Quote from: Blusponge;838974Ummm...maybe you could tell us a bit about the scope of your campaign.  A lot of the advice I'm seeing here – that I recognize anyway – has a lot more to do with PCs moving freely across a large environment.  Vampire – at least my understanding of it (I'm not a fan) – has always been a lot more personal horror and vampire court politics between the rival clans; machiavellian scheming and maneuvering through the courts of power.  I'm not sure how different DAV is, without the masquerade to worry about.  But I'm pretty hex crawling is not going to be that helpful.

Am I right?  Am I wrong?

While it isn't the right era, I would look at Black Vulmea's blog.  His game is very urban centric (Paris) where the players have to deal with a fair share of social conflicts and courtly intrigue.  So while the era is different, a lot of the themes should carry over nicely.

Tom

Good point, Tom. The original Chicago by Night was an excellent social sandbox, complete with charts showing the social relationships between all the characters. It had a lot of genuinely interesting characters as well, with backgrounds largely defined by actual historical events. This was before the WoD  crawled up its own ass and became completely insular. It no longer felt like vampires in the real world, instead being completely overtaken by its own convoluted mythology.

While it is modern day, the same approach could be used for vampires of any era.

It wasn't heavy on rules, but the old 7th Sea Montaigne sourcebook had an interesting social mechanic and social mini game about courtly drama and intrigue.  It might be worth a google search or a look at the PDF to see if it would be helpful.  It was pretty simple, about two pages, and was pretty portable and adaptable to different game systems.

Might make a good alternative to Chicago by Night.

Does VDA have an equivalent of CbN?  1st edition or 2nd edition?

Tom

Quote from: Blusponge;839029Does VDA have an equivalent of CbN?  1st edition or 2nd edition?

If you are asking about CbN 1st or 2nd edition, I prefer 1st edition. I think 2nd edition was the beginning of WoD going off the rails. Actually, I should say "on the rails". First edition set up a city which lots of intrigue for your players to get into. There was big conflict on the horizon, but what happened next was all up to you.

Then 2nd Edition came along and told you what happened. It told you who lived, who died, who ended up where in the power struggles. What you've been doing in your own game all this time doesn't matter. It was the point where they stopped providing a setting to play in, and just started telling us a story.

Get the d30 sandbox companion, it's a handy little resource for generating content on the fly, plus if I recall correctly it's pretty cheap.

As to advice, don't over think. With something like Vampire the Dark Ages you actually have a good bit of your work done for you as the broad setting assumptions and some finer details have been worked out. Pick a historical locale in Europe that interests, read up on it a bit and use the interesting bits you find as inspiration for places, npcs, factions, quests, etc.

Sketch out your area. Make a list of who is who, then what they want, who they like/dislike, etc. Really plan out your first session but don't think much beyond that, what happens in your first session should give you lots of ideas for where to go from there.

All good advice! Thank you.

I'm finally comfortable at being a procedural GM. I can' vaguely run a campaign where there's a series of "situations of the week" that player's stumble into and then interact with.

Two of my players have played more VtM/WW games and LARPs then I ever will. I got them to agree in the house rules that I could do whatever I wanted with canon (that was the first thing to overcome). However, when I started setting out plot hooks to follow, they didn't follow them (which is fine). However, I didn't have anything else for them to do.

My new-style response would be - we agreed we'd be running this game, so it's YOUR job to come up with a motivation to engage with the response. However, we never explicitly had that conversation. Their expectation seems to be that it's more sandboxy.

That is, they could decide to do anything any session. I spoke to one of them and he explained that when he runs things he just makes up tons of stuff on the fly (which THEN become things that need to be statted up, documented).

They're currently in the city of Florence in 1230.

Quote from: Baulderstone;839031If you are asking about CbN 1st or 2nd edition, I prefer 1st edition. I think 2nd edition was the beginning of WoD going off the rails. Actually, I should say "on the rails". First edition set up a city which lots of intrigue for your players to get into. There was big conflict on the horizon, but what happened next was all up to you.

