Player Engagement in West Marches Campaigns
Good Day Everybody,
I have been running RPGs for about 5 years now, running the gamut on various systems. Recently, I've been implementing a West Marches approach to my campaigns, as this style seems to work best for my work/life/hobby balance, but there's a few hiccups I'm running into that I think can be smoothed over.
The two games I am running are a Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition chronicle, and a 5e 2024 campaign that just started. My Vampire players seem to have engaged with the concept, however, they seem to be stuck in the mindset of "the whole coterie, or no game." If people wanna play with a bigger group because that's when they have the most fun, I don't knock them for it, but I think this is more from player apprehension at getting "too far" ahead of their peers or the perception that one person is "taking charge" and overly dictating the others.
For 5e, the players don't seem to really be communicating with each other on scheduling a date and time, and again, I think this is apprehensiveness over someone becoming a "leader" in what most people probably see as a purely cooperative endeavor. Many of the 5e players are in another campaign that follows the usual approach of "DM says they'll be on next weekend, we play then."
Does anyone have any tips on how I can get these players to become more engaged/active with a West Marches-style? Open to all advice. Thank you for your time.