Western Horizon

Design philosophy and toolkit for West Marches campaigns: players declare goals, the GM generates content in response, and the world builds collaboratively rather than pre-planned. The story emerges from the collision of player goals and faction goals.

Key Files

• OVERVIEW — Master document: full design philosophy and structure
• Welcome — Entry point
• Open Issues — Outstanding design questions

Sections

Organized as a numbered manual under Sections/:

• 00 - Overview & Philosophy/ — Core philosophy, goals over hooks, proven solutions
• 01 - People/ — Residents, rivals, quick NPCs
• 02 - Settlements/ — Founding, history, districts, threats, workflow
• 03 - Factions/ — Faction design
• 04 - Geography/ — Hex map, travel and complications
• 05 - Lore/ — Seeded discovery pool, lore delivery
• 06 - Quests/ — Quest prep, dungeons, five-room structure, expedition types
• 07 - Session Zero/ — Player guide, session zero overview
• 08 - Sessions/ — Session running
• 09 - Wiki/ — In-world wiki structure
• 10 - Appendices/ — Oracle tables, solo procedures, quick reference, source systems

Pandemonium Engine

Pandemonium Engine/ — Procedural content generation system:

• Wave Function Collapse content model
• Six-Layer Graph architecture
• Seeds and the Focal Quest
• Shadow Horizon / Shadow Map
• Player-Initiated Collapse

Notes

• Notes/Systems/ — Reference notes on source systems (Microscope, Kingdom, Perilous Wilds, etc.)
• Notes/References/ — Research and reference material

Handouts

• Player Quick Start — Player-facing intro document

Maturity

Stage: Framework design, partially complete. The core philosophy is well-documented and several sections are finished. Others are skeletons. The Pandemonium Engine (procedural generation system) is designed but undocumented in full. The framework has informed real sessions but hasn’t been systematically playtested as a complete method — some of what’s here is proven at the table, some is still theoretical.