We’ve been running our West Marches-style campaign for over a year now, and something’s become entirely too clear: this is a format best suited for experienced players. Unfortunately (though awesomely), the majority of players at work are new to the game. Where West Marches is meant to be a sandbox, newer players tend to need rails. Where West Marches relies heavily on player initiative, newer players aren’t quite sure what they’re able to initiate. West Marches is (apparently) built around a whole library of unwritten rules and common knowledge to which the new player has limited access.
A month or two, Jerry and I agreed that my subtle hints about the various Big Picture plotlines were going completely unnoticed. So we decided on a good ole info-dump. An adventuring party is finishing up the exploration of a nearby green dragon’s lair. At the end of last night’s session, the PCs find scraps of the green dragon – Silvana’s – journal. It contains a couple of “clue-by-fours” that outline what the dragons are after, as well as mentioning two other Big Bads and hinting at some other stuff.
If nothing else, hopefully this clues everyone into the fact that this campaign can be more than just a bunch of loosely connected quests if they want it to be. We’ll see how it goes!
