West Marches Design Regrets
Previously, I have stated that being organized is the most important trait to run a Hexcrawl. That should be obvious with the monumental task of creating an open world sandbox for your players to play in. I’ve made a few mistakes when I designed my West Marches, here are some pitfalls you’ll now know to avoid.
A calendar is very important for maintain verisimilitude and so I cheated, creating a calendar that the twelve months are either 28 or 31 days. The thing is, while it is important to indicate the transition of seasons or knowing how long ago your players burned down that house, they don’t need a calendar based in reality. A friend uses a calendar in his own West Marches game which is ten months of four weeks where each week is ten days. My god, it is so simple! There’s no mental math of carrying the one when the players want to know what month their shipment arrives in when everyone knows it is 65 days.
Seriously, 10 Day Weeks Kick Ass
The players start in a mountain ridge and can only march west, which I thought is a pretty clever play on a West Marches Hexcrawl. The thing is, if I want to funnel players in a particular direction, then I should make that as easy as possible. When I used Worldgrapher to make my hex map, I didn’t think about the rammifications of selecting vertical or ‘flat top’ hexes. This meant that when players naturally wanted to march west, I kept asking “Northwest or Southwest”? If you are going to push towards a particular direction, perhaps it is best to keep that in mind to not slow down the process.
With the case of my players having to choose between Northwest, Southwest, North or South, I robbed them of the possibility of just West or East. If the players state a direction that isn’t quite possible, just go with it. For example, if I had a bigger brain when the players said West, I would pick the Northern hex when they went West, followed by Southern, back and forth for each time they wanted to go ‘just West’. This would faciliate more Hex Feature discoveries and simulate the meandering nature of trekking. Now that I have the players trained to state Northwest or Southwest, there’s less of a chance of stumbling into adventure.
I went with two moons because it would be more interesting but it is a lot more to keep track of. I wouldn’t mind that so much if it weren’t for how similar spaced they are. One moon is in the night’s sky for a week but arrives every seven days. The other is in the night’s sky for three nights but arrives every eight days. For reference, our moon is is in the sky between 13 to 15 days each month and then takes two weeks off like it works in Europe. Going with multiple moons is feasible but then you need to think of social rammifications. Many cultures base events off of a lunar calendar, which is another plate to spin regarding schedules.
Don’t Corner Yourself
Regarding geography, it made sense for the story of my Hexcrawl that the players are part of a Dwarven society living underneath mountains that shut its doors during the apocalypse. Seven hundred years later, they re-opened the doors due to overcrowding and lack of resources to find a new world out there. Dwarves mining out mountains is a common trope, easily bought by my players. The issue is that when the players start marching, and they always start from the same place, it can only go Westward.
I have unintentionally painted myself into a corner with this decision. The party knows what’s immediately to the North and South after a few ventures, with only Westward expansion being the direction they can go in like my players are a bunch of pilgrims. A better decision would have the starting hex be a mine that they’ve dug up from. That way I could have multiple directions which lead to multiple biomes. For example, with my landlocked starting zone, I can’t really do any ocean, pirate or water adventures. Worst of all, it limits what kind of Hex Features I can run, such as Twisted Taverns. If I had the start be in the middle of my map, I could easily have made one border an ocean for the players to play in if they ever wanted to hoist the black and begin slitting throats. Then the North could be the Winter ‘Zone’, to borrow terminology from video games, with Tropical or Desert to the South and whatever temperate to the opposite of the ocean border.
Don’t Negate Popular Zones
Another Zone I neglected is the city! When you’re looking for modules to pick and choose from; such as the incredible resource that is the One Page Dungeon Contest, plenty of adventures take place in a metropolis. As my game takes place in the post-apocalypse, I overlooked seeding cities for my players to discover. Looking at Mad Max for inspiration, its latest incarnations have three cities in what is otherwise an apocalyptic wasteland. I find myself reading adventures I cannot use. Your players’ characters might be from a particular city but the central premise of a West Marches Hexcrawl game is that the adventure is out there, not at home. Make a city for them to discover, just so you have somewhere to use those modules.
Lastly, I did not put enough rivers into my Hexcrawl. There’s a huge, six mile wide one because I am using six mile wide hexes, but a river doesn’t need to be that wide to be interesting. If I used rivers, I could have easily crossed ones, raging hazards or ones that are weather dependent. You can use these to funnel players towards destinations if you have pregenerated hexes or just force a particular route. If a player decides to use their Downtime to make a bridge for that pain in the ass river, they’ll feel very rewarded.
