Meanings
- uncountableroleplaying gamesA genre of TTRPG campaign formatted as a series of one-shots in a shared open world with no fixed schedule and rotating players.
Alarming fact: brave GMs all over the place are taking up the torch and starting their own West Marches games.
2009, Jonathan Jacobs, editor, Open Game Table: The Anthology of Roleplaying Game Blogs, volume 1, Open Game Table, page 92 more examples
My own preferred style of Dungeons & Dragons is called the West Marches, a "hexcrawl" where players explore around an open world commonly drawn onto hexagonal graph paper.
2019, Steven Lumpkin, “Procedural Storytelling in Dungeons & Dragons”, in Tanya X. Short and Tarn Adams, editor, Procedural Storytelling in Game Design, CRC Press, →ISBN, page 265West Marches exemplifies sandbox-style gameplay, affording players the agency to select interactions and storylines freely.
2026, Maxime Scholte Albers, Jan de Wit, “Bleed in Dungeons & Dragons: A Study on the Impact of Personality Design and Character Similarity”, in International Journal of Role-Playing, number 17, page 108
Cite this entry
West Marches. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/West%20Marches
“West Marches.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/West%20Marches. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “West Marches,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/West%20Marches.
Source: West Marches on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.