1. Getting Started in the Road West
Sagaborn D100
The system is easy; everything is a d100 (percentile 1-100 % chance) skill. Want to listen? If your skill is 54, roll a d100, and success is 54 or below. Things can be difficult (skill halved) or easy (skill doubled). Everything else – talents, combat tactics, and magic – adds complexity, but the core system remains simple percentile-based resolution. Want to see the full system? Check out the full online Core Rulebook at www.sagabornd100.com
The Road West Goal
The goal is simple: a hex-based crawl where the heroes are surveying the lands to build a road west away from the evil empire. Each game night is a complete session, with the heroes ending up back at their home base, so different players can join in or be absent each night (no more scheduling woes). It is also low-prep for the game runner, as most things are generated using random tables. The sessions are then recorded by the players as expedition reports.
The game session is also pretty simple: pick a hex, figure out the weather, travel to the hex and survey, and deal with rolled consequences. These sessions can be the entirety of the game, or players can join in roleplay and banter off table as they build strongholds, add lore, or craft.
The Road West Synopsis
The Road West is a wilderness-based hex crawl. The heroes will be traveling across the wildlands of the Swordspyne Mountains. The StoryGuide will be helping them navigate, filling in the details with random tables and encounters. This first book sets the stage with the first region, the home of goblins and a mysterious tower that seems to spawn lesser demons.
The Road West is a West Marches-style campaign, a style of tabletop RPG campaign that focuses on player-driven exploration within a shared, persistent world rather than a fixed storyline. Instead of a regular group, players form different parties each session based on availability, choosing their own destinations and goals. The setting typically begins largely unexplored, and much of the gameplay revolves around mapping and discovering the unknown. There is no central plot guiding the campaign; instead, the world evolves in response to player actions. Sessions are usually self-contained, with characters venturing from a safe location and returning by the end, creating a flexible, open-ended experience in which the story emerges naturally from play. There are myriad online and offline resources that explain West Marches campaigns in depth, as well as plenty of videos for further research.
The Story of the Road West Campaign
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The heroes are trying to escape the Uthgard Empire to the East. They have found refuge in the settlement of Elmhearth, but they must seek a safer place to the West. Helfen, the leader of the settlement, has started to send our crews to build a road through the Swordspyne Mountains, connecting to the Western Kings through the closest town to the West, Raven’s Rift.
The rest of the story and the adventures you have are created by you.
About this Book and Campaign
This campaign is built through random tables, player stories, and StoryGuide improv. It provides everything needed to make the improv easier and guides you, as the StoryGuide, on how to make this campaign memorable for you and your players.
It is a simple hex-based wilderness crawl, but each add-on book will add more areas, monsters, treasures, and adventurers to jump-start your own Road West Campaign. This is considered a West Marches style game, which has been described in a multitude of videos, books, and zines so we won’t go too deeply into detail, but suggest looking into it (visit www.sagaborn.com/west-marches-repository/ for all our suggested West Marches links).
The Road West is a little larger than a normal West Marches game (there are around 5,000 hexes to explore), and it is also different in that there is an end goal. The heroes may journey straight towards Raven’s Rift (though they should come up with some obstacles that make them meander a bit). Or they may explore in all different directions, or stay in a region they enjoy. Let the Road West become the campaign your players want, and you get to enjoy seeing them explore and craft their own saga.
Your Role as the StoryGuide
As the name suggests, your job is to guide the story for the players. You will need to roll the charts to determine events and landmarks that occur during exploration. There will be guides for each section of the hexmap, both geographic regions and faction regions.
The top four things to keep in mind:
- Adventuring is supposed to be fun, so how can the results from the random rolls make things fun?
- Set the mood with weather and survival. Don’t make it an accounting game; instead, describe the wilderness to make the players feel like it is hard to survive.
- Planning ahead can bog down your game. Pick some hexes that have major features in them, but otherwise let the dice tell the story.
- While you need to keep up with some basics of the hexes and the story, leave it to the players to keep journals and histories. My rule is, if it isn’t in an expedition report, it didn’t really happen!