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The Seven Elements of West Marches Play
The West Marches is a style of TTRPG gameplay designed by Ben Robbins, and written up in 2007 on his Ars Ludi blog. The idea was that Robbins was burnt out as a GM, and bored of that mid campaign settlement where the players have lost some degree of enthusiasm for the ‘plot’ and are pretty much just going through the motions of turning up and rolling dice, then going home again. Rinsing and repeating each week.
By JimmiWazEre
Opinionated tabletop gaming chap
TL;DR:
West Marches campaigns hand more responsibility to the players: no scripted plot, no encounter balance, and strict timekeeping. The GM builds a world of rumours, dangers, and discoveries, while the players organise sessions, keep records, and decide where to explore.
Introduction
Ahoy there. Apologies if I’m a little late with this post, and if the writing’s a little more concise than normal. I’ve got the dreaded COVID lurgy and thinking straight is a bit of a mission right now :D
Today’s post is inspired by two things. Firstly, Critical Role season 4, and the perhaps clumsy(?) mention that it will be in West Marches style, and secondly, that maybe the West Marches style will suit my upcoming Pirate Borg campaign. We’ll see, but these are my thoughts so far.
Why Do A West March Style Game?
The West Marches is a style of TTRPG gameplay designed by Ben Robbins, and written up in 2007 on his Ars Ludi blog. The idea was that Robbins was burnt out as a GM, and bored of that mid campaign settlement where the players have lost some degree of enthusiasm for the ‘plot’ and are pretty much just going through the motions of turning up and rolling dice, then going home again. Rinsing and repeating each week.
Robbins wanted more, so based on his interpretation of the original 1970s playstyle, he coined/rediscovered/invented/reimagined a new/old style of play; the West Marches. The goals were threefold:
More player engagement, players who actually cared about the game world and wanted to discover it.
Less GM burnout from things like manufacturing and forcing complicated arching plots, or weaving in player backstories all while having to constantly juggle the pressure of not accidentally killing the players and cutting their stories short.
Fairer distribution of meta game responsibilities so that things like arranging dates and times of play, and sharing things like after session reports and maps was a responsibility for the players rather than the GM.
Robbins had more players than table space, and he wanted to find a way to allow them all to share the same instance of the game world.
The Key Principles of West Marches
1) No Predefined Macro Level Plot
West Marches games are unapologetically sandbox in style. That means that the GM has absolutely zero responsibility for attempting to craft a narrative story with character arcs.
Instead, the story of the game is told in retrospect and is crafted by the player’s choices, and the judgements of the dice.
None of this is to say that that the GM’s world shouldn’t have a history though - craft a world to your heart’s content - just don’t craft a series of future events designed to happen at designated points in the upcoming campaign. For example, you may have a big bad evil guy, but you must not have plans to bring him out on the final session. If and when he arrives in the game will be driven by the players actions.
2) Exploration and Discovery Focus
There is a huge emphasis upon the exploration pillar - that is; the means by which exploration is handled, and the player’s desire to discover the secrets of the world and plunder its loot. How you handle the mechanics of travel is up to you, but the key is moving the players into the wilderness.
In order to motivate players to the leave their home base, Robbins suggested making it a safe haven for rest and shopping, but not a place where adventure can be had or knowledge can be attained. In fact, the world is often built so that the further you travel from base, the greater the dangers and the greater the reward.
Taking a slightly different route, I’m going to experiment with having all of the home base elements of the game happen away from the game table to be managed entirely between games, so that the actual sessions start and end with leaving and arriving back at home base.
3) No Encounter Balance
The GM should pay no heed towards trying to keep the player characters alive in the face of their poor choices. It is this perceived deadliness which drives the players to advance in the game and find ways to meet their own goals. When a band of player characters return back to base in failure, they return with a greater understanding of the challenges that lie ahead so that they might try again, better prepared next time.
Besides, I find that as with most things in life, all the juice is in the journey rather than the destination. That is, the striving toward success, not the actual succeeding.
To be blunt - this means, yes, player characters will die. Probably frequently. When they do, roll up a new one. This means that in turn, that adventuring groups will contain characters of different levels, and that’s OK too. When games are engineered this way, the focus of game play becomes less about your stats and abilities on a character sheet, and more about your abilities as a player to effectively and creatively solve problems. That’s a feature, not a bug.
4) Players Are Incentivised to Write Up Session Reports
Players should be encouraged to keep up all the between-game book keeping as much as possible, and make it publicly available on some kind of digital sharing and communication platform. Discord seems like a solid choice. This is meant to simulate the natural flow of stories and rumours that would happen when an adventuring party got back and hit the local tavern, and it’s a crucial shared resource for everyone. It plays a huge part in helping the players decide what they want to do next, especially when some players miss a couple of sessions and might not otherwise know what’s going on.
Be warned though, the GM should never be tempted to correct the player’s imperfect interpretation of the world, be that maps they have created and updated, or reflections upon a session’s activity. Nor should you correct your world to match their version - let the players discover for themselves where mistakes were made and correct them as the course of the adventure unfolds.
All that said, I think it’s very likely that players will need to be highly incentivised to do this, as most are used to being passive consumers of content - and now we’re effectively saying that we expect them to complete homework. I’ll experiment with using meta currency, or even XP as incentives until I find something that works.
5) Activity Driven by Rumours and Clues
As GM, you’re predesigning the world with care. Each location in the game’s world should be keyed and intentionally formed, and each should contain clues pointing to another location that ensures the players are never without tantalising options for future adventures.
Equally, I’ll also be using the between-session time to post rumours to the campaign discord which reflect what the players might have heard in the local tavern. There’s no pressure on the players to pursue these rumours and not all of them will even be true, but they will serve to stop the players from ever being short of options.
6) Player Responsibility To Arrange Sessions
This is a big one. Based off all the information players have received both in game, from rumours and from write ups, the players arrange between themselves where they want to go to next. If you’re operating with more than ones table’s worth of players then some will miss out on a particular adventure, and if they’re eager, they’ll set up a rival party to maybe head out to the same location to try to get the loot first.
