I have started running a West Marches-styled game over Discord/Roll20 named “The Doomed Reach.” This came about mostly because of my move from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and wanting to stay in touch with many of my gaming groups, both face-to-face as well as online.
So far we have done two character creation sessions with supplemental world building. I spent a few weeks coming up with a hex map, adding materials to it, building a little bit of lore, etc. But I also wanted the players to have some input into the setting.
Obviously with something like a West Marches, the content requirement prevents players from being able to ad-hoc add tons of material in (or at least, it prevents it in terms of my preferences), so I used the system from Beyond the Wall’s Further Afield – players get to add a feature from a random table, and then other players get to embellish on the detail. All of this is delivered in-character, and the Referee rolls in secret how accurate their description is.
So this allows players to add new stuff to the setting, and I get to keep the tied together bits of dungeons and lore that I want. I intend to run this setting relatively anti-canon – one player decided to play a Kobold, and while I told him I’d prefer if he played a dog-kobold, he could do whatever. I fully intend to lean on him for all things Kobold related. Equally a player decided she had been swept up by missionaries who had deemed her cursed and sinful, and now she walks away wondering the reach of the religion that raised her – that player is going to be my main source of info for that sort of religion.
I’ll be posting some lore details and session reports as they come, right now I have a bunch of material I need to prep for the first actual adventuring session.