West Marches campaigns...

[hogarth]

But then I got two problems, one of logistic, other of philosophy:

1) The logistic problem: How do I deal with having to interrupt an adventure due to the unavoidable "it's like 2AM and we have to work tomorrow" problem? The old solution of stopping the game at that point and then resuming next session would kill the flexibility aspect of a West Marches game.

In the West Marches campaign description it sounded like there was some self-policing going on. Since your character was essentially "frozen" while he was in the wild, there was a very strong incentive to make it back to town before the end of the session; otherwise, you wouldn't be able to play until you could round up the same group of players again.

2) The philosophical problem: With the PCs initiating all the adventures, they are "adventurers" in the hardcore sense applied to the East India Company: "here's a land full of exotic green people: lets kill them and take their stuff."

Well, if you have a moral problem with killing bandits, goblins and evil cultists (among other dangerous monsters), I would suggest that D&D might not be the game for you.

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

Quite honestly the problems you mention are not problems. As a DM you should try to end the adventure within a session. If not the pcs return to a common location where they can do other adventures and do those adventures and possibly come back to finish the first one.

Cinematically the characters might have finished one before another, but it's fine if people jump around as adventures are provided. What I don't suggest is that you make a lot of hassle trying to keep track of who can and can't join an adventure, it's another mechanism which really doesn't add enjoyment to the game.

As to your second issue. As a DM you create the world and the opportunities therein. If you don't want something to be possible, it isn't possible. If you don't want pcs pillaging Green Creatures, then you should not push them that way and perhaps explicitly state your distaste, or perhaps not even having that location exist to begin with.

Secondly there's no need to require pcs to have infinite choice in where they go. Very simply you can just give 3 or 2 options and that will highly likely satisfy their desire for choice.

See the link in my sig for a campaign that does all this.

[JigokuBosatsu]

Bill, I agree. One thing I've noticed from bumping around your campaign site a while ago, was that this model really does seem to keep things under control. There aren't a million half-assed locations, but several active ones.

[Josh_Kablack]

1) The logistic problem: How do I deal with having to interrupt an adventure due to the unavoidable "it's like 2AM and we have to work tomorrow" problem? The old solution of stopping the game at that point and then resuming next session would kill the flexibility aspect of a West Marches game.

Probably the best option here is seriously the sitcom / serial / syndication option.

When sessions are scheduled, they have tight start and end times scheduled. If the PCs fail to clear out an area / find a treasure / escape from the locked room by the end time.....they are somehow back in the town's pool of available adventurer's when the next session starts. You can handle this by handwaving it, or by a running narrative expedient of "well really the ending wasn't that exciting, but it made a better story than "and then we trudged back to town"" or you could do something like give each major expedition exactly one Word of Recall scroll to let them port back to town instantly.

The other option would be to go the route of the early Wizardry games and have adventurers get stuck in the dungeon whenever you had to power off without getting back to town. Meaning that you'd have to have a second party go off to find them and bring them back. This could work for a West Marches style game if and only if there was no player overlap between the "get stuck" session and the one immediately following it.

2) The philosophical problem: With the PCs initiating all the adventures, they are "adventurers" in the hardcore sense applied to the East India Company: "here's a land full of exotic green people: lets kill them and take their stuff."

Well my reflex there is to have the wild lands beyond "civilization" populated by creatures whose civilizations aren't recognized as such - much like the expansion of settlers into most real world frontiers. The Natives are just not seen as people by the powers that be. But in a West Marches style setting, the PCs are the only real adventurers and will be making first contact situations and therefore get to decide whether to see these guys as monsters, savage people or respectable people. But this sort of game PCs should totally have the option of talking, trading, raiding, or warring with them, and different Native groups had different customs and pre-existing talk/trade/raid/war situations between each other. So yeah, PCs can go wipe out the Orcs and take their stuff; or they can talk with the Orcs to find out about the lay of the land and Orkish treasure myths; or they can set up trade with the Orc Chieftain allowing them to resupply without going all the way back to town, or they can forge an alliance with the Orcs in the longstanding Orc vs Gnoll war, or they can decide that the need to convert to Orcs to the worship of Hextor, or whatever.