Either way, when a group of players have come together to agree what they want to do next, and when and where they want to do it (they need to make sure the GM is also available and has enough notice to prepare) then they simply book the time in on the Discord server, or wherever you’re tracking your campaign, and provide details of the in-game date that the expedition is going to set off.
7) Strict Timekeeping Must be Kept
Firstly, before I get into it, your GM life will be made so much easier if you enforce an in-game rule that all adventuring parties must end their session at home base. If this involves having to come up with suitably punishing rules about ‘rolling to return home’ then so be it - it’s worth it for the headaches it saves. Let me explain why:
This is probably the biggest complication with running West Marches style games. As GM, you have to manage the passage of in-game time really carefully and accurately. If you do have multiple groups then the main headache will be in keeping track of branching timelines when a group departs, and then folding those timelines back into the main branch when the adventurers return back to base. All this has to be done in way that avoids creating any in-game ‘crossing of the streams‘.
For example; lets say you have two groups. If group A departs on the 1st day of your in-game calendar for location Z, and then they return on day 4, that represents a branch. The implication of this; is that later on in real time, group B cannot arrange a session where they depart on day 2 for location Z also. Why not? Because it would create a conflict - group A did not meet group B at location Z during the period of days 1-4, therefore group B cannot have gone there.
It would however be fine for group B to set off to location Y on day 2 and return on day 5. This doesn’t cause a conflict. They could also set off for location Z on day 5, but they’d be arriving at a place that’s already been visited.
At some point, your play groups should intermingle and form new groups. In these cases it is important to resolve any calendar differences between the different characters. Following our examples, for some PCs it is day 5, and for others it’s day 4. In these situations, we use downtime for the players on day 4 to fast travel them forwards to day 5. Alternatively, we fast travel everyone to whatever agreed day the next expedition happens on.
For me, this ‘downtime’ is the opportunity for players to shop, train, heal, carouse, careen their ships - whatever seems reasonable.
You’re gonna need a digital calendar to track this so that everyone knows what’s going on.
Additional Considerations
Consider Giving the Players A Basic Map
Not essential, but you might want to consider giving the players a starting map. Not a hex map, mind - nothing gamefied. Just a basic outline of the land, something that they can fill in as they go.
Multiple Groups or One Group
You can do this with only one table’s worth of players, that certainly simplifies the timekeeping, but it does mean that you’d be missing out on a key component of West Marches play - inter-player competition, and a sense of urgency to be the first to discover somewhere and get the loot.
That’s a big deal and one of this methods key draws.
Emergent Gameplay Vs Prep One Session at a Time
This isn’t an either/or situation. You should prep what you can for a given session once you’ve been informed of the players intent, but as with any style of TTRPG GMing, you should also have all the tools you need to hand to help you improvise emergent play when things take a turn for the unexpected.
Tools of the Trade
Just a quick list of some essential tools… Well, I think think they’re gonna be essential:
A private discord server, fully set up with different chat rooms for different purposes such as arranging sessions or sharing reports.
Maybe something like Obsidian Portal so that players can share their understanding of the world in a structured way.
Both an in-game calendar for planned expeditions, and a real world one for plotting game session on!
It’s all gone wrong!
There are a few pitfalls to watch out for I reckon, the key things to watch out for are:
Players forming cliques and never mixing with other players. You should make rules to force players to mix it up every once in a while.
Social barriers - such as players being bold enough to put themselves forward to actually arrange a session, rather than hoping someone else will do it, or players being too passive to bother with the after session write ups.
As GM, if you do need to break the rule about returning to base in the same session, you need to be really careful about how you handle it and the implications that this has on the timeline for everyone else.
Conclusion
My next move is gonna be to put this article in front of my play group and see if they’re interested. Maybe you can use it in the same way? If you’re interested in running West Marches style games, feel free to direct your players over this way to test the waters.
Also, I’ve never done West Marches before - if you have any advice or comments, please chuck it down below the line, I’ll be grateful of anything you can share!
Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials - it really helps me out and costs you nothing! If you’re super into it and want to make sure you catch more of my content, subscribe to my free monthly Mailer of Many Things newsletter - it really makes a huge difference, and helps me keep this thing running!
Catch you laters, alligators.
What Makes ‘Ravaged by Storms’ a Standout Pirate Borg Sandbox?
When Golem Productions reached out to invite me to showcase their adventure, I was happy to answer the call.
By JimmiWazEre
Opinionated tabletop gaming chap
TL:DR:
A storm-wracked sandbox, a furious feathered serpent, and a doomsday clock. Ravaged by Storms is Golem Productions’ newest Pirate Borg adventure — a 72-page mini-campaign where factions clash, hurricanes brew, and the Blight Revenant stirs. I really like it, it’s packed with GM tools like a Storm Generator and Ruin tables, but my first look also spotted a couple of quirks. Here’s what stood out to me.
Disclaimer
Similar to last week’s initial exploration of Emergent, I can’t call this a review. I’ve not played it yet you see, coupled with the fact that I’ve only been sent a WIP copy with some missing images etc and haven’t seen the final version.
As ever, I’ve not received a financial incentive to write nice things, but I am a backer of the Ravaged by Storms Kickstarter. When Golem Productions reached out to invite me to showcase their adventure, I was happy to answer the call. As part of this, I fed back a few suggested improvements to Golem Productions, and as such you’ll find me credited in the book :)
The upshot is that despite that very minor minor conflict of interest, you’re gonna be reading my honest first thoughts on an adventure which is mostly finished, and that I quite clearly can’t wait to get my hands on the finished product!
Oh, and whilst I’m disclaiming, this post contains minor spoilers covering the opening setup of the adventure. Cool? Swinging, lets get started.
What is Ravaged By Storms?
OK so, off the back of successful releases ‘The Way of the Worm’ and ‘The Scarlet Coral Kingdom’, brother - sister duo Alexander Jatscha-Zelt and Sabrina Jatscha (Golem Productions) have got yet another Pirate Borg adventure on the stove. ‘Ravaged by Storms’ (RbS), is currently in a live Kickstarter (well, live until 11th September 2025 anyway) and the campaign has already hit a fantastic 426 backers with over £15,000 pledged so far.
