Grand Experiments: West

Marches
from http://arsludi.lamemage.com/
West Marches was a game I ran for a little over two years. It was designed to be pretty much
the diametric opposite of the normal weekly game:
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 THATS 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.

My motivation in setting things up this way was to overcome player apathy and mindless plot
following by putting the players in charge of both scheduling and what they did in-game.
A secondary goal was to make the schedule adapt to the complex lives of adults. Ad hoc
scheduling and a flexible roster meant (ideally) people got to play when they could but didnt
hold up the game for everyone else if they couldnt. If you can play once a week, thats fine. If
you can only play once a month, thats fine too.
Letting the players decide where to go was also intended to nip DM procrastination (aka my
procrastination) in the bud. Normally a DM just puts off running a game until hes 100% ready
(which is sometimes never), but with this arrangement if some players wanted to raid the
Sunken Fort this weekend I had to hurry up and finish it. It was gaming on-demand, so the
players created deadlines for me.

Setting: Go West Young Man

The game was set in a frontier region on the edge of civilization (the eponymous West
Marches). Theres a convenient fortified town that marked the farthest outpost of civilization and
law, but beyond that is sketchy wilderness. All the PCs are would-be adventurers based in this
town. Adventuring is not a common or safe profession, so the player characters are the only
ones interested in risking their lives in the wilderness in hopes of making a fortune (NPCs
adventurers are few and far between). Between sorties into the wilds PCs rest up, trade info and
plan their next foray in the cheery taproom of the Axe & Thistle.
The whole territory is (by necessity) very detailed. The landscape is broken up into a variety of
regions (Frog Marshes, Cradle Wood, Pike Hollow, etc.) each with its own particular tone,
ecology and hazards. There are dungeons, ruins, and caves all over the place, some big and
many small. Some are known landmarks (everbody knows where the Sunken Fort is), some are

rumored but their exact location is unknown (the Hall of Kings is said to be somewhere in Cradle
Wood) and others are completely unknown and only discovered by exploring (search the spiderinfested woods and you find the Spider Mound nest).
PCs get to explore anywhere they want, the only rule being that going back east is off-limits
there are no adventures in the civilized lands, just peaceful retirement.
The environment is dangerous. Very dangerous. Thats intentional, because as the great MUD
Nexus teaches us, danger unites. PCs have to work together or they are going to get creamed.
They also have to think and pick their battles since they can go anywhere, there is nothing
stopping them from strolling into areas that will wipe them out. If they just strap on their swords
and charge everything they see they are going to be rolling up new characters. Players learn to
observe their environment and adapt when they find owlbear tracks in the woods they give
the area a wide berth (at least until they gain a few levels). When they stumble into the lair of a
terrifying hydra they retreat and round up a huge posse to hunt it down.
The PCs are weak but central: they are small fish in a dangerous world that they have to
explore with caution, but because they are the only adventurers they never play second fiddle.
Overshadowed by looming peaks and foreboding forests yes. Overshadowed by other
characters, no.

Scheduling: Players Are In Control

The West Marches charter is that games only happen when the players decide to do something
the players initiate all adventures and its their job to schedule games and organize an
adventuring party once they decide where to go.
Players send emails to the list saying when they want to play and what they want to do. A
normal scheduling email would be something like Id like to play Tuesday. I want to go back and
look for that ruined monastery we heard out about past the Golden Hills. I know Mike wants to
play, but we could use one or two more. Whos interested? Interested players chime in and
negotiation ensues. Players may suggest alternate dates, different places to explore (Ive been
to the monastery and its too dangerous. Lets track down the witch in Pike Hollow instead!),
whatever its a chaotic process, and the details sort themselves out accordingly. In theory this
mirrors whats going on in the tavern in the game world: adventurers are talking about their
plans, finding comrades to join them, sharing info, etc.
The only hard scheduling rules are:
1) THE GM HAS TO BE AVAILABLE THAT DAY (OBVIOUSLY) SO THIS SYSTEM ONLY WORKS IF
THE GM IS PRETTY FLEXIBLE.
2) THE PLAYERS HAVE TO TELL THE GM WHERE THEY PLAN ON GOING WELL IN ADVANCE, SO
HE (MEANING ME) HAS AT LEAST A CHANCE TO PREPARE ANYTHING THATS MISSING. AS THE
CAMPAIGN GOES ON THIS BECOMES LESS AND LESS OF A PROBLEM, BECAUSE SO MANY
AREAS ARE SO FLESHED OUT THE PCS CAN GO JUST ABOUT ANYWHERE ON THE MAP AND
HIT ADVENTURE. THE GM CAN ALSO VETO A PLAN THAT SOUNDS COMPLETELY BORING AND
NOT WORTH A GAME SESSION.

