Quote from: robiswrong;738386If it wouldn't have negative impact if it was ignored, then why would it matter if the PCs got involved or not in the first place?

Lost opportunity. Technically not a negative in the PCs' lives. Just a positive slipping out of their grasp.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;738384I don't think it would be negative. Life would just go on. If there are not curious about it, then nothing really happens. Maybe I should make it more personal to get them invested.

I would look at past seasons of Supernatural for inspiration. Particularly the ones where Sam or Dean "retire" from hunting for a while.

The basic gist is that while they are successful in leaving the hunter's life for a while something comes back to drag them back in. They were just too involved and made too enemies to truly get out.

Then there are the time when Sam and/or Dean let something go or rarely missed something. When it comes back to bite them it because the bad buy grew stronger. They realized their mistake because of some signature characteristic of the bad buy.

Applied to your murderer means if the players ignore the case the person or creature gets to complete his spree. Then moves on to something bigger. What you need to do is make sure there is enough of a signature in the clues that later they can go "You know that murder thing we thought the cops would be able to handle? That this thing in there." followed by a "oh, shit!" as they realizaed they could have a nipped the big bad in the bud if they followed up.

Thinking more about it I highly recommend mining Buffy, Supernatural, Angel, Grimm, etc for idea. Especially those episode that show more of the life of the setting that the main characters inhabit. For example Supernatural periodically have hunter with different attitudes and techniques show up. Those are sometime more interesting than what the main characters do.

Since people seem to ignore it and argue against a straw man, I'll reiterate that preparing for possible turns of event is so unobjectionable, so old hat and usual, as to make fatuous any puffing about it being anything other than a "sandbox" game.

It doesn't need a fancy new name like "Plot Point Campaign" any more than writing up a dungeon key needs to be called something like "Matrix Point Dynamics" and talked up as the hottest innovation since decimal dice. Get real, people!

Are you going to leave it at that, or are you going to force players to conform to your limited set of options? That's the fundamental yes or no question, and all that being slippery about it is going to do is reduce discussion to confusion.

Be a bullshit artist, and of course you're going to stir up controversy where there's no non-bullshit reason for it.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;738381Well, I think this is the biggest problem. WoD games are modern city games. You are not a wandering adventurer. You stick in one place. Your appartment.

That must be one heck of an exciting apartment!

An overwhelming majority of people venture at least through the apartment building and to a store. An only slightly smaller majority travel to various places by various routes meeting various people and having various interactions with them in a world that is in various states from one day or even hour to another: a truly vast universe of possibilities.

Quote from: estar;738462I would look at past seasons of Supernatural for inspiration. Particularly the ones where Sam or Dean "retire" from hunting for a while.

The basic gist is that while they are successful in leaving the hunter's life for a while something comes back to drag them back in. They were just too involved and made too enemies to truly get out.

Then there are the time when Sam and/or Dean let something go or rarely missed something. When it comes back to bite them it because the bad buy grew stronger. They realized their mistake because of some signature characteristic of the bad buy.

Applied to your murderer means if the players ignore the case the person or creature gets to complete his spree. Then moves on to something bigger. What you need to do is make sure there is enough of a signature in the clues that later they can go "You know that murder thing we thought the cops would be able to handle? That this thing in there." followed by a "oh, shit!" as they realizaed they could have a nipped the big bad in the bud if they followed up.

Thinking more about it I highly recommend mining Buffy, Supernatural, Angel, Grimm, etc for idea. Especially those episode that show more of the life of the setting that the main characters inhabit. For example Supernatural periodically have hunter with different attitudes and techniques show up. Those are sometime more interesting than what the main characters do.

Heh, it's just a little awkward to someone mention all those shows, only without the context of writing a plot. WoD books always mention shows, films and books like these as inspiration. Only with the intention of writing a plot.

Something like:
Scene 1: Introduction of the NPC's, themes and mood
Scene 2: Introduction of the main threat
Scene 3: Escalation of the main threat
Scene 4: etc.

Anyway, I always sucked at that. I just have to wrap my brain around seeing this used in another context I guess. :confused:

Quote from: Phillip;738521Since people seem to ignore it and argue against a straw man, I'll reiterate that preparing for possible turns of event is so unobjectionable, so old hat and usual, as to make fatuous any puffing about it being anything other than a "sandbox" game.

It doesn't need a fancy new name like "Plot Point Campaign" any more than writing up a dungeon key needs to be called something like "Matrix Point Dynamics" and talked up as the hottest innovation since decimal dice. Get real, people!

Are you going to leave it at that, or are you going to force players to conform to your limited set of options? That's the fundamental yes or no question, and all that being slippery about it is going to do is reduce discussion to confusion.

Be a bullshit artist, and of course you're going to stir up controversy where there's no non-bullshit reason for it.

