I love working with systems that are sensitive to guild/factions.  So few are.

I caution any novice GM signing onto the "sandbox" bandwagon. It's the hip meme on forums, but few actual players are significantly proactive. If you have them great, but most players are reactive, prone to be looking to the GM for the "adventure of the week".

Also, the ability to make up stuff on the fly is different than the ability to make up good stuff on the fly. My players compliment me on my ability to riff out great stuff from nowhere, but it's not magic, its hard won expertise. I have volumes of my own writing, bookshelves I've devoured and decades of experience that I'm calling upon at that moment.

For all the online hate against railroads, let's not forget the most popular products in RPGdom are railroad adventures and the weekly 4 hour choo choo railroad is the entire business model of organized play by WotC and Paizo.

That said, there is great advice in this thread, but as you pour it all into your margarita glass, don't forget to salt the rim.

Google "Bat in the Attic" + "fantasy sandbox" and there is whole manifesto that is pretty useful even if you don't go for the author's personal fantasy preferences.

Quote from: Spinachcat;839564I caution any novice GM signing onto the "sandbox" bandwagon. It's the hip meme on forums, but few actual players are significantly proactive. If you have them great, but most players are reactive, prone to be looking to the GM for the "adventure of the week".

Also, the ability to make up stuff on the fly is different than the ability to make up good stuff on the fly. My players compliment me on my ability to riff out great stuff from nowhere, but it's not magic, its hard won expertise. I have volumes of my own writing, bookshelves I've devoured and decades of experience that I'm calling upon at that moment.

For all the online hate against railroads, let's not forget the most popular products in RPGdom are railroad adventures and the weekly 4 hour choo choo railroad is the entire business model of organized play by WotC and Paizo.

That said, there is great advice in this thread, but as you pour it all into your margarita glass, don't forget to salt the rim.

Spinachcat has conducted a survey of all players and GMs to back up these assertions as well, you know.  Just ask to be pointed to the reams of data.

I would not have run this game if I had known it would be sandbox style. My fault for not stating up front "this game is about players doing X". The worst that will happen is that I'll learn a lot and become a better game. I still prefer mission based games - still situations, I just prep a situation and let the players decide what if anything they want to do, but sandbox-style isn't good for people that are naturally anxious!

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?

and

Quote from: PencilBoy99;839581I would not have run this game if I had known it would be sandbox style. My fault for not stating up front "this game is about players doing X".

Hang on, I am confused ...

You are the GM.
You run the campaign how you want to run it.

So, how can you not know what style of campaign you are planning to run?

I know, from your other thread, that you have encountered some issues with your Vampire players, but that doesn't force you to change your GMing style to something you are not comfortable with.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;839581The worst that will happen is that I'll learn a lot and become a better game. I still prefer mission based games - still situations, I just prep a situation and let the players decide what if anything they want to do, but sandbox-style isn't good for people that are naturally anxious!

If you prefer to run mission-style campaigns, then run a mission-style campaign. Simple as that.

If the players decide to go off-mission, then run a couple of one-off scenarios, but come back to the missions.

It's your game, run it and play it however you want to.

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. The Dark Ages books are somewhere in between old and new wod I think.

Yes, that's exactly what I like about nWoD. Well, that and the mechanics, which actually are getting somewhere as of God-Machine Chronicle:).

Quote from: The Butcher;839129(...)
But then I am biased, as "social sandbox" is pretty much my default WoD (old and new) GMing style.

"Social sandbox" is my defauly GMing style even for OSR games or technotriller/cyberpunk. Of course, in that case you have to situate "violence" on the social spectrum.
It helps that it's already part of said spectrum, of course;).

Quote from: LordVreeg;839422I love working with systems that are sensitive to guild/factions.  So few are.

Me too, but I wouldn't say they're all that few. I mean, between Reign, The Great Game of Weapons of the Gods, Runequest Empires, Price of Power, An Echo Resounding (from Sine Nomine, in the same setting as Scarlet Heroes), and Spellbound Kingdoms...I should have all the systems I need.

Quote from: Matt;839575Spinachcat has conducted a survey of all players and GMs to back up these assertions as well, you know.  Just ask to be pointed to the reams of data.

Please, could you do that? I'm interested.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;839581I would not have run this game if I had known it would be sandbox style. My fault for not stating up front "this game is about players doing X". The worst that will happen is that I'll learn a lot and become a better game. I still prefer mission based games - still situations, I just prep a situation and let the players decide what if anything they want to do, but sandbox-style isn't good for people that are naturally anxious!

There's an intermediate solution that might work for you.
Ask them what they're planning to do next session, then prepare that. It helps if you end each session either as them having a planning session in which they must decide what to do next. You, on the other hand, turn up next session with their mission.
Said mission might be "turn an ally of his against the Prince", or it might be "improve my herd, including powerful people". But once they tell you this, you can make it into a mission, right?
They might not actually decide it in character, but doesn't matter. What matters is the timing. They get the next two days after the session to decide what to do, after that they tell you and then you prepare what you're going to run next time.
If they take the two-days bonus, they've got to tell you the first approach they intend to take, as well. Next session starts with them doing exactly that.

