I’m going to start this post out by saying something up front: I am nowhere near ready to start a new West Marches adventure. I love the format, but I’ve really been enjoying having time to run smaller, more focused games. I’ve been chewing my way through some Paizo APs and Adventures, and I wouldn’t have the time to prep for them if I was worried about a sandbox game as well.
That said, I still find myself thinking about the next one… after all, it is a format I deeply enjoy, and surely, I’ll run out of Adventure Paths at some point, right? I might as well jot down some notes on what I’ve been mulling over.
The basics
The system, obviously, would be Pathfinder 2e for any fantasy sandbox. I’ve already written about how PF2 is well-tuned for West Marches, and time hasn’t dulled that opinion.
- The world is robust, so there’s no need for me to do a ton of worldbuilding.
- The math works for encounters, making it easy to adjust to pick-up groups.
- There’s so many heritages / ancestries / classes to pick from.
- It requires pretty much no GM fiat to run, making it easier to keep track of what house rules you have at a shared table.
- The rules are all free and online!
Lessons learned and potential improvements
It would be pointless if I co-ran a game for almost three years and didn’t come away with some lessons learned. No attempt is perfect, and there’s always ways to improve.
Levels!
One of the biggest bugbears we had was dealing with level spread. When we started, chat would determine how much XP we got, and everyone had different levels of XP, due to everyone starting at level one when they joined. Level spread became a bigger and bigger problem as time went on, to the point where the GMs started to burn out trying to offer enough games for everyone. In our experience, you couldn’t have more than a three level spread before someone overshadowed the rest or the lower levels were in danger of being one-shot.
We eventually solved this by introducing banding, which worked, but I’ve since grown disillusioned with that as a solution. My other West Marches game (VtM V5) used that, but we eventually abandoned it to make everyone the same level.
Lesson learned: Kill level spread before it kills you.
XP!
In the last server, XP was awarded for chatting in our Discord. This made sense at the time, but also wore down mods and GMs who felt obliged to keep things active. After all, players who don’t get a level get cranky, and might just leave for greener pastures. This is another idea I’ll be swapping out. Some alternative ideas:
- A flat amount each month. Easy to plan for, but doesn’t motivate players.
- An amount for each game played, but given to everyone. Great for getting games on the calendars, but might cause some pain if we have low months due to Real Life.
- A totally random amount between 250 and 1000. I’m including this mostly because it amuses me.
Lesson learned: Link XP to something that’s sustainable for the GMs, since they’re the most limited resource.
Play-by-post!
This one is tricky… Many people love PBP. Hell, I love running and being in text scenes. I’ll also be the first to admit that it can take so much time. Our intention with pushing more PBP in the old game was two-fold:
- More XP at the end of the month
- Allow people to roleplay, with the live games being more combat focused.
In the end, it kind of worked, but it also fed the issue with GMs feeling burnt out due to pressure to post. We created a ton of channels so people could post in set “locations” (think #tavern, #bookstore, #market, etc), but newcomers were overwhelmed by so many options. Also, not everyone likes PBP, and would rather roleplay during a game!
While I don’t want to block PBP (the people who like it REALLY REALLY like it), I think I’ll tweak a few things:
- No creating dozens of channels. Instead, keep it to a single digits number. If channels are busy, players can always RP in DMs and post the result later if they want.
- Disconnect XP from posts
- Offer more games where RP is the focus rather than straight combat.
Lesson learned: PBP is great, but isn’t for everyone.
Time zones!
Good lord, this one bit us so hard.
If you have players separated by an ocean, scheduling games can become complicated fast. Most of our players were in the US, so games in those time zones made sense. This left EU or third-shift players without games unless a US GM was willing to run super late or super early. Personally, I didn’t have a problem running the odd early game on the weekend, but I wasn’t willing to do that every weekend.
I never want to tell someone they can’t play… but on the other hand, it’s not like GMs are paid employees who agreed to all-hours shifts. They’re volunteers who have their own lives, games, and need for sleep.
The solution for this one is tough, and one I’m still working through. “Have GMs in every time zone” isn’t feasible, and having GMs run at all times isn’t sustainable. Some ideas I’ve had:
- Have set timeslots and stick to them. This way, incoming people know if the server will work for them.
- Don’t set timeslots, but have core hours. For example, if the core hours are weekdays 5-12, games can start no earlier than 5pm, and must end by 12am.
- Do nothing and hope for the best? Obviously, this one is my least favorite.
Lesson learned: Round Earth is a terrible design. Whoever thought of it should be fired.
Classes and alts!
One awesome thing about PF2? It’s constantly coming out with new classes and ancestries and heritages! One rough thing about PF2? The exact same thing.
Because games blossom when people bond and make connections, I’m not a huge fan of a revolving door of PCs, especially if players expect that they’ll be pulled into the plot quickly. On the old server, we decided to let people have alts, allowing them to have multiple characters (three, to be exact). Some people loved this, and some had trouble keeping up. Also, to be honest, as a GM it became difficult to keep track of all of the personalities. Classes weren’t as much of a problem as bodies. People want to play with their buddies, but if the buddy is a different level / same class, they may not feel like they can ever be in a game with them.
I still love the idea of alts, because they give the server flexibility and let people try out new stuff without dropping an old character. So… is there a way to meld to two?
My potential fix: Let a PC have more than one build.
This would be built into the story via some sort of magic device. Essentially, PCs would be gifted an artifact that has the “impression” of another former adventurer. How this plays out is up to the player. Maybe it’s just one personality and three different classes, or maybe they choose to have different “personalities”, depending on which class is active.
This is one of those ideas that either have people super excited to play, or who immediately aren’t into it. My hope is that it’s a mechanic that can add to the game without taking away from anyone who would rather just have one class. As someone who never got to play her Rogue main in WoW, I 100% get that.
Lesson learned: Not everyone wants to juggle three personalities, and it can start to tax the GMs.
Streaming!
I’ll be real: This was a lot of fun to do. No, we never had a huge audience, but players who couldn’t join a game could watch, and it was fun to clip moments. I got so used to doing this that I started recording (though not streaming) my regular games.
It does require set-up to do, and a machine beefy enough to handle a VTT, Discord, and OBS at once, but this is one of the things I would pitch to the server as an option. The only problem would be if a player didn’t want to stream, which I 100% get. In that case, some options might be:
- Don’t record the game at all
- Stream the game through Discord
- Record it and post a link to the game later
I’m leaning towards the last one, since if you can stream, you can record.
Lesson learned: A record of games is nice to have!
Final thoughts
Okay, decent write-up, but when is the next game happening? A few months ago, I would have said “January 2023” but… I’m writing this in May 2023, so that obviously didn’t happen.
I would say it would be more likely to happen sometime in 2024. The itch for more loose games is growing, and I have a growing number of people I’d love to play with who can’t commit to a full AP. When it does happen, I’m sure I’ll post about it here!
Katie Plays Games 