“Kethis West Marches” is a frontier campaign in a “West Marches” style, hence the name. It is intended to be an open world sandbox type of game, in which the characters know essentially nothing about the world they are in, with in-game reasons for it being so.

One of the main features of a West Marches type of game is that the players are largely able to schedule when to play. As such, it is useful to have a large set of players so as to increase the probability of overlapping schedule availabilities for play. It is not expected for every player to play in every session, and that would yield groups too large to be easily managed. A suitable number of players for a session is generally around 3-6.

The players are encouraged to journal about the events of each session from their character’s point of view. To encourage this, bonus experience points are awarded. As not all players may want to journal, these bonus experience points may also be awarded for other types of contributions to the game.

As not all players will play in every session, it is to be expected that characters will advance at different rates. In an effort to avoid characters being left behind, players may run more than one character at a time, but with certain caveats. For one thing, a player may only run one character at a time in any given session, save for brief role play interludes. For another, a player may not create a character of higher level than they have worked up from first level in this game. If one player wants their character to stick with a specific set of other characters they want to work with, so they don’t fall behind, it is suggested that the other players generate other characters so that they can continue play.

New players will start at first level. This is not a punishment. This is to reflect a lack of knowledge of the game world. In the event that only one person is joining, it is advisable that existing players generate first level characters to help introduce them to the world.

I use “session zero” to help new players create characters, explain pieces of the world that a new character would know, establish ground rules, and help set expectations and boundaries.

Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, and other related things are not permitted in this game. If that’s too “woke” for you, you should leave – I am under no obligation to welcome you to my game. If you think that’s a violation of your First Amendment rights, you don’t understand the First Amendment, and again, you should leave.

This wiki is meant to help players understand the larger game itself, and to document in-game things that characters have learned. Unlike the journal entries, it is not meant to be in character.