Getting Started

This guide takes you from a Discord server to your first adventure on WestMarches.games. Do the steps in order. The first four connect the site to Discord. The rest set up your house rules, and you can come back to them whenever you like. Until the essential steps are done, admins also see a checklist of them on the community's home page.

You need a Discord server where you have the Manage Server permission, because Discord asks for it before it lets you add a bot.

1. Create the roles in Discord

The site reads each person's Discord roles to decide what they can do there, so the roles come first. In Discord, open Server Settings → Roles and create these:

Role	What it unlocks on the site
GM	Posting adventures and handing out rewards after a session.
Player	Creating characters and signing up for adventures.
Admin (optional)	Changing community settings. You can always change the settings of a community you create, so you only need this role if someone helps you run it. To post adventures or make characters yourself, give yourself the GM and Player roles too.

Everyone who plays needs the Player role. The site can't use @everyone for it, so a member without the role can read the community but can't make a character or join an adventure. Decide now how people get it: by hand once they have introduced themselves, or automatically through a question in Discord's onboarding (Server Settings → Onboarding, on Community servers).

If players should be pinged about new adventures, make roles for that too, such as "Adventure pings" or one role per level tier. Turn on "Allow anyone to @mention this role" for each one, because GMs can only ping roles that have it.

2. Create the channels

The site posts to Discord through its bot, and you choose which channel each kind of post goes to. Start with three channels:

Channel	Type	What the site posts there
#adventures	Forum	A post for every new adventure, kept up to date when the GM edits it. Signup openings, reminders and recaps go into the adventure's own post, so each adventure gets its own discussion.
#characters	Forum	A post for every new character. GMs and the player can talk about approval underneath it.
#rewards	Text	Rewards handed out after a session, marketplace purchases, and currency transfers, so there is one place to check where a character's gold came from.

If you would rather read every recap in one feed than in each adventure's post, add a #recaps text channel as well.

Let only the bot start posts

The three channels stay readable when the bot is the only one starting posts. In each channel's permissions, deny @everyone "Send Messages" (a forum calls it "Create Posts") and allow "Send Messages in Threads" ("Send Messages in Posts" in a forum). Members can still reply under every post.

A deny on @everyone applies to the bot as well. Add the bot's role to each of the three channels and allow it to send messages, and do the same for any private channel you want it to post in. Step 4 warns you if you missed one.

The rest of the server is up to you. A welcome channel with your rules and a voice channel to play in are a good start. For a fuller layout, Stephen Collins describes every channel on his group's server in part 2 of his toolkit series.

3. Create the community

Community details: name, game system, language and timezones. Anyone can view a public community. Give it a Discord invite link that never expires, so visitors can join your server from the community page. A private community is only visible to members of your Discord server.
Add bot: invite the bot to your server. It reads roles to work out what each person can do on the site, and it posts the notifications you set up in step 4. It doesn't read messages.
Select server: pick the server you just added the bot to.
Adventure scheduling: in Default mode, GMs post adventures and players sign up. Classic mode also lets players propose an adventure for a GM to pick up, closer to how Ben Robbins ran the original West Marches. If you aren't sure, pick Default. You can switch later in Adventure Settings.
Permissions: choose the GM, Player and Admin roles from step 1. GMs and admins can also approve characters and edit the wiki. You can change who can do what later under Roles & Permissions.

4. Connect the channels

A new community posts nothing to Discord until you choose the channels. Open Settings → Discord Notifications and set:

Setting	Channel
Adventures	#adventures
Characters	#characters
Rewards Distribution, Marketplace Purchases, Currency Transfers	#rewards
Adventure Reminders, Adventure Recaps	Leave empty to post in each adventure's own thread

When you pick a channel, the site checks that the bot can post there and shows a warning if it can't. Reminders and recaps stay greyed out until you switch them on in the next step.

5. Set your house rules

These settings shape every character and adventure, so settle them before players arrive. All of them can change later.

In Character Settings, write your character creation guidelines. Players see them every time they create or edit a character, which makes them the place for allowed sources, starting level and anything else a new player must know. This is also where you set how many characters each player can have and whether new characters need a GM's approval. See Player Characters.
In Experience Ladder, set how much XP each level takes. A community for Daggerheart, Shadowdark or Pathfinder 2e starts with the ladder its guide suggests, and any other system starts with the D&D 5e ladder.
Every community starts with a Gold currency. Add more under Currencies only when you have a use for them. See Currencies.
In Adventure Settings, switch on the 30-minute adventure reminders.
In the Wiki settings, switch on the adventure recaps page. Notes that players write after a session then collect into a shared timeline.
In General Settings, write your community's home page text. It is the first thing a new player reads, so say what the campaign is about and how to join.

6. Write the first wiki pages

Start the World Wiki with the pages players look for first: your house rules, and the home base where adventures begin and end. Other GMs can't open the Wiki Editor until the first page exists, so create one before you invite them.

Then write down how rewards work: how much XP and gold a session is worth, and what earns a bonus. Put it on a page only GMs can see. When several GMs hand out rewards, a shared rate keeps every table's characters levelling at the same pace.

7. Post a test adventure

Before anyone else joins, check that posts reach Discord. Create an adventure, publish it, and look for it in #adventures. Drafts are never posted, so make sure it is published.

If nothing shows up, open Discord Posts in the settings menu. It shows the error when a post failed, and you can create a fresh post from there once the cause is fixed. Delete the test adventure when you are done. Its Discord post stays behind marked as deleted, so remove that by hand.

8. Invite your players

Post your community's link in your Discord welcome channel, together with the player guide, which explains signing in, making a character and signing up for adventures. Give new players the Player role as they arrive. If someone can't find the Create Character button, check their roles first, because it only shows for people with the Player role.

After the first session

When the session ends, the GM opens the adventure and uses Distribute Rewards to give XP and currency to everyone who played. Levels update from the experience ladder, and the rewards are posted in #rewards.

Everyone who played can then add notes on the adventure page. Public notes are the recap: they are posted in the adventure's thread and appear on the wiki's recaps page. Private notes are visible only to the person who wrote them.

Each adventure on the site is one session. When a story runs over several sessions, post each session as its own adventure. Copying the first one saves typing it out again. More on this in Adventures.

When something doesn't work

My Discord server isn't in the list: The bot isn't on the server yet, or you aren't a member of it. Add the bot, go back one step, then come forward again to reload the list.
Nothing gets posted to Discord: Check that a channel is set under Discord Notifications, that the bot's role can post in it, and that the adventure isn't a draft. Discord Posts shows the error when a post failed.
A player can't create a character or sign up: They are missing the Player role in Discord, or that role isn't selected as Players under Roles & Permissions.
A role is missing from Discord Roles to Ping: Turn on "Allow anyone to @mention this role" for it in Discord.
A new Discord role doesn't show up under Roles & Permissions: Press Refresh options on that page.

The channel layout and the advice on multi-session stories draw on Stephen Collins' Building an Online TTRPG Toolkit series, which follows a new group through setting up Discord and WestMarches.games. Part 4 is his review of the site.