All other decisions are up to the players they fight it out among themselves, sometimes
literally.

Grand Experiments: West Marches (part 2), Sharing

Info
Players sharing information was a critical part of the West Marches design. Because there was
a large pool of players, the average person was in about a third of the games or to look it the
other way, each player missed two-thirds of the games. Add in that each player was in a random
combination of sessions (not even playing with a consistent subset of players) and pretty quickly
each player is seeing a unique fraction of the game. No one is having the same game
experience, which sounds philosophically interesting but is bad news if you want everyone to
feel like they are in the same game. Sharing info was essential to keeping everyone on the
same page and in the same game.
There were two main ways information got shared: game summaries and the shared map.

Shared Experience: Game Summaries

Players were strongly encouraged to chat about their adventures between games. Email
(specifically a list devoted to the game) made between-game communication very easy,
something that would have been next to impossible years earlier. This discussion theoretically
mirrored chatter between characters who had made it safely back to the town. Did you stumble
into the barrow mounds in Wil Wood and barely escape with your life? Warn other adventurers
so they can steer clear. Did you slay wolves on the moors until the snow was red with blood?
Brag about it so everyone else knows how tough you are.
What started off as humble anecdotes evolved into elaborate game summaries, detailed stories
written by the players recounting each adventure (or misadventure). Instead of just sharing
information and documenting discoveries (we found ancient standing stones north of the
Golden Hills), game summaries turned into tributes to really great (and some really tragic)
game sessions, and eventually became a creative outlet in their own right. Players enjoyed
writing them and players enjoyed reading them, which kept players thinking about the game
even when they werent playing.

Shared World: the Table Map

The other major way information was shared was the table map. When the game first started
the PCs heard a rumor that years ago when other adventurers had tried their luck exploring the
West Marches, they had sat in the taproom of the Axe & Thistle to compare notes. While trying
to describe an area of the wilds, a few thirsty patrons had scratched out a simple map on the top
of the table (an X here, a line here). Over time others started adding bits, cleaning it up, and
before long it had grown from some scratches to a detailed map carved into most of the surface
of the table showing forests, creeks, caves, ominous warnings, etc. Where was that table now?
Gone, but no one was sure where maybe carried off as a souvenir, smashed in a brawl and
used for kindling, or perhaps just thrown out after it was too scratched to rest a drink flatly.
On hearing this story the PCs immediately decided to revive the tradition (just as I hoped they
would) and started to carve their own crude map on a large table in the taproom of the Axe &
Thistle. As the campaign went on all the PCs would gather around it, quaff an ale, and plan
adventures. In the real world it was a single sheet of graph paper with the town and the
neighboring areas drawn in pretty well, and then about four or five more pieces of graph paper

taped on haphazardly whenever someone wandered off the edge or explored just a little bit
farther. Because the map was in a public place and any PC could get to it, I brought it to every
game session for the PCs to add to or edit and kept a reasonably up-to-date scanned copy on
the web for reference between games. In the end maybe half a dozen different players had put
their hand to it.
Was the table map accurate? Not really, but having a common reference point, a shared sense
of what they thought the region looked like kept everyone feeling like they were playing in the
same world.

