Ever heard from this method? I had a pretty long thread about sandboxing vs linear storytelling a while ago, but I never could place the WoD method in any of those two boxes. Now I saw this link and I found this method very familiar. Do you like this way of creating adventures and why?

The linked article speaks of scenario or individual situation/mystery/secret design. Though if you repeat the operation enough times, and across a big enough stretch of real estate to support a regular campaign, it's pretty much how I do WoD campaigns: cooking up factions and burying secrets across a place (typically a city).

I've never used it for CoC, BTW. But it's absolutely doable.

I think of it as a sandbox, because it's essentially the same as drawing a hexmap or dungeon and stocking it. You conjure up a fictional world with stuff the players can interact with.

Also "fish tank" is an odd name/analogy. Who the hell keeps piranhas in one of those? Unless you're a researcher or something. I'd call it The Piranha Pond; more striking and evocative, and alliterative to boot. But I see no need to call it anything other than a plain ol' sandbox.

That's pretty much how I do most of my games. There's no difference between this and a sandbox. Sandboxes have stuff to play with in them. Same is true here, he just calls them fish.

I think the biggest difference between this and a sandbox is it's focus on relationships. A sandbox has factions with goals and motivations. A "fishtank" has relations between the factions. My feeling is in a sandbox the factions don't have to meet each other as a rule and in a fishtank they are stuck with each and how they deal with each other is the mayor focus of the game.

To me this is the default WoD method nowadays. They always have their NPC's setup like the relationship map in the third part of the article. There is a relationship map like that in the Requiem Chronicler Guide.

I think its definitely a type of sandbox--even if, as you say, factions don't necessarily have to be connected in a sandbox, in most sandboxes I've experienced they do. "Fishbowl" just seems like version of that.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;774189I think the biggest difference between this and a sandbox is it's focus on relationships. A sandbox has factions with goals and motivations. A "fishtank" has relations between the factions. My feeling is in a sandbox the factions don't have to meet each other as a rule and in a fishtank they are stuck with each and how they deal with each other is the mayor focus of the game.

This doesn't make any sense to me. How can you possibly have a proper living sandbox if the factions sharing the map don't interact with each other? Why wouldn't they interact which other?

Yeah the only way this isn't a sandbox is if by sandbox you mean nothing but set-piece hexcrawling with 10ft hexes and no person interacts with eachother.

Gnome Stew: we re-invent the wheel, so you don't have to!

Quote from: The Butcher;774198This doesn't make any sense to me. How can you possibly have a proper living sandbox if the factions sharing the map don't interact with each other? Why wouldn't they interact which other?

You could have an entire career with the thieves guild in the Elder Scrolls without getting into contact with the fighters guild. The world is larger, different groups do different things, they might just not run into each other. They also don't form one society as in the new Mage game for example. You could be a relic hunter and never meet a certain mercenary guild.

It's definitely a kind of sandbox. Have seen the idea before.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;774280You could have an entire career with the thieves guild in the Elder Scrolls without getting into contact with the fighters guild. The world is larger, different groups do different things, they might just not run into each other. They also don't form one society as in the new Mage game for example. You could be a relic hunter and never meet a certain mercenary guild.

Merely a matter of scale. Big enough factions on a big enough setting are bound to interact, e.g. starfaring empires and interstellar shipping guilds/corporations in a space-opera sandbox like a Traveller subsector.

Elder Scrolls is fun and all but really, though the term "sandbox" originated with videogames, tabletop RPGs are far better at pulling it out precisely because the human GM needs not impose artificial barriers and constraints.

And I also don't get how is it that Mages in Awakening "don't form one society" — Pentacle Orders and Seer Ministries interact (by which I mean, hate and compete and murder the shit out of each other) fairly often, with Scelesti on both sides and Apostates sometimes caught in the middle, and the Abyss take the hindmost.

Tabletop RPG sandboxes of all sizes are made more interesting when the elements the GM populares them with interact not only with the PCs, but with each other as well. Sure you can have each wilderness hex, dungeon room or star system vacuum-packed waiting for the PCs to come along, but again, why would you? This would make for a less interesting sandbox.

Quote from: The Butcher;774319And I also don't get how is it that Mages in Awakening "don't form one society" — Pentacle Orders and Seer Ministries interact (by which I mean, hate and compete and murder the shit out of each other) fairly often, with Scelesti on both sides and Apostates sometimes caught in the middle, and the Abyss take the hindmost.

They do form one society. All WoD games have multiple factions forming one society. Just like different government organisations. I wasn't really clear.

Quote from: The Butcher;774319Tabletop RPG sandboxes of all sizes are made more interesting when the elements the GM populares them with interact not only with the PCs, but with each other as well. Sure you can have each wilderness hex, dungeon room or star system vacuum-packed waiting for the PCs to come along, but again, why would you? This would make for a less interesting sandbox.

But easier to use. You just pick out what you want to play. If you want to fight you join a mercenary league or a knights order. If you are fighting on the battlefield all the time you don't have much business with the scrollhunters who are out there collecting treasury from dungeons or with the thieves guild who are stealing valuables from mansions in cities.

In a vampire game you get in contact with all the other groups, because they form a coalition together for all the city titles. And the other splats are opposition. Maybe I got the wrong picture here and isn't it as black and white.

This is pretty much what I just think of as a sandbox.

I guess it requires differentiation, since some people seem to think that "sandbox" = "nothing happens and there are no reactions."

So, ya know, good on him for figuring that out?

I guess the idea here is to sandbox an event rather than a region, so the death of Laura Palmer can trigger all sorts of outcomes in Twin Peaks depending on what the players do.

But still, it's a sandbox. I usually do something very similar for one shots and conventions. The only difference is I make sure to write down ahead of time the basics of what a faction will do if the PCs help, hinder or ignore the faction's goals. It is just a few bullet points next to motivations and personality types to help me remember things. It helps me improv and react faster to PC antics.

Quote from: ForthrightRay;774415I guess the idea here is to sandbox an event rather than a region

Right, but in general as part of a "living world", I include events, factions, and all that other stuff as part of a "sandbox" anyway.

That's what I was getting at - the term "sandbox" seems to have shifted to "a static geographic area where nothing happens, and there are no reactions to the actions of the players" for a significant portion of gamers.