Hello fellow DMs, I am co-DMing a "west marches" style campaign. The players are sponsored pioneers from a new empire (ruffly 50 years old) on a newly discovered continent. The players have been sent to the farthest village in the realm, tasked with exploring and taming the surrounding wild. I would love ideas for adventures/quests whether long or small, that makes sense in a developing village, of a bigger but new empire. Anything helps! Thank you!!
*a little explanation: Our campaign can be summed up like this: Imagine any open world RPG video game, but there is only one village, and you are supposed to explore, tame, and settle the continent. As you progress, the far away empire will "level up the town" accordingly.
Anything that gets them out in the world to roll on the random encounter tables. The encounter tables are how you populate the world and where the emergent gameplay comes from.
Good tables pay off very well, I roll on one table to see what they encounter, (for instance 1-4 goblins, 5-7 animals/plants, 8-11 undead, 12-15 roll on non combat table, 16-18 wandering monster from adjacent regions, 19-20 rol twice and keep both), then I roll to see how they encounter it (1-9 signs/tracks 10-16 monsters themselves, 17-20 lair)
What people encounter has created most of my adventure hooks.
Ones I explicitly give:
I usually start with a treasure map. People love treasure maps. Put a few vague landmarks on the map that they will have to look for, this gets them exploring and discovering. Make something interesting at each of the landmarks. And remember treasure maps are not to scale and aren't very accurate...
We need resources! find a quarry/forest/lake for supplies
so and so has gone missing, track them down!
I am loving west marches, let me know if you want to bounce anything off someone
Thank you Leerjawise! Great ideas. I need to make an encounter table, I've never tried using one before. And I'd be glad to bounce ideas off people (sorta why I made this forum haha). Right now they are on a section where they have found basically whats left of some stronghold (all thats left is an underground section) that has a werewolf clan under the direction/control of an ancient wizard/alpha werewolf. I'm now just trying to get backstory created so they can figure out more about this "new" continent.
The boardgame Gloomhaven is a great inspiration for any West Marches campaign. Heck, it practically is a West Marches campaign. There's a ton of quests exploring wilderness and/or ruins with various challenges to overcome and lore to learn.
Other nations will want to seize some of the resources of this land. Acting against another country's colonial holdings could expand this campaign further, giving more varied encounters and objectives. Raiding a village or some pirating of incoming vessels could make for interesting quests.
A less combat-driven quest could be a diplomatic meeting with indigenous groups. Meeting the Priest-king of the Firenewt kingdom of Ixti (random example) to establish a trading agreement would facilitate a larger port, with the town to match. Perhaps a disease outbreak in the town leads to a meeting with a knowledgeable Dragon in the distant mountains, bring her some loot and she will grant you the cure?
Certainly try to squeeze in some of the more alien monsters to sell this place as a new continent. Krithuiks (sp?) Burrowing under the town or infesting the mines will require no small amount of fire and steel to eliminate. While the grisly murder of a town guard, eyes pecked out and flesh ripped away could herald the presence of a wereraven.
Just some ideas. Have fun!
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Hello fellow DMs, I am co-DMing a "west marches" style campaign. The players are sponsored pioneers from a new empire (ruffly 50 years old) on a newly discovered continent. The players have been sent to the farthest village in the realm, tasked with exploring and taming the surrounding wild. I would love ideas for adventures/quests whether long or small, that makes sense in a developing village, of a bigger but new empire. Anything helps! Thank you!!
*a little explanation: Our campaign can be summed up like this: Imagine any open world RPG video game, but there is only one village, and you are supposed to explore, tame, and settle the continent. As you progress, the far away empire will "level up the town" accordingly.
Anything that gets them out in the world to roll on the random encounter tables. The encounter tables are how you populate the world and where the emergent gameplay comes from.
Good tables pay off very well, I roll on one table to see what they encounter, (for instance 1-4 goblins, 5-7 animals/plants, 8-11 undead, 12-15 roll on non combat table, 16-18 wandering monster from adjacent regions, 19-20 rol twice and keep both), then I roll to see how they encounter it (1-9 signs/tracks 10-16 monsters themselves, 17-20 lair)
What people encounter has created most of my adventure hooks.
Ones I explicitly give:
I usually start with a treasure map. People love treasure maps. Put a few vague landmarks on the map that they will have to look for, this gets them exploring and discovering. Make something interesting at each of the landmarks. And remember treasure maps are not to scale and aren't very accurate...
We need resources! find a quarry/forest/lake for supplies
so and so has gone missing, track them down!
I am loving west marches, let me know if you want to bounce anything off someone
Thank you Leerjawise! Great ideas. I need to make an encounter table, I've never tried using one before. And I'd be glad to bounce ideas off people (sorta why I made this forum haha). Right now they are on a section where they have found basically whats left of some stronghold (all thats left is an underground section) that has a werewolf clan under the direction/control of an ancient wizard/alpha werewolf. I'm now just trying to get backstory created so they can figure out more about this "new" continent.
The boardgame Gloomhaven is a great inspiration for any West Marches campaign. Heck, it practically is a West Marches campaign. There's a ton of quests exploring wilderness and/or ruins with various challenges to overcome and lore to learn.
I am one with the Force. The Force is with me.
Other nations will want to seize some of the resources of this land. Acting against another country's colonial holdings could expand this campaign further, giving more varied encounters and objectives. Raiding a village or some pirating of incoming vessels could make for interesting quests.
A less combat-driven quest could be a diplomatic meeting with indigenous groups. Meeting the Priest-king of the Firenewt kingdom of Ixti (random example) to establish a trading agreement would facilitate a larger port, with the town to match. Perhaps a disease outbreak in the town leads to a meeting with a knowledgeable Dragon in the distant mountains, bring her some loot and she will grant you the cure?
Certainly try to squeeze in some of the more alien monsters to sell this place as a new continent. Krithuiks (sp?) Burrowing under the town or infesting the mines will require no small amount of fire and steel to eliminate. While the grisly murder of a town guard, eyes pecked out and flesh ripped away could herald the presence of a wereraven.
Just some ideas. Have fun!