Most of this setup happens in Discord, not here. The site reads your members' Discord roles to decide what each of them can do, and its bot posts into channels you pick. So roles come first, then channels, then the site.
It also means that when something breaks, it's usually a Discord setting. The one I've seen cause trouble was a forum channel set to require a tag on every post. Every adventure the bot tried to post there failed. Step 2 says how to avoid it.
You need the Manage Server permission on your Discord server, because Discord won't let you add a bot without it. Then do the steps in order. The first three connect the site to Discord. You can come back to the rest whenever you like, and until the essential ones are done, admins see a setup checklist on the community's home page.
West Marches needs a crowd. To me, a small West Marches game is one GM and six or more players, and with fewer than that a normal campaign will probably suit you better. Not sure which you've got? Read What is West Marches first.
In Discord, open Server Settings → Roles and create these three.
| 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. As the owner you can always do that, so you only need this role if someone helps you run the community. You still need the GM and Player roles to post adventures or make characters yourself. |
Everyone who plays needs the Player role, and it can't be @everyone. A member without it can read the community but can't make a character or join an adventure.
How people get the role is up to your community. I've seen it done three ways.
If players should be pinged about new adventures, make roles for that as well, like "Adventure pings" or one role per level tier. Turn on "Allow anyone to @mention this role" for each of them, because a GM can only ping roles that have it.
The bot posts each kind of update to the channel you choose for it. Three channels are enough to start with.
| Channel | Type | What the site posts there |
|---|---|---|
| #adventures | Forum | A post for every new adventure, kept up to date when the GM edits it. 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. Send Marketplace Purchases and Currency Transfers here too (Settings → Discord Channels) and there's one place to check where a character's gold came from. |
Leave tags optional on #adventures and #characters. The bot doesn't add tags, so if a forum requires one, every post the bot tries to make there fails.
If you'd rather read every recap in one feed than in each adventure's post, add a #recaps text channel as well.
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.
That deny covers the bot too, so add the bot's role to each of those channels and allow it "Send Messages" ("Create Posts" in a forum). This part is optional, but I'd do it even as the only GM, because it keeps the channels readable.
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. Stephen Collins shows every channel on their group's server in part 2 of the toolkit series.
Sign in with Discord and open Create Community.
These shape every character and adventure, so settle them before players turn up. Each one is a page under Settings, and you can change all of them later.
Players look for the house rules and the home base first, so start the World Wiki with a page for each. The home base is where adventures start and end. Create the first page from Create a Page under Settings → Wiki, and do it before you invite other GMs, because until a page exists, a GM who isn't an admin has no link to the Wiki Editor.
Then put your reward rates on a page only GMs can see. How much XP and gold is a session worth, and what earns a bonus? With several GMs handing out rewards, a shared rate keeps every table's characters levelling at the same pace.
Before anyone else joins, check that posts reach Discord. Create an adventure dated in the future and publish it (drafts and past adventures never get posted), then look for it in #adventures.
If nothing shows up, open Manage → Discord Posts. It shows the error when a post failed, and once you've fixed the cause you can create a fresh post from there.
When it works, edit the test adventure into your first real one. If you delete it instead, the setup checklist asks for an adventure again, and its Discord post stays behind, marked as deleted, for you to remove by hand.
Post your community's link in your Discord welcome channel, along with the player guide, so new players can read how to sign in, make a character and sign 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.
The GM opens the adventure and uses Distribute Rewards to give XP and currency to everyone who played. The site works out new levels from the experience ladder, and the bot posts the rewards in #rewards.
Everyone who played can then add notes on the adventure page. Public notes are the recap. The bot adds them to the adventure's post in #adventures, and they show up on the wiki's recaps page. Private notes are only visible to whoever wrote them.
I took the channel layout and the advice on multi-session stories from Stephen Collins' Building an Online TTRPG Toolkit series, where their new group sets up Discord and WestMarches.games. Stephen reviews the site in Part 4.