Player Handbook

A West Marches Campaign is a particular style of RPG campaign, easily transported to D&D, which has some of the following criteria:

• Every game session begins and ends at the same point of origin (the hometown/base) 
• This means:
• Every session can be entirely self-contained. The new session will always represent a completely new foray, out from the base, into the wilderness, even if (coincidentally) the party is exactly the same as last time, and want to resume a similar pursuit.
• Players’ characters don’t have to spontaneously appear in narratively unsatisfying ways when needed.
• In later adventures, as travel times increase away from that point of origin, the act of traveling itself is more likely to be handwaved/skipped over.

• The players decide where to go and what to do in ADVANCED
• Yes, it’s a sandbox, but the players must decide what they would like to do in advance of the session. Normally, as part of booking the DM’s time for the session, the players would also state what they wanted to do in that session.
• This way the DM can prepare in advance, without needing to prepare the whole world, or improvise large pieces of content
• Session reports are always shared
• As all PCs are assumed to spend their downtime in the same town, word gets around about what happens on each adventure. Players are encouraged to write up session reports and distribute them to each other. It’s a living world, the same goblin warlord cannot be killed by two different groups, so the second group that wanted to try needs to know if the first succeeded or not.
• New quest hooks can be picked up by any group of players
• There is a shared world map, that’s potentially unreliable
• All initial objectives and later objectives that are discovered are marked on a shared map, which players can use to suggest places they want to explore
• The initial map is produced in-game by a character and is only reliable as the characters map-making abilities/trustworthiness. It is later edited by players who may also make mistakes. This means it’s possible to get lost, if the map is wrong (and players can subsequently correct it).
• Competition between players is actively encouraged
• Jealousy is considered to be a useful motivational force in getting sessions booked and games actually played. If anyone else can pickup from the interesting place where you last left off, or someone else has discovered something exciting, then that motivates you to prioritize organizing your next session. Especially when magic items are on the line.
• Content is loosely tiered
• Players started at a low level and would meet on average higher levels of danger the further they ventured outside of town. This meant players could largely assess whether a threat was likely to be appropriate or not.
• Significantly stronger threats in low levels areas are normally well sign posted.
• Having pockets of more difficult enemies make the world more exciting, more diverse, and incentivizes PC’s returning to earlier explored areas later, when they are stronger.