Rules for exploring the wilds
The West Marches is a custom built “hexcrawl”/sandbox campaign setting, and it is also a style of game. Beyond the edges of human society, the wild weaves a siren song few can hear over the drudgery of daily life. The land outside of civilization is teeming with the other- fantastic beasts, foul creatures, bloodthirsty fey and fell dragons. Ancient ruins litter the landscape, offering treasures undreamed of and terrors to frighten babes at bedtime.
Where will the players go? What rumors will they pursue? The townsfolk and outriders will gladly keep them informed of local happenings, but the choice is in the players’ hands. They can strike out for a known landmark, search out the seasonal trappers’ camp, or simply explore, allowing adventure to find them instead.
Some of what you find will be known, some will simply be rumor, but much will be utter unknown. You choose where to go and what to do. There will be a handful of obvious choices, but you don’t by any means need to take them.
In a West Marches style game, there is no set player roster, making it a perfect kind of game to run as a series of one-shots but within a persistent and shared world with many different players and characters.
Your character is first and foremost an adventurer, for one reason or another. On your search for the non-mundane you have come to The West Marches, leaving the safeties of The Kingdoms behind.
Each 24 hour day is divided into 6 time periods, or “watches”, each 4 hours long.
These watches are rougly spent with the party sleeping for two to three and awake/adventuring for three to four.
The term hexcrawl comes from the map design, which is literally a bunch of hexes. Each hex represents an area on the map with their own locations and notes, with a larger group of hexes make up an area or environment of the world with their own theme and encounter tables. My hexes are each hex is 6 miles in diameter, 7 miles slanted diameter, and about 3 miles from the middle to an edge(3.5 to a vertex). This makes traveling math easier.
Traveling throughout the West Marches is typically done at a steady pace of 3 miles per hour, with roads and natural obstacles speeding or slowing progress. At this pace, the average party can travel through 4 hexes(24 miles) per day. Addtionally the party can attempt to travel 2 more hexes(a total of 36 miles), but each party member must succeed on a constitution saving throw or take a level of exhaustion.
Traveling to a new location or through the unknown wilds can be treacherous and unpredictable. When the party sets out on adventure, they must pick a character to make a navigation(Survival) check with a base DC of 10. If other members of the party have already been to the destination or are proficient in the Survival skill, the navigator can make this check at advantage. If this check is failed, the party becomes lost and veers away from their intended direction of travel. Who knows, this might lead to a new quest!
Familiar locations are those which a character has visited more than once. A character can always succesfully navigate to a location they are familar with. Under certain circumstances, characters may be considered “familiar” with a location even if they’ve never been there.
Encounters are not just combat scenarios, you might encounter undiscovered ruins or a search party of Elves looking for a lost prince. Or you could run into some haunted scarecrows…
Once per watch when the party enters a new hex, elect a party member to roll a d20 to check against that region’s encounter chance(typically 15%). If this check is successful, roll an additional d20 to determine the encounter type; 1-10 is a location encounter while 11-20 is an other encounter.
To determine a location encounter, roll for the location’s placement within the hex(North, East, West, South). If this hex already has a location in this area, this is the location the party encounters. If not, roll to determine location encounter.
To determine an other encounter, simply roll on the region’s encounter table.
While resting in the wilderness is usually more safe than traveling across the fields and forests, there is always a chance of your rest being interrupted by a ravenous bugbear. When attempting a rest(short or long), elect a party member to roll a d20. If the result is a 1, an encounter happens!
Sometimes the party might want to actively seek out a location or creature that they have heard is in the area. Learning that the lost ruins of Alk’Racaw resdie somewhere North of Devi’s Barrow isn’t the same as knowing exactly where to find them. Finding a new location within the wilds depends on the party’s knowledge, whether they’ve been around here before, and how easy the location it is to find.
There are times when encounter chances are higher than normal or might even happen for certain. I will not tell you this information outright, but will provide contextual clues or environment descriptions to hint. Resting within an underground dungeon or traveling through a region under control by an opposing faction might carry higher encounter probabilities.
The standard ways of earning XP are defeating enemies in combat, exploring the world, and solving/finishing quest lines. However, there are extra XP bonuses available to you if you play your character’s motivations and help your fellow adventurer solve their own quests.
Why are you adventuring? Choose a motivation, or tell the GM your own. At the end of each session, if you did something clearly in support of your motivation, tell the party. If most of them agree, you gain a 10% xp boost.
Some motivation ideas
Personal quests are quests a character is found by, invents, or chooses to undertake. When you know of something in the wilds and it inflames your passions, write yourself a major quest and tell the GM what it is. While in an adventuring party you can share your quest with the others, tell them why you care and ask your allies to help you. If the party completes the personal quest of anyone within the play session, everyone gains a 30% xp boost.
While I do run my West Marches games using the 5e ruleset, not all of the different rules I like to play with are appropriate for the this type of game. The West Marches runs in a very tight time window, is usually more combat involved than roleplay, and leans more to the RAW interpretation of 5e.
I fell in love with this game type while watching Rollplay’s West Marches series, so I draw heavy heavy inspiration from it. The cast was a revolving set of personalities that always brough new and radically different adventures to the table. Steven Lumpkin, the Game Master behind the idea, was always pushing the characters into the new, the strange and the weird. Even better, Steven shared a lot of the resources he used to build his world and influence the rules, which in turn has done the same to my own. So now you know who to blame when you contract Necrotic Leprosy or have to strike a bargin with the Wounded Wretch.
The West Marches series on YouTube
The Official Unofficial West Marches Wiki