Jatscha-Zelt describes RbS as a “72-page mythic sandbox adventure module designed for Pirate Borg… rules-light, art-heavy, and fiercely OSR.“ and he’s pretty much nailed it.
For those unfamiliar with the idea; since it’s a sandbox adventure there’s no middle or end plotted out for you to awkwardly steer your players towards. What happens is totally in their hands. Player. Agency. My dudes.
There is however, a beginning:
In The Beginning, There Was A… (Minor Spoiler Alert, players skip to the next section!)
A millennia or so ago Mesoans settled in an archipelago in the Bahamas of the Dark Caribbean called the Death Wind Islands. With the help of their Coatl allies (serpentine demigods of wind and storm) they go on to build a glorious city housing all their wealth and knowledge.
Hundreds of years later, those Mesoan chaps are long gone - but their crumbling kingdom remains guarded by the last Coatl; Tzoketuapacatl (bless you!). It’s lucky he does too, because during a siege on the city an undead warrior was touched by a local Great Old One’s juicy venom and transformed into (our BBEG) the Blight Revenant, and this chap is hell bent on claiming the Whisperwind Conch.
If the Revenant ever manages to nab it from the city, the result could be extinction-level toxic hurricanes:
Fortunately, Tzoketuapacatl intervenes. Sealing the city, Revenant, and the Conch behind layers of impenetrable magical raging storm prisons. This is seemingly a cunning, nay, foolproof plan with but. One. Small. Flaw…
You see, it all slowly unravels if anyone gets into the city through the back door and yoinks a second magical McGuffin; the Wind Bone Key.
And, well, ‘sugarpuffs!’ Wouldn’t you just know it!? Flash forward to the Golden Age of Piracy and some swashbuckling scurvy dog has only gone and unwittingly done exactly that! Now there’s a six day timer ticking until the Blight Revenant gets his boney hands on the Conch, and to really stick the boot in - Tzoketuapacatl (who is understandably pretty dischuffed with this turn of events!) is going on a bit of a rampage against all the local factions trying to find the Wind Bone key and is tearing everything up in his path.
Unto this scene, enter stage left; our heroes.
Come on, that sounds pretty Saturday morning swashbuckling, right? I’m in.
What’s it trying to Do?
Be A Complete Mini Campaign
RbS is built to run as a 5-10 session adventure. Whilst you could probably run it straight out of the book, I would always recommend familiarising yourself with the content that you need to run an expected session, and making some notes prior to sitting down at the table.
It has a defined opening, a ticking doomsday clock, and enough locations, NPCs, and encounters to sustain a whole arc without having to do much more work than flesh out some of the things given to you should the players actions necessitate it.
Encourage Sandbox Play
There’s no fixed middle or end.
Instead, the module gives you procedures for faction activity, travel, and naval encounters so the world keeps moving around the PCs. The story isn’t pre-written and can only be understood as something that happened at your table in the past-tense, rather than something that the GM dictates will happen.
That’s really key to understanding how to use RbS: The players choose what to pursue, who to side with, and how to spend their six days before everything goes all Sharknado. The module does have a handful of potential ways the campaign might play out listed at the end, but the purpose here isn’t to say ‘pick one’, rather ‘this is just an inspirational small range of the limitless possible outcomes’.
Be Modular
After all that though, if a Sandbox campaign really isn’t your thing, well the module is also pretty damn modular to be honest. You could easily reach inside and tear out the stuff you like, such as the Lifeless City, or Drownmaids Rest to use as one shot adventures, and then adjust the player agency to taste.
What Stands Out To Me?
The Timer
The six day timer is doing two things, firstly, it’s setting expectations that this isn’t going to be a terribly long campaign arc (5-10 sessions), in fact this campaign is going to be perfect for my Pirate Borg campaign as a keyed location to drop in, and that’s how I’d suggest you use it too.
Secondly though, the timer is infusing the adventure with a sense of urgency which is something I find to be critical in keeping the players moving forwards and not getting bogged down trying to fulfil that ‘videogamey’ habit of exploring all paths and getting every achievement… and then consequently robbing the experience of all it’s tension.
The Roaming Coatl
Tzoketuapacatl is a cool monster, no doubt about it. But he serves a meta-function as a chaos generator and a GM safeguard.
I was thinking about this, we’re all human, and even in sandboxes GMs sometimes drift into predicting how things might play out. Once you start imagining outcomes, you risk steering players toward them. The Coatl prevents that.
By rolling for his actions and storms, and including information on how all the keyed locations change in his aftermath, the board state constantly shifts in unpredictable ways. It keeps the GM honest, preserves agency, and if you make the players feel it; I can imagine it injecting fresh tension each new game day.
The fact that Golem Productions has included this meta layer of thinking about how their module should be ran, and how they can make it easy for you to stick to sandbox principles really impressed me.
Sandbox Toolkit
OK, so yeah - the Coatl is very specific to RbS. But there are other gameplay tools that you can add to your broader Pirate Borg arsenal, and that makes it extra valuable:
There’s a Storm Generator that provides you with both descriptive prompts, but also translates these into specific player challenges, and suggests potential consequences for failure. Really useful for making weather more than simple flavour.
A Ruins Generator that lets you roll up some convincing locations for crawling, in case players take a left turn and find themselves somewhere that looks like it could use a dungeon.
Six new rituals from the ‘Squallbinding’ school to give extra magical options for PCs, all focused around the movement of air; wind, speaking, breathing etc.
Faction Play
Every group on the islands has its own agenda: there’s the pirate group; the Phantoms fracturing under Marceau, the West India Company scheming for control, the Bright Maiden’s mercurial ghost crew, the Coatl’s wrath, Peacatatl, and the Blight Revenant.
They’re all written to act and react alongside the PCs, with different motivations which creates shifting alliances and betrayals, again adding to the richness and variety of the campaign’s path at your table.