An intentional side effect of both game summaries and the shared map was that they whetted
peoples appetite to play. When people heard about other players finding the Abbots study in a
hidden room of the ruined monastery, or saw on the map that someone else had explored
beyond Centaur Grove, it made them want to get out there and play too. Soon they were
scheduling their own game sessions. Like other aspects of West Marches it was a careful
allowance of competitiveness and even jealously to encourage more gaming.
It was also important to me as a GM that players share knowledge because otherwise I knew
that no one would put the pieces together. Remember how I said there was no plot? There
wasnt. But there was history and interconnected details. Tidbits found in one place could shed
light elsewhere. Instead of just being interesting detail, these clues lead to concrete discoveries
if you paid attention. If you deciphered the runes in the depths of the dwarven mines, you could
learn that the exiles established another hidden fortress in the valleys to the north. Now go look
for it. Or maybe youll learn how to get past the Black Door or figure out what a treasure beyond
bearing actually is. Put together the small clues hidden all across the map and you can uncover
the big scores, the secret bonus levels.

Grand Experiments: West Marches (part 3), Recycling

DID YOU READ PART 1 AND PART 2 ALREADY? NO? GO DO THAT.

Running frequent on-demand games is a lot of work, but because the campaign was set in a
fixed region there were ways I could maximize the reusability of some material I prepared.

Recycled Maps: Evolving Dungeons

Maps were a good example I could pour tons of detail into wilderness maps because I knew
characters would be returning to those areas frequently. Even after some players had mostly
explored a region they still had to trek through it get to farther away areas. Plus since there were
lots of players there was always someone going to an area for the first time. Lots of return on
investment. Compare that to a normal game where the players might stroll through a region
once and never look back.
Interior maps of dungeons, ruins, etc. were also a very good investment, because even if a
party came through and wiped out all the creatures the floor plan did not change. Come back a
season later and who knows what will have taken up residence. Wipe out the entrenched
kobolds and next spring the molds and fungi that were a minor hazard before have spread into
whole colonies of mushroom warriors. Drive the pirates out of the Sunken Fort and its lonely

halls become the hunting ground for the fishy devils from the sea or maybe the whole place
is just empty. These evolving dungeons were a key feature of the West Marches.

Recycled Danger: Wandering Monsters

Another massively useful tool was the venerable yet mockable wandering monster table. No,
seriously. Think about it: by creating a unique wandering monster table for each wilderness area
(one for the Frog Marshes, one for the Notch Fells, etc.) I could carefully sculpt the precise
flavor for each region. It made me think very carefully about what each area was like, what
critters lived there and what kind of terrain hazards made sense (anything from bogs to rockslides to exposure to marsh fever). They were effectively the definition for each territory.
Most tables also had one or more results that told you to roll on the table for an adjacent region
instead. If youre in Minol Valley you might run afoul of a goblin hunting party that came over the
pass from Cradle Wood. The odds were weighted based on how likely creatures were to wander
between the regions.
For all encounters there was also a chance of getting two results instead of one: roll twice and
come up with a situation combining the two. It might be a bear trapped in quicksand, or a bear
that comes across you while youre trapped in quicksand. Combining two wandering monsters
results is surefire way to come up with an interesting encounter.
Just having these detailed wandering monster tables at my fingertips meant I was always ready
when players decided to do a little light exploring. These tables got used over and over and
over again.
Players never saw these wandering monster tables, but they got to know the land very, very
well. They knew that camping on the Battle Moors was begging for trouble (particularly near the
full moon), they knew that it was wise to live and let live in the Golden Hills, and they knew to
keep an ear out for goblin horns in Cradle Wood. Becoming wise in the ways of the West
Marches was part of their job as players and a badge of merit when they succeeded.

