Finding Published Adventures for a West Marches Campaign
What I look for, and how I make it fit
Creating your own adventures for any TTRPG is a big part of the fun for any Game Master. But I also lean heavily into published adventures for Schadengard, my Shadowdark West Marches campaign.
Several Reasons
Quantity. I’m running as many as 3-5 sessions a week. I love adventure design but not at that pace.
Creativity. No matter how hard I try to challenge myself I’d have to imagine that I’d slip into repetitive habits without even realizing. Including other people’s designs is the kind of cross pollination I need to keep things thriving and fresh.
Community. I think having a thriving community of creators is always a good thing and I’m happy to toss a few dollars around even if I don’t end up using the product if it helps keep the scene growing.
Affordability. Related to the previous. In 1978 TSR published the first ever adventure module G1: Steading of the Hill Giant Chief for $4.50. Today I can still get tons more adventures for that same price or less (plus a few squirts of printer ink). That is absolutely one of the most remarkable things about this hobby.
So with all that in mind, what do I look for? What makes a great scenario for my campaign? And what are some red flags that suggest it might not work?
I Prefer to Avoid ...
Disclaimer – these traits just suggest it won’t be a good fit for me. There are plenty of great adventures out there that just aren’t going to be a good fit for this style of play.
- Urgent Missions. West Marches campaigns thrive on player agency. For most players, urgent missions like rescuing the miller’s daughter from the cult about to sacrifice her, or stopping the ritual that will bring about destruction to the world only offer the illusion of player agency. Only the most cold-hearted are going to pick something less urgent.
In the right context those scenarios can be plenty of fun but it struggles against the promise of a player driven campaign. If I’m going to run an adventure like this I’ll instead find some other hook (e.g. treasure, mysteries, secrets to discover). In that case the miller’s daughter becomes the quantum victim. Lying there, tied to the alter just waiting for some accidental heroes to come looking for some ancient scepter instead.
Quests initiated by NPCs. Often related to urgency, but not always. If the adventure depends on an NPC approaching the party and asking for a favor or wanting to hire them for some purpose that’s hard to work in. If I can write it up as a local posting a notice looking to hire adventurers to complete some non-pressing quest, I can work with that. But if it involves something like a conveniently placed beggar or madman running into the party and dropping some lore, it’s too much.
Some Things I Can Adapt
Required Lore. Detailed, historical necessities. Wait … how come we didn’t know about the reign of the Necromancer Kings before? Whole new villages or towns. I already have the area around home base detailed, it would be strange to encounter a new town they didn’t know about before. And if stumbling on a new town is an important part of the adventure set up that makes it awfully hard to to seed the adventure into rumors for the players to choose.
On the other hand if the adventure is worthwhile and I can foreshadow it well in advance, then it’s useful. If I pick up something like this early enough I can seed it in with some foreshadowing, but it might be more difficult if the lore of my campaign has grown.
Things I Seek Out
Treasure worth pursuing. Tidbits about forgotten riches and fabled artifacts are always the best hooks for adventure in West Marches. Of course, if I like the adventure but it doesn’t include any especially memorable treasure I could always include some. I’ve got lots of treasure ideas that don’t come with an established adventure.
Size Matters. Our sessions are scheduled for four hours. The five room dungeon is about the perfect size for that, with plenty of wiggle room for a short travel recap to and from, with more than enough time for carousing, treasure distribution and other post-adventure shenanigans. If I’m going to go longer I’d rather it be twice that size or more – so that we can successfully break it down into multiple sessions. Nothing’s worse than time running out and there are two or three rooms left. Too much to finish, but not enough to be another adventure.
Interesting NPCs. I’ve got over 200 NPCs in my NPC database but there’s *always* room for more. Some of my favorite adventures have provided long-term allies, contacts, and antagonists for my players.
Seeds for more quests. These kind of take a couple different looks. For one, you could have something like Righteous Vow 1, from Bill Harvaat and Crawling Club. The zine consists of a series of bite sized keeps to explore, leading all the way up to a showdown with the Lich King of Ul himself. Or others that just leave hints at more ideas and more adventures.
