The Popular Show Is Not Launching a Player-Rotating Adventure, But It's Possible For You

Having watched the premiere of Critical Role Campaign 4, it becomes apparent that describing this new venture as "rotating-player format" was somewhat inaccurate. The new Dungeons & Dragons story set in the realm of Aramán, designed by Brennan Lee Mulligan, promises to be an grand and enjoyable journey, yet the first episode demonstrates it won't adhere to the West Marches model.

What Characterizes a Rotating-Player Campaign

Campaign 4 boasts an expanded cast of thirteen players who will rotate at the gaming table by splitting into three shifting groups. While changing participants is a core premise of a West Marches campaign—first pioneered by game creator Ben Robbins—the real gameplay and structure differ significantly from what Critical Role is presenting in this newest installment. But, if you are intrigued about West Marches and wonder why it might be a good option for your own campaign, continue.

The Beginnings of the West Marches Format

West Marches started as the setting for a campaign led by Ben Robbins, who also designed the games Microscope and Kingdom. To solve the common problem of varying player availability, Robbins introduced the idea of not maintaining a set group. Since he could select from a large pool of players, he let them to arrange sessions on their own. Once enough players agreed on a date, the game would proceed as needed.

Having a rotating "cast" is great for players: It doesn't matter if you can participate weekly or monthly, you will consistently have a spot at the table.

For a DM, however, it requires a particular approach when constructing the campaign. West Marches is, at its heart, a sandbox campaign where players explore the world without being bound to an overall plot. At the end of each session, they go back to town to rest and organize their next foray. This is necessary to allow DMs to run a game with changing players and flexible scheduling. Consider designing a large, epic narrative, packed with villains, factions, and plot milestones, but without knowing who the protagonists will be at any given time.

The Reasons West Marches Avoids Plot Unresolved Endings

Certainly every DM has had a session conclude on a huge cliffhanger featuring a specific character, only to find out that the participant could not attend the following session. It's like if Frodo had to step away from Mount Doom briefly before destroying the Ring. West Marches prevents this by essentially eliminating the main plot. However, that doesn't mean a West Marches-style campaign has no story.

As stated by Robbins: "There was background and linked details. Tidbits found in one place could shed light elsewhere. Rather than just being an fascinating detail, these clues lead to concrete discoveries."

How Critical Role Diverges from the West Marches Model

At first, I thought something similar would occur with Critical Role Campaign 4, with the mythology of the world developing organically and slowly through players’ actions in each episode, but I was mistaken. Episode 1 is heavily filled with pre-existing lore, and there is a powerful, dominant plot that guides the characters. No issue with that, of certainly, but West Marches offers a quite different gameplay from many D&D campaigns, one that is valuable to experience at least once.

Tips for Managing Your Personal West Marches Adventure

For my first, long custom D&D campaign, I began from a concept similar to the classic The Keep on the Borderlands D&D module, which subsequently inspired Robbins’ first West Marches. After an intro, the players found themselves in a frontier town, a traditional "final bastion of civilization" environment. From there, they have the opportunity to venture into the nearby wilderness, either motivated by missions gathered in town or by their own curiosity. This style of play is heavily location-based, so if you're going to try it, ensure to fill your wilderness with interesting locations to explore. The worst scenario you want is your players declaring, "Today we want to check out the mysterious ruins in the Swamp of the Dead," and you have nothing prepared.

• For me, I prefer having a strong plot in my campaigns, so I also scattered several story leads for an overall narrative, both in town and in the wilderness.
• I think that pure sandboxing and aimless dungeon crawling can become boring after a while, but Robbins made an important point in this regard when he explained the origin of West Marches.
• "My motivation in designing it this way was to overcome player apathy and mindless 'plot following' by placing the players in charge of both scheduling and what they did in-game."

Achieving Equilibrium in Every Campaign Type

The lesson here is that regardless of the style of campaign you're running, it's important to strike a equilibrium between your responsibility as a DM in guiding the narrative and players’ agency. Whether you're designing a complex death maze for a classic dungeon crawl or shaping the fate of the world in a Critical Role-style campaign, consistently consider what your players may want to do. You set up the table, but they decide what to eat.

Why Now Is a Great Time to Begin a West Marches Adventure

It might be the best time to date to launch a West Marches-style campaign. D&D’s latest starter set, Heroes of the Borderlands, is a comeback to the Keep on the Borderlands, providing the perfect setup to draw new players into this format. The following add-on recommends how to more effectively connect the different quests in the set, but you can also run this as the center of a sandbox campaign and develop it as it progresses.

In fact, the most interesting aspect of the original West Marches is the collaboration between the rotating players. The town tavern had a map of the nearby areas carved into a table, where groups added information and sketched new areas as they discovered them. This not only meant that players could help each other even while not being at the table at the same time, but also that the world of West Marches grew naturally as the players ventured through it. If you're a DM who is attempting to create a custom campaign or world for the first time, West Marches could be exactly what you need.