West Marches Style Campaign

There's no fixed group of players. Players can drop in and out of each adventure. There's no set scheduled time. A party leader assembles their team, a location or quest they want to explore, and proposes a schedule to the DM. In person games are also available. The DM will need a week to prepare. DMs propose short adventures (2-3 sessions) similar to a classic quest board situation if there is no clear adventure. Players keep whatever gold and XP they earn from session to session. Characters may group with other characters of any level but must change players between adventures. New characters start at level 1.
Homebrew rules:

• Max 5 players in a party


• XP must be bought, 1gp=1XP. Don't worry, the rewards are waaaayyyyy higher in this mode.


• 3rd Party sources are welcome after being vetted by the DM. You don't have to use dndbeyond as long as the DM sees the character sheet first


• You can travel anywhere in Faerun or the other planes as long as you can afford the travel. If you can teleport, you have to make sure you can afford components before and after the travel. If you can't make it back home at the end of the adventure you lose all treasure from the adventure “buying” your way back home


• Magic items can be sold and split in between adventures using a common price based on rarity


• NPC “henchmen” can be hired for an adventure if you need more players. These count against head count in the party and will receive a split of the XP/Gold, but great if you don't have enough for a full party. They won't take any magic items, and will bring their own equipment, and will be run by the players, not the DM


• You can bring any character you have. New characters start at level 1. You can transfer gold between characters, but if it's spent on XP it's gone forever just like normal!


• Challenges will be based on the level of the highest character in the party. If you think your level one can rock the ancient White dragon, bring them!


• The party leader is also assigned as party scribe and is expected to write an adventure log afterwards. They'll be posted here for all to read, but will receive a 10% increase in gold for writing


• Locations will have secrets and hidden areas. Parties can return to locations for more secrets as new monsters will inhabit the locations, and sometimes you'll have to find keys for one location in another. Only one player can hold the “keys”, so choose wisely


• Once you play with a party leader, you can't join that player’s party again until you play with someone else. This applies to the player, not the characters, and only the party leader. I want to encourage varied party compositions and a larger group of players


• Unlimited short rests! You're welcome Warlocks


• Long rests always consume one ration and can only be taken in a safe place, as adjudicated by the DM. A haunted crypt may not be safe until a Consecration ritual is performed, for example. Spells like Magnificent Mansion would count as a safe space, Tiny Hut would not. Resting in the wilderness doesn't count as a safe space except for Rangers and Druids in their preferred biome. If your character has a requirement to sleep they will still need the normal time to rest or else risk Exhaustion, even if the sleep doesn't confer the benefits of a long rest. Pick your locations carefully, you may not be able to sleep well in a fully populated dungeon.

What is West Marches

Show spoiler

1. There was no regular time: every session was scheduled by the players on the fly.


2. There was no regular party: each game had different players drawn from a pool of around 10-14 people.


3. There was no regular plot: The players decided where to go and what to do. It was a sandbox game in the sense that’s now used to describe video games like Grand Theft Auto, minus the missions. There was no mysterious old man sending them on quests. No overarching plot, just an overarching environment.


4. Session reports are always shared


5. As all PCs are assumed to spend their downtime in the same town, word gets round 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.
6. New quest hooks can be picked up by any group of players.
7. There is a shared world map, that's potentially unreliable
8. 
   
9. 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.


10. The initial map is produced in-game by a character and is only as reliable as that characters map-making abilities / trustworthiness. It is later edited by the players who may also make mistakes. This means it's possible to get lost, if the map is wrong (and the players can subsequently correct it).


11. Friendly competition between player parties is actively encouraged

Jealousy is considered to be a useful motivational force in getting sessions booked and games actually played. If anyone else can pick up from the interesting place where you last left off, or someone else has discovered something exciting, then that motivates you to prioritise organising your next session. Especially when magic items are on the line.

12. Content is loosely tiered
    
13. 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.
14. Significantly stronger threats in low level areas were normally well sign posted. Having pockets of more difficut enemies made the world more exciting, more diverse and incentivized PC's returning to earlier explored areas later, when they were stronger.