Grand Experiments: West Marches (part 4), Death &

Danger
As Ive said before (and any of the players will tell you) West Marches was dangerous by
design. Danger encourages teamwork because you have to work together to survive. It also
forces players to think: if they make bad decisions they get wiped out, or at least chased into
the swamp like little sissy girls (a recurring game quote*).
Its an open secret that every GM fudges sometimes, or glosses over closely checking rolls and
just hand waves things. Its part of the art to do it well and gracefully. No such thing in West
Marches: I rolled all dice in the open, not behind the screen. If the dice said you sucked a
critical, a critical you did suck.
Did this lead to looming specter of sudden death? Yes, but having strong and fairly unyielding
consequences combined with a consistent, logical environment meant the players really could
make intelligent decisions that determined their fate they really did hold their own lives in
their hands.

Of course for that to work the sandbox had to be built with internal logic and consistency that the
players could decipher

Danger Gradients: Paths of Exploration

West Marches was intended to be a campaign environment, where characters would start at low
level (1st actually) and then push farther and farther out into the wilds as they advanced. When I
was creating the game map I marked each region with a specific encounter level (EL) to gauge
the kind of threats that were normal there. The logical pattern was a rising gradient of danger:
the farther you get from the safety of town, the more dangerous the land became.
In most cases there were no steep changes in encounter level as you moved from region to
region: if you were in an EL 3 area, an adjacent region would probably be EL 4 or 5 at most.
This makes good game play, but also matches game world logic: the goblins in the mountains
dont magically stay on their side of the fence, some wander into Cradle Wood (the adjacent
region) and some even go as far as the Battle Moors (the region beyond that). Distance was
generally walking distance not as the stirge flies, so the far side of a mountain range might be
quite a bit more dangerous since it was effectively farther from town.
Mountains, rivers, valleys and similar terrain features divided up the West Marches, creating
separate paths of exploration. Players were free to jump around and explore where ever they
liked, but there was a tendency to return to previously explored areas just to see what the next
region out looked like. So if a party started exploring west into Wil Wood, they would probably
push into the Frog Marshes, then the Dwarven Caves, then the Notch Fells, each region harder
than the last. But if they explored north into the Moors, they would push into Cradle Wood,
Ghost Wood, then the Goblins Teeth and so on. Each region also held tidbits that revealed
details about the farther regions. By the time you reach the ruins in Harbor Wood youve hit lots
of clues pointing at their druidic origins.
Multiple exploration paths also meant that a player could level up exploring one direction, die
horribly somewhere high level (sorry Mike, two hydras was cruel), and then start a new 1st level
character and explore completely different areas. You didnt have to go back to the same low
level areas because there were multiple low level areas (and multiple medium level areas, and
multiple high level areas, and so on).
The players never knew I had these potential exploration paths planned out, they just pushed
farther and farther into the wilds in whatever direction they started going.

Danger Pockets: Barrow Mounds & Treasure Rooms

Not everything in a region obeyed the overall encounter level how exciting would that be?
Some regions had sharp pockets of danger, like the barrow mounds in the middle of the
otherwise pleasant Wil Wood.
By logic those pocket encounter areas had to be either sealed away or isolated somehow,
otherwise they would change the EL of the region around them. If the wights stay in their
mounds, the rest of the wood is still relatively safe. If the wights go roaming through the forest,
Wil Wood should just have a higher EL.

Usually these pockets were either easy to find and well known or hard to find and completely
unknown. This kept players from just bumping into extreme danger with no warning they
either knew about the danger spot and could avoid it if they wanted, or didnt know about it and
would only find it with searching, in which case they knew they were unearthing something
unusual. If they were smart that would be enough to get them to proceed with caution.
Dungeon design was also a little different than normal. In a traditional game the adventurers
sweep through a dungeon and never look back, but as I covered in part 3 the ongoing
environment meant every dungeon was a permanent feature. Dungeons generally had the
same or near EL as the region they were in (for all the obvious reasons), but to make things
interesting I designed many of the dungeons with treasure rooms that were harder than the
standard EL, well hidden, or just plain impossible to crack. So even when a party could slog
through and slaughter everything they met, there was a spot or two they couldnt clear, whether
it was the fearsome Black Door, the ghoul-infested crypts of the ruined monastery, or the
perilous Hall of Swords. They usually had to give up and make a strong mental note to come
back later when they were higher level.
Lots of times they _never_ came back. They really wanted to, they talked about it all the time,
but they never got around to it because they were busy exploring new territory. Rather than
being frustrating each new incomplete seemed to make players even more interested in the
game world.
Was there actually good treasure in the treasure rooms? Yes, really good treasure. Every time
the players cracked one it just made them more certain that all those other sealed or wellguarded rooms they couldnt beat were chock full of goodness.

