Run one open campaign for more players than fit at your table. Whoever is free tonight heads out from a safe town into a dangerous wilderness, and the next group has to live with what they find.
By Karl Otto Kristoffersen · system-neutral · PDF and print on DriveThruRPG
A West Marches campaign has one world and many players. There is no weekly group. Players say when they want to play, and whoever shows up that night forms the party.
Every session starts in town and ends back in town, or it does not end at all. The party sets its own goal, marches out and comes home with a map, a rumor or a dead friend. The next group walks into whatever this one left behind.
The name comes from a campaign Ben Robbins ran and wrote about on his blog, Ars Ludi. I wrote the Guidebook after running my own, because I wanted the whole method in one short book I could hand to another GM.
Rumors, open jobs and old maps hang where everyone can read them. Players pick what they want to chase.
The party agrees on one goal before they leave. One sentence. The GM preps that, and only that.
Out into the wilderness. Danger grows with distance, so how far to push is the players' call.
Back in town the map is updated and new rumors go up on the board. Now the next group has something to chase.
The Guidebook teaches the method. The other three hold the campaign together while it runs, one for the GM, one for the group and one for each player.
The method. How to run one open campaign for more players than fit at your table, and keep one world consistent for every group that heads out.
The paperwork of an open campaign, already laid out. One place for the world, its factions, NPCs, rumors and quests.
The book the players keep together. It moves the shared bookkeeping off the GM and onto the group, and over time it becomes the history of the company.
One book per player, carried between sessions. What your character saw out there, what they owe, and what they mean to do next time.
The bundle on DriveThruRPG only charges you for the books you do not already own.
Any of them. The books are system-neutral. They describe how to run the campaign, so they sit next to Shadowdark, OSR games, 5e, Pathfinder 2e or whatever you already play.
No. The Guidebook is the method, and it is enough to start. The other three are working books for the GM, the group and each player. If you want everything, the West Marches Playkit bundles all four.
Yes. The West Marches Expedition One-Sheet is free. One page per expedition: who marched out, what they were after, what happened and what came home.
The Guidebook is about how to run the campaign, and some readers wanted more tables. If that is you, pair it with the Sandbox Playstyle Toolkit: The City for the home base and the Hexcrawl series for the wilderness.
Yes. All four books are print on demand from DriveThruRPG, in softcover and hardcover. Shops can order them at retailer terms on the vendor page.
The Guidebook is out in Italian on DriveThruRPG and in Spanish from El Refugio de Ryhope. A Polish edition is on its way.
I wrote the books myself. AI tools were used as a final proofreader for typos and inconsistencies. The text, art and layout are made by people.