Quote from: Matt;839575Spinachcat has conducted a survey of all players and GMs to back up these assertions as well, you know.  Just ask to be pointed to the reams of data.

Damn right! Thank you Minion Matt! Keep up the good work and you just might be promoted to Assistant Marketing Minion!

Sycophants are the best!

Quote from: The Butcher;839407We'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"?

Oh, it's you. New profile pic again.

Yes, I think those books provide some of what I might be looking for. I know New Orleans and it has an interesting backstory about Vidal being betrayed by the CotC leader when doing a blood potency lowering ritual. It failed and now he hates Cronies and Nosferatu.

But ... I felt it was a bit hamfisted and it forced Catholicism and Voodoo into the covenant mold in a very contrived way. And I find the settings generally not so appealing in the new wod.

I usually play a wod mortal setting now which uses hunters and the spirit world, but I don't use any of the excisting groups. I made up all the factions myself and wrote a backstory for the world about the slowly eroding Gauntlet and all the extra manifestations that occured in the last few centuries. It mostly deals with a council of spirits who want more control in the material world and with a lot of mortal factions who all deal with the situation differently. Some see a threat, others an opportunity for occult study or a business opportunity. The Gilded Cage was a good book for mining ideas about those factions. I gave them clear goals btw, instead of ideologies.

My best adventures in the new wod are usually not due to the settings, but despite off the settings. It's best ignored and build from the ground up. I play a very different setting than the default.

Quote from: Spinachcat;839564I caution any novice GM signing onto the "sandbox" bandwagon. It's the hip meme on forums, but few actual players are significantly proactive. If you have them great, but most players are reactive, prone to be looking to the GM for the "adventure of the week".

In fairness, you only need one proactive player to make this work.

I agree with the part about making stuff up on the fly, though - I'm not great at improvising, so sandbox gaming can mean a lot of up-front prep work.  On the other hand, if your players aren't too worried about verisimilitude, you can start with something pretty small and expand from there.  

My school group was a sandbox-stye campaign, but all that meant in practice was that there were several dungeons nearby and they could choose which one they wanted to explore each time they went out.  There was conflict in the town but they players never really chose to engage with it, preferring to hop from dungeon to dungeon.  The game was a sandbox because I let them do what they wanted.

Quote from: Matt;839574Google "Bat in the Attic" + "fantasy sandbox" and there is whole manifesto that is pretty useful even if you don't go for the author's personal fantasy preferences.

Sorry I didn't see this thread before. First thanks for the shout out.

Here are the relevant links.

How to make a Fantasy Sandbox. An exhaustive overview of how to create your own setting with relevant details suitable for a sandbox campaign.

http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2009/08/how-to-make-fantasy-sandbox.html


Blackmarsh Setting Reference Document which has a brief sandbox how-to at the beginning as well as an example of a hex-crawl formatted setting.

http://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/blackmarsh_srd.zip


This link is to all the sandbox articles I written on Bat in the Attic.

http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/search/label/sandbox%20fantasy

Starting in 2008 to date.

Quote from: Spinachcat;839564I caution any novice GM signing onto the "sandbox" bandwagon. It's the hip meme on forums, but few actual players are significantly proactive. If you have them great, but most players are reactive, prone to be looking to the GM for the "adventure of the week".

It is about the initial context. Players that can thrive and have fun with a blank maps are indeed not common. For the rest, trying to explore a blank map is as fun as trying to play a game of darts in darkness. The available choices in the beginning are random shots in the dark and not really choices at all.

The solution to this is to come up with a initial context for the characters and the group. This provide the foundation for the initial choices of the players as their characters.

The essence of a sandbox campaign is not in circumstances at any point in the game. It is in the willingness of the referee to let the players direct the action of the campaign regardless of his or her own wishes.

Most players want to advance their status or wealth by doing interesting things. So in general they will opt to pursue adventures. For the most part a sandbox campaign doesn't appear much different than a traditional tabletop campaign or even a Paizo style adventure path.

The difference comes in when the players have a desire to explore something else about the campaign for a few sessions. Or when the player mix changes and the ensuing dynamics changes the goals of the group. A sandbox campaign will give these choices equal weight and equal potential reward as if they opted to stay on the original path.

On my blog at a http://batintheattic.blogspot.com I have the accounts of several campaigns I ran as a sandbox. What common about all of these campaigns is that they have major phases. A phase is a long run of sessions where the group is pursuing a specific goal. However something changes, either in-game or out-of-game. Whatever the cause the result is the group pursuing a new set of goals often in a new locale.

The players find that I don't care about their change of focus. Even when it involves trashing major amounts of prep on my part. The worse that will happen is that I will end a session earlier so I have time to prepare some new material.  But most times I just able to go along with as if it was my plan for the campaign all along.

