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 (http://www.gnomestew.com/gming-advice/the-fish-tank-as-a-mystery-2/) 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. :D
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.
Quote from: robiswrong;774423That'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.
I think you are absolutely right, and I really have no idea why this is true. I've mentioned wanted to run a sandbox to some people who have played tradtional RPGs for years, and their worry is it would just be a videogame with no lasting consequences (like GTA, run long enough and the law forgets).
I think that reluctance stems from people not knowing how to tell a GM that they're not having fun or from GMs not being receptive to criticism.
Quote from: Black Vulmea;774267Gnome Stew: we re-invent the wheel, so you don't have to!
Yeah, if there's a more over-rated GM advice site, mainly though ignorance of the readers of rehashed content, I've never seen it.
Quote from: robiswrong;774423That'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.
Quote from: ForthrightRay;774433I think you are absolutely right, and I really have no idea why this is true. I've mentioned wanted to run a sandbox to some people who have played tradtional RPGs for years, and their worry is it would just be a videogame with no lasting consequences (like GTA, run long enough and the law forgets).
White room echo chamber reiterated bullshit from people who have no living memory of what they're talking about, just playing a game of "TGD/AP Telephone".
The newest games supported by the largest gaming corporations are so far divorced from the origins of the hobby that younger people are floored when they find out "Wow, you can have like, a setting where there's people outside of the adventuring party, and those people interact and stuff!"
It's like the genius from a couple weeks ago who invented the hexcrawl.
Quote from: CRKrueger;774483It's like the genius from a couple weeks ago who invented the hexcrawl.
Wait, what? :confused:
Quote from: jan paparazzi;774347But 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.
Until, of course, the dungeoneers return from the ruins of the Imperial Mausoleum bearing the Scroll of the All-Conquering Host, the legendary incantation that, when read out loud, makes any army invincible for a fortnight and guarantees victory in battle. An ambitious warlord hires the Thieves' Guild to acquire the Scroll, and retains the mercenary company as his plans for conquest are set in motion; the knightly order, loyal to the true and lawful king of the land, rallies to his banner, even under the threat of certain defeat...
They don't always
have to interact, but I like it better when they do. :)
Quote from: jan paparazzi;774347In 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.
Absolutely! The main point I'd like to get across is that absolutely nothing about the so-called "fish tank" approach is (a) different from what everyone's been calling "sandbox" for years now, and (b) exclusively or specifically pertaining to investigative or mystery scenarios.
Quote from: CRKrueger;774483The newest games supported by the largest gaming corporations are so far divorced from the origins of the hobby that younger people are floored when they find out "Wow, you can have like, a setting where there's people outside of the adventuring party, and those people interact and stuff!"
To be fair, it's easy to laugh at the the 'deep thinkers' at Gnome Stew - and believe me, I do, loudly and often - but to their credit, sometimes they are treading new-to-them ground that's worth the walk.
Quote from: CRKrueger;774483It's like the genius from a couple weeks ago who invented the hexcrawl.
:rotfl:
Yeah, that was friggin' comedy-gold.
Quote from: The Butcher;774500They don't always have to interact, but I like it better when they do. :)
I like it better when you have to option to decide if they interact. With vampire (and mage .. and changeling as well) I feel like they HAVE to interact with each other. It's the main focus of the game. I never liked that part. Hunter is different. In that game they can work togehter to kill some demon and split up after that.
Edit: They are a bit like the House of Representatives. If you use one of the covenants you got them all. It doesn't make sense not to do so. I always find that restrictive.
Quote from: Black Vulmea;774509To be fair, it's easy to laugh at the the 'deep thinkers' at Gnome Stew - and believe me, I do, loudly and often - but to their credit, sometimes they are treading new-to-them ground that's worth the walk.
Ok, I didn't know that. I don't visit a lot of these sites. Not nerdy enough I guess. I never been on pennyarcade and I intend to keep it that way. :D
Quote from: The Ent;774493Wait, what? :confused:
Yeah.
Some guy on Facebook in the Tabletop RPG group had talked about this great new idea he had for a game, where you'd have a grid of a large location and encounters keyed to grid locations.
Quote from: Black Vulmea;774509To be fair, it's easy to laugh at the the 'deep thinkers' at Gnome Stew - and believe me, I do, loudly and often - but to their credit, sometimes they are treading new-to-them ground that's worth the walk.
Agreed. It's easy for those of us that have been playing 30-40 years to think all of this stuff is common sense, but it's not necessarily obvious to people that have been playing for a shorter time, especially if their expectations are set by "Adventure Paths" and the like.
Quote from: ForthrightRay;774415I 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.
Bingo. This is highly focused sandbox, or a sandbox+; a scenario. The layer on top is that there's one specific thing the players are supposed to be doing; beyond that, there's a lot of freedom, but the specific thing guides the prep, includes a storyline, and even inspires "key scenes".
If anything it's kind of like a town in Dogs in the Vineyard. The focus is more on a specific problem that's baked in than it is on exploring and discovering your own goals. This doesn't make it better or worse than a more pure sandbox. You could blow it up into a whole campaign framework of you like. But stringing a bunch of them together will give you a different structure from a more organic continuity.
