The Moving West Marches: Adventures on the Red Caravan (and How to Run Your Own)

 

  I have a lot of friends who play TTRPGs, and many others who were always curious about trying them. After years of GMing, I realized that what I enjoy the most are open, sandbox-style campaigns. Over time, I gradually let go of railroading and over-preparing, which I found often narrows the path players will take. Eventually, I decided to surrender to the will of the dice gods.

At the same time, I had been reading a lot of blog posts about West Marches and it felt like the perfect fit for my gaming style. So I started putting together a West Marches-style campaign using my usual group and expanding it to include several friends who were either new to RPGs or came from different systems.

For the system, I chose Forbidden Lands, which is ideal for exploration and resource management. I loved how it uses abstract dice to track supplies—rations, water, arrows, torches, etc.—represented by a die (d12 → d10 → d8 → d6). Each day, players roll the relevant die, and if they roll a 1–2, the resource depletes and drops to the next die. It’s simple, thematic, and adds great tension.


Making the West Marches Mobile

What I didn’t love about traditional West Marches campaigns was the need to always return to a home base at the end of every session. It felt repetitive—leaving from point A to a new location, then returning just to reset the map. It wasted a lot of the rich terrain I had created.

So I made my West Marches campaign mobile.

The Premise

A mysterious red mist had blanketed the land, cutting off villages from each other for hundreds of years. Only recently has the fog begun to dissipate, revealing the remnants of the old world beneath. The players were part of the first expedition sent to reestablish contact, map the world, and assess what remains.

Their characters traveled as part of a caravan. After each session, the caravan would move to wherever the players had ended up. That hex would then serve as the starting location for the next session. If players ended a session in a dungeon or an unsafe situation, we assumed they made their way back to the caravan to report their findings (unless the group agreed to play a follow-up session in the same place).


What Worked Well

🧭 Assigning Cartographers

Each session, one player was assigned the role of cartographer. I gave them a large blank hex map with only the starting village marked, and it was up to the players to fill in the rest. This added a collaborative worldbuilding element and gave the players ownership of their exploration.


📜 Expedition Reports

After each session, players were expected to write a brief expedition report for the next group. I, as the GM, would not share any meta-information—everything had to come from the players. To encourage participation, I offered XP bonuses to those who wrote reports (though in my case, players genuinely enjoyed writing them). The key was to keep them short—no longer than one A4 page. If players wanted to write detailed fiction, they had to include a short bullet-point summary so others could quickly get the key takeaways.

📅 Fixed Game Night

Rather than waiting for players to organize sessions themselves, I chose a fixed day every week and ran a session regardless of who was available. This was much easier for scheduling and kept the campaign flowing. For special story arcs, I also scheduled occasional weekend events.

🎭 All-Player Milestone Sessions

At major story points, we held full-group sessions with all 9 players. These were chaotic but fun, and served as narrative milestones. They allowed players who rarely interacted to share the spotlight and brought resolution to important plot points. When one of my players had to leave the country, and their character was central to the story, we wrapped it up with an epic final battle and an epilogue showing what became of the characters years later. It was a great emotional send-off and helped me recharge after weeks of running sessions non-stop.


🧭 Time Passes

One small but impactful decision I made was to assume that three days pass between each session. This gave players enough time to recover from injuries or prepare supplies if they happened to play back-to-back games. More importantly, it gave the world time to react. If the party was spotted sneaking into a forbidden temple, by the next session several days would have passed—enough time for the temple’s defenders to set up an ambush or reinforce their defenses. This led to some really interesting developments. It’s always fun to keep a clock running in the background. A bit of pressure forces players to make tough choices in the moment, instead of optimizing every move.


Challenges & Lessons Learned

⚔️ Different Playstyles

With a big rotating cast, clashes in playstyle are inevitable. Half the group loved combat; the other half preferred long social scenes and exploration. This led to sessions where some players were thrilled buying vegetables from eccentric merchants while others were bored, or vice versa with pure combat encounters. Also, louder or more confident players sometimes overshadowed quieter ones. My advice? Check in with players privately and talk things through. Since we were all friends, we resolved these issues pretty smoothly.

🐍 Conflicting Faction Interests

In our world, many factions existed. Some players were aligned with one group, while others supported rival causes. This led to situations where one group helped the Serpent Cult in one session, and the next group accidentally attacked their temple. We never reached PvP, but it caused a lot of debate. Eventually, the players decided to vote on major faction choices together, forming a kind of caravan assembly.

We also ran into logistical conflicts—for example, one group pushing west toward a powerful mage’s tomb, only for the next group to chicken out and go somewhere else. Sometimes this meant a group ended up exploring the same area multiple times. It was occasionally frustrating but also provided fun story moments and laughs.

😢 Captured Characters

In one session, a player’s character was captured by a cult. The next group had 24 in-game hours to rescue them before a sacrifice took place. Unfortunately, the team made some bad choices and failed the mission—the character was killed. It was rough for the player to find out their character had died off-screen. In hindsight, I think captured players should at least participate in the rescue session, maybe playing an NPC if needed.


Final Thoughts

This campaign was one of the most fun and engaging I've ever run. It let me share the game with new players, create a living world full of consequences, and step back as the GM to let players take control. If you're thinking of running a West Marches game and want something more dynamic and flexible, consider going mobile. Forbidden Lands was a perfect match for this format.

Would I do it again? Absolutely—but maybe with a co-GM next time 😅

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