How To Run a Successful West Marches Campaign, Just Like CRITICAL ROLE

How to Run a Successful West Marches Campaign

So, how does one successfully run a West Marches campaign? First and foremost, it requires the buy-in of the players. A good West Marches campaign operates under some common assumptions. Players start from the same location every session. They know their destination when they start their session and they don’t deviate from it. Planning and running these sessions aren’t hard, provided that players understand what they should and shouldn’t be doing during their session. If players understand the cadence of a session, it means getting to the “meat” of session quicker.

This buy-in also extends beyond the session. A West Marches campaign requires the impetus of the players to determine where they’re going and what they’re going to do there. That needs to be communicated to the GM days in advance so that the GM has time to prepare. It should not happen at the start of the session. If players are meeting on a regular basis, you may want to set a deadline or set aside time at the end of the session to handle decisions about the next game. This will give the GM plenty of time to plan out the next session.

This doesn’t mean that a game has to sacrifice roleplay, inter-party connections, or other elements of the game. Nor does it mean sacrificing improvisation. In my West Marches sessions, I usually included some time around the campfire. That’s where players could interact with each other in relative safety and build those inter-party connections. I also handled a lot of the “business” side of D&D, such as buying equipment or making tweaks to a character, outside of a session. This meant keeping the lines of communication open outside of the game, usually via Slack or Discord.

West Marches and Exploration with a Hexgrid Map

One major part of the West Marches style is exploration, typically using a hexgrid map. My general rule of thumb was that each hex contained one key location to explore or secret to discover. Some of these locations would “unlock” later secrets. A goblin camp might have the key to unlock a treasure vault (which of course would have its own challenges). Or a statue of a lost civilization might point the way to a larger ruin elsewhere. Not every hex had to contain a location either. Rumors of dragons, liches, or every more intriguing characters like a decidedly neutral vampire NPC could lure a group of players towards a certain hex.  

Not only do individual hexes need to be seeded, they also need to be discovered over the course of play. When my players traveled to a specific location, I gave them hints about the hexes that they passed through on their way to their locations. To keep things organized, I also kept a running list of discovered locations and plot teases that the players used when planning for their sessions.

Session Planning 101

In terms of session planning, a key was to balance simplicity with intrigue. West Marches sessions are meant to be one-and-done play sessions. For me, this meant leaning on the five-room dungeon concept when building out ruins, or building around a single combat encounter. Short and long rests weren’t much of a factor with my sessions. But it added a different wrinkle to combat as players had to decide when to use certain abilities, knowing they might not have them for the rest of their session.

Like any sandbox, a West Marches campaign can either feature a static map with secrets to discover or take place in a world that shifts and changes based on the decisions of the players. My campaign used the best of both worlds. Ruins and dungeons were static, but there were villains that would gradually rise up over the course of campaign that would eventually need to be dealt with. This provided a kind of season of play, where one villain would become a recurring issue culminating in a boss fight that usually required coordination of multiple parties to solve.

A good West Marches campaign requires a lot of coordination and more planning than a typical D&D campaign. But it’s a great way to juggle a large cast of players, especially when not every player has the ability to meet on a weekly basis. If you have the opportunity to participate in a West Marches campaign, you absolutely should. It really offers a unique experience for players. When done right, a West Marches campaign scratches the itch for an old school TTRPG experience. It is one where secrets are out in the wild, just waiting to be explored.