Postscript
In Gamist-Narrativist-Simulationist (GNS) terms, West Marches was gamist (make bad
decisions and you die, roll bad and you die) and heavily simulationist (if youre in the woods in
winter and you have no food youre in trouble).
An interesting side effect was that West Marches put me (the GM) in a more neutral position. I
wasnt playing any scheming NPCs or clever plots, so I wasnt portraying intelligent opposition
and didnt have any ulterior motives. The environment was already set, so instead of making up
challenges that matched the party I just dutifully reported what they found wherever they went.
When I rolled I would freely tell the players what bonuses or target numbers they were up
against, so the players looked at the dice to see the result, not me.
In many of the West Marches games it really felt like the PCs versus the world with me as an
impartial observer. The players didnt see my hand just the game world, which is about the
most any GM can hope for.
BIG KUDOS TO MIKE, GAVIN, KAREN, CHRIS, DAN, PING, SETH, JEM, JEN, ROB, RUSSELL,
PAUL, TREY, ZACH, ROY, TOMMY, MIKE M, CHARISSA, JOHN, AND PAUL G. I KEPT TRYING TO
KILL THEM AND THEY KEPT COMING BACK. WHAT MORE CAN YOU ASK FOR IN PLAYERS?
* ONE OF KARENS BEST LINES, BACK IN THE FIRST DAYS IN THE KOBOLD CAVES.

West Marches: Running Your Own

Alarming fact: brave GMs all over the place are taking up the torch and starting their own West
Marches games. Scary isnt it?
Ive already had some private email conversations about how one would actually build and run a
West Marches of their very own. Maybe youve got the bug too. Early symptoms include a
desire to build vast wilderness areas and enlist hordes of players to explore it. Sound familiar?
Then read on for a few (hopefully) helpful tips:

Building It
make town safe and the wilds wild Having the town be physically secure (walled or in some
cases protected by natural features like rivers or mountains) is very useful for making a sharp
town = safe / wilderness = danger distinction. Draconian law enforcement inside town, coupled
with zero enforcement in the wilds outside town, also helps. Once you are outside the town you
are on your own.
keep NPC adventurers rare Or even better non-existent. Its up to the players to explore the
wilderness, not NPCs. As soon as you have NPCs going on adventures of their own you move
the focus away from player-initiated action. NPC adventurers also makes it harder to explain
why interesting things werent already discovered players love being the first to find the
Horned Tower or the Abbots Study. Keep this in mind when you devise the background for your
region. Is it a newly opened frontier? Or is adventuring just something no one in their right mind
does in this world (the West Marches premise)?
build dungeons with treasure rooms, locked rooms, pockets of danger A solid party may be
able to wipe out the primary critters in a dungeon, but there should always be spots that are a
lot harder to clear. On those rare occasions when a group _does_ manage to clear a dungeon
or crack a treasure room, they will stand on the tables in the tavern and cheer, not in some small
part to brag to the other players who werent on that sortie.