I try to read your previous four or five posts and I must admit that I don´t understand any of them. Your sentences are so awkward in their construction, I really don´t know what to make from it.

Quote from: Phillip;738534That must be one heck of an exciting apartment!

An overwhelming majority of people venture at least through the apartment building and to a store. An only slightly smaller majority travel to various places by various routes meeting various people and having various interactions with them in a world that is in various states from one day or even hour to another: a truly vast universe of possibilities.

Usually a haven, hotspot and Elysium are the only places vampires often meet. There is no need for a mortal character to really go out and investigate what goes bump in the night. Unless it`s his job and he gets ordered to. Otherwise he just leads a run of the mill life with an office job and a mortgage.

A mortal doesn´t choose this life. Something happens to him or her. They might be victim or someone in their personal might be victim. Their mother bought a mirror from a second hand store and it appears to be cursed. Stuff like that.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;738600I try to read your previous four or five posts and I must admit that I don´t understand any of them. Your sentences are so awkward in their construction, I really don´t know what to make from it.

philip is arguing that, unlike the railroad accusation due to the word "plot" in its title, PPCs are essentially a sandbox from his viewpoint. He is asking what makes them different, because otherwise to him it is reselling with a new label. I am not philip, he may correct, and further caveats infinitum.

As from what I can see, know that I do not own a PPC to say with any authority, there's several things that immediately stand out:

The first thing I see different from the standard sandbox campaign -- often home brew -- is that this PPC is already populated heavily with a spread of active and reactive premises. Most GMs when I look at their home sandboxes behind the screen do not overly populate, as 60+ premise hooks is quite a lot. As for products, mini-sandbox modules just don't have the volume, and while campaign box sets may have that volume it is often over a far larger area (from what I can tell from the regions in the PPC chart).

The second thing is the interweaving, the threading of hooks into a regional tapestry in space. The obvious arrows stand out immediately. Note too the colored blocks covering several hooks at once, denoting shared region. Regional space is populated and interconnected with its own hooks, and different regional spaces are interconnected through transitionary (travel?) hooks. The layout is not about a connecting trade route on a map, but about hooks and relations that make these spaces relevant within and nearby.

The third thing I see is extrapolation through time. The tiers speak of regional challenges, which though not necessarily connected with previous hooks, connect to the same space over different eras of PC time. Further, there are hooks that do connect over time, some within the same tier and some straddling more than one. This is usually not provided by sandboxes, as they tend to not extrapolate too far beyond a specific dateline. Here, since time's accounting is fungible regarding a BBEG's agenda, this can allow for extrapolations from beginning tier to well beyond "name level," as it were.

Fourth thing I see is this usage of mission-based structure, that extrapolation of connected hooks through a fungible stretch of time (a.k.a. BBEG agenda). Sandbox products tend to avoid these direct lines of connection in products, as they usually take a rumor table and a limited calendar of events (Forgotten Realms grey box), having difficulty tying an agenda to a concrete timeline without destroying the sandbox. As this flowchart is uninterested in concrete time and tight direct lines of causation, these mission-based structures can be embedded within a sandbox's time and space again.

Essentially, yes, it is through party pro-action a sandbox. And, yes, it uses reaction missions, familiar to many a published module. But unlike often seen in published sandbox products, it takes an abstracted look at time and space in order to throw a lot of hooks -- even in interconnected bundles -- to "map out" a campaign place. It's a relationship map of people, places, and times all in one spot instead of the usual geographical map, who's who, and calendar spread. Useful as a GM overview from what I've seen so far.

Ok, so there seems to be different opinions about what a sandbox is. Is it just a bunch of premises on a map? Comparable to a computer game like Elder Scroll. Quest are just waiting till a player stumbles upon it. Or is it NPC's reacting on the moves the players make?

The Plot Point campaigns are just not fleshed out quests. Some are locations based (quest on planet Zumba), some are time based (after one month ingame), some are activation based (after you finished quest X) and some are a combination of those things.

It all becomes a little confusing. People are talking about Plot Point campaign. Some people are talking about it, while not knowing them well. Other people are talking about sandboxes, while disagreeing about it's definition. And then I bring in the World of Darkness as a possibility for either a sandbox or a Plot Point Campaign, while that very different from the usual way of GM'ing a game like that.

Ehhhhh...... I gotta think about getting this thread on track again.

Also, seriously some of the "plot points" are really really open to whatever the GM wants to do with them. While some are longer than others, there are some like the following:

Quote from: 50 Fathoms PPCWhaling
Begins in: Kaja, Arfk.

Bjorn Olafsson is keen to make some extra money and offers his service to any party planning on hunting norwhales. He is an experienced whaler, knows the local waters, and wants only a fair share of the profits in return for his services.

Bjorn: Typical Pirate with Throwing d8
and the Whaler Edge (page 195).

