Will M. said: Let me clarify, I sent Mark a message but I know he is busy. In most Westmarches style games, there is a common base where each group goes out in what is primarily a one-shot to get what they can from a place and then returns to base by the end of the session. Thus, they are able to tell tales of what they encountered and if they missed something, it gives another opportunity for another group to go and check it out. It is mostly player-driven, where the players make the maps, tell the stories, and keep the world going. The further from home you venture out, the more danger there is to the adventurer. I am not seeing this here. What I see is that your commonality with Westmarches is composed of having a main base with like an adventurers guild to do quests around the Sword Coast (the setting of the Forgotten Realms). However, it seems that you do not follow the one-shot model, but instead have like various campaigns going on simultaneously. While you claim to use a timeline of sorts, most of your DM campaigns have no date listed. From what I have read you seem to be struggling with the aspect of downtime, player advancement, and having more adventures for higher level players. If you use large campaigns (e.g. The Storm King's Thunder) you kind of restrict what PCs can do because your DM is wrapped up in a campaign rather than offering a time slot, picking a part of the world and superintending it (e.g. Westmarches model). Multiple DMs can use notes from the same part of the world, and so they could go there as characters have times available. I have read many of your forums and your in game notes, and what seems to be happening here is more of a hub to meet up with fellow players to get into a campaign rather than a living breathing world like Westmarches. As long as you have sustained campaigns and don't necessarily move more towards the "one-shot" model, I feel like you will continue to struggle with this aspect of the game. If you just made it a hub where people meet up and indepedently do their own thing, that too would be more doable with what you have here. I may be TOTALLY wrong about my observations, but from what I have read this is what I see. I think you are spot on with all of that. The campaign has taken a bit of a turn from the vision we originally had. The main reason is that we wanted to allow for more flexibility to experience other options other than one-shots. For example, we just completed session 24 of an Undermountain series. I saw a lot of PC changes from 1st to 5th level, but we have pretty much have a regular group since then and have reached 7th level now. When the campaign concludes (8th-9th level), those PCs will be available to jump in to whatever is out there. Sometimes the PCs involved in the longer term stuff changes a bit. Last session we had a one-session guest PC join up. Restricting DMs to running one-shots seems to limit what can be experienced here. But maybe that would be a better format and something to consider for the future. Most of us are new to this so I really have no idea. We have kind of been playing it by ear. lol So it has become more of a hub and has been difficult for new players to join in when you have PCs "locked" in to an adventure. I would love to see some better organization that is easier to follow. I have mostly just been trying to keep up with posting threads in answer to questions. As you can see, there has been a LOT of questions. lol From time to time, I try to merge the sticky threads, but they have been getting so large that it has been hard to justify that lately. We do need to see more one-shot style adventures here if we are going to be able to accommodate all of the players. Currently, I have no idea about how to promote that and keep the flexibility of longer-term adventures. Anyways, input for organization and such would be very helpful. To start, it sounds like I need to make the Game Schedule a bit easier to find.
