#westmarches — Public Fediverse posts

The fourth of my toolkit posts is up, this time on campaign management. It's also a full review of ENNIE-nominated West Marches, which might interest some folks here.
https://stephencollins.org/posts/building-an-online-ttrpg-toolkit-part-4-campaign-management-scheduling-economy-and-notes-and-a-review/

#ttrpg #westmarches #ennieawards

@HeyeBodo Ich würde sagen, es ist für mich so eine Art 'Comfort Food'. Unsere #DnD5e #WestMarches ist im Grunde das.
Aber hätte ich Lust, dafür Commitment in eine längere Kampagne zu geben? Eher nicht, dafür müsste der Rest schon interessant sein.

I made a thing.

morndur.com — an async collaborative storytelling RPG narrated by an AI. 1980s play-by-mail energy: slow, mythic, totally text. No accounts. No slots. No schedule.

You write what your character does next, the narrator reads every voice in the cycle, the next chapter is what survives. 1, 10, or 1000 — same engine.

Releasing with quiet dread. Be kind. 🜍

#ttrpg #aigame #async #darkfantasy #westmarches

.. und wer jetzt Bock hat, das mal auszuprobieren: Wir spielen schon seit über 2 Jahren in einer #Westmarches Kampagne #Shadowdark online.

Bei Interesse gerne mal bei @[email protected] oder @[email protected] melden. :)
#pnpde #valravn

Am Freitag kam mein Buch "Wrath of the Sea Lich" aus den Staaten an, das ich auf #kickstarter mit gebacken hatte. Die Fertigstellung war für Mai 2025 geplant <hust!>

Ich muss sagen: Hätte ich vorher gewusst, was das wird, hätte ich es mir wohl mehrmals überlegt, ob ich da mitmache. Vor allem der Preis war echt krass für das was man bekommt. 60€ das Buch an sich, 25€ Versand und bei Ankunft durfte ich noch mal 10€ Zoll (+ DHL Gebühren zahlen).

Ich hatte mir auch ein wenig etwas anderes vorgestellt. Eher eine #Sandbox für #Shadowdark, es ist aber jetzt eine Kampagne in mehreren Akten.. Von so etwas wollte ich eigentlich seit einiger Zeit lieber die Finger lassen.

Wenn man mal #Westmarches gespielt hat, will man diese freie Art des Spielens einfach nicht mehr missen. Ich will einfach nicht mehr eine ganze Kampagne durchlesen und bei jeden Abend überlegen müssen, ob die Spieler dies oder das "kaputt machen" dürfen, damit die Kampagne noch "funktioniert". Da bin ich seit #Nyarlathotep so ein wenig ein gebranntes Kind, das nervt mich da inzwischen ungemein.

Laut Intro soll die #Kampagne aber zumindest relativ frei sein. Es passieren Dinge in der Welt, auf die die Spieler Einfluss nehmen oder sie ignorieren können. Mal ein wenig rein lesen, ob das dann auch wirklich so ist.. Und mal schauen, ob ich nicht trotz Kampagnen Struktur doch etwas mehr Westmarches mäßiges daraus anbieten kann..

Aussehen tut das Buch zumindest schon mal ziemlich cool! 😍😀
Und es ist vom ersten durchblättern her auch echt gut geworden. Wer also eine Kampagne erwartet hatte, dürfte nicht enttäuscht worden sein (außer halt von dem durch den Versand stark überhöhten Preis).

Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gaxxworx/wrath-of-the-sea-lich

#pnpde #gygax #sealich

Four sessions in on my Basic Fantasy West Marches-style campaign. Had my first TPK.

Everyone seemed to have fun (and they liked my paper scenery), but I'm wondering if if might start the players at level 3, rather than 1, just to give them a slightly better chance of survival.

This would also mean I could start throwing more interesting monsters at them.

#TTRPG #WestMarches #BasicFantasy #OSR

7.9. ab 14:00 - Rollenspiel in der Juzi in Sülz
Meldet euch unter https://forms.gle/BRPPAThE7J8VFERz5 für eine von 5 Runden an! Außerdem geht auch unsere #Westmarches-Kampagne weiter - wenn euch die interessiert findet ihr alle weiteren Infos im Discord!

