The Lantern Hall
Painting: an ancient lexicon open on a carved lectern in a dark chapel of books, glowing runes and symbols lifting off its pages like fireflies.
TermTabletop term

West Marches

A campaign format with a large, rotating pool of players who schedule their own sessions and head out from a safe town into a dangerous, persistent wilderness. With no set plot, players choose what to explore and share discoveries with one another.

A campaign format with a large, rotating pool of players who schedule their own sessions and head out from a safe town into a dangerous, persistent wilderness. With no set plot, players choose what to explore and share discoveries with one another.

Origin

Created by designer Ben Robbins (later the author of Microscope, 2011) and described in his blog posts about the campaign in the late 2000s; its premise has been compared to The Keep on the Borderlands (1979).

Quick answers

What does "West Marches" mean?
A campaign format with a large, rotating pool of players who schedule their own sessions and head out from a safe town into a dangerous, persistent wilderness. With no set plot, players choose what to explore and share discoveries with one another.
Where does the term "West Marches" come from?
Created by designer Ben Robbins (later the author of Microscope, 2011) and described in his blog posts about the campaign in the late 2000s; its premise has been compared to The Keep on the Borderlands (1979).

Nearby in the archive

Sandbox

General term

A game world the player explores freely, choosing goals rather than following a set plot. In tabletop play it describes a campaign where the referee prepares places and factions rather than a storyline; in video games it describes open worlds such as The Elder Scrolls or Minecraft.

Hexcrawl

Tabletop term

A wilderness adventure played on a map divided into hexagons, each holding terrain and perhaps a lair, ruin, village or dungeon. Players choose where to travel and the referee reveals what they find, making exploration itself the adventure.

The Keep on the Borderlands

Adventure module1979

A fortified keep on the edge of civilization, a ravine honeycombed with monster lairs, and a DM's primer in the margins — the adventure that introduced a generation to D&D.

Living campaign

Tabletop term

An organized-play format in which thousands of players run characters through a shared, persistent setting at conventions and game stores, with results carried from table to table. The RPGA's Living City and later Pathfinder Society and D&D Adventurers League followed this model.