Redpill me on "West Marches" campaigns

They're complete shit because anyone wanting to run a campaign that way has no fucking idea how to pull it off, and anyone with the talent and patience to do it right would do much better with a more traditional set-up anyway, so they stick to that.

Why no named NPCs?

>Because there is an inconsistent party each session, every session HAS to be discrete. There's no getting halfway through a dungeon then finishing next week,
You absolutely can swap out some of the character mid-dungeon and tacitly agree not to mention it in-game.
That was /the norm/ in the early days of D&D, when a gaming community would have 2-3 referees and 30-50 players who showed up when they showed up and used the same sheet for each table.

I can't help but feel like you fundamentally misunderstand the concept. Also, your reasoning is deeply flawed.

Sandbox were the GM has to plan and worldbuild a lot
If the GM actually puts effort in it can be great
If the GM is lazy it fucking sucks

Redpill for you OP:

West Marches campaigns are sandboxes without cities and NPC interactions, replacing them with adventuring on your own pace. It helps to build immersion since you have to be the adventurer who gathers together a party to go exploring on your own. It's also advantageous to run because you no longer have to worry about someone not showing up or being sick. You just have one pool that moves on it's own after collecting members together.

The reason why it's popular right now is that it's a meme. A lot of people thought it was "cool" from the original blog post, and then one of the guys on the Roll Play channel tried running it, though he ran it hilariously wrong by including NPC interaction and small villages despite that going against the tone of the setting. After that though, it started blowing up because everyone wanted in.

Other than that though, it's your average OSR sandbox campaign. If you want to know whether or not you should join one, I don't have much experience in it. I tend to avoid it out of a sixth sense that tells me to avoid danger, but I could be wrong.

Something a lot of people miss is that there are meant to be multiple DMs. Most people are meant to give DMing a try and everyone is meant to have a PC as well.

Nothing is stopping you from scheduling three sessions with the same party, the point is not to have the same party every at the same time every week for a year.

Matt Colville has done a video on it, he's probably better at explaining it than I am
youtube.com/watch?v=oGAC-gBoX9k

Matt Colville is also the person I believe did the setting wrong by including NPC interactions, ironically enough. Though his introduction of it is pretty solid, just take it with a grain of salt.

Out of curiosity, what do you think Redpill means?

The basic West Marches-style is a terrible idea. Most players appreciate some NPC interactions and some semblance of a story or narrative to guide their adventures. Throwing all that into the trash just to appease the murderhobos who want to play an MMO with dice is a bad idea.

You can adopt some ideas from the original blog post, but it has significant areas where it can be improved.

Reading that makes it interesting.
Reading the other posts about it was a huge turn off though.

It's trash. West Marches is basically an excuse for a DM to run a campaign that is basically Dark Scroll / Skyrim, with little-to-no roleplaying, and allowing players to switch out characters whenever they want for the sake of "agency" when in reality it's just an excuse for them to be baby shits who can't stick to one character. It's all about looting and hexcrawl-type shit (but not actually hexcrawl) and basically is a giant drop-in-drop-out campaign, meant for the worthless normies and rosties who can't actually commit to a gaming group because they have to take off every saturday to stay home "watching the little guy" or doing some other cuck shit, because they made stupid fucking life decisions and married a fat feminist sow which is 90% of women these days.

Fuck West Marches campaigns. They are a crutch for shitty DMs who can't create a real story or a real game.

Namefags
When will they learn?

Holy crap dude are you bait or just lonely and bitter

Wayneposting is the worst new meme

I tried a west marches game recently, so far a lot of talk in this thread is about how the GM has to be good enough. I think you also have to have a good group of players (and a large one, with fairly open schedules, considering the laissez fair nature of the game else the game just turns into multiple groups that always play on the same day for convenience's sake). If your players have no drive to role-play between sessions or in-game, nor the drive to be proactive and plan adventures on their own it boils down to you GMing multiple boring uninspired sessions a week for players that don't care about what's happening.

I wouldn't recommend it, if not for the reasons above then for the fact that one GM managing that many players is horrible for everyone. You'd be better served running a similarly themed game for one, smaller, group of players, with regular weekly games.

>Redpill me on "West Marches" campaigns.
>Redpill me
you don't have to try so hard to be cool, buddy

What the fuck is Dark Scroll?

I'm just beggining a west marches campaing (session 3 is gonna happen this saturday) and most of my players are still coming in to terms with the way the game is run. but what you talk about this time constraint being lika aleash doesn't make any sense, you are the DM if the players learn about a far away dungeon you know is going to take a lot of time to compleat and to get to and from encourage them to make settlements or fudge the tables, give them some content on the trip, but don't stall them with lets say combat. and part of the fun in worldbuilding is to make a world that the players will WANT to explore little by little, cram it with details and plot hooks so that the players will always have something to tell the others, even if it was minor. I also encourage using a levelless system, I'm runnig it with runequest 6 and make so that time only moves forward when there is a game and the xp rolls can only happen once every week so players are encouraged to give space on the table for the others.