Nostalgia
It would simply be remiss of me not to mention that the art and descriptions are fantastic throughout. I really appreciated that elements of it grabbed me right in the childhood and transported me directly back to Monkey Island, meeting “Herman Toothrot” and tinkering about with monkeys and suspicious statues. Great stuff!
Potential Friction Points
Terminology Consistency
I especially like how the module uses a similar concise framework to my preferred method when it comes to giving area descriptions, however one of the things I fed back on relates to the consistency of the terminology in these areas. I should stress, mine was a preview copy with final changes yet to be made, but I noticed instances where I was uncertain if more than one distinct noun or proper name for a given element was simply artistic flair, or an indication that there were multiple similar elements.
For example, are “Maritime Beast,” “bone cage,” and “skeletal remains.” all referring to the same giant desiccated animal corpse on the beach, or are there three?
It’s fine to do this for many people, but for me personally it made reading comprehension just that little bit more of a challenge. Having to reread lines, over analysing, self doubt, that question - ‘have I missed something from elsewhere that explains this?’.
I’ll be happy to see this resolved in the final product, with the addition of the last few area maps which will clear this up nicely :)
Intentional Vagueness
Since this is a concise OSR adventure, there’s not pages and pages of lore a la WOTC. That’s not to say lore is absent, but rather that RbS is concise and gives you the minimum to make sure the GM is in control of the important facts. This means you’ll have to improvise if more detail is required.
This is going to work absolutely fine for me as all the main details have been covered and I just need to add some flesh to the bones here and there, but if you’re not comfortable with improvisation then it could be a sticking point for you, and it’s worth knowing, going in.
Navigation
There’s quite a lot of page flipping to be had in RbS, mainly in relation to how one of the broad cast of NPS relates to another regarding factional interplay. The nice thing is that you are specifically told where to flip to though, and you’re not just left to vaguely cast about looking for the relevant section.
I think I would have preferred to see some kind of nodal diagram showing all the different cast members, who they are connected to and how. That could have been up front on a single page and would have meant that I’m not regularly having to flip to elsewhere to get the full picture explained to me.
As it currently stands, this is probably the main reason why I said earlier that the module does still require you to read through and make notes, to make sure that you’re in total command of all the relevant information.
Do You Want To Know More?
Looks like Ravaged by Storms has made a bit of a splash, which is really nice to see.
Over at Thaumavoria, Dave has a nice interview up with Golem Productions, discussing RbS and various design choices.
And Rascal News even has a guest piece up discussing the Kickstarter!
There’s also an interview up on Youtube with Mom’s Open Table and the Kickstarter trailer offers a nice tease:
Conclusion
Obviously, it’s clear that I really like the look of Ravaged By Storms. I think it’s going to be an excellent option for inserting into my wider PB campaign. On top of that, you know I’m going to be lifting those GM tools straight out and putting them to use more broadly.
How about you though? Do you think it looks interesting? What would you like to see form a module like this? Answers in the comments below as always :)
Oh, before I forget - If you want to get in on the kickstarter, head over to the campaign in time for the final push before September 11th and grab yourself a slice of the action.
Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials - it really helps me out and costs you nothing! If you’re super into it and want to make sure you catch more of my content, subscribe to my free monthly Mailer of Many Things newsletter - it really makes a huge difference, and helps me keep this thing running!
Catch you laters, alligators.
What if Stranger Things, Buffy, X-Files, and X-Men Had a Baby? Emergent RPG: A First Look
In Emergent your protagonists have been touched by the interdimensional fallout that explodes into our world when the barrier between Earth and the ‘Transverge’ breaks down.
By JimmiWazEre
Opinionated tabletop gaming chap, who’s very tempted to rewatch Buffy now.
TL;DR:
Emergent is a superhero-horror RPG blending Stranger Things, Buffy, and X-Files vibes. Teens with powers fight monsters while juggling exams and social life. Cool dice mechanics, strong inclusivity, but potentially heavy prep and GM load. Looks promising if you enjoy structured, thematic play.
Disclaimer
Now then! Before we get into the weeds let’s be nice and clear with the disclosure: I don’t want to call this a review because I haven’t played Emergent yet. I’ve definitely not received any financial incentive to write about it, but I did receive a copy of the PDF to share my thoughts on without any actual obligation to do so.
I will be providing affiliate links though, in case Emergent seems like it might scratch your itch, and if you buy from those links I’ll get a small kickback at no additional cost to you.
I trust that we’re all savvy now? Let’s gooooo :)
What Is Emergent?
Just The Facts
| Type | TTRPG |
| Theme | Superhero, horror |
| Players | 2-6 (Including GM) |
| Ages | Teens and up |
| Dev | Shield Brothers Games |
| Pages | 425 |
Successfully kickstarted to the tune of $6,256 in 2024, Emergent has been available digitally since March 2025 and represents the first foray into the TTRPG space for Shield Brothers Games design duo Daniel Staples and Austin Nachbur, with support from graphic designer; Blaine Greenway and a small squad of dedicated Q&A leads and sensitivity readers.
Staples and Nachbur began collaborating in college after they realised that they were both separately developing similar things, and decided to combine their projects into one, Emergent is the product of that collaboration - 425 pages all written in a diegetic style, as if the reader is inheriting a set of responsibilities, passed down from the old guard to the new.
What’s it Trying to Do?
Emergent wears its inspirations quite proudly. Stranger Things, X-Men, Supernatural, IT, Alan Wake… For me personally, I can see Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the X-Files embedded into it’s DNA too. That’s a lot to be blending together so let’s unpack it a bit:
It’s a superhero game, in Emergent your protagonists have been touched by the interdimensional fallout that explodes into our world when the barrier between Earth and the ‘Transverge’ breaks down. This singularity gifts you with minor powers that set you ahead of other humans, but it also draws the attention of ‘Division Omega’, the sinister shadow-government organisation responsible for all the transdimensional meddling in the first place.
