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For adult life time management attendance problems we are thinking about opening our table to do TW as a "West Marches" -style game.
Quick synopsis for those few who might not know: about 10-15 players, they decide when to play and what to do in the sandbox. Those that are first to report being able to attend (4-5 players) are playing.

To make the concept work, the characters should naturally end the session back in the homebase, otherwise all would be scattered all over Poland pretty quickly. But what if this does not happen in the time allocated?
Problems arise when this week players 1, 2, 3 and 4 attend session. But what if next week it is players 9, 6, 7 and 3? And player 3 character happens to be still stuck in Warsaw due to last weeks mission and the rest are in home base back in Krakow?
Now usually in TW I handwave many "realism" things aside due to the fact that to us it is a form of social entertainment. But outright teleporting characters seems a bit off even for us, especially since travel and dangerous wilderness is a huge part of the whole TW game.
This is the main reason why "West Marches" style adventures usually require the players to finish the session in the home base btw.

So I am hoping people here might have ideas on how to handle those sessions that involve characters not making it back.
- Multiple characters is ofc one solution but my players don't want that.
- "Sorry you can't come because your not in Krakow" would make the whole thing useless in the first place. The whole idea is to maximize participation when the player is able to come.
- So far "escaping the dungeon" -roll seems to be the best option (https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/21 ... he-dungeon) Could easily whip up a table and have players do a survival or some other roll and then roll on the table if they fail.

But yeah, anyone done "west marches" in TW and how did you solve this problem? Or even if you haven't run WM how would you deal with it?

After having issues with trying to get my two groups to actually get together to play, I decided to just combine both groups and do something similar.

Those who can play, will play, the rest are out for the session.

But, currently it's not a massive issue since the players do have a home base and they tend to stay near it.

That said, if they ever go on a longer trip, I'll just have the other player characters (we also have 22 NPC's back in camp) tag along but they'll be staying in the temporary camp that they put up each night while the rest of the characters are the scouting group that goes out temporarily.

That way when the group constellation changes for the next session, it just means that it's a slightly different group that has gone out from the temporary base camp for the night.

I have actually done something similar with the 6 players that I currently have. Usually 4-5 are able to make it so the one or two are just NPCs hanging back at the camp watching over the hilux/HMMVV/tent.
It is good to know that even with larger groups it hasn't been an issue. Perhaps the solution might be just to have a bigger entourage where those not attending are just faded into background/camp.
Definitely gonna add that to the list of options, thanks.

Yeah, it all kind of just evolved naturally...

I started out with a group of 5 players (and a 6th one that constantly didn't show up, didn't even show up to make a character).

These guys rescued a couple of refugees and found some rag-tag soldiers along the way that tagged along with the group.

Then they found a pretty good base (Alntorps Ö outside of Nora in Sweden) where they set up a permanent camp.

I had several people that wanted to try out the game, so I statted out the NPC's to use as back-up player characters when needed.

And then my 2nd group never got around to start playing their game due to many of them living far away, so I just decided to combine both groups in to the T2k campaign.

So, suddenly there were a bunch of players, but since there were hardly ever more than 5-6 that could play at any given time, this kind of approach just evolved naturally.


Normally, there's the main PC group of 9 characters that all go along if they're going for a longer trip, plus 1-2 of the main NPC's, while the rest of the NPC's stay back at the main base. Out of those, 4-5 are the active group in any session with the rest staying back to guard the Tgb 13 (ie. camp) and go fishing, hunting, look for water etc. while the main group concentrate on the main task. Should any surprise guest players show up to play, they'll use the NPC characters to play for that session.

I find it works out pretty nicely.

I've been running a West Marches-style campaign since January (campaign blog is here). My PCs obtained a vehicle in their first session and started with only their home map hex visible, so a lot of their missions so far have been local mapping and reconnaissance. I set up my game sessions so that most of them are self-contained... while there is an overarching world plot, each mission is a discrete operation that can (usually) play out within a single game session. This requires player cooperation and rigorous referee planning, but we've made it work.

Recently, there has been discussion at my (virtual) table about ranging farther from home. The best idea so far is to equip one of their second-line vehicles as a mobile base. They've acquired a BTR-70K and they're looking at converting the troop/radio compartment into tool and supply storage and a tiny (one- or two-litter) mobile medical clinic. This will give them the core of a traveling camp which they could establish in whatever region they've decided to focus on. All of the PCs will travel with the mobile base, and anyone who isn't present for a session will be assumed to be back at camp, providing security, brewing fuel, or performing other downtime/support actions.

- C.