Jul 12, 2017 7:05 pm
Hey Everybody!
{EDIT: if you're on this page, please leave a note to let me know you've seen it so I don't keep bugging you about it, and maybe subscribe to the thread? I want all the input I can get!}
So I recently watched this video by Matt Colville about West Marches style games and he talked about the fact that a West Marches style game can have TONS of players in it (like up to 50) and even multiple DMs. So this started me thinking--what if we started a West Marches game in which anyone on the entire GP website who wanted to play could, and depending on how many players we had, we could have a bunch of DMs who would take certain adventures as parties formed and decided to try something.
Now I think there are several benefits to something like this:
First, it's not a whole lot of work for the DMs. I tried DMing once and it was hard! A lot of prep and very time consuming. But as Matt explains, a West Marches style game is played in a very impromptu way on the DM's part, where the players are the ones having to force the game along and the DM just has to react as the players advance. A West Marches game is especially easy over a forums-based game because the DM has not only all the time between the player's choosing what to do and them doing it, but also all the time between them posting.
Second, a West Marches style game, especially one this large, would have a very hard time "dying out". Now I love GP, but one of my greatest pet peeves about it is that games come and go like dandelions. A new game starts up and everyone's fired up to do it, but then after about a week of feverish posting the game starts to slow down and finally it gets so slow that it's nearly non-existent as the adventurers slog through what feels less and less interesting material and their great dreams for their characters begin to look less and less attainable. Or, the DM has a conflict and has to stop DMing. Sound familiar? Well, a West Marches game would be much harder for this to happen to. On the player's part, it's organic and constantly changing, so the players never get bored of the storyline or their comrades because both are new every adventure. On the DMs' part, they don't have nearly as much pressure on them to come up with great new content every single time, because they aren't constantly DMing because there are 9 other DMs helping them out. And if someone's life starts coming down around their ears and they have to bow out? No problem! We'll miss them, but the other DMs are more then capable of holding it all together until that person comes back, or maybe even one of the players can ascend to the status of DM and run a couple adventures until IRL stops killing the poor guy who had to leave.
Third, because of the nature of West Marches games, the DM often doesn't have the world mapped out already. Instead, he drops the players in a town with absolutely no adventuring opportunity in it and says "go out, young adventurelings". As the adventurers spread out into the world, the DM decides what they find and where, even randomly, but the adventurers have to keep track of this stuff themselves. The DM isn't going to hand them a perfect map. Because of all this, it means that the players are, in a way, forcing the creation of the world as they go along, a concept that I think is really cool. Again--less work for the DMs.
Fourth, it'd be a great community builder. Have you ever wished that you could get together a bunch of specific GPers and play a game with them? Go out on an epic adventure? If you're like me, you love playing with a lot of GPers. How do you play them all in the same game without bogging down the poor DM who has to bear the load? Well, in a massive West Marches game you can have a ton of people so if you want to play with everyone you can. And as to getting all your friends in, the parties wouldn't be determined by who the DM lets into the limited slots the game has; instead parties would be determined when Example101's character decides he wants to try to explore the cave Example105's character talked about nearly getting herself killed in. When Example101 decides this, he goes out and finds E102 and E103's characters and says "Hey, wanna go explore this cave with me?" So you'd get to play with all your old pals. But you'd also meet new people because if E101 is playing a wizard, E102 a sorcerer, and E103 a bard, they need some muscle. So they go over to E104's barbarian, who they've never played with before, and ask him to join. Voala, community building. (Or have you ever joined a game that was running much too fast [or much too slow] for your taste and had to bow out? Well in a West Marches game, parties are formed around preference, level equality and also who posts as much as you do. So that problem would probably go away as well, at least to a large degree)
Fifth, the DMs could join the game as well. Because of the structure of a West Marches game, no one really knows everything that's out there. So the DMs could each have a character as well. Obviously their characters couldn't go on adventures they were DMing, but if we had multiple DMs then DM101's character could go on the adventure with E101-104 because DM102 is running it. So have you ever wished you could play in your own game, as a DM? I have. In West Marches, you can.
Finally, it'd just be frikin' awesome. A game with 50 people in it?! Say, 10 DMs? That'd be so amazing, GP might even get some publicity out of it.
Now if everyone is like "uh, this kid is crazy", then fine. I get that, this does sound a little crazy. But I think it could be really cool if we worked it out. Thoughts? Comments? Critiques?