It’s a horror game. Unknowable monstrosities call the Transverge home, and when they break through they’re angry, confused, and hungry. If you sit back and let Division Omega handle it then they’ll probably discover you too. That’s bad, you don’t want to be dissected and turned into the bioweapons of tomorrow, so you’ve got no choice but to defeat these Lovecraftian horrors yourself, all quiet-like. The only problem? They’re stronger than you and they’re getting stronger all the time.
It’s an investigation game! In order to get the edge, you’re gonna need to spend some time on recon, maybe investigating local sites of monster activity to look for clues, or heading to the library to check out the section on strange mythical beasts? It’s only when you understand the vulnerabilities of the monster that you should attempt a final confrontation. You’re going to need a plan.
“Pass Your Exams. Slay a Monster. Make it Home for Dinner”
It’s a coming of age game. Protagonists in Emergent are teenagers, typically in high school or college, learning to be adults, learning to accept themselves, learning how to survive in society. You’ve got to contend with the monsters whilst juggling all that stuff too, otherwise you risk becoming stressed out, socially ostracised, or failing your exams! I don’t want you to think this is just fluff though, this stuff is part of the core gameplay loop. Outside of school, work, and extracurricular activities you have limited time in your week, less so when your companions are also available. How are you going to make the most of it?
What Stands Out to Me?
Inclusivity
One thing that stands out straight away reading through Emergent is how seriously it takes inclusivity. The rulebook doesn’t shy away from pointing out ugly issues present in the real world (racism, sexism, homophobia) but it’s clear that whether these appear at your table is a matter of group consent.
Even in the sample cast of ‘Emergents’ (the game’s name for the superhero protagonists), inclusivity is matter-of-fact. Ash, for instance, is trans, but that detail is presented alongside her love of painting minis and running the school newspaper. It’s baked into the fabric of the game.
The result is a book where allyship feels foundational instead of performative.
The Core Mechanic
I love a cool core dice mechanic, and I’ve not seen this one before. To succeed in a check, you need to roll under your attribute + skill stats. The GM modifies the difficulty by setting the dice size (using the standard set of seven as made popular by D&D).
So, an easy task might use a d4 (more chance of rolling low, which is good) and a nigh on impossible task might be a d20. In this way, the game has two clear variables at play: firstly, how good your character is at a given skill - represented by their stats. Secondly, how difficult that particular expression of the skill is.
I’m also a big fan of the rulebook loudly making the point that skills checks should only be called for when failure carries risk. As opposed to calling for checks willy-nilly at every little thing that PCs might attempt to do.
Time & Scheduling
Emergent takes and tracks the passage of time very seriously. Gary Gygax would be proud!
Each day is broken into nine playable chunks called “sequences”. Three of these are for sleep (usually skip these), and three are reserved for school (sometimes skip these, unless there’s an interesting reason not to). That leaves you three sequences for responsibilities (like work and after school clubs), monster hunting and downtime.
At character creation all the players work together to build a shared calendar so that they can see when the group is free. Ideally, the PCs schedules overlap in places to allow for group monster hunting! However, the rules do encourage some deliberate mismatching to encourage the occasional solo scene too.
This strikes me as quite novel for a game to explicitly map out the PCs schedule like this. Most just hand wave it away, and it’d be interesting to see if this formal structuring impacts the natural flow of gameplay.
You might be asking ‘Why wouldn’t the PCs just ignore school and focus solely on the monster hunting?’ Well, for the same reason that Buffy the Vampire Slayer still went to class - exams, grades, and social obligations matter. Skipping them risks failure, expulsion, or drawing the wrong kind of attention.
Emergent goes a step further. If characters start blowing off school or other commitments, they accumulate Stress, which can escalate into Strain. In play, these translate into stat debuffs and penalty giving special rules - tangible consequences for ignoring the pressures of everyday life.
Superpower Themes
One of Emergent’s most eye-catching features is its catalogue of distinct superpowers. Each is presented as a theme, categorised into frontliner (tank), informant (scout), runner (skirmisher), support (healer), or controller (crowd control). Within those, abilities are unlocked as your character advances using a nodal system that connects abilities. You can only unlock a new node if it links to one you’ve already taken.
While these powers are written in a directive style similar to how D&D lays out spells, Emergent also stresses that abilities should be applied creatively at the GM’s discretion. The intent is to push players to think beyond the exact wording on their character sheet and use their powers imaginatively in the fiction.
Where things get particularly juicy is with Power Weaving. At higher levels, characters can choose to “weave” a second power into their existing one, broadening their toolkit in a way that’s reminiscent of multiclassing in D&D. A Blink user, for example, might weave Psyche to combine teleportation with telepathy.
Crafting
Crafting works through a recipe structure. Players gather components, match them to a blueprint, and assemble the item. Blueprints cover melee weapons, spray weapons, explosives, armour, and traps and even include the option for your players to MacGyver up anything that seems reasonable like the ruddy A-Team!
It’s good to see that crafting has consequences. Items can carry defects, and repairing damaged gear may become necessary. Because each Monster has unique weaknesses, the crafting stage is often where strategy takes shape. Players brainstorm together, share resources, and prepare tools that can turn an impossible fight into a survivable one.
Time is the limiting factor. Crafting takes up Sequences on the daily calendar, so every nail bat, molotov, or improvised trap represents time that could have been spent studying, resting, or keeping up with work.
Potential Friction Points
Possibly Heavy GM Mental Load
There’s a risk that the game undermines its otherwise elegant core mechanic. The GM doesn’t just pick the base difficulty die; they also decide when to apply advantage/disadvantage (shifting the die size), and when to apply situational modifiers (±1 to the skill). That’s three layers of judgement on every roll.
In my view it adds unnecessary cognitive load, and over a few hours of play I can imagine GMs starting to feel that weight. I’d houserule those away and replace them with a slight buff to player stats at creation.
Of course, your own mileage may vary depending on how comfortable you are juggling modifiers.
Emergent Gameplay?
