How to Run a West Marches Campaign on Discord

The Server Layout

Start with this. It’s small on purpose: one category each for the Board, the Map, and the Report, plus a place to read the rules, a place to hang out, and voice rooms to play in.

What Is West Marches?

West Marches is a campaign format described by GM Ben Robbins on his blog. The idea is simple:

• No fixed group. A server might have 10, 20, or 40 players. Each session is played by whoever wants to and can.
• Players schedule the game. The GM doesn’t say “we play on Saturday.” Players say “we want to go to the swamps, who’s in?”
• Every session is a complete expedition. The group leaves a safe town and comes back by the end of the session. Nobody gets stuck halfway through a dungeon for a week.
• The world is shared. Whatever one group killed, found, or angered stays that way for everyone.

That last point is what makes the format exciting, and it’s also where it breaks. On Thursday, Marta’s group finds a dragon’s lair in the mountains and barely escapes. On Saturday, Oleh’s group, who never heard about it, cheerfully heads into the same mountains to “check out that cave.” Every group is made of different people, the world is shared, and each player only remembers their own part of it.

Why Discord Works

Discord gives you everything the format needs in one place everyone already opens every day: channels for announcements, voice rooms for play, roles for players and GMs, and reactions for quick sign-ups. The layout above handles the rest. What Discord won’t do on its own is move information from one group to the next, which is the job of the Board, the Map, and the Report.

The Board, the Map, and the Report

In a regular campaign, the whole group remembers what happened, because they were all there. In West Marches, each group only saw its own piece. These three shared things put the pieces together into one world.

The Board: Where Expeditions Start

The job board is what gets players together. The GM posts rumors and contracts, and players pick what interests them.

• Write it in-world. Skip “there’s a level 3 dungeon” and post “The miller in Willow Hollow will pay 50 gold to whoever finds out what’s stealing his sheep.”
• Give jobs a deadline. “The caravan leaves in two weeks” pushes players to plan.
• Let the world react. If nobody took a contract, the next rumor tells what happened because of it.

The Map: What’s Been Explored

The map is the shared memory of geography: explored areas, discovered routes, dangerous places.

• Start with an almost empty map. Let the players fill it in.
• Have a player draw the map, not the GM. That way it shows what the characters know rather than what’s really out there.
• Mark danger. “A dragon lives here” matters more than the exact shape of the mountains.

The Report: What Happened Without You

The report is the heart of the format. Without reports, groups live in parallel worlds, and a month later the dragon’s lair gets discovered for the fifth time. After every expedition, someone from the group posts one in #reports using a template like this:

EXPEDITION · [date] · [where we went]

GROUP
[Characters and players]

GOAL
[What we set out to do]

WHAT HAPPENED
• [Key events, 3–5 points]

WHAT WE FOUND
• [Places, items, routes]

WHO WE MET
• [NPC: name, who they are, how they feel about us]

DANGER
• [What to stay away from]

LEFT UNFINISHED
• [Hooks for the next group]

The last section matters most. “Left unfinished” turns a report into an invitation: another group reads it and goes to finish the job.

How to Schedule Expeditions

Scheduling is the second reason West Marches campaigns fall apart. This routine works:

1. The GM posts open slots. “I can run Thursday and Sunday evening.”
2. A player proposes an expedition in #looking-for-group. Where, why, and which slot.
3. Others sign up with a reaction, like ⚔️ under the message.
4. Set a minimum and a maximum. Usually 3 to 6 players. Fewer, and the expedition is moved. More, and it’s split in two.
5. Priority goes to people who haven’t played in a while. Otherwise the same people take every seat.

Common Problems and Fixes

If you have several GMs, agree on how you’ll split the work up front. Our session zero checklist works for West Marches too: run it for the whole server instead of one group.

Shared Memory for Every Group

Even with good reports, one problem remains. Reports get written after the session, tired, at 1 AM. Half the names get lost, and the NPC Marta’s group talked to has a different name in Oleh’s group’s report.

So West Marches needs more than a feed of reports. It needs a wiki: one page per NPC, location, and faction, which every group adds to. We covered how to build one in our guide to campaign wikis, and what to put on each page in tracking NPCs, locations, and lore. If nobody has the energy to write reports at 1 AM, Kazkar can record each expedition in its voice room and add what the group found to one wiki for the whole campaign, so Saturday’s group finds Thursday’s discoveries already linked.

Keep GM secrets separate from the shared wiki. For how to split what players see from what they don’t, see player notes vs. DM notes.

When it works, the payoff is small and very satisfying. Next Saturday, as Oleh’s group gets ready for the mountains, someone opens the wiki, finds the page for “The Lair in the Grey Teeth,” and says, “Guys, maybe the swamps first?” Nobody from Thursday had to be there for that warning to reach them.

Frequently Asked Questions