West Marches: Lessons from Ryoshi

I've been running two games a week; Let's talk about West Marches!

1/9/2025

West Marches is a style of TTRPG game where players lead the action. Traditionally, according to Ben Robbins, Game times, party composition, and objectives are determined on the fly, the map is extremely detailed, and town is a safe haven from the wild outdoors. 

For the most part, I think I’m sticking to the -spirit- of the games that he described and the ones that have sprung up in their tradition.

Here are some highlights and takeaways:

I’m Not Detailing -Naaada-. 

I’m exhausted and busy and lean heavy into improv, so I am aiming to lay solid groundwork for improv and fun decision making, but hexes will absolutely not contain a million named NPCs, three points of interest, and a homemade dungeon. I'll be leaning heavy on my random tables and love of improvisation here. Speaking of-

Systems, Systems, Subsystems!

My games as of late have leaned happy-go-lucky in most areas: lots of handwaving and judgment calls on things that aren’t super clear in the rules (EZD6 hack; super minimalist, most things are not super clear in the rules). This is exhausting and I have been forced to learn to love the subsystems and processes I’ve grafted from OSE, Knave, and other old-school systems. Specifically, the Crawling/Travel Hazard Dice, Crawling and traveling Procedures, and a firm initiative system have been saving my life. Instead of prepping explicit content, I prep tools to enable my improv and trust myself and my players to make it a good time!

Index Cards and Owlbears

Despite my intentions to eventually make another super-high-production-value Foundry VTT game happen, I’ve gotten comfortable in the super simple Owlbear Rodeo in a more complex game than I thought I could run with it. Battlemaps are super abstract, with digital INDEX CARD RPG cards representing points of interest. MUSIC has done wonders for my immersion, both ingame and for mood setting while doing prep. Tracks Extension has been a godsend. 

Let Them Count Their Coins

I laid eyes on 3 character sheets during this era of play. This is between some 13 characters and 9 players. I’m trusting them to handle things over there and for the most part, they’ve been doing a decent job. If we can’t figure out something you missed on the spot, we give it a best approximation. Nobody’s died for lack of bookkeeping so far, so calling this one a win. 

Let The Pages Live on the Map

Crawling procedures, random tables, points of interest (hidden and discovered), and monsters and their notes all live on the tabletop. Most of them are simply invisible and in pre-staged locations for their eventual reveal or off on the side. Important notes like action economy, faction resources, and torch timers live right on the screen for players to see, on the screens for their most frequent use.

Struggle Notes

Note taking has still mostly fallen on me, and so notes are pretty slim and folks are often asking for summaries after a few sessions away. I’m in the process of porting my planning and our shared documents from Google Docs to Obsidian, and hopefully it makes it a bit easier for folks to take the initiative in logging their notes and thoughts. Also considering throwing in some XP for contributing to the Summary page.