West Marches living world

The story in a West Marches game is emergent and player-dependant. It comes from who you are and what you do, rather than being prewritten by the GM ahead of time.
YOU ARE THE BAIT.

>emergent and player-dependent
I mean sure, I could have an "emergent" and "player dependent" story in Minecraft, but it's still going to be shit compared to a game that was actually designed with a story in mind. You can squeeze a story out of anything if you use enough imagination, but West Marches games are still shit if a story is what you're actually after. That's like saying Pathfinder is the best system for running anything.

There's a difference between being not being spoon-fed a plot and a game literally not having one. There's a reason 80% of Veeky Forums and 60% of Roll 20 immediately just leaves a topic when it's about West Marches games.

That's your argument? That's all you've got?

Your mom is like Pathfinder, faggot.

>There's a reason 80% of Veeky Forums and 60% of Roll 20 immediately just leaves a topic when it's about West Marches games.

Yeah, I've seen Gamefinder and Roll20's LFG, and it's because 80% of both are fucking awful players who need a railroaded plot jammed up their ass or they don't know what to do with their half tiefling half werewolf half kobold characters.

How do you leave a topic in Roll20?

You like West Marches, fine, no need to get so assblasted over someone explaining why other people DON'T like it. Calm the fuck down, kiddo.

I mean, you're not wrong, Roll20 is a cesspit. But it really says something when even a cesspit is consistently avoiding a certain type of game.

First off, you have to be a nonexistant strawman.

You went straight for the RPG equivalent of calling someone a Nazi. Connecting somebody's argument to "well that's like saying Pathfinder is great" just makes you an asshole.

It says it's not popular? But that doesn't really say anything about its qualities, or quality.

You know what, I'm drunk and should stop shitposting. Nevermind, fagits, I'm off to bed.

>Look how hard I'm desperately trying to defend my e-peen on an anonymous image board.

Dude, when the majority of the topic is telling you you're wrong, it's time to quit and find another topic to shit up. I mean, you're not wrong about the Pathfinder thing, but you're still wrong about pretty much everything else. Take a break already. Nobody in any other topics are gonna know how much of a retard you were here.

I thought the point of a west marches game was easier scheduling, and an in-game way to deal with characters leaving / joining the party.

That's part of it yes. That's also why it's impossible to have much of a "story" in a West Marches game, aside from the barebones MMO loot-grind of "get better gear so you can get better gear". That's not to say sandbox games can't have stories, but it's awfully hard to have a story when the characters are changing all the time and people have to play catch-up before every session to be up to speed.

Yes but most GM's don't/can't put in the legwork to make every spot interesting so it ends up feeling like procedural generated generic crap.

Characters leaving and joining the game all the time, or not having sessions together as a party makes it really hard for people to get invested in eachothers characters, or events in the world period. It's why everything in West Marches is designed to be as rudimentary as possible... which pretty much means as mediocre and generic as possible.

Pretty much what said, except it's not the fault of the GM so much as the fault of the game rules themselves telling GMs to run their games like this.

West Marches is a deliberately 'off the rails' style of game, and you're only going to get as much out of it as you put in. If neither the DM nor the players revisit the consequences of their actions, then nothing is going to happen.

An example scenario would be the players encountering the ruins of a city. It's got random magical artifacts scattered around, goblin and kobold gangs in constant turf wars, a couple boss types keeping things from getting too far out of hand and a scarcity of safe zones. Since we're off the rails, we have any number of choices: side with one gang, murder indiscriminately, cut deals, assassinate leaders, whatever. Back the fuck out and keep moving if you want. DM's role in all this is just to set the stage and adjudicate the reactions, there's no plot-armored questgiver or fail state beyond TPK.

This does necessitate a particular style of DM'ing that is atypical, since the DM is all about building on player choices and throwing in mixups instead of the usual gentle steering back on track. And if the players don't care that they've eliminated all the hurdles to the formation of the biggest goblin empire in history as they continue west, then it happens in the background until they realize their favorite pub is under siege.

