Let's begin our look of the play system with what I think is one of the starting points for a West Marches campaign, the Town. When I envision play in a WM campaign I picture the game centering around the home base that the players will be basing their adventures out of. I would like to have the town develop as a character unto itself as the game progresses. Characters will come and go in the town, some will die from adventuring or living on the frontier and I want that to be reflected in the story that is told.
I've gone back on forth on a bunch of different town creation ideas over the past several months on my internal documents. I've toyed with some pretty in-depth ideas on creating a town, applying a layout to the town and having that recorded by someone in the player party. After some internal play-testing of some concepts, I found that what I was originally going for ended up being way to complex and crunchy for town creation. As much as I want the town to be an integral part of the gameplay experience, I came to realize that players don't want to spend a ton of time setting up the town, its denizens and all of the relationships. I also realized that all of that stuff doesn't have to happen before the game starts. One of my core tenants with character creation is that your characters aren't heroes before they start this game and to a large extent, who they were and their backstory before this town doesn't matter. Your character will be made through their adventures. That same concept needs to apply to the town itself, that the makeup of the town, the flavor of it will all be determined from the play that occurs moving forward, not from before hand.
It was with that in mind that I scaled back my town creation concept quite a bit. I wanted to create something that was fun, quick, but still gave the players a general concept of how their town would be laid out and who the people in the town would be.
With that in mind, players will basically throw their dice set onto the table and assign houses/backgrounds from there. Someone at the table can quickly transfer that idea over to a piece of paper for tracking purposes. Over time as the town grows, denizens change and things change, that town layout and detail can change. Ultimately, I plan to design a town "tracking" sheet that will allow someone to easily track the denizens
Things can be loose here and not all of the townspeople need a name or need to have their profession fully fleshed out. All of that can happen later when/if a character comes into the story that is being told.
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Town Creation
When setting off into the wilderness you will first need to set up a new town before you create your character. Each player at the table will contribute to the creation of a town by developing multiple characters/families. Players will then be able to use any character they have created for adventuring.
To create a set of characters roll a full set of seven standard TTRPG dice. All players at the table will roll their dice at the same time onto the table. Where the dice land will determine the shape of the town and the location of each character’s home/business. Designate one player to translate the town layout to a piece of paper for future reference.
If a new player joins the game or a player has lost all their character’s they may re-roll their dice again to create new characters, homes, and businesses. The homes of dead characters can live on as abandoned, haunted, or occupied by the remaining family or purchased by a new character.
Assigning Characters
Starting with the highest d20 roll on the table, each player will assign a character or profession to each of the dice on the table. The player’s main character will be assigned to the building in their dice roll with the highest score on the dice. This may or may not be their d20 dice.
For any dice that have rolled a six (6) or higher, the player may roll on the Profession table to assign a trade/profession.
Any dice with a six or lower is automatically labeled as a “Laborer”. These characters can still be playable characters.
| d12 |
Professions |
| 1 |
Laborer |
| 2 |
Farmer |
| 3 |
Herder |
| 4 |
Tradesman |
| 5 |
Servant |
| 6 |
Merchant |
| 7 |
Trader |
| 8 |
Military |
| 9 |
Scholar |
| 10 |
Scoundrel |
| 11 |
Artisan |
| 12 |
Spiritual Leader |
Players are encouraged to expand their selected Profession as they see fit. A Laborer can be anything from a factory worker, to an office worker, to a miner depending upon your setting.