The Requiem Chronicler's Guide has something like this. You have to write down names of NPC's, write down their motivation towards a certain issue (f.e. Masquerade violation) and draw arrows between the NPC's for their relations. Those arrows could have texts like: protect him, prove him wrong, change his mind etc.
Quote from: robiswrong;774558Agreed. It's easy for those of us that have been playing 30-40 years to think all of this stuff is common sense, but it's not necessarily obvious to people that have been playing for a shorter time, especially if their expectations are set by "Adventure Paths" and the like. (emphasis added - BV)
Exactamundo.
They're discovering ways of doing things that I learned at fourteen, but they're having to undue years of conditioning to get there, so while I snicker at their often wide-eyed way of presenting their 'discoveries,' hey, at least they're thinking outside the box.
Quote from: robiswrong;774558Yeah.
Some guy on Facebook in the Tabletop RPG group had talked about this great new idea he had for a game, where you'd have a grid of a large location and encounters keyed to grid locations.
:D
That said I can easily see someone not having seen this kinda thing before, I mean outside of the OSR hexcrawl stuff has been really rare for what, 20-30 years? I mean I've played for 20 years and didn't Get hexcrawls until I got into osrgames. Allthough I'd run sandboxes before that, mind. A friend used to call my old sandboxes "squarecrawls" :D
Re-inventing the wheel can be a good learning excercise, and writing about it might be helpful to others.
At some point, though, it's helpful to avail oneself of the treasury of experience in a field that has been around for some time.
I think one problem for many younger gamers is that the resources are not so obviously before them as in the days when what now is called "sandox" was called simply "the campaign".
Anyhow, the main pitfall to beware of is getting too invested in the expectation that the players will pursue this or that course of action. That depends on the customs of the group at hand. With one, you might be able to count on players following your lead to Mystery Manor; with another, planned "main events" might turn out to be off the stage of the players' undertakings.
Ambivalent
One the one hand, I applaud the new players thinking outside the box even if they are "re-discovering" cool things that weren't lost to begin with.
On the other hand, Google? I mean when you get into a hobby that you know has spawned hundreds of games over decades, how do you never investigate what else is out there?
It's not like Rome fell and people are now re-learning how to dress stone for Christ's sake.
The fact that you're re-discovering a new technique that was never lost and still in use just points to the fact that you're insular, and despite the greatest collection of information ever known at your fingertips, you don't bother to look at anything outside your immediate "information circle".
Quote from: CRKrueger;774933The fact that you're re-discovering a new technique that was never lost and still in use just points to the fact that you're insular . . .
And that is why I laugh.
It is kinda weird the tabletop definition is so different from the games definition. With pen and paper RPG's it seems to be all about actions and consequences. Who reacts on your actions and how? With computer games it's all about a big open world with a lot of quests.
Quote from: jan paparazzi;775390It is kinda weird the tabletop definition is so different from the games definition. With pen and paper RPG's it seems to be all about actions and consequences. Who reacts on your actions and how? With computer games it's all about a big open world with a lot of quests.
That, I think, is why videogames are still a long way from replacing tabletop for me. I'd say it's 50% this, and 50% the social aspect.
Funny how human brains, despite their limited computing power, limited storage capacity and propensity to all sorts of biases, do such a better world of abstracting so many complex variants and emulating a living, breathing world (mostly, I suppose, by drawing and extrapolating from experience).
Quote from: The Butcher;775391That, I think, is why videogames are still a long way from replacing tabletop for me. I'd say it's 50% this, and 50% the social aspect.
Funny how human brains, despite their limited computing power, limited storage capacity and propensity to all sorts of biases, do such a better world of abstracting so many complex variants and emulating a living, breathing world (mostly, I suppose, by drawing and extrapolating from experience).
Yeah, true. You could make a brilliant social web of Game of Thrones btw. It also explains why I like those books so much more than your run of the mill fantasy.
Btw I think I know why I felt different about the factions in a WoD game than the factions let's say SW Hellfrost or another fantasy RPG. In those last games every organisation has it's own leaders and that's where it stops. In Vampire a city could have a Prince who is Invictus, a Sheriff who is Ordo Dracul and a Senechal who is Carthian. I always had trouble with that aspect of the game. It just doesn't make sense to me. And then I don't even mention the Primogen. So they are all rival organisations, but they still work together? I just can't wrap my head around it. The Rome setting is much more cohesive to me.
Quote from: CRKrueger;774933...
On the other hand, Google? I mean when you get into a hobby that you know has spawned hundreds of games over decades, how do you never investigate what else is out there?
...
The fact that you're re-discovering a new technique that was never lost and still in use just points to the fact that you're insular, and despite the greatest collection of information ever known at your fingertips, you don't bother to look at anything outside your immediate "information circle".
What exactly do you think they should have been Google for?
Right now search engines tell you what you look for, but you need to know what you're looking for. There's some work in search engines that tell you what they think you want to / ought to know, but it's early days yet, and it requires that the search engines have a pretty good understanding of who you are and what you're interested in.