Some of my Favorite Examples
Here are five published adventures that I’ve run in my West Marches campaign and that fit some or all of the criteria I’m talking about. Some written specifically for Shadowdark, but even the system neutral entry was easy to adapt.
Letters from the Dark Vol. VI: Scallywags by Chris Powell. This zine has three connected adventures and six factions packed with terrific NPCs. The factions were easy to insert as is, because it’s perfectly reasonable that the players might not have had prior dealings with a salvage company, a tea importer, or a club of royal explorers.
Vault of the Emerald Key by Stephen Hardy. Queen Lach is a memorable recurring NPC, and the adventure is the second in a series of five meant to unlock a great treasure (although only the first three have been published so far). Stephen has a tremendous knack for designing puzzles and riddles that get my players thinking, but the always arrive at the solution with just the perfect amount of effort to feel like they overcame something without teetering into frustration.
The Forsaken Ossuary by Elven Tower (part of Dungeon Vault Magazine #48). “So long, thieves. You are too slow for Daeron Feathertin.” The twist in this adventure – there’s cool treasure, but they find out the one item they sought was in another dungeon. This really lit a fire in my campaign. The questing character started digging into the history of Daeron Feathertin, and ended up tracing his steps until he finally found the elf’s final mission and plucked The Lightning Blade off Daeron’s animated corpse. Bonus – the spirit of the child in area #6 ended up possessing our dimwitted Pit Fighter, who showed the young lad all he was missing out of life over the next four weeks (including some things that an adult probably shouldn’t show an *actual* 12-year old), finally going to his rest a happy soul. I mean, how do you top killing a dragon?
The Bride of Sinner’s Crypt by Hillside Games – This is one of my favorites of the Weird Tales Game Jam of 2024. I did have to bend the lore a bit to make it work, putting Saint Adӧmyr and his war in the extremely distant past so that the crypt and its inhabitants were completely forgotten, which meant the “only opens once a year” nature of the tomb wasn’t necessary any more. I love that this adventure could end in so many different ways. No spoilers, but our game led to some interesting long-term NPCs and a new warlock patron! They’ve recently posted a new deluxe pack as well (see link above).
Beneath Beatrice Blackwell’s Basement by YouCanBreatheNow Games. Even though this system-agnostic adventure comes with established lore, it was super easy to fit the Blackwell family into the history of my players’ home. And it was super easy to replace the Murdoch Gang with one of my own established Thieves Guilds. Discovering a secret smuggling tunnel *and* a seaworthy longship was a huge game changer for the campaign, as much as any magic item. In addition, the adventurers established good relations with Hissiminens, meaning he and his crew have become recurring NPCs. If they run into Kobolds in the wilds my players like to emphasize that they’re good friends with “The King of the Kobolds”. At which point they answer with something like “…. who?!?” but it’s still fun. All the YouCanBreatheNow games come highly recommended as far as I’m concerned.
Bonus Content: Five Swords for Shadowdark from Watcher DM. Need to seed a memorable piece of treasure into an otherwise memorable adventure? These five inventive swords are specifically tied to the mechanics of Shadowdark making them feel super special. While I’m at it, their Shadowdark adventure Tower of the Spectral Sorceress was also a big hit, with lots of interesting NPCs who happen to be ghosts now after getting caught up in a thoroughly tragic book club meeting.
This is an amazing topic and one that I'm constantly working with because I play a lot of games that, even though they are not West marches, are very open ended games. One example is I'm playing Dolmenwoos right now and really letting the players do what they want and go where they want to go.
To that end I've got some questions. Feel free to answer what you want and ignore the rest 😃
1. What's this NPC database you've got? Any chance you're gonna talk/share it in a future article? Or is it something you could just give a description/screenshot of? I have an adventure database, but I've never seen an NPC database and it seems very interesting.
2. If the players hear about a rumor or even start a quest and then fail to continue pursuing it, do you roll to see if someone else resolves it? Or do you sort of leave it floating in a quantum state unresolved until the players come back?
3. Have you ever thought about including a mega dungeon somewhere nearby? That the players could opt to explore when they want it? Thinking about Stonehell as an example.
4. Since you're running shadow dark, what are you using for your retainer and mount rules? Are you somewhat handwaving it or our players just not getting into that kind of thing?