one of the original West Marches players popped back up and
shared some memories in the comments, and frankly they are too good not to give a post of their
own.

Tommy, aka Lucky, aka Briarweed, sez:

I stumbled onto some discussions of “West Marches” DM style, and followed the rabbit hole down
to these blog posts. Now I know why it sounded so familiar: I played in some of those early games!
I only made it to like 4 sessions before moving back to the east coast in April of ’02, but I still have
many vivid memories of those games.

A handful of those memories:

– The cool concept of that big wooden table where other adventurers had begun carving out the
map. A few big Xs where previous heroes had fallen (and maybe left some of their treasure and
items behind to collect.)

– A legitimately terrifying encounter with shadows, and a big black door that we couldn’t get past
no matter what we tried.

– First character, a rogue who (unsuccessfully) tried to convince the L2 party that he was a bard,
mostly pulling his weight through a dungeon, and then dying to a random crit from a wolf on the
way back to town. RIP Lucky before he could even level up once.
– Reading the email tributes to Lucky after his failed attempt to make his mark on the Marches.
Don’t worry about the broken lute, warrior bro; he had a spare “travel lute.”

– My next character, a druid named Briarweed: harrowing explorations through an undead-

infested temple, turning the tide of a perilous battle with a timely cast of shillelagh.

– A near-TPK water trap. The rogue kept failing checks, and several players drowning before we
barely managed to escape. I still recall our desperate attempts to make it through a rest in the
forest while soaking wet in sub-zero temperatures, nursing the drowned warrior back to health,
rationing goodberries, fighting off random encounters, and using every skill, ability, or spell I could
find on my sheet to help keep the party alive in those cold wastes so we could make it back to
town.

Good times. Despite my short time in the West Marches, and the dozens of campaigns I’ve played
or DM’ed in before or since, I remember those sessions as some of my favorite gaming
experiences.

“We buried the finest Bard in all the land and took his rations for ourselves, trudging back to keep
town, weary, worn and poorer then when we left.” -from the email chat

Yes, Lucky unluckily joined the game right around the time the players concluded that just sitting
around the Axe & Thistle for the winter would drain their savings, and decided to do a little “light
exploring” in the snow, facing off wolf packs and making an already dangerous water trap infinitely
more hazardous. On the bright side, Briarweed made it to level 2! Good times indeed.