Ironically for a game called Emergent, I wouldn’t say it proactively supports Emergent gameplay styles in the low-prep OSR sense, where outcomes arise unpredictably from light-touch systems or improv riffing from random prompts.
Instead, I can imagine game prep being quite involving, similar to a Call of Cthulhu session where the GM has to design the clues in advance so that they actually connect to a solvable answer. Additionally, the monster hunting loop follows a predictable pattern of investigate scenes, gather clues, discover weaknesses, prep, and then fight.
Call of Cthulhu is great, but I’ve only ever run it episodically and occasionally. That keeps the prep from becoming exhausting and stops players from familiarising themselves with the structure too much.
From my read through, Emergent feels similar. That’s not a bad thing necessarily, it just means the game leans into structured, thematic play where everything proceeds more or less to the GMs design, rather being the kind of game which relies on improvising and playing to find out.
Whether that’s your vibe is up to you to decide :)
Do You Want to Know More?
There’s not much information out there about Emergent yet, but Quinn from Shield Brothers Games has GM’d a couple of actual plays. You just go right on ahead and feel free to take a poke if you want to learn a bit more about how the game plays out.
Conclusion
Yeah so, Emergent seems like it should be pretty cool to me, and a couple of my usual players have already decided that it ticks their boxes and are eager to give it a go when time allows. If you want to pick up Emergent it’s available from Drive Thru RPG, and buying from my affiliate link will provide me with a little kickback at no additional expense to you.
Anyway, what do you think to it? Interested? Anything that puts you off? Let me know below the line.
Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials - it really helps me out and costs you nothing! If you’re super into it and want to make sure you catch more of my content, subscribe to my free monthly Mailer of Many Things newsletter - it really makes a huge difference, and helps me keep this thing running!
Catch you laters, alligators.
A Lesson From Solo RPG Gamers? Oracle Dice
As a GM, do you ever find yourself called upon to make a call, and for whatever reason - you struggle? For me it’s when it’s a particularly close call, and I’m acutely concerned/aware that my own GM conflict of interest might be swaying my decision one way or another.
By JimmiWazEre
Opinionated tabletop gaming chap who’s been really busy this week writing a report on the merits of workplace coaching.
TL;DR:
Solo RPG players use oracle dice to improvise and guide play. GMs can borrow the same tool to resolve tricky calls, avoid bias, and keep the game moving with unexpected twists.
Introduction
Just a quick one this week guys, I’m running on fumes writing a report on the merits of workplace coaching to earn a level 5 qualification. 1500 words to go!
OK, so, if you’re a subscriber to the Mailer of Many Things (if not, fear not! You can fix this egregious error) you’ve seen me advocate a few videos from the Man Alone Youtube channel. Solo Roleplaying interests me for a couple of reasons. Yeah, first up is the obvious one - it means you can play RPGs even when all your mates are unavailable.
That’s a good enough reason by itself, but I’ve got a theory about another. I reckon that gaining aptitude with solo RPGs will make you a better GM.
Hear Me Out
A key component of GMing RPGs, especially the OSR ones I favour, is the ability to take prompts and then improvise a situation from them. Typically, people find this daunting, especially early on in their GM careers. The good news is that it is definitely a learned skill, and you can get better with practice. Solo roleplayers are doing this all the time - typically a solo RPG isn’t an event based campaign, it’s something that’s largely improvised on the spot with the help of oracle and spark tables, that makes solo games a great low-stakes practice for improving your improvisation skills.
Hold on to that a moment, we’ll come back to it because here’s something else I want you to consider:
As a GM, do you ever find yourself called upon to make a call, and for whatever reason - you struggle? For me it’s when it’s a particularly close call, and I’m acutely concerned/aware that my own GM conflict of interest might be swaying my decision one way or another.
Oracle Dice
OK. Here’s the point: have you tried incorporating an oracle dice into your regular GMing? I figure that next time I face one of the those awkward situations, I can crack this little badger out and let it make the decision for me, and then I can just riff off the result.
It couldn’t be easier to make: Simply pick up a cheap blank d12 online and then in accordance with the idea that you should say ‘yes’ more than ‘no’, I proceeded to weight the outcomes by labelling each side with a black sharpie accordingly:
| Value | # |
| YES AND | 1 |
| YES | 3 |
| YES BUT | 3 |
| NO BUT | 2 |
| NO | 2 |
| NO AND | 1 |
I’ve pretty much just pulled these weightings out of thin air, but the nice thing is that sharpie markers can be removed with light chemicals, and I can reassign the values if I decide to make changes.
For the uninitiated, the AND modifiers amplify the YES or NO result, and the BUT modifiers add a twist which is positive or negative - whatever is the opposite of the YES/NO result. So for example, “YES BUT” might mean that the pirate captain will sail you to the island, but you need to help him quell a mutiny first.
Conclusion
I’ve not tried this out yet because I’ve just finished up with running my last campaign, but I’ll definitely be giving this a go in my next game. I’d appreciate your thoughts on if you think I’ve got the weightings right? Do you think that an oracle dice like this is a useful tool? Answers in the comments please.
Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials - it really helps me out and costs you nothing! If you’re super into it and want to make sure you catch more of my content, subscribe to my free monthly Mailer of Many Things newsletter - it really makes a huge difference, and helps me keep this thing running!
Catch you laters, alligators.
D&D’s Best Intro Campaign? I ran Lost Mine of Phandelver For My Group
Lost Mine of Phandelver (LMoP) is the first D&D 5e starter set adventure. Released in 2014, LMoP is an event driven campaign for 3 - 5 players, taking characters from level 1 - 5.
By JimmiWazEre
Opinionated tabletop gaming chap.
TL;DR: Lost Mine of Phandelver starts strong with tight early dungeons and a solid onboarding for new players, but quickly loses focus. The villain is forgettable, the pacing drifts, and structural choices teach new DMs bad habits like railroading and pulling punches. I rebuilt huge sections and turned it into a spaghetti western, giving the BBEG presence, adding time pressure, and replacing the green dragon with a recurring ancient red. The result was decent enough, but only because of heavy rewrites.
