Back in May I came upon an old post by Ben Robbins about a campaign he ran called West Marches. I was not aware other people had considered this type of set-up, but that is mostly due to having focused my RPG reading on World of Darkness related ideas rather than more traditional fantasy/dungeoneering sources.
There are a few key rules that need to be adhered to when running a campaign in this way. First, the town should be safe and the wilds wild to help keep adventuring focused on exploration of the wilderness. Second, the DM should appear to be passive, giving the players a sandbox where they decide what they are going to do. Lastly, there is no set party and any players/characters can group up if they can get together.
Contrary to popular belief, the West Marches were not run as a hew crawl but instead used a vector based map. This front loads a lot of the development onto the DM requiring a high degree of detail when it comes to wilderness and dungeon sites. Especially when you consider that the players would be navigating via direction and landmarks. Personally, this mapping system would be too ambitious for me. As of now I feel more comfortable using a nested hex mapping system, starting off with a map consisting of 25-mile hexes, and then maps for more traveled or important areas consisting of 5-mile hexes, and if more detail is required maps consisting of 1-mile hexes.
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