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After viewing the premiere of Critical Role Campaign 4, it becomes apparent that describing this latest venture as "rotating-player format" was a bit misleading. The fresh Dungeons & Dragons story set in the realm of Aramán, crafted by Brennan Lee Mulligan, promises to be an grand and enjoyable tale, yet the first episode shows it won't adhere to the West Marches model.

What Defines a West Marches Campaign

The new season features an large group of 13 players who will rotate at the gaming table by splitting into multiple rotating groups. Although rotating players is a fundamental premise of a West Marches campaign—first developed by game designer Ben Robbins—the actual gameplay and format differ significantly from what the show is offering in this latest season. But, if you are curious about West Marches and wonder why it might be a good choice for your own campaign, continue.

The Origins of the Player-Rotating Format

West Marches started as 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 schedules, Robbins introduced the idea of not having a fixed group. Because he could select from a big group of players, he let them to arrange sessions on their own. When a sufficient number of players settled on a date, the game would proceed ad hoc.

Having a rotating "group" is beneficial for players: No matter if you can participate once a week or once a month, you will always have a place at the table.

As a Dungeon Master, though, it demands a specific mindset when constructing the campaign. West Marches is, at its core, a sandbox campaign where players explore the world without being tied to an main plot. At the conclusion of each session, they go back to town to recover and organize their next expedition. This is essential to allow DMs to run a game with rotating players and ad hoc scheduling. Imagine crafting a large, sweeping narrative, packed with villains, factions, and plot key points, but without knowing who the main characters will be at any given time.

Why West Marches Prevents Plot Unresolved Endings

Certainly every DM has experienced a session end on a huge cliffhanger involving a particular character, only to find out that the participant could not make the following session. It's similar to if Frodo had to leave Mount Doom for a moment before tossing the Ring. West Marches avoids this by essentially removing the central plot. However, that doesn't mean a West Marches-style campaign has no story.

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

The Way Critical Role Diverges from the West Marches Approach

Initially, I believed a comparable approach would happen with Critical Role Campaign 4, with the lore of the world developing naturally and slowly through players’ actions in each episode, but I couldn't be more wrong. Episode 1 is strongly charged with pre-existing lore, and there is a powerful, overwhelming plot that drives the characters. No issue with that, of course, but West Marches provides a pretty distinct experience from many D&D campaigns, one that is valuable to experience at least once.

Advice for Running Your Own West Marches Adventure

For my initial, extended homebrew D&D campaign, I started from a concept similar to the classic The Keep on the Borderlands D&D module, which subsequently influenced Robbins’ first West Marches. After an introduction, the players were placed in a frontier town, a classic "last outpost of civilization" setting. From there, they have the chance to explore the surrounding wilderness, either prompted by quests gathered in town or by their own curiosity. This style of play is heavily location-based, so if you're planning to attempt it, make sure to fill your wilderness with interesting places to discover. The worst scenario you want is your players declaring, "Today we want to check out the mysterious ruins in the Swamp of the Dead," and having nothing prepared.

• For me, I like having a strong plot in my campaigns, so I also disseminated several story leads for an main narrative, both in town and in the wilderness.
• I believe that pure sandboxing and aimless dungeon crawling can become tiresome after a while, but Robbins raised an important point in this regard when he explained the origin of West Marches.
• "The reason in designing it 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."

Finding Equilibrium in Any Campaign Type

The takeaway here is that no matter the style of campaign you're running, it's important to strike a balance between your role as a DM in guiding the narrative and players’ agency. If you're creating a complex death maze for a traditional dungeon crawl or determining 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 decide what to eat.

The Present Is a Perfect Moment to Start a West Marches Campaign

This could be the ideal time to date to launch a West Marches-style campaign. D&D’s latest starter set, Heroes of the Borderlands, is a comeback to the Keep on the Borderlands, providing the ideal setup to pull new players into this style. An add-on recommends how to more effectively link the various quests in the set, but you can also run this as the core of a sandbox campaign and expand it as it continues.

In fact, the coolest aspect of the original West Marches is the collaboration between the changing players. The town tavern had a map of the surrounding areas carved into a table, where adventuring parties added information and drew new areas as they found them. This not only ensured that players could assist each other even while not playing at the table at the same session, but also that the world of West Marches evolved organically as the players explored it. If you're a DM who is attempting to build a homebrew campaign or world for the first time, West Marches could be just what you need.