#pnpde #Köln @koelngruppe

Thinking about running a #westmarches style game for my kid and her friends. Big open map with lots of cool looking things on it. It's through a magic portal. At the end of the game session they abruptly portal back to the far side with whatever they're carrying (maybe they don't keep treasure unless they carry it to the portal?)
The kids are 8-10 so I want to make it fun, but also a bit challenging. I want them to have to think a bit about making a plan and seeing it through.

Thinking a bit about running West Marches style games.
#westmarches #rpg #ttrpg #dnd
https://nickdrawthing.bearblog.dev/there-and-back-again/

Tonight in my #westmarches #ttrpg game my players finally got well and truly lost during a storm. They flubbed a couple of navigation rolls in a row and wound up going WAY off course.
They did really well at asking questions, consulting their maps, and using geography and other navigational clues, and making a single really lucky guess, and made it back to familiar territory.
This was a GMing experience I've always dreamed about and finally got to experience 🤩

@[email protected] Wir haben einen virtuellen Open Table mit (mehreren) #Shadowdark #Westmarches. Ich hatte hier immer mal wieder Werbung für den weiter geleitet, wenn Interesse gerne mal an @[email protected] oder @[email protected] wenden. @[email protected] ist vor kurzem auch zu uns gestoßen.. 😊
In dem Kontext passiert aber auch alles mögliche andere im OSR Umfeld, ist eine sehr angenehme und ziemlich aktive Runde mit vielen Spielern.
Dort kam auch die Einladung zu der Minicon.
Wenn Du Interesse einfach an der Con hast ist evtl @[email protected] oder auch @[email protected] ein guter Ansprechpartner. Die ist zwar inzwischen ziemlich ausgebucht, aber könnte gut sein, dass noch ein Platz frei ist. 😊

About six months after wrapping it up, I think back on my attempt to run a Shadowdark Barrowmaze open-table game, what did I enjoy and what could I have done better?

https://open.substack.com/pub/reddicediaries/p/thoughts-after-ending-my-shadows?r=4bly7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

#RedDiceDiaries #RDDRPG #Shadowdark #Barrowmaze #OpenTable #WestMarches #TTRPG #RGP #OSR

I backed the #westmarches #arcanelibrary Kickstarter. But just at the 3 Cursed Scroll issues level. Should I have gone higher?! Buyer's remorse?! ARGH!! I love the excitement that #Shadowdark has injected into the ttrpg world.

West Marches: The original West Marches campaign put scheduling in the hands of the players. They would organize a party out of the player pool and let the GM know the time that they had and the area that they wanted to explore.

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

I've heard the term "West Marches server" used among online gamers, but I haven't done enough online play to have proper context.

#ttrpg #dnd #westmarches

3/?

My #DnD peeps, has anyone run -two- Dungeon Masters in a West Marches-style campaign? Two tables, two DMs, one world?

#ttrpg #WestMarches #sandbox

Going through an old sketchbook looking for art from my #westmarches #ttrpg

I pre-roll my random encounters and don't apologize for it

https://nickdrawthing.bearblog.dev/i-pre-roll-my-random-encounters/

#ttrpg #westmarches #dnd

Thinking about trying to put together a #WestMarches style #warhammerfantasyrpg game for a group of friends. I've never run nor played a westmarches game before. Anyone have advice for avoiding common pitfalls?

#ttrpg #whfrpg

We're live with Nordmark! Continuing the Rock questline, our ship-bound group finally sight land and much-needed repairs. But Nila's condition is only worsening...

https://www.twitch.tv/hiscursedness
https://youtube.com/live/bpDAiDS2zK0?feature=share

#dnd #actualplay #westmarches #dungeonsAndDragons #ttrpg #rpg

It's the wrong time of day to be asking for #ttrpg #westmarches advice but here goes.

My players wander the world. They encounter new NPCs with some regularity and not all of them are hostile, but the world is. It seems like every encounter starts with my NPCs saying some variation of "hold up! I don't want trouble. What bring you out this way?"

