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Having watched the first episode of Critical Role Campaign 4, it is clear that labeling this latest venture as "rotating-player format" was a bit inaccurate. The fresh Dungeons & Dragons story set in the world of Aramán, designed by Brennan Lee Mulligan, promises to be an grand and enjoyable tale, yet the first episode demonstrates it won't adhere to the West Marches model.

The Elements That Defines a Rotating-Player Game

The new season boasts an large cast of thirteen players who will rotate at the session by dividing into multiple shifting groups. Although changing participants is a core premise of a West Marches campaign—originally pioneered by game creator Ben Robbins—the actual execution and structure are quite distinct from what the show is presenting in this newest season. However, if you are curious about West Marches and want to know why it might be a good option for your own game, continue.

The Origins of the West Marches Style

This style was originally the setting for a campaign led by Ben Robbins, who also designed the games Microscope and Kingdom. To address the common problem of inconsistent player availability, Robbins introduced the idea of not maintaining a set group. Since he could draw from a big pool of players, he let them to schedule sessions on their own. When a sufficient number of players agreed on a date, the game would run ad hoc.

Using a changing "cast" is beneficial for players: It doesn't matter if you can play weekly or once a month, you will consistently have a spot at the table.

As a Dungeon Master, however, it requires a specific mindset when constructing the campaign. West Marches is, at its heart, a sandbox campaign where players explore the world without being bound to an main plot. At the conclusion of each session, they go back to town to rest and organize their next expedition. This is necessary to enable DMs to run a game with changing players and ad hoc scheduling. Imagine crafting a large, epic narrative, filled with villains, factions, and plot milestones, but without knowing who the protagonists will be at any given time.

The Reasons West Marches Prevents Plot Cliffhangers

Certainly every DM has had a session end on a massive cliffhanger involving a particular character, only to find out that the player could not attend the next session. It's like if Frodo had to leave Mount Doom briefly before destroying the Ring. West Marches prevents this by essentially eliminating the central plot. However, that isn't to say a West Marches-style campaign has no story.

As stated by Robbins: "There was background and linked details. Clues found in one place could shed light elsewhere. Instead of just being an interesting detail, these clues lead to tangible discoveries."

The Way Critical Role Diverges from the West Marches Approach

At first, I thought a comparable approach would occur with Critical Role Campaign 4, with the lore of the world emerging naturally and slowly through players’ decisions in each episode, but I was mistaken. Episode 1 is heavily charged with established lore, and there is a strong, dominant plot that drives the characters. Nothing wrong with that, of certainly, but West Marches offers a quite different experience from many D&D campaigns, one that is valuable to experience at least once.

Tips for Running Your Own West Marches Adventure

For my first, long homebrew D&D campaign, I began from a concept like the iconic The Keep on the Borderlands D&D module, which subsequently influenced Robbins’ first West Marches. After an intro, the players found themselves in a frontier town, a classic "final bastion of civilization" environment. From there, they have the chance to venture into the nearby wilderness, either motivated by missions found in town or by their own curiosity. This method of play is strongly location-based, so if you're planning to attempt it, ensure to stock up your wilderness with engaging locations to explore. The last thing you want is your players saying, "Today we want to check out the enigmatic ruins in the Swamp of the Dead," and having nothing prepared.

• For me, I prefer having a strong plot in my campaigns, so I also scattered several hooks for an overall narrative, both in town and in the wilderness.
• I think that pure sandboxing and purposeless dungeon crawling can grow tiresome after a while, but Robbins made an key point in this regard when he explained the genesis of West Marches.
• "My motivation in setting things up this way was to address player apathy and mindless 'plot following' by putting the players in control of both scheduling and what they did in-game."

Achieving Equilibrium in Every Game 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’ freedom. If you're creating a complex death maze for a classic dungeon crawl or shaping the fate of the world in a narrative-heavy campaign, consistently consider what your players may want to do. You set up the table, but they choose what to eat.

The Present Is a Perfect Time to Begin a West Marches Adventure

It might be the ideal time ever to start a West Marches-style campaign. D&D’s newest starter set, Heroes of the Borderlands, is a comeback to the Keep on the Borderlands, offering the perfect foundation to pull new players into this format. An add-on recommends how to better link the various quests in the set, but you can also run this as the core of a sandbox campaign and develop it as it continues.

Actually, the most interesting element of the first 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 found them. This not only ensured that players could help each other even while not being at the table at the same session, but also that the world of West Marches grew organically as the players ventured through it. If you're a DM who is trying to create a custom campaign or world for the first time, West Marches could be just what you need.