West Marches Style

The "West Marches" is a style pioneered in the early days of the TTRPG hobby by Ben Robbins, it is a shared campaign world host to the adventures of several players, 7, 14, 50 different players and multiple referees or DMs. In the following link you can peek at the original intent of this style in his own blog.

https://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/78/grand-experiments-west-marches/

 

Directives

  The following directives ring true in this campaign setting followed by a couple extra ammendments.

 

1. Sessions are scheduled by the players of the campaign without previous or regular commitment to time or place.
   
   
2. There is no "regular party", players mix and match and explore as they please. Engage in content as they please and disengage as they please. There is no "regular plot" so disengagement doesn't interrupt flow.
   
   
3. There is no overarching narrative, there are events- environmental exploration is the key motive for adventuring.
   
   

 

Addendums

   

2a. Multiple Dungeon Masters can engage in world building, downtime arbitration, archiving and of course, play referreeing- whichever purview they see fit for themselves. This reduces the tyranny of single DM authorship, assists in the collaboration of the collective world building/exploration effort, and helps create a continuous (if shattered) world for the players to live in.

3a. The Nebula is a campaign world that lacks continuity by concept, this is also made by design. Worlds connect and split, people are joined and separated, there is endless potential for micro narrative drama, conflict and adventure for players to explore. A chaotic and roiling ocean of worlds, DMs can create collectively from any inspirations, themes and settings they desire- they are not bound by many strings like geography, setting canon or theme.

1a. Players return to a Sanctuary upon completion of an Expedition. A "home" place to return to uncomplicates logistics, the in world abstraction of player communication, and time continuity.

  It is the intent of all involved to bring the joy of table top rpgs to all players and dungeon masters involved. To bring the joy of gaming to our ever changing, hectic adult lives.