Topic: Anyone with experience running a "West Marches" type campaign?

[BeggarKing (Thomas)]

This http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/78/grand-experiments-west-marches/ - is an example of a "sandbox" style campaign where players muster up a group and campaign with the DM for adventures.
I'm looking at using aspects of this to solve similar problems (mainly working around busy schedules where games are interspersed and can only last a few short hours).  I've been running a form of "offline mode" over email and focus in on the tactical part of the adventure during actual sessions, and I've been using other tricks to keep the group focused in when we can actually get together.
Anyone else have experience running these sorts of campaigns and have any advice/gotchas? Or with corralling a group of very busy people and making the best of short, interspersed sessions?

[Hurin]

I've never tried anything like that per se, but I do try to give my players a lot of freedom regarding what they want to do. Might be fun to take that to the limit.

[markc]

  I ran a game that met every third week and in the middle used the email to do drama, puzzle solving and other such stuff. It worked very well, IMO and it kept the game alive and the players interested.
MDC

[BeggarKing (Thomas)]

I ran a game that met every third week and in the middle used the email to do drama, puzzle solving and other such stuff. It worked very well, IMO and it kept the game alive and the players interested.

Can you help me understand how you made that work (what were the topics you covered in email, how often you sent them, etc)?

[markc]

Well I tried to send out stuff at least once a week but sometimes it was twice a week. Some players got very involved and some just did the min required.
 
 I tried to have some e-mail episodes where players were talking to specific NPC's about important stuff that related to them or expanded upon their PC's background. At times 2 or more PC's got together and it was a group going to a specific location to find out info about this or that.


Topics,
 Well anything that was not combat related was fair game for email.
MDC