West Marches - Weakness and Potential Solutions

INTRODUCTION

I read a recent blogpost by Redtoof's on his D&D West Marches campaign. Two years and a half of West Marches is awesome and there is a lot of experience in that post, I suggest people that want to run one read it.

That being said, I wanted to do a brainstorming: some of his problems I felt them at the beginning of my own WM, or I had found other people having the same problem as Redtoof had. In both cases, I was able to find pseudo-solutions. Are my solutions foolproof ? No. But maybe as a community we can all think about it and share ideas to make a more informed decision about our own desires and gaming groups.

I will therefore go through each of his problems and offer some musings. I hope he will forgive me for being so bold, since his campaign has been running for a bit longer than mine. Also, this discussion will be across edition of D&D.

LESSONS LEARNED FROM REDTOOF

1. The game is not balanced around large, high level parties getting to have one or two encounters between long rests

I agree with him. Even in OD&D, I have my Magic Users memorize spell only at the Haven. If I include magical items with "power per day" mentality, I will instead have them give one per adventure, since they need a profesional wizard to be "recharged".

As for 5th, I'd say using the optional DMG rule of short rest being 8 hours and long rest being a full week (in Haven/civilization that is) would be a good move forward. 5th has a tendency to have drawn-out combat (we'll take about this later), which creates a problem in itself: if you are a player that knows there is only time for one encounter per game night, you will unleash everything. Powers are not resources anymore to be managed, only buttons to be spammed.

It's a tough one. But I say that switching to variant healing (and the Healer's Kit variant in the DMG) and slowing down the rests (again DMG) would help this out. If not, adopting an OSR system (B/X, AD&D or OD&D) would help tremendously.

2. Players gaining individually and getting ahead of the rest by attending more sessions isn’t a massive problem, providing the gap isn’t too far. 

I agree and I have nothing to add. For now I haven't seen any problem with this, especially in OD&D where everyone can provide intelligent solutions, and even in pure mechanical terms they all hit 1d6 in a combat where everyone can die fast.

3. Unlimited downtime is a problem

I think from reading his lesson, and especially his solutions, that the problem is from 5th edition DMG downtime activities which have some unbalanced issue (such as magical item farming). That being said, if you have a more diverse and less intense list of downtime activities, I think there shouldn't be a problem. I only implemented them recently, but so far I don't foresee a problem. Maybe again a bonus point for OD&D ?

4. Some players do not like being 'left behind' in the story

I understand what he is saying. Although for me it's very difficult to find: I have a core group of players (6-8) that play every game or so, and a pool of people that only came in for one time. They did stop showing up because they were left behind ? Because of outside reasons ? Because they didn't like WM campaign, or my own Refering ? I don't know. I can see where this would be problematic.

Story so far document is something I have hesitated a lot. I fear that if I do it myself, it will create an even bigger distance between players and the game world, because now everything will be "automated". But since it seemed to have worked for him, I might start considering it since my players seldom write and share between themselves outside of the actual game night.

5. Some players don't like leaving 'unfinished' areas. 

I haven't had that problem yet. It even created interesting solutions. It might be because I like to refurbish dungeons and add some sub-quest value to coming back. Leaving a dungeon earlier has not been so much a problem because stars have been mostly aligned for me: 90% of the time, players were almost dead or already full of loot by the time they had to start thinking about the trip back, which was perfect. In any cases, I haven't had yet, for example, to use my system of leaving the dungeon earlier.

6. Players like random loot, but generally they do not use the stuff they get. 

I think he points it out: 5th gives too much magical items and sometimes they are not interesting or useful. I like the list of object from OD&D, and I had some of my own as minor trinkets here and there. Since they give out XP (but not money) as a trade, it creates a balance. Maybe later on it will become problematic ? For now, they have made use of what they have, which is kind of scarce.

7. Players often like to role play character disagreements, but sometimes too much!

Haven't had that problem, but I made it very clear to every player joining that there is no PVP, no useless arguments, etc. for multiple reasons. One is because it's objective-oriented play, second is because of time constraints. I don't stop them from roleplaying, but I don't want it to end as a drama.

I have one overarching goal for my players, to find the Holy Grail, and even if they don't really chase it that much (they prefer to chase loot), it gives them a binding social contract.

CONCLUSION

All and all, if I do a TLDR, it would be this:

• 5th edition has inherent flaw in its design for West Marches and I am glad I'm running OD&D
• I might start a "story so far" document to help situate my players

It was good musings and lesson learned, and I like it when people share that experience.