Running It
appear passive The world may be active, but you the GM should appear to be passive.
Youre not killing the party, the dire wolf is. Its not you, its the world. Encourage the players to
take action, but leave the choices up to them. Rolling dice in the open helps a lot. The sandbox
game really demands that you remain neutral about what the players do. Its their decisions that
will get them killed or grant them fame and victory, not yours. Thats the whole idea.
provide an easy lead to get new players started Once players are out exploring, each new
discovery motivates them to search more, but how do you get them started? Every time I
introduced a batch of new players I gave them a very basic treasure map that vaguely pointed
to somewhere in the West Marches and then let them go look for it. Whether it was the dwarven
treasure beyond bearing or the gold buried beneath the Red Willow, a no-brainer go look for
treasure here clue gets the players out of town and looking around. Of course once the players
are in the wilds, they may find that getting to that treasure is much harder than it looks.
the adventure is in the wilderness, not the town As per the discussion of NPCs above, be
careful not to change the focus to urban adventure instead of exploration. You can have as
many NPCs as you want in town, but remember its not about them. Once players start talking

to town NPCs, they will have a perverse desire to stay in town and look for adventure there.
Town game was a dirty word in West Marches. Town is not a source of info. You find things by
exploring, not sitting in town someone who explores should know more about what is out
there than someone in town.
let the players take over Dont write game summaries, dont clean up the shared map. You
want the players to do all those things. If you do it, youll just train them not to.
competition is what its all about Fair rewards, scarcity, bragging rights these are the things
that push the game higher. You could have a solo West Marches game with just one group
doing all the exploring, and it would probably be a fun and pleasant affair, but its _nothing_
compared to the frenzy youll see when players know other players are out there finding secrets
and taking treasure that _they_ could be getting, if only they got their butts out of the tavern.
(Hmm, is this why I get a kick out of running Agon? Its true, Im a cruel GM.)
require scheduling on the mailing list It doesnt matter whether a bunch of players agreed to
go on an adventure when they were out bowling, they have to announce it on the mailing list or
web forum (whichever youre using for your scheduling). This prevents the game from
splintering into multiple separate games. If you notice cliques forming you can make a rule
requiring parties to mix after two adventures. Conversely if you notice players being dropped
from follow-up sorties too often just because some people cant wait to play, you can require
parties to stay together for two adventures. That forces a little more long time strategy in party
selection, less greedy opportunism. Season to taste.
fear the social monster This is the big, big grand-daddy or all warnings: even more so than
many games, West Marches is a social beast. In normal games players have an established
place in the group. They know they are supposed to show up every Tuesday to play they
dont have to think about that or worry about whether they belong in the group. On the other
hand West Marches is a swirling vortex of ambition and insecurity. How come no one replied
when I tried to get a group together last week? Why didnt anybody invite me to raid the ogre
cave? And so on and so on ad infinitum. The thrilling success or catastrophic failure of your
West Marches game will largely hinge on the confidence or insecurity of your player pool.
Buckle up.
Running your own West Marches game? Post a link in the comments so everyone can take a
look and grow green with envy. Ive got some links I need to post but if you hurry you can beat
me to it.

West Marches: Secrets & Answers (part 1)

Writing about world-building in the expansion to Microscope got me thinking about West
Marches again (more on that in part 2), so Im taking a break from my kickstarter to answer
some questions that have piled up.
Some of these ideas Ive mentioned before but never elaborated on. Other bits are things Ive
never talked about at all. Because I know lots of people have played or wanted to run West
Marches games of their own, Ive tried to clarify which choices were critical to making the
concept work and which were just personal preference. Because there is more than one way to
march west

The Players Handbook

Even though I wrote the blog posts in 2007, the actual campaign was years earlier. We started
West Marches at the very beginning of 2001 and ended in 2003. 3rd Edition D&D had just come
out and we used it for the entire campaign (3.5 wasnt released until after the game ended).
West Marches character creation followed one very simple rule: you could only build characters
using the original Players Handbook. No classes, races, feats, nothing from any other source.
And because everything in the Players Handbook was allowed, I could just say, If its in the
Players Handbook, its good without having to look over anyones shoulder or screen
characters.
Even religion worked that way. Need a god? Just pick one of the friendly faces in the book, read
the tiny paragraph and youre ready to go. Want to buy something? Check the price on the
equipment list and spend away. The only caveat was that no one sold alchemical crap like
tanglefoot bags and sunrods for the simple reason that I hated faux-technology stuff. Get a torch
or get a wizard!
Using just the Players Handbook made life simpler because there were no debates about
whether to allow X, Y or Z in the game. It wasnt even an issue. But even more importantly it
started players on the right foot by putting them in the drivers seat. They didnt need to ask me
to approve anything. If they had the Players Handbook, they could make their own decisions. It
put them in a West Marches mindset before they even started playing.

