I am not new to the West March format, having a couple years ago run one using Free League's Forbidden Lands system. It was a remarkable success that was ultimately derailed by (in small part) poorly managed between-session engagement and (in much larger part) my schedule. Taken together there was a loss of momentum which saw the campaign grind out after a little more than a half dozen sessions or so.
By contrast, I'm already seeing the gams on this Eastmark thing and oh boy do they go for days. If I can be diligent about a) making sure my timeslots are actually available and b) committing only to the time I'm willing to run, then I think this campaign will chug along for a bit. Which is good! Because there have been some growing pains I'm gonna tell you about now.
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| Fun fact! Leonardo DiCaprio didn't even wait for this show to turn 26 before he left it. |
In one of my first posts on this blog I referenced an aphorism 'the map is not the territory' to pithily describe a misunderstanding of the relationship between The Thing and The Representation Of The Thing. And having learned nothing from myself, I made a pretty easy--but consequential--mistake in how I presented some information to my players.
Below is the map which players got which I, in my ineffable stupidity, gave little comment on.
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| She might not be pretty, but don't worry, she was also unhelpful. |
It's a rough thing I tossed together. The hope was that I would give the players some points of reference--"Vinhas Wold", "Heartmire", "Elfharrow Plains"--so they could coherently discuss where they wanted to go. And I had imagined (without really thinking about it) that "where they wanted to go" were the little dots on the map which signified Hello Here Is Something.
But really take a look at that map-- those little dots aren't that prominent are they? And the labels float with very little strict attachment to any single hex.
Taken altogether, the organizing principle of the map is the hexes which incorrectly gave the players the idea that this was going to be run as a more conventional hexcrawl-- strike out in a direct and see what is there.
In fact, the conventional hexcrawl was what I wanted to avoid. For a couple of (what I think are) good reasons.
- I want to make sure that players who sign up for a session Get Something Out Of It. The procedural nature of a conventional hexcrawl makes them hotbeds for emergent narratives; but for every really cool session you're liable to have a handful of tremulous and confused wanderings. I want to honor my players' (and my) time by making sure a session Has A Point.
- I want clear boundaries in regards to what I will be preparing. I can internalize a lot, but the vast and sundry adventure locations of the Eastmark are not something I can internalize all at once. I am a devastatingly handsome man, but I am only a man.
- Totally unrelated but looking at my posts I really like to put things in numbered lists, don't I? They're comforting. They give a sense of organization and progress to a life which has tremendously little of it. I'm embracing this panacea. I will kill anyone who tries to take this comforting illusion from me. Don't bully me, I cry easily.
And so there were some... frustrating session starts in which I'd been given an ostensibly itinerary by a group who almost immediately ditched it. Or in one case, admitted that while they wanted to go to X, they actually had no idea where X was and were just going to wander along the river hoping it was there.
I can only blame them so much-- I hadn't given them the right tools, and I hadn't properly communicated my expectations nor forecast my intentions.
I'm still noodling a solution beyond the blunt hammer of saying "from here on out, when you sign up for a session please tell me the latitude/longitude of your destination". Most probably, I'm going to revisit the map I've given them; I might nix the hexes, add a ruler, and inflate the size of the pre-identified locations to give them visual prominence. In my Forbidden Lands campaign, I even pre-labeled certain locations as they were in my location bible (A1, B4, U571 etc.). If it worked there, it might work here.
Other Observations
In a little over 30 days I managed to run 6 sessions.
- PCs discovered an incredibly fuckable and unsubtle eldritch evil being locked up by a waning order of warriors. They killed the order and released the evil, that's how fuckable it was. This was a one-shot recruitment session down at my local game bar, and wasn't truly reflective of the campaign in retrospect.
- PCs discovered a Human town cosplaying with Dwarven aesthetics; this turned out to be because it was built on the ruined Hall of the Halfbeard. A second group of PCs would return here and begin teasing out some of the specific history of the legendary figure Torme the Halfbeard.
- PCs discovered a hidden monastery run by an order who believed all of existence to be the dream of a sleeping god. Their eternal lullaby was meant to preserve existence. They figured out that the door behind which god slept probably didn't contain god but might contain the corpses of some powerful supernatural entities. As yet, the door is unopened but I suspect that's just a matter of time.
- PCs discovered the Temple of the Black Gate and a magic door that needs four keys. So far two keys have been recovered between all the PC groups. I'm excited when they put together what exactly the "Black Gate" being referenced is.
- PCs cleared out one of three old Imperial forts along the Eastingway. This was a remarkably straightforward session, but impressed on the players the value of securing new safe havens further into the Eastmark.
I've only got two or three more sessions on the schedule-- one is going after a second Imperial fort, while a third is crossing a lake to see why the fishing town on the other side is being weird. Altogether that'll be ~8 sessions in a month and change. That's a lot, seeing it written down. We'll see if it's a sustainable pace; at the very least it makes me think that I should seek out co-GMs with slightly more exigency than I am right now.
The Journey subsystem has worked like a treat; its impact on System Strain has done exactly what I wanted it to. In general, players have usually managed a session or two before they've had to properly worry about how much System Strain they've accrued. The simplicity of the Journey Events has also been good for handing it over to players to narrate-- "What kind of challenge do you face on the road that puts you at risk of losing a whole day?".
By contrast, I'm not sure if the Council subsystem is working as well. In point of fact, it's only come up twice and only come up organically once. That's not a great sign. On the other hand, most of the adventuring hasn't had a huge social element to it so this might just be a situation where I need to wait longer to see whether a reevaluation is necessary.
Mechanically, Worlds Without Number is really doing the trick. I've been able to on-board newbies very quickly, and there seem to be enough mechanical widgets for players to futz with in a satisfying way. There are two points of "concern" (I use quotes because I'm too handsome to actually be concerned); one player looks to be going full-bore with henchmen, and that may become a point of imbalance. I've reserved some greymatter to think on what I would do if it becomes a problem, but I'm loathe to act unilaterally or decisively on the shadow of imbalance being cast on the wall. I'll implement something only when I'm clutching a handful of my own bloody hair, and not a moment sooner.
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| "I am a Gamemaster, how could you tell?" |
Some of the motifs I've been putting out seem to be getting picked up on-- I spent more attention than strictly necessary on things like language. The differences between Dulandir and Dunirr, the history of the Trow language and its connection to dead tongues like Caelish and Quendarian etc. In sessions, I have emphasized a lot of information by filtering it through the languages a PC knows. By way of example, the PCs initially thought they'd simply found an old Dwarven ruin called "Hall of Weathered Stone", until one of them recognized the writing wasn't Dunirr, it was Old Dunirr. And that meant that the phrase for 'weathered stone' still meant 'incomplete beard'. Or half-beard.
The players in general have now been paying close attention to what languages they know and the little quirks thereof. At least one is investing in becoming The Expert on dead ancient Elvish tongues. That's the kind of thing that's satisfying to see and hopefully I can keep rolling with the motif in a meaningful way. The intention isn't to gate information from players but to emphasize the lens by which they're getting this information. Put another way, I'm trying to avoid an objective voice while still giving accurate and actionable information; they learn everything from a specific voice and cultural context, which bears thinking about. How does an Elf from the Haudhnos of Glass talk about divine figures compared to one from the days of the Caelish Princes? And so on.
In any case, I'm pretty happy with the game as it has gone. Expect more updates when I've learned that everything I love sucks and I'm not enjoying anything anymore forever.
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