>a fat feminist sow which is 90% of women these days
>not marrying a cute, intelligent girl who just happens to think she's a boy somewhere between 50% and 90% of the time, but doesn't want surgery
Becoming "gay" was the best decision I ever made

At least it's not as bad as Wayne. Fuck you, Wayne.

It's nice when you have a lot of players who can sometimes play.

Anyone who can play this friday show up, and we do a short adventure. And so on.

I would talk against "no NPC interaction" as it could lend to repetetive games and a feeling of "the world is against us", of course the world is but by putting NPCS inside the "west marches" area you can use them to show the players what this land can do. (I'm: by the way) I my game I put that before the players had arrived there was an old adventuring guild in town, but their guild house has burned down (and is now for sale so that the PCs can buy it) and most of the other adventurers have gone, died or gone mad (the only one left in town is a catographer who's brain is mostly mush now but sometimes he can help with the maps they find) so the players, even if they made lackluster backstories without much investment they get curious with the place and the people in there. most of my players are now hunting for a saint thet may or may not be immortal and hiding within the west marches they are leranign about his whearabouts from scatarred pages they find in their other adventures. what I'm saying is: make connections within the world, put people in there make a place that not only makes sense but also has a rich history and still living people they can find, fight or even learn from.

>I would talk against "no NPC interaction"
You're free to do what you want, of course, but including NPC interaction literally goes against the entire theme of the setting, which is exploratory high-fantasy action adventure. There's a reason why the DM told the group there will be no town adventures, because there are no adventures to be had with other people. The adventure is mapping and exploring uncharted territories. Adding NPC interactions goes against it, and you're no longer really playing West Marches. Advertising it as such is disingenuous to the people who come in expecting that.

Further blog post by the creator show that there indeed is NPC interaction in his games, though.

...

Which one? I've read through pretty much all of them and saw no such thing.

NPC interaction doesn't translate to town adventures. If the characters are walking in the woods and find an old witch who after they pay her some sacrifice will give her some information is NPC interaction. Then another player in the group who playes a more religous zealot type of character decides that the witch must die so he goes hunting her, you have now a more action driven session. and remember that an NPC doesn't always have to be human what if the adventurers that are going into the temple of the snake god decide that they should pledge their life to the god's service instead of plundering the treasures hidden there? you have another instance of NPC interaction, maybe on of the players thinks its a good idea to try and talk to the vampires, or become the necromancer's aprentice, or even the bandit leader after she has killed their former commander, make a interesting and responsive world to your players and you'll have a good game. after they go through a dungeon make them want to go back there and see how things change, what are the gnolls up to know after most of their warriors are dead? make the world it self act as a living character or else you'll have just a boring checklist of locations htat your players will go to and forget.

>Then another player in the group who playes a more religous zealot type of character decides that the witch must die so he goes hunting her, you have now a more action driven session.
Until you find out that there were 4 other people in the group who really liked that NPC and were not aware of the religious zealot's actions, thereby creating party in fighting.

Neither. I play RPGs on a weekly basis with my group and I am one of the best DMs out there. I have literally been paid to DM, and not on roll20. Kek, I've never sunk low enough to play on that site. All my gaming is done in-person. I also make homemade snacks for my group and have a vast miniatures collection for if we play a game involving miniature / grid combat. I've had more people asking to get in on my group than you've probably spoken to in your entire life, you basement virgin fag (pic related, it's you). I'd have to quit my job to be able to DM for all the people who want it from me. In the meantime, what are you doing? Trolling lfg threads hoping that someday, someone might take pity on you and let you into their shitty Pathfinder/5e campaign where you get railroaded through some shitty plot ripped off from Dark Scrolls?

here's your (you)

Note that user, but if you go by the Matrix, then Redpill means knowing the truth - Neo took the pill to know the truth about the Matrix. You're using it to mean "sell me your opinion on something". Not the same at all.

>it requires that the GM be good
>the GM has to be really skilled
>they suck because they depend on the GM

Oh okay
So like every other game

and what is the problem of in party fighting? maybe the characters that liked that NPC will begin to plan a assassination on their next expedition and tell the others that it was an accident. maybet he zealot will strongarm his will and the other characters will be afraid of questioning him. the biggest point in a West Marches style game is that the GM is responding to the actions of the players and not the players responding to the DM's world. so let your PCs fight, they aren't friends, they are adventurers, they are the only ones that are crazy or have a big enough death boner to venture forth theese strange lands. let they know that behind the gates of civilization they are safe, but as soon as they leave those heavy door behind they aren't in control that world will want them dead and probably they will end up turning on each other soon enough. maybe when they are about to strike the kill a giant attacks the group, maybe the zealot end up getting himself killed either way, or maybe the other do pull off their ambush and end up killing the zealot, put now they need to hide the body, and they are at a bigger disadvantage because they are short of one. maybe they get sloppy in hidding the body and another group finds it and the wounds don't add up "they told uss he was killed by wolves, but theese are sword cuts.." what I'm saying is in west marches the DM's job is not that of a storyteller he is more of a filter between the world, the PC's actions and the consequences they have