The West Marches Season 2: Old Beginnings

The Rundown

The Maps

On Tuesday will be the beginning of season 2 of our campaign. It all started from this map...

The map that was found inside a partially burnt book in Wave Echo Cave. This "map" is placed in the adventure to take players beyond the start set adventure The Lost Mine of Phandelver. I used it to hook in the new players for the West Marches Campaign. The 'X's on the map were points of interest for them to explore with rumours associated with them. This was a fun approach where the players were really left not knowing what was out there. My intention was for them to explore, make notes, and mark on the map where they find things. Afterwards, the next group could build upon that information as is the style of the West Marches.

Following all of the events of the last 15 sessions or so, here is the map I will be giving the players on Tuesday.

The colorful areas represent the collective knowledge of all of the characters. What they have seen on their adventures over the past few months, the places they've been and the NPCs they've met. However, the land still holds many mysteries and all of the gray area is unknown to them. As we explore new locations and points of interest, I will mark them at the session and mark them on the map. The program I use for this is entirely free and called Hexographer. I'll keep track of the known locations, the players will need to keep the notes because I won't be reminding them what is there.

What's with the hexes?

The hex has been used on D&D maps... for a long time, probably. They're a good way to conceptualise the omni-directional travel of your typical party of adventurer's as well as make it easy to figure out how far away locations are for said party. It also aids in prepping because I know how many rolls I will have to make for travelling encounters, encounters to spice up travelling for the players. 

For example, lets say The Foul Four want to trek from Drellin's Ferry to Witchcross to see why the hell its smoking in the distance. Each hex is 6 miles and the party can move at a travel pace of 3 miles per hour. This time can be adjusted for stealth by going slower, or speed by going faster. Other factors might play into this such as terrain and weather, but for now lets say its a bright sunny day walking on the road. To get to Witchcross it is a total of 5 hexes, or 30 miles. Therefore, The Foul Four will be able to reach Witchcross by nightfall if they leave Drellin's Ferry bright and early. I'll get into prepping encounters to West Marches games in another post, but for now, hopefully you understand the travel system.

The Session

Most West Marches game begin with the map. Typically, there is one bastion of civilisation against the wilderness. Several players wanted to create towns or forts in the wilds for their characters. In order o keep true to the style and still make their writing and choices matter, I am going to alter the sessions slightly at the outset. When we sit down to play, the players will choose from one of the several starting locations. Tempered Vale, Whiteclyff, Stormwatch, or Drellin's Ferry. This creates more work for prepping for me, because I need to create rumours and quest hooks that are unique to each location. Yes, I could just reuse the same hooks in all the starting locations, but each of them is located in a unique locale that I couldn't waste. Plus it also gives more options for myself and the players to explore the world.

Once we've played around in this sandbox for a while, I'm thinking players will want or have to explore the unknown. In order to offset time spent prepping and running through random travelling encounters, players can setup camps that can be used by all other players as potential starting zones to continue exploring. Though, they will not be as safe or as well supplied as a settlement would be.

After they have chosen a starting location the party will then choose a course of action, follow a rumor, or just go exploring. It is by and large a player directed style. They won't really be reacting to massive threats at the start other than knowing that the winters have been getting longer and colder over the past few years. Hopefully after they follow a rumor, there will be a couple of travel encounters, they will get to the location they want to, solve the problem that is there, and then head back to town.

On my next post I will go over how I prep for these games and what happens in between sessions. This is just the beginning.

Roll well,

Mack