Experimenting

Getting players to gather on a regular schedule is a frustrating act, both for the Game Master (GM) and the players. It may seem innocuous, but gathering 3 or more people into a single room is difficult as everyone has responsibilities away from the game table. I have been looking into a style of Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) known as West Marches.

The style is called that because the setting it was run in was the West Marches setting. The general idea behind the campaign is to make up for the inability for players to always meet up. West Marches style is far more player driven than GM driven. Rather than the GM makes everything and sit down to lead the players down a story arc, the players decide where they want to go and a GM agrees to make content for that spot.

This style of play can have up to fifty people because they are not playing at the same table together. It is instead fifty people who are in communication with each other to find party members and GMs to do content with. Sometimes rules like, "you can't play with the same person more than twice in a row," are put in place to prevent cliques from forming and to ensure everyone can get a party formed.

What I want to borrow from this style for my collection of friends is the ability to meet in varied groups and sizes. The idea is simply trying to overcome the inability for all 9 of us to meet up every two weeks. I posed the idea to our group chat to see who will agree to it. The idea is rough at the moment: we have the same setting, short sessions, build lore as we go, don't over power players, players understand house rules will alter between GMs, and so on.

If this doesn't work, I might just make a simple murder dungeon or combat zone players can jump in on at any point. I don't see any reason why we should all cease playing entirely, nor the various people who want to be GMs should not just try with one-offs first. I probably would have been a better GM had I tried a one-off rather than jumping into a grand campaign without any grasp of the rules. I doubt there will be any play before Christmas, but hopefully we I can get a consensus from people before January.