Then 2nd Edition came along and told you what happened. It told you who lived, who died, who ended up where in the power struggles. What you've been doing in your own game all this time doesn't matter. It was the point where they stopped providing a setting to play in, and just started telling us a story.

So nwod is probably more like 1st edition. A social sandbox. All the chains of triggers are local though (nothing worldwide) and there are no chains or triggers in the core. The Dark Ages books are somewhere in between old and new wod I think.

A low-key overview as to what to do.  Fantasy, yes, but the advice is basic:

Opening Gambit: Your town and its NPCs

Faith Manages: Designing religions

Setting The Table: Party composition and equipment

The Appetizer Round: Tips on portraying your world's NPCs

The Main Course: Your First Adventure

The Dessert Round: Random tips and suggestions

Spicier Cities

Quote from: jan paparazzi;839092So nwod is probably more like 1st edition. A social sandbox. All the chains of triggers are local though (nothing worldwide) and there are no chains or triggers in the core.

Sort of. The big factions are all more or less global in their ubiquity, even if local chapters behave like cells that do not necessarily coordinate much.

A good degree of conflict between factions is built-in.

There are a few potentially world-threatening antagonists, such as the Idigam or the Annunaki, but they are few and far between and mostly early enough on their Earth-shattering agenda that PCs have a decent chance of stopping them.

But then I am biased, as "social sandbox" is pretty much my default WoD (old and new) GMing style.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;839053They're currently in the city of Florence in 1230.

I ran my longest-running V:tDA game in Florence, circa 1198 AD... by 1230 the city should be an even bigger Guelph vs. Ghibelline mess. Pretty sure Dante Alighieri has been exiled by then. Good stuff.

Do tell us about your game!

Quote from: The Butcher;839130I ran my longest-running V:tDA game in Florence, circa 1198 AD... by 1230 the city should be an even bigger Guelph vs. Ghibelline mess. Pretty sure Dante Alighieri has been exiled by then. Good stuff.

Do tell us about your game!

Love that time period.
And do tell us.

I picked Florence because at that time it was very cosmopolitan and in the middle of the dark ages map.

The big picture arc is the following: all of the characters sires don't exist. That is, the character's remember them existing, but no one else remembers them. Anyone they ask ignores the fact that they don't have sires, and can't even conceive of it being a problem. For example, a grandsire will just assume that this chile is one of his "other" chiles creation. What has actually happened is that a super evil cabal of all sorts of people, including elements of the Technocracy, powerful elders, etc. came up with a plan to stop Gehenna by empowering the existing Vampires, creating an eternal darkness for the world, shrouding it in a technomagical "anti-greenhouse warming" thing (that's what mortals will think is being done). Their sires, using some sweet True Brujah time travel action, were involved in a conspiracy to stop this. The bad guys have erased them from existence. They don't know much of this plot so far.

I gave the city to two rival princes, twin childer of the previous prince of the city, both Lasombra. His importance allowed him to essentially will it to them, so that within bounds, they may rival until one of them shows themselves worthy. The city was in real life large enough then to support lots of Kindred. The players inadvertently escalated tensions in the 2nd adventure by delivering one Prince's ally to the other prince.

One of the other nifty plotlines is the Giovanni attempting to consolidate their power by creating a series of "ghost roads," which will allow Kindred safe travel over vast distances. This requires murdering boatloads of people, and will become a problem later.

I've made the Prometheans into two groups - those that are sort of noble sabbat-like and want to free themselves from the oppression of elders and blood bonds, and cabals of Ghouls that have decided that revolution is required. They ran into these two plots when they stopped to rest for a night at what had been a Giovanni build site for the ghost road, which had instead been taken over by the revolutionary ghouls, who had been waylaying and eating Kindred for some time.

(note i drop all sorts of hints about the plotlines and their progress).

The Canite Heresy is much more aggressive. They believe that Kindred are divine beings who should be worshipped as such, and eagerly drive towards Cain's imminent return. The party inadvertently gave control of a major city to the Heretics. This will be a problem at some point, as they told the Prince they had handled the matter.

