If you've ever tried coordinating a regular D&D campaign, you know the struggle. Between shift work, weekend commitments, family obligations, and the general chaos of modern life, getting the same group of people together weekly is harder than finding a decent parking spot on a Saturday afternoon. Enter the West Marches campaign style – a brilliant solution that turns scheduling nightmares into scheduling flexibility.
Originally developed by DM Ben Robbins, the West Marches style has become increasingly popular as more groups discover its benefits. Even Critical Role, the much beloved live-play series, has chosen this style of game for its next campaign. But what exactly is it, and how can you run one that captures the spirit of exploration and adventure that makes D&D so compelling?
What Is a West Marches Campaign?
Think of a West Marches campaign as the difference between a scripted TV series and a reality show. Traditional campaigns follow a linear story with the same characters appearing each episode. West Marches campaigns create a living world where different groups of adventurers explore, discover, and shape the environment based on their actions.
The concept centres around a home base – typically a frontier town or settlement – surrounded by unexplored wilderness filled with mysteries, dangers, and treasures. Players form expedition parties of 3-5 characters and venture out into this wilderness, with each session being a self-contained adventure that contributes to the greater understanding of the world.
The genius lies in its flexibility: players organise their own sessions, choose their own party members, and decide which areas to explore. The DM facilitates this by maintaining the world, running sessions when requested, and ensuring that the consequences of each group's actions ripple through the shared world.
Core Principles of West Marches
Player-Driven Organisation: Forget about the DM trying to wrangle everyone's schedules. Players organise themselves, propose expedition dates, and recruit party members. This shifts responsibility from the DM to the players, making everyone more invested in actually showing up.
Exploration Focus: The campaign rewards curiosity and boldness. There's no central plot pushing characters forward – instead, the lure of undiscovered territories and rumoured treasures motivates exploration. This makes it perfect for players who love the "what's over that hill?" aspect of D&D.
Session Independence: Each expedition is designed to return to the base town by session's end. This means players can miss sessions without derailing ongoing storylines, and new players can join without needing extensive backstory explanations.
Living World Consequences: What one party discovers or changes affects future expeditions. Clear that goblin camp? Future parties won't encounter it. Find a new trade route? The town might grow and change. This creates a sense that the world continues existing between sessions.
Setting Up Your West Marches Campaign
Start with the Base: Design a frontier settlement that serves as the campaign hub. Include essential services like shops, taverns, temples, and places to hire guides or gather information. Make it interesting but not overwhelming – players should be eager to venture out, not settle down permanently.
Map the Unknown: Create a large regional map with the home base at one edge and vast unexplored areas stretching beyond. Mark some obvious landmarks (rivers, mountains, forests) but leave most areas blank. This unknown territory is where the real campaign happens.
Populate with Purpose: Stock your wilderness with a variety of threats, mysteries, and discoveries appropriate for different character levels. Include everything from goblin warrens suitable for first-level characters to ancient ruins that would challenge seasoned adventurers.
Establish Communication: Set up a Discord server, Facebook group, or similar platform where players can organise sessions, share discoveries, and maintain expedition logs. This becomes the campaign's living memory and organisational heart.
Tips for Successful West Marches DMing
Embrace the Sandbox: Your job isn't to create a story – it's to create situations and let players make stories through their choices. Prepare flexible encounters and locations that can adapt to whatever direction the party chooses.
Track Everything: Maintain detailed records of what each party discovers, changes, or destroys. Use a shared document or wiki where players can contribute expedition reports. This information becomes crucial for maintaining world consistency.
Level Zones: Design areas of varying difficulty radiating out from the base. Closer locations should challenge lower-level parties, while distant regions offer appropriate threats for experienced adventurers. This prevents new characters from wandering into certain death.
Reward Exploration: Make discovery itself rewarding. Hidden locations, unique magic items, and valuable information should be scattered throughout your wilderness. Players should feel that bold exploration pays off more than cautious advancement.
Session Zero Plus: Hold a thorough session zero explaining the format, then run several short example expeditions to demonstrate how the system works. Many players are used to traditional campaigns and need time to adjust to the self-directed approach.
Time Pressure: Consider adding gentle time pressure to encourage action. Seasonal changes, evolving threats, or limited-time opportunities can motivate players to organise expeditions rather than endless planning.
Managing Common Challenges
Power Level Disparity: With irregular attendance, character levels will vary significantly. Design encounters that scale with party composition, or create level-appropriate areas that naturally separate characters by experience. Alternatively, allow players to create and play characters at different levels for different expeditions.
Information Management: Players will discover information at different times and may not share it effectively. Consider implementing in-game bulletin boards or reward systems that encourage information sharing.
Session Frequency: Some players might dominate expedition organisation while others rarely participate. Encourage rotation by limiting how often the same character can venture out, or create in-game recovery periods after dangerous expeditions.
Why West Marches Works
The West Marches style suits modern gaming culture particularly well. Our irregular work patterns, busy social lives, and generally hectic schedules make the flexibility invaluable. Whether someone's pulling extra shifts, dealing with family commitments, or just needs a break from regular gaming, the campaign continues without them.
It also captures something appealing about exploration and making your own way in vast, dangerous territories. There's something brilliant about a campaign style that adapts to real life rather than demanding you bend your schedule around it.
The West Marches approach transforms D&D from a rigid weekly commitment into a flexible adventure platform. It's perfect for groups who want epic adventures without the stress of coordinating everyone's diaries every single week.
Give it a crack – you might find it's exactly what your group needs to keep the adventures rolling, no matter what life throws at you.
