West Marches Style: Bringing Us Together

I'm here, and I've seen the first COUPLE of postings... far too many for me to read tonight (though I'm trying to keep up as an active member of the community). I just have one question that makes me (a veteran DM, GM, Storyteller, Marshall, Judge, etc.) feel like a NUUUUB....

What...is...a..."Kingmaker" game?

Kingmaker is a Pathfinder Adventure Path where the party is tasked with exploring an uncharted land and eventually building a kingdom there.

Unless there's some other definition I'm not aware of, of course!

Is either Kingmaker or West Marches still alive as a project on GP?

I'm running a Kingmaker game right now, actually

The West Marches game that was up has since closed. It's a lot of moving parts to take care of and people in the individual adventures kind of faded out.

Shame about the West Marches game, but I can understand how it could go wrong so many ways, both as tabletop and PbP. I'd be interested to try Kingmaker if you're not that far into it and have a free spot, Naatkinson.

The West Marches game was the first pbp game I played in, and it was a lot of fun while it lasted! I'm sorry to see it go :(

If anyone's looking for something vaguely similar, I've got a group playtesting a bunch of 5e subclasses that a friend and I have been designing. If you want some fast-paced "one-shots" at a variety of levels and some deep discussion of these new player options, that's what we're going for.

Game details are here if anyone's interested.

Real shame that this concept didn't work out.
I actually was part of a discord server that used mics and organized one-shots in a vast common campaign, used roll20 as support etc.

I think transposing this huge community to a play-by-post format really has a lot of potential, but yeah, we'd need a team of say, 3 serious DMs and 6-15 dedicated players to get it going, some of these doubling up as "maintenance crew" (compendium updates: stories, cities, dungeons, maps, timeline, etc).

It's some work, not much, but would have to be done with dedication and regularity.
But it could be done.

On another note, one can also start opensource world-building with simple, straight-up creative story-telling, that can be adapted or integrated into roleplay later.

Yeah, I don't think we ever had more than two DM's at any given time. I think you're right about needing at least 3.

There was definitely potential, but very tough to execute.

I enjoyed DMing this format and its was more exciting to be the to get it started, sadly life got in my way and I could not keep up with all the cross information.
I am sad I had to drop out but life has seemed to loosen its grip on me some and if we take what we leanred from this first attempt and can discuss and come up with a concrete solution for the timeline and how and who would organize all the information I'm up for DMing this again.

I'm a storyteller not very skilled with the OneNote and organization.

After having been excited about the concept and fizzeled out in this as well as my own attempt at the same, I don't think that WM style game would work well in PbP format. Western Marches style games work because each session is a minimal commitment by players - a one shot played in a continuing world. But in PbP, even a simple adventure will take several weeks. Attrition is just a fact of life when so much time passes and real life can get in the way.

Sorry to be all negative. However, I do think that recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of PbP, admitting what works and what didn't, can help us all figure out new ways to play.

One suggestion I would have is that we could post here to organize video/voice chat games and write up the session summary. Multiple GMs would be able to continue the game world story and no one is committed to any more than one 2-4 hour session.

You nailed it constable... it's just too long for it to really work.

Might I suggest Rolegate for such an endeavor.

No negativity, you are helping us all figure out how to make this site better. If we try to force this style it will only weaken the format. Good call.

Allow me to say that over on Unseen Servant Marullus is doing one hell of a job on a West Marches style.

Labyrinth Lord:The North Marches

Valdus, thanks for sharing. Always nice to see examples of great games.

this sounds truly beautiful is there a game open yet?

youd probably need a starter team of dms to maintain the initial interest and then bring more in as population increases and though im inexperienced i would love to talk further about helping you really get it rolling. PM me if i can help, i do have pc experience just not dm and can pick up quickly what we would need to know to start.

Not to shill for another site (cuz I love GP), RPG Crossing is another PbP site that has done a couple successful West Marches games. They ain't gonna help you set one up here (it's against the rules to help rival sites), but the West Marches games are public, so it may be worth it to lurk around there and see what they've figured out to make it run.

Thanks Jab will check it out.