It starts to get tedious. How do you avoid it?

We are live on Twitch and YouTube with more Nordmark West Marches D&D!

Continuing our Milestone Mission, The Rock, our band of brave sailors risk drowning under godly interference.

https://www.twitch.tv/hiscursedness

https://youtube.com/live/pOd6wYVmXqY?feature=share

#dnd #ttrpg #dungeonsAndDragons #westmarches #actualplay #dndpodcast #live

I've been thinking about what makes a hexcrawl key successful. I think a big part of it is that it draws the players in and slingshots them somewhere else, encouraging the process of exploration.

https://nickdrawthing.bearblog.dev/a-compelling-hexcrawl-key/

#osr #rpg #westmarches

Made a very cheesy map for my #westmarches game to provide some nationality names for the players and NPCs. The players will never explore these areas, so it's just meant to provide some fun world-building.
Also, all the Zelvadors were originally a transcription mistake (I wrote out the names and assigned them randomly on the map) but I decided to keep it to imply some historical schism.
#ttrpg #map #osr

#westmarches question: To what extent do you curate your encounters? Do you update random encounter tables to increase the odds of bumping into familiar NPCs, or just inject interesting encounters into the world as you feel like it? I feel like I'm often torn between maintaining the impartiality suggested by the format, and the desire to offer cool story hooks and interesting NPCs.

I may need to simply provide more hooks and signposts, but beyond that I'm considering some kind of reward system for discovering new locations, like a cartographer's guild emissary in the starting town or something.
Advice appreciated.
#westmarches #osr

In my #westmarches #osr game one thing I've noticed is that my players are re-treading the same territory over and over again, avoiding delving deeper into the map. I guess naturally they will figure out there's not much more loot to be found here and they will go broke if they don't move on, but I'd like to speed things up.

Soliciting more #westmarches advice! This time about NPCs.
My feeling is that West Marches games benefit from being outside of civilization and safety. Danger is the whole point. So it can be difficult to justify the existence of non-hostile NPCs in that setting without undermining the challenges upon which the whole format hinges.

It's time for Nordmark! This time, the Boatstuck finale. Our intrepid adventurers have found a boat, stuck sideways in the river, miles away from the ocean.

Of course goblins are responsible.

https://www.twitch.tv/hiscursedness

https://youtube.com/live/DXI7C1geZfM

#ttrpg #dnd #westmarches #rpg

#Lore24 OK; once more, with feeling.
Instead of theoretical, I’ll try to delineate something I have in play, namely the Tower of Agrimmar, a semi feral TARDIS of a PC base that was heavily influenced by Christian Eichhorn’s Tower Golem Trilogy on DMsGuild: https://www.dmsguild.com/m/product/302169 Which is a pretty good run in itself that I’d recommend, but I have expanded & reworked the base thematics & structure, using it as a base for my #WestMarches campaign that todders fitfully along.

After doing some work on adapting 40 year old D&D exploration mechanics to Dragonbane, I had once again the question pop up in my mind if I really have to make the campaign I am planning an exploration sandbox game.

And then I just so happen spotted a Kenshi video on youtube and instantly remembered that this is really the only way to play any RPG. 😎

#ttrpg #Dragonbane #Kenshi #WestMarches

Hey #OSR crowd: what's your favourite wilderness exploration rule set? I'm tinkering with mine for my #westmarches game and I'm still not fully satisfied. Trying to strike a balance between fairness, variety, and enjoyment is a TOUGH design challenge. Different players at the same table have different tolerances, too.

I am slowly coming to understand that long distance travel campaigns and wilderness exploration campaigns are fundamentally opposing concepts.

The kinds of maps you have to prepare require completely different structures.

While I do love the idea of big expeditions going on months long journeys, there's just so many more things about establishing a presence in a strange area that are fascinating and compelling.

#ttrpg #WestMarches #hexcrawling

We're live on twitch with Nordmark - Cakemaker pt 3!

It's time for the Great Airedale Bakeoff!

Come join the fun at https://twitch.tv/bisectedbrioche

#dnd #dndpodcast #actualplay #westmarches #ttrpg