One of my players is planning to GM a West Marches type campaign soon, and I'm also thinking about doing a Wilderlands sandbox. In my games I tend to just hand my players the wilderness map, while keeping my dungeon maps secret (for Underdark I often just use a nodal or linear travel map). But the West Marches approach of no GM-provided map, players doing their own mapping and maintaining a shared wilderness map is interesting, and seems to make exploration potentially a lot more exciting. Anyone have experience with doing this?
Yup. I ran an open table from 2011 thru 2013 that featured this style of play. Works great.
I initially handed them hex paper, but we quickly concluded it was more effective for the hex structure to remain hidden from the players. (This can go either way.)
I wrote a series on the specific hexcrawl structures (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17308/roleplaying-games/hexcrawl) I used to encourage/emphasize exploration.
Quote from: S'mon;817580One of my players is planning to GM a West Marches type campaign soon, and I'm also thinking about doing a Wilderlands sandbox. In my games I tend to just hand my players the wilderness map, while keeping my dungeon maps secret (for Underdark I often just use a nodal or linear travel map). But the West Marches approach of no GM-provided map, players doing their own mapping and maintaining a shared wilderness map is interesting, and seems to make exploration potentially a lot more exciting. Anyone have experience with doing this?
Ran a campaign for about 3 years on West Marches approach. The players developed their own map, based on an extremely crude map they found in their base town. They got pretty sophisticated in knowing what was where, how many days out, what obstacles there were. They shared it between adventures, as we would have a different make up of a group each week. They started in town/ended in town. So we could run with 4 or 12 people from game to game, without any troubles.
Players have been exploring wilderness areas in my campaigns (mapping as they go) since the 1970s. It's always worked well for me.
In well-civilized area, PCs can usually find/buy fairly accurate maps. In frontier areas the accuracy of maps goes down and there are usually large blank areas that the PCs will need to explore and map themselves if theuy want to find out what is really there.
In true wilderness areas, there may be no maps at all or only "maps" derived from from the stories of other travelers, natives, etc. If even available such "maps" tend to be limited to things like major rivers (although the map's version of the river's course may be wildly inaccurate), mountain ranges and other large and visible from a long distance landmarks. Everything else is blank (or worse, guesswork that the PCs fail to take with a large grain of salt). Such wilderness maps are often dangerously useless -- the PCs are basically on their own even if they have one.
Randomly generated AD&D map for a campaign. Each hex is 6 miles and used the random wilderness gen rules in the DMG. No towns or other locales were marked on this version.
(https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2037004_md.png)
This was the basic map I gave the players at the start of the campaign 3 years ago. Some of it was intentionally misleading, as maps and myths often are.
(https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-lkH69RwsMWU/SXf53FNvH0I/AAAAAAAAAJo/Sgw1HlxQhS0/s859-no/PlayersMapDaleDarkwoods2.png)
Quote from: Justin Alexander;817586Yup. I ran an open table from 2011 thru 2013 that featured this style of play. Works great.
I initially handed them hex paper, but we quickly concluded it was more effective for the hex structure to remain hidden from the players. (This can go either way.)
I wrote a series on the specific hexcrawl structures (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17308/roleplaying-games/hexcrawl) I used to encourage/emphasize exploration.
Yes, your hexcrawl series was great, I've read it through twice already! :D
Edit: And I see you added another entry today - http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17464/roleplaying-games/hexcrawl-part-12-at-the-table - I'll be studying that.
I'm still not completely happy with that last installment, but there came a point where I just needed to pull the trigger on it and call it "good enough".
I think the problem is that the real magic from this sort of thing is the result of how things build over times: It's the in-jokes at the table. It's one group of PCs doing something to the environment and then another group of PCs coming along and seeing it. It's when you role up a random lair, add it to your hex map, and it somehow becomes the spoke that the campaign revolves around for a dozen sessions.
Any given session is pretty cool and everything. But it's really that point in the sixth session where you find the corpse of your PC from the first session while using the map you bought from a different PC that was drawn up during session three while he was adventuring with the guy he met during session 2 that you killed in session 5 because he was being a jackass.
So any attempt to really demonstrate that process through a single session was going to necessarily come up short.
Quote from: Chgowiz;817687This was the basic map I gave the players at the start of the campaign 3 years ago. Some of it was intentionally misleading, as maps and myths often are.
(https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-lkH69RwsMWU/SXf53FNvH0I/AAAAAAAAAJo/Sgw1HlxQhS0/s859-no/PlayersMapDaleDarkwoods2.png)
That's pretty cool. One great GM I played with created this player-handout map for his campaign:
(http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m149/jedscott1/LordlesslandsMap001.jpg)
In-game it was an advert scroll to attract adventurers to the region. That worked pretty well, but we players tended to treat it as 'the real map' and not try to do our own mapping, or try to just add stuff to this often-inaccurate map. So something less detailed might work better to encourage player mapping perhaps.
Thank you. I weathered it so that it looked old and battered. The players made a copy and worked off the copy. The map was more of what you might find in a tourist shop - only spatially correct - the proportions were all off and there was a lot more that the players didn't know about. Plus... once they got to the other side going to Irecia (an abandoned city after the Doom), there was nothing mapped...
That's a great map you did!
This is a blurry cell pic of my first-ever hand drawn hex map, for my first-ever wilderness crawl campaign heavily influenced by the West Marches charter. Kind of just shat this out while watching the news and Jeopardy! last night.
1 hex = 1 mile, divided up into zones for encounter tables. Landmarks/dungeons not added yet (except for the home base, the "city" at the south of the map- all explorations will push vaguely northward- to the south lies civilization, safety... that's for retirees only, not proper adventurers.
The terrain is based on a real stretch of our planet. Not sure if it's recognizable (it's not necessarily supposed to be).
If a character has the proper materials and the party is not travelling too fast, they are free to map as they please on blank paper- but I will not be correcting, editing, or even discussing their efforts. I intend mapping and getting lost to be a big part of this campaign.
Quote from: Chgowiz;817858Thank you. I weathered it so that it looked old and battered. The players made a copy and worked off the copy. The map was more of what you might find in a tourist shop - only spatially correct - the proportions were all off and there was a lot more that the players didn't know about. Plus... once they got to the other side going to Irecia (an abandoned city after the Doom), there was nothing mapped...
That's a great map you did!
If only - wasn't me, was Edward Scott, my GM at the time, Librarian to the House of Lords, and a very cool guy. His art site: http://theartofjedwardscott.tumblr.com/
I've also read the Alexandrian blog, and it has been invaluable in my attempt to get an oD&D feeling out of Earthdawn. Thanks again Justin.