To me the point of tabletop roleplaying is to be somebody else doing interesting things AS IF I AM REALLY THERE. In essence a pen and paper virtual reality. The fewer metagame bullshit, the better the experience. The body of advice about sandbox campaigns are the best methods I found to achieve this.

Thanks all. Now to my new set of problems!

Quote from: Spinachcat;839564I caution any novice GM signing onto the "sandbox" bandwagon. It's the hip meme on forums, but few actual players are significantly proactive. If you have them great, but most players are reactive, prone to be looking to the GM for the "adventure of the week".

This statement seems to be predicated on the belief that sandboxes don't have scenario hooks.

To the contrary: A good sandbox has scenario hooks hanging all over the place. The successful sandbox will not only be festooned with scenario hooks, it will also feature some form of default action that can be used to deliver more hooks if the players find themselves bereft of interesting options.

For example, a typical hexcrawl sandbox features a rumor table (which serves up some arbitrary number of scenario hooks to the PCs) and a default action if none of those rumors sound appealing (wandering around the map until you find something interesting).

A megadungeon sandbox similarly features a rumor table and a default action (go explore some unknown part of the dungeon).

Prepping this plethora of scenario hooks can be daunting for a GM who believes that every scenario hook needs to be linked to a distinct, unique plot. The trick to a sandbox is that you don't prep plots: You prep situations. And for the sandbox you'll be able to hang countless hooks off of every situation. You'll also discover how sandbox situations "stay alive" even after the PCs have interacted with them (instead of being completely chewed up and discarded).

For example, let's say you've got a dungeon a fair distance outside of town that's the remains of a Neo-Norskan temple complex. It's currently being occupied by a Bandit King who has forged together an alliance of humans, goblins, and ogres. He's also renting skeletons off a nearby necromancer.

In terms of scenario hooks, there's all kinds of stuff you can hang on this situation: Bandit raids are terrorizing local villages. A powerful magical artifact was stolen from a local caravan. There are old legends about the Neo-Norskan temple and what it contains. Because of the skeletons, there are false rumors that the necromancer lives there. Or that the necromancer has allied with the Bandit Kings. (And you can salt these scenario hooks into the campaign in any number of ways: Rumor tables. Lore recovered from other locations. Allies of the PCs who are now in need. Et cetera.)

So one day the PCs grab one of these hooks and they go off and they kill the Bandit King and they take the magical artifact he was carrying.

Over and done with, right? Only not really, because the guy who originally owned the magical artifact still wants it, so now the PCs are getting attacked by bounty hunters attempting to recover the artifact. Meanwhile, they didn't wipe out all the bandits and the remaining goblins are renewing their raids under the leadership of the One-Eyed Ogre.

So the PCs go back to the Neo-Norksan temple and this time they wipe out all the bandits, permanently ending their threat to the region. Except now the Necromancer sees a big, open dungeon complex filled with the discarded corpses the PCs have left in their wake, and so he moves in and animates the corpses as a skeletal army.

Which all sounds like a lot of work, but because you prepped the whole thing as a situation to begin with you haven't needed to spend more than about 5 minutes "refreshing" this content between sessions: You're reusing the same maps and stat blocks over and over again. You spent a little time putting together new stat blocks for the bounty hunters when they showed up. And there was probably some light re-keying necessary for the changes the Necromancer made when he took over the complex.

You didn't have to buy a whole new set of tools every single time. You just occasionally added a new tool when necessary. (And occasionally removed a hammer that the PCs had broken.)

This can be easier to visualize with a location (which is why I use it as an example), but the same basic process holds true for, say, factions in an urban campaign. Create a gang that's, say, manufacturing and marketing a drug derived from blood that's been harvested from vampires and you should be able to use that toolkit to generate dozens of sessions of play.

The other thing that happens in a sandbox campaign is synergy between the different elements of the sandbox: By holding onto the artifact that was stolen from them, the PCs make enemies of House Nobuzo. This unexpectedly earns them a patron in the form of House Erskine, unleashing a flurry of scenario hooks from the "feuding noble houses" toolkit you designed. As the PCs get drawn into that world, they're approached by a minor house named Tannar: They're currently allied to House Nobuzo, but their daughter has been murdered by the Necromancer who has now stolen her body in order to transform her into his Corpse Bride. If the PCs can rescue their daughter from a fate literally worse than death, they'll break their alliance with House Nobuzo and pledge for House Erskine.

After that scenario has resolved itself, you might find that the players are now actively looking for minor houses that they can endear to their political causes by doing favors for them. (Which would organically create a new default action for delivering scenario hooks.)

In any case, once your sandbox toolkits start interacting with each other like this, you'll quickly find that the sandbox is basically running itself.

Quote from: The Butcher;838928Alex's essays are great, even if I find his style way more hardcore than mine (which incidentally is why I love his ruleset -- it's like having a smarter kid do your homework for you while you and your friends slack off ).

Hah, my years of high school at last pay off.