Run it as written and you’ll learn the hard way.
Introduction
Belch, Duncath, Twig, Diego, and Nasbo fire up the Forge of Spells.
From the shadows: slow clap. “Well done…” says the Black Spider, stepping into the dim light. “You have been my pawn from the start…”
Her skin tears away. Her back splits. The Black Spider crumples, replaced by an ancient red dragon — Dragos, the Destroyer of Worlds.
“Bow before me… or burn in this place!”
What is the Lost Mine of Phandelver?
Lost Mine of Phandelver (LMoP) is the first D&D 5e starter set adventure. Released in 2014, LMoP is an event driven campaign for 3 - 5 players, taking characters from level 1 - 5.
It took me several months of play to finish this, you could probably do it faster but we’re limited to 2-3 hours sessions twice a month.
That’s right folks, it’s another review from Jimbo about a product that’s been out for chuffin’ ages already! Wooo.
Spoiler Warning
As written, the adventure is set on the Sword Coast, near Neverwinter, this dwarf dude named Gundren Rockseeker has found the legendary Wave Echo Cave (WEC), and the valuable Forge of Spells (FoS) within. He's recruited you to help him clear the place out and get it up and running.
The only problem is that en route to the frontier town of Phandalin, near WEC, Rockseeker is kidnapped by the Cragmaw Goblins, leaving you and your fellows to pick up the pieces.
The bulk of the adventure then follows the PCs as they attempt to find and rescue Rockseeker, discover the location of WEC for themselves, and thwart the various factions who're standing… sometimes in their way, and sometimes just off to the side.
This all ends with a fight against a BBEG you’d be forgiven for forgetting about called The Black Spider, who's been orchestrating all the local problems from the shadows like some moustache twirling villain out of a Saturday morning cartoon.
Ok, that's you all caught up.
So, What's it trying to do differently?
LMoP is a starter set, so it's trying to teach new DMs and players how the game works over the course of a strictly Event Driven Campaign (EDC). Emphasis on strictly, because all modules sit somewhere on a scale between sandbox and railroad. Well, this adventure sits at 90% railroad and IMO that’s too much for something that’s meant to set expectations.
The big problem here is that the EDC structure is a rigid sequence of set pieces where the players are nudged from one scene to the next. In my opinion, that’s a rubbish exposure to how an adventure should look for a new DM, and it’s a big reason you see so many online complaints about railroading from players regarding their lack of agency, and from burnt out DMs begging for help over their stress trying to force the flow of the game towards the predefined solution.
What does it do well?
Cragmaw Hideout in act 1 is a neat and concise little dungeon that does a good job teaching players about stealth, traps, competing factions, multiple paths and solutions. Aside from being too verbose, (which I’ll get to later) the dungeon presents a nice little challenge to the players, and is easy enough to run for the DM.
Redbrand Hideout too, is a little bigger but still very well designed and reinforces those lessons about multiple routes, traps, and adds rewards for extra exploration. It also includes a cool encounter with a Nothic which can lead to fun shenanigans - like sucking the skin off a willing dragonborn’s finger!
Finally I can confirm that this adventure contains both dungeons and a dragon, which at the very least earns it points for correct advertising.
Unfortunately that's about as much as I can honestly say that I thought was legitimately good. Everything else is 'meh' at best.
Yikes, I've got some beef. What didn't I like?
Deep breath.
Teaching the Wrong Lessons
Ok, so, as it's meant to be played the first encounter is a forced combat, seemingly 'balanced', and yet it's so deadly that any DM playing the ambushing goblins with any degree of tactical nouce should cause a TPK within a few turns. This is a terrible lesson - forced combats are bad enough, but making brand new DMs fight with one hand tied behind their back to give the fledgling players half a chance sets a bad precedent about expecting fudged rolls for both parties.
The text should acknowledge the deadliness here, and then give very specific guidance on what to do as DM if the player’s do not win.
Much later, Cragmaw Castle offers a false dichotomy. You see, players can go in the front door but that's obviously trapped, but if they do then it leads to several routes through the dungeon until the end and a potentially satisfying experience.. However, because of the aforementioned trap, the players do a quick bit of recon, and discover that they can just walk around the outside the castle and go in through the prominently placed side door with a simple pick lock check. After that they can chance upon skipping the entire dungeon by turning right on a whim and walking straight to the boss room with Gundren.
The game is trying to teach players that there are multiple paths and choices, but if one of those choices is obviously the right answer, then that's no choice at all - all we’re left with is an anti-climax.
Terrible Layout
Man alive, I hate long form text! If you want to run from the book (because, you know, that's why you bought a book in the first place) without having to spend hours rewriting and summarising it, then the DM is required to parse long form prose over several pages then flip back to a map for reference. This is no way to design an adventure, and it makes running scenes slow and easy to mess up.
Below is just 2 pages from the 9 page WEC dungeon. Can you imagine trying to read that at the table, under pressure, and then articulate it back to your players? And those read aloud text boxes - my player’s would be asleep!
Half-baked “Story”
Gundren, the whole game is about rescuing Gundren, but other than a single boring real-aloud text box which mentions him at the start of the game - the players never meet him or have any genuinely gripping reason to care that he’s missing other than an underwhelming amount of GP offered as a reward.
In truth, the game comes with pre-gen characters that we didn’t use, and one or two of them have some tertiary connections to Gundren and Phandalin, but you don’t meet his brothers until the end so they’re not pressing you forwards, and the relationship Gundren has with Sildar is only mercantile, so why should he bust a nut begging for your help?
Then there’s the Black Spider. A BBEG that players just don't care about. As written, you never meet the Black Spider until the end, and you barely learn anything about them, their motives, or even that they're particularly evil or just misunderstood. That's a real kicker when you consider that this is so story driven - what's the point of a baddie if the players don't have an opinion about them?
It feels like ancient wisdom to say that a dragon that most players will never meet is no dragon at all. If a dragon falls over in the woods but no PC is there to hear it - does it still make a noise? Well, said dragon lives in Thundertree, which is so far removed from the main quest that I can't see many players naturally finding it without heavy DM fiat. What a waste of the game's only dragon!