{EDIT: if you're on this page, please leave a note to let me know you've seen it so I don't keep bugging you about it, and maybe subscribe to the thread? I want all the input I can get!}
So I recently watched this video by Matt Colville about West Marches style games and he talked about the fact that a West Marches style game can have TONS of players in it (like up to 50) and even multiple DMs. So this started me thinking--what if we started a West Marches game in which anyone on the entire GP website who wanted to play could, and depending on how many players we had, we could have a bunch of DMs who would take certain adventures as parties formed and decided to try something.
Now I think there are several benefits to something like this:
First, it's not a whole lot of work for the DMs. I tried DMing once and it was hard! A lot of prep and very time consuming. But as Matt explains, a West Marches style game is played in a very impromptu way on the DM's part, where the players are the ones having to force the game along and the DM just has to react as the players advance. A West Marches game is especially easy over a forums-based game because the DM has not only all the time between the player's choosing what to do and them doing it, but also all the time between them posting.
Second, a West Marches style game, especially one this large, would have a very hard time "dying out". Now I love GP, but one of my greatest pet peeves about it is that games come and go like dandelions. A new game starts up and everyone's fired up to do it, but then after about a week of feverish posting the game starts to slow down and finally it gets so slow that it's nearly non-existent as the adventurers slog through what feels less and less interesting material and their great dreams for their characters begin to look less and less attainable. Or, the DM has a conflict and has to stop DMing. Sound familiar? Well, a West Marches game would be much harder for this to happen to. On the player's part, it's organic and constantly changing, so the players never get bored of the storyline or their comrades because both are new every adventure. On the DMs' part, they don't have nearly as much pressure on them to come up with great new content every single time, because they aren't constantly DMing because there are 9 other DMs helping them out. And if someone's life starts coming down around their ears and they have to bow out? No problem! We'll miss them, but the other DMs are more then capable of holding it all together until that person comes back, or maybe even one of the players can ascend to the status of DM and run a couple adventures until IRL stops killing the poor guy who had to leave.
Third, because of the nature of West Marches games, the DM often doesn't have the world mapped out already. Instead, he drops the players in a town with absolutely no adventuring opportunity in it and says "go out, young adventurelings". As the adventurers spread out into the world, the DM decides what they find and where, even randomly, but the adventurers have to keep track of this stuff themselves. The DM isn't going to hand them a perfect map. Because of all this, it means that the players are, in a way, forcing the creation of the world as they go along, a concept that I think is really cool. Again--less work for the DMs.
Fourth, it'd be a great community builder. Have you ever wished that you could get together a bunch of specific GPers and play a game with them? Go out on an epic adventure? If you're like me, you love playing with a lot of GPers. How do you play them all in the same game without bogging down the poor DM who has to bear the load? Well, in a massive West Marches game you can have a ton of people so if you want to play with everyone you can. And as to getting all your friends in, the parties wouldn't be determined by who the DM lets into the limited slots the game has; instead parties would be determined when Example101's character decides he wants to try to explore the cave Example105's character talked about nearly getting herself killed in. When Example101 decides this, he goes out and finds E102 and E103's characters and says "Hey, wanna go explore this cave with me?" So you'd get to play with all your old pals. But you'd also meet new people because if E101 is playing a wizard, E102 a sorcerer, and E103 a bard, they need some muscle. So they go over to E104's barbarian, who they've never played with before, and ask him to join. Voala, community building. (Or have you ever joined a game that was running much too fast [or much too slow] for your taste and had to bow out? Well in a West Marches game, parties are formed around preference, level equality and also who posts as much as you do. So that problem would probably go away as well, at least to a large degree)
Fifth, the DMs could join the game as well. Because of the structure of a West Marches game, no one really knows everything that's out there. So the DMs could each have a character as well. Obviously their characters couldn't go on adventures they were DMing, but if we had multiple DMs then DM101's character could go on the adventure with E101-104 because DM102 is running it. So have you ever wished you could play in your own game, as a DM? I have. In West Marches, you can.
Finally, it'd just be frikin' awesome. A game with 50 people in it?! Say, 10 DMs? That'd be so amazing, GP might even get some publicity out of it.
Now if everyone is like "uh, this kid is crazy", then fine. I get that, this does sound a little crazy. But I think it could be really cool if we worked it out. Thoughts? Comments? Critiques?
Last edited July 13, 2017 2:11 am