That is the entire written word about this "adventure". Yes, a large portion of them are longer, but they aren't railroad "every scene is set in stone" type things. They are adventure hooks with a few ideas of how things could play out, and the stats of any main players in it.

It's not all the stuff on the right that strikes me as "not what I want".  It's the stuff slammed against the left column.  You know, the core series of adventures that must be done in order.  And "core" is their word, *not* mine.

And yes, I know the GM can ignore them.  At which point they have no value.  That's like arguing that DragonLance isn't a railroad because the GM can ignore what's supposed to happen.

Quote from: robiswrong;738839It's not all the stuff on the right that strikes me as "not what I want".  It's the stuff slammed against the left column.  You know, the core series of adventures that must be done in order.  And "core" is their word, *not* mine.

And yes, I know the GM can ignore them.  At which point they have no value.  That's like arguing that DragonLance isn't a railroad because the GM can ignore what's supposed to happen.

I think nobody said the plot point campaigns were 100% sandbox. The original point I made was the PPC were looser than an average campaign, while not as loose as a sandbox. Ok, let's leave it at that.

I found two articles about this: sandbox with sign posts and lessons learned from savage worlds

I also want to find out what a sandbox is.

Some people view it as a map with cities and villages on it and dungeons to explore. The players can wander around and stumble upon things. Much like an Elder Scrolls game really. To me this seems like a perfect fit for fantasy games. You just wander around in some forest and suddenly you find a dungeon with undead. Kill them all, loot the room, sell the shit at some town, buy some new shit (pants +1) and repeat all the same shit again. At least that's how I always played Warhammer FRPG. I actually got pretty bored with this stuff.

Other people view a sandbox as NPC's (or NPC factions) reacting towards the players actions. This seems more interesting to me. This also seems more appropriate for a World of Darkness game. Plenty of powermongering NPC's around and plenty of factions too.

So what is it? Or is it both?

*I have to admit that the Bloodlines video game was pretty sandbox as well. You were just walking around in LA stumbling on things to do.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;738866I also want to find out what a sandbox is.

Some people view it as a map with cities and villages on it and dungeons to explore. The players can wander around and stumble upon things. Much like an Elder Scrolls game really. To me this seems like a perfect fit for fantasy games. You just wander around in some forest and suddenly you find a dungeon with undead. Kill them all, loot the room, sell the shit at some town, buy some new shit (pants +1) and repeat all the same shit again. At least that's how I always played Warhammer FRPG. I actually got pretty bored with this stuff.

Other people view a sandbox as NPC's (or NPC factions) reacting towards the players actions. This seems more interesting to me. This also seems more appropriate for a World of Darkness game. Plenty of powermongering NPC's around and plenty of factions too.

So what is it? Or is it both?

*I have to admit that the Bloodlines video game was pretty sandbox as well. You were just walking around in LA stumbling on things to do.

you are missing a number of points, based on the many times Rob, Beno, Estar, (myself) and the others have gone over this.  I don't blame you, but we need a better search function.

However, I'm drinking a nice 9 year old rioja after a hellish couple of weeks.  So I might do some of the heavy lifting later.

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

from an early, illustrative argument...http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=25668&page=17

http://celtricia.pbworks.com/w/page/60581028/Vreegs%20Rules%20of%20Setting%20and%20Game%20Design   look more at #3 and after...that is what you are missing, the actual living, moving setting world.  It is a sandbox because of the GM's allowance for the PC volition; their ability to do a think or interact with a thing without punishment or railroad, this does not, however, mean that actions or inactions do not have consequence.  The static world you describe above is not the vibrant place a sandbox should be.  
The Sandbox is a place of consequence, of player responsibility for their own decisions, and by that, the players run everything, the GM just plays the rich and deep reactions of the rest of the setting to the players actions.

Ah, that is clearer.

One thing: Encounters is something typical fantasy. If you do that in a modern city it might be a bunch of robbers in a dark alley, but you can't really killing people all the time. You might end up in jail doing life. And in case of vampire you might end up tied up on a building's roof for violating the Masquerade. Combat is generally quite scarce. Think the Godfather. All tension with rare sudden bursts of violence. So I don't really see that in the WoD. Although ... perhaps an angry ghoul, a rival vampire, ehhhh ... it shouldn't happen too often though.

The rest is all usable. Especially the Celtrica page. I read it more in detail tomorrow.

Is the Elder Scrolls a sandbox? I mean according to pc games theory it is. But according to tabletop theory it isn't. There aren't any consequences. The only thing that changes is your character (in strength mostly). I found the VtM Bloodlines game to have more consequences to your actions. That was one of the cool things of that game. And the investigation aspects. That game was what drew me into the WoD in the first place.

The fourth rule is what WoD naturally stimulates. So that doesn't need work. The third rule is the biggest difference. Actually I think in the older setting the Metaplot filled the part of the world in motion. Ok, I get back to this later.