Important DM Skills Completely Ignored
The game doesn't give you any tools to address pacing. Gundren has been kidnapped, but time might as well be standing still for days on end whilst you side quest. This should be used to teach DMs about driving urgency and hammering the game forwards with a simple GM facing timeline of steadily worsening events that happen if the PCs fail to act.
Speaking of act - after you finish up with the Redbrands, act 3 suddenly opens up into a sandbox which sends jarring messages about the game becoming a hex crawl. There’s only the most cursory guidance given to teaching DMs this new skill, and when the players have just experienced two acts teaching them that the game is a railroad about a time sensitive rescue mission, the sudden lack of direction brings the game screeching to a whiplash inducing halt.
Then, in act 4, WEC is such a large and boring dungeon that even the designers feel obliged to acknowledge as much. To combat this, rather than equipping the DMs with detailed knowledge about how to run a procedural dungeon crawl, the game settles for a quick paragraph about rolling a d20 on a random monster table according to GM fiat. This is not sufficient, not even close.
How did I run it?
I'm an experienced GM so after giving the game a cursery read through and seeing a tonne of things both objectively and subjectively bad, I had lots of work cut out for me to make a bunch of changes.
Some of those changes were quite experimental and not all of them worked as I'd hoped. We lives and learns, don’t we precious?
Setting
To start with - old forgotten mines, gangs, a frontier town... come on - this is a western, and yet, the game seems to forget this. Barely anything else nods towards this as the game defaults again and again to generic European fantasy land. Bugger that. So I reskinned it into a spaghetti western, including house-ruling in sixshooters. Much better.
Then, given my aforementioned loathing of long form prose at the table, I went through every dungeon and rewrote every room out for brevity and utility. Check out this post if you want to learn how to do this.
Goblin Arrows
This was really experimental, I ran act 1 as a lvl 0 gauntlet - each player had a cast of 4 characters each and whoever survived until after Cragmaw Hideout got to level up to 1, gain a class and became their primary character. This worked pretty well, but if you try it yourself make sure your players fully understand what's going to happen, as most of their characters will die by design and the players are expected to embrace this. It worked for me, just about - but you do you.
Phandalin
The cast of Phandalin got pruned down to just a few memorable NPCs. One of Gundren’s brothers was dead from the start, murdered by the Redbrands to push that conflict to the front. Sister Garaele became possessed by Agatha the Banshee, forcing the party to solve that before they could get her help.
I got rid of Thundertree as well, it's too far away from the adventure site and has absolutely nothing to do with anything. I also swapped out the young green dragon who lives there with an ancient red dragon; Dragos, Destroyer of Worlds, and I had him turn up every now and then as this ever present threat to extort treasure from the players. Man, they hated that dude!
The Black Spider was given presence. Introduced early under the guise of a serving girl at the Sleeping Giant Inn, I had her and the party competing to secure a lockbox (Thanks Matty P) containing a vital key to the Forge. She even kidnapped a beloved NPC, turning her from an abstract villain into someone the players actively hated.
The Spider’s Web
In Act 3, I tried expanding Old Owl Well into a full “funhouse” dungeon, and even though it was cool, it heavily distracted from Gundren’s rescue and confused the group about what mattered. The lesson there was clear: trying to add sandbox elements into a strict railroad just muddies both.
By the end of the Old Owl Well thread my players had pretty much forgotten all about Gundren, so I very quickly abandoned the idea of the exploratory sandbox, and swiftly provided more clues to guide the players towards his rescue where I made liberal use of progress clocks to make sure my players knew what was at stake. That alone is responsible for rescuing the Cragmaw Castle session from being a massive anticlimax due to it's bad dungeon design. If you want to learn about how and why to use progress clocks, check this post.
Wave Echo Cave
Wave Echo Cave was rebuilt into something tighter and easier to run. The maze became a tense skill challenge instead of a drawn-out slog.
At the climax, I revealed that the Black Spider was actually Dragos all along, which was a nice twist. One of my players even sided with the ancient red dragon whilst the others chose to fight, which gave me the opportunity to finish a campaign my favourite way - with a massive PvP monster bash.
You see, I placed 5 pilotable stone golems in the FoS chamber, and when battle commenced, the players used these in their combat against Dragos (who was controlled by the player who sided with him) - it was awesome and played out like the finale of an episode of Power Rangers, whilst I got to sit back and watch this really tightly fought match between titans.
What do other commentators say?
Matty P over on YouTube really likes LMoP, and I took a lot of his tips to heart about improving the story and trimming some of the fat, over the course of his full playlist . Definitely worth watching if you're planning on running it.
Conclusion
In the end, I have mixed feelings about LMoP, but I'm unfortunately leaning towards it being a bit pants. I really enjoyed acts 1 and 2, but the adventure rapidly drifts away from focus in act 3. additionally, for a game all about a prewritten story, said story requires a major rewrite to make it satisfactory.
Also, as a starter set to introduce new players and DMs to D&D, I think it probably does more harm than good if I'm being honest. I'd like to try to excuse it's flaws by saying it's really old, but frankly, there are starter adventures for earlier editions that have existed for much longer and nail it - Keep on the Borderlands anyone?
I guess I enjoyed myself running it, but only because I enjoying playing games with my friends, and maybe that's enough for you too? That said - I would have enjoyed myself even more running something better.
Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials - it really helps me out and costs you nothing! If you’re super into it and want to make sure you catch more of my content, subscribe to my free monthly Mailer of Many Things newsletter - it really makes a huge difference, and helps me keep this thing running!
Catch you laters, alligators.
The West Marches is a style of TTRPG gameplay designed by Ben Robbins, and written up in 2007 on his Ars Ludi blog. The idea was that Robbins was burnt out as a GM, and bored of that mid campaign settlement where the players have lost some degree of enthusiasm for the ‘plot’ and are pretty much just going through the motions of turning up and rolling dice, then going home again. Rinsing and repeating each week.