Every Square is 5 Feet

The idea that the Players Handbook was inviolate, that it was a bedrock you could trust and
swear upon, started with character creation but it ran right into game play. Specifically, combat.
Unlike every previous version of D&D (and I mean every single previous version), 3rd Edition
did not require judgment calls just to run a simple melee. You didnt have to ask the GM whether
you could get past the lizard man to attack the chief this round or who your fireball would hit.
You could just look at the battle map, count the squares and make your move. You could open
your PHB, read a page from the combat chapter, and know exactly what you could do and what
to expect.
If you started with 3rd Edition or later, this may not seem like a big deal. Trust me, it was. Huge.
It fundamentally transformed how D&D was played. As a GM, it meant I could set up the
situation and then kick back and let the players decide how to tackle it. They didnt have to ask
me what they were allowed to do each round or hope I ruled in their favor.
Without this fundamental shift, West Marches would not have been possible. Or it would have
been a much weaker shadow of itself. Players could never have felt that they were really in
control of their own destiny if they had to play mother may I in every battle.

Rooting for the Players

Because the rules were well-documented and clear, there were lots of times when West
Marches combats would become fascinating (albeit life-threatening) tactical puzzles for
everyone at the table. We would all gaze down at the battle map (me included!) and ponder
possible moves. Was there a way the barbarian could zig-zag through the kobold hordes and

pounce on the shaman lurking in the back? (answer: yes, with clever manuevering he could
avoid all but one attack-of-opportunity) Could a totally underpowered rogue anchor the line and
prevent the bugbears from wrapping around and flanking the heavy fighters by just dodging like
crazy instead of attacking? (answer: yes. By holding her ground in a fight that was out of her
league she averted a total party kill at Zirak-zil) Could a staggered retreat get everyone out of
the Hydra Cave in one piece? (answer: no. Really, really no)
Im not talking about telling other players what to do (coaching sucks), Im talking about
analyzing the rules and the options after a player has declared a plan they want to try, but arent
sure how it will play out mechanically. Someone would say hmm, could I get to the shaman
without getting clobbered by attacks-of-opportunity? and invite the tactical huddle. These
discussions levelled the playing field as far as rules knowledge went. Someone could be totally
new to D&D but make reasonable decisions because if there were rules consequences they did
not foresee everyone else could (politely) help them understand the odds. Again: informing, not
coaching. Characters getting wiped out from making poor decisions was completely legit, but
getting wiped out because you misunderstood the rules was not the danger I was trying to
promote.
And when I say I would be chatting and trying to figure it out just like everyone else, I mean I
really was. Once the combat was under way and the situation was pretty well understood, I
often didnt have any secrets. When a creature attacked, I would happily tell players exactly
what its attack bonus was and roll the dice in the open. When a PC attacked, I told them the
armor class they were trying to hit. I didnt tell them actual hit points but I was pretty clear about
how wounded something was. Most creatures in West Marches didnt have weird or surprising
abilities. You could generally look at the battle map and see what was up, so I could chat and
analyze possible moves just like the other players did.
Being open about basic stats reinforced the idea that the dangers came from the monsters on
the table, not from me. Player decisions and the forces in the world mattered, not my whims.
When attacks were made, the players looked at the dice, not me. I could root for the players and
even help them understand how the rules worked in their favor and it didnt hurt the tension of
the game even slightly. The combat rules of 3rd Edition D&D made that possible.