>factions
Yeah that's what makes a sandbox game. For some reason it is never emphasised in posts about West Marches, though. Which might be why people view it poorly.

An empty sandbox is indeed boring.

>and people have to play catch-up before every
This shows you have no idea how to run a west marches campaign. Like said the story and gameplay is emergent. Embrace that.
Do some research on how to pull off a good sandbox. There are things that work and things that don't. Look at how many of the early groups ran sandbox. This is a very different style of gaming. Don't project how you think it should work or what you are already used to on to this style of gaming. It doesn't work and all you'll be left with is this

Except you're describing a good sandbox game, not a West Marches game.

>Dude, when the majority of the topic is telling you you're wrong, it's time to quit and find another topic to shit up.

>A bunch of Random anons think you are wrong
>Therefore you are wrong

user...

This sounds strictly like a failure on the GMs part, not that the form is inherently bad.

If you make the story about and organization the PCs are part of, you can have continuity of plot - the cast just changes from week to week.

I think this rankles some people because it doesn't put them central stage, rather slightly off center and in the back.

>J-just because everyone in this topic thinks I'm a retard doesn't mean I'm actually a retard! They're just random anons on the Internet!

user...

>West Marches game
>Party does their usual thing, causes shit, and such
>Then...

>They earn the enmity of someone very powerful who starts to throw shit at them in retaliation
>Suddenly they have an enemy, and something real to strive for

>Or maybe random treasure tables bring up something surprisingly powerful, like a Ring of Human Influence or a couple Potions of Longevity
>Everyone wants that shit and the party has power at their fingertips and difficult choices to make

>Maybe they take a liking at a random NPC at the inn
>He relates to them his life story and how he's been plagued by some strange shit in the basement
>Party goes there, opens up a whole new dungeon crawl that turns out to threaten the stability of the city, not to mention their new friend's life
>"Hey guys maybe we'll want to do this even if there's no loot."

>Maybe one character just wrote a single line in his backstory about being an exiled noble or a runaway
>Family comes calling, shit goes down

Came up with these all in about two minutes during making this post.

Making up an emergent yet reasonably compelling plot line based entirely on the actions of the player characters is not hard, people.

Well, yes actually, that's a perfectly reasonable assumption all the smug girls in the universe won't change

>Playing an trpg
>to be spoonfed a story

When I create a game I design a world , with various npcs with motivations and gpals and the players then create their own characters with goals and motivations and the 'story' emerges from the interplay of those goals and resulting consequences. The idea of creating some narrative railroad for my players to trudge through sounds absolutely abhorrent.

>HURR DURR SKY IS GREEN
>Dude, no, it's obviously blue
>WHAT DO YOU KNOW YOU'RE JUST A RANDOM INTERNET MEANIE AND I'M RIGHT FOREVER

Alright champ.

Didn't understand, try a food analogy

To a large degree, that is the story. Most of it comes from what characters interacted with each other when, and how it went. There can be something oddly compelling about "if we need a pure healer to get through the first level of this location, I can get us one but he can only play on Tuesdays" but it requires a lot of willingness by the DM to hold the group as a whole to that and not just automatically re-size everything to whoever showed up.

I suspect a lot of "West Marches" games aren't West Marches-style at all.

This entire thread reads like a gay argument imported from some other forum in a lame attempt to get people to read about some dude's campaign idea. 0/10

Now tell me how you're going to do that when the party composition changes around every session.

All grudges are on the party rather than the individual, all artifacts are put in the community chest and require everyone to vote before they're used, and all dungeons have many entrances yet lead to the same... ah fuck it I can't keep this up. It's terrible.

>mfw someone always drops off the face of the earth as soon as their character takes the plot spotlight

Stop playing with randos on the Internet.

That's the sad thing - I don't.

By the time they drop, I'll have known them for a while, played with them for a while, they've always been there in time for sessions and seem really invested in the game. And then the moment they get more plot relevance, out they go without a word of warning.

It's inexplicable and infuriating.