A near term major plot is the 3 Sisters. I decided that the Fall of Rome had been much more precipitous for Kindred. At some point, in fairly short order, all of the Kindred had been driven out or killed in very short order in Rome and many of the surrounding cities in Italy. This was so terrifying that some Kindred actually fled into the sea (these aquatic kindred will be a problem soon) and hid there. What actually happened is that the wicked depredations and debauchery of Rome's kindred were so great that mortals despair were able to raise 3 martyred sisters up as pagan wraiths of vast power. They've been slumbering for some time, since Kindred have kept their nose clean because of all the superstitions about the dangers of central Italy. However, open war in Florence (along the lines of the Guelphs and Ghibellines in the mortal realm) is likely to rise them from their slumber. Things will not go well if this happens.

I've only hinted at werewolves. I'm thinking of going way outside the box and making them essentially a line of very powerful rogue Revanants (Gangrel), enslaved during the 2nd city to serve under great cruelty. They pacted with something (maybe Lilith), which granted them their freedom and much more power. They pretty much want to exterminate all of the Kindred and anything like them.

One of the players is a cool Tzimisce who is searching for the perfect form. I'm super into rewarding anyone who doesn't want to play Tzimisce as people that turn other people into flesh cathedrals, so I'm going to use the thing as a goal for him where Tzimisce who pursue the perfect form can achieve a sort of Golconda.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;838861It seems like I need to run my Vampire Dark Ages
Game as a Sandbox. Given that I've never run one, what are the best books and GM sections of books on how to run a sandbox?

The best book I've read is Gamemastering at http://gamemastering.info/

Add-on books would be the ones from http://www.enginepublishing.com/

Quote from: PencilBoy99;839151I gave the city to two rival princes, twin childer of the previous prince of the city, both Lasombra. His importance allowed him to essentially will it to them, so that within bounds, they may rival until one of them shows themselves worthy. The city was in real life large enough then to support lots of Kindred. The players inadvertently escalated tensions in the 2nd adventure by delivering one Prince's ally to the other prince.

(...)

The Canite Heresy is much more aggressive. They believe that Kindred are divine beings who should be worshipped as such, and eagerly drive towards Cain's imminent return. The party inadvertently gave control of a major city to the Heretics. This will be a problem at some point, as they told the Prince they had handled the matter.

Yup, sounds a lot like my game.

I too, took the "two princes" tidbit from Three Pillars, and had the Cainite Heresy as a major player (in my game, keeping both princes at each other's throats).

Your game sounds like a hoot, but by now I am hopelessly biased. Love what you did with the Giovanni and the Prometheans.

Quote from: The Butcher;839129Sort of. The big factions are all more or less global in their ubiquity, even if local chapters behave like cells that do not necessarily coordinate much.

A good degree of conflict between factions is built-in.

There are a few potentially world-threatening antagonists, such as the Idigam or the Annunaki, but they are few and far between and mostly early enough on their Earth-shattering agenda that PCs have a decent chance of stopping them.

But then I am biased, as "social sandbox" is pretty much my default WoD (old and new) GMing style.

That upcoming Dark Eras book will probably have settings with a chain of events build in. So that will provide me with some triggers to start a campaign with. That's what I miss now in the books. No chain of events, so no real starting point (unless you make something up out of the blue). I find it easier to react to something that happened or to give a spin on something that happened. Now it's a bit static.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;839403That upcoming Dark Eras book will probably have settings with a chain of events build in. So that will provide me with some triggers to start a campaign with. That's what I miss now in the books. No chain of events, so no real starting point (unless you make something up out of the blue). I find it easier to react to something that happened or to give a spin on something that happened. Now it's a bit static.

We've had this conversation before and I think I understand where you come from, with regards to the oWoD's (esp. from VtM 2e on) very detailed, "metaplotty" setting vs. the nWoD's broadly outlined factions and conflicts (actually quite a bit like oWoD 1e in this regard, as someone else already remarked).

Have you looked at the nWoD 1e setting books? (New Orleans for VtR, Chicago for crossover, Boston for MtAw, etc.) If so, how'd you rate them in terms of providing what you call "triggers"?