It doesn't surprise me that people who haven't been introduced to sandboxes don't stumble across them until non-OSR gaming sites choose to write articles on them.
That's right. People have to know what they are looking for. I think it's good for sites like Gnomestew to write articles like this. This topic isn't about dissing some website for writing something people know already. I was just really wondering what the fishtank is. And I learned a few things again:
- A fishtank is really a sandbox
- It looks like a WoD relationship map, so WoD games are sandbox too
- 50% of sandbox is open world, the other 50% is the social side
- The biggest difference between a WoD setting and a fantasy RPG or maybe Fading Suns is the scale. A WoD sandbox is indeed a fishtank. You are more likely to run into each other than in an ocean like some of those big world fantasy settings.
Quote from: jan paparazzi;775592That's right. People have to know what they are looking for. I think it's good for sites like Gnomestew to write articles like this. This topic isn't about dissing some website for writing something people know already. I was just really wondering what the fishtank is. And I learned a few things again:
- A fishtank is really a sandbox
- It looks like a WoD relationship map, so WoD games are sandbox too
- 50% of sandbox is open world, the other 50% is the social side
- The biggest difference between a WoD setting and a fantasy RPG or maybe Fading Suns is the scale. A WoD sandbox is indeed a fishtank. You are more likely to run into each other than in an ocean like some of those big world fantasy settings.
Sounds right to me.
Fishtank = "City/town-sized sandbox mostly about people (and their goals and actions)"?
Quote from: jan paparazzi;774347But 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
Until the city you are fighting to conquer or protect also happens to have a major scriptorium and library for the scroll hunter faction. And something very much like that happened in my Hellfrost game.
Quote from: The Butcher;775391Funny how human brains, despite their limited computing power, limited storage capacity and propensity to all sorts of biases, do such a better world of abstracting so many complex variants and emulating a living, breathing world (mostly, I suppose, by drawing and extrapolating from experience).
This also only works because that human brain only needs to explain the concepts to other human brains who have a shared frame of reference. And it's not really emulating a living, breathing world. More like emulating an emulation of a living breathing world. :)
Quote from: Doctor Jest;775694More like emulating an emulation of a living breathing world. :)
(http://thinkwhatyoulike.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/inception-poster-600x250.jpg)
Quote from: jan paparazzi;775592That's right. People have to know what they are looking for. I think it's good for sites like Gnomestew to write articles like this. This topic isn't about dissing some website for writing something people know already. I was just really wondering what the fishtank is.
I agree, it's a good thread.
Quote from: jan paparazzi;775592And I learned a few things again:
- A fishtank is really a sandbox
- It looks like a WoD relationship map, so WoD games are sandbox too
- 50% of sandbox is open world, the other 50% is the social side
- The biggest difference between a WoD setting and a fantasy RPG or maybe Fading Suns is the scale. A WoD sandbox is indeed a fishtank. You are more likely to run into each other than in an ocean like some of those big world fantasy settings.
Funny thing is, when I said #3 I meant the social side of gaming itself, not of the open world, but you know what? If you consider the "open world" to be the distinct elements floating around in the medium that is the setting, and the "social side" to be the interaction between these elements, I think it's a damn fine way to formulaste what I and a few others have been speaking of.
Much like the fish tank was meant by the Gnome Stew writer as a different, and IMO far dumber analogy that you've grasped and refined into something meaningful.
Quote from: The Butcher;775766(http://thinkwhatyoulike.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/inception-poster-600x250.jpg)
The first rule of
Inception is, you can't talk about
Inception unless you link The Button (http://inception.davepedu.com/).
Quote from: jan paparazzi;775592- A fishtank is really a sandbox
- It looks like a WoD relationship map, so WoD games are sandbox too
- 50% of sandbox is open world, the other 50% is the social side
- The biggest difference between a WoD setting and a fantasy RPG or maybe Fading Suns is the scale. A WoD sandbox is indeed a fishtank. You are more likely to run into each other than in an ocean like some of those big world fantasy settings.
Maybe these would help: A Swashbuckler's Sandbox, Part 4 (http://black-vulmea.blogspot.com/2012/02/swashbucklers-sandbox-part-4.html) | The Social Megadungeon (http://black-vulmea.blogspot.com/2012/07/social-megadungeon.html) | The Social Network (http://black-vulmea.blogspot.com/2012/06/social-network.html#).
Quote from: The Butcher;775772I agree, it's a good thread.
Funny thing is, when I said #3 I meant the social side of gaming itself, not of the open world, but you know what? If you consider the "open world" to be the distinct elements floating around in the medium that is the setting, and the "social side" to be the interaction between these elements, I think it's a damn fine way to formulaste what I and a few others have been speaking of.
Much like the fish tank was meant by the Gnome Stew writer as a different, and IMO far dumber analogy that you've grasped and refined into something meaningful.
I figured the open world are the places you can visit. In case of a modern city that means districts and/ or neighbourhoods and of course buildings.
With the social side I meant the NPC's, their goals and their relations. And optionally different factions with also goals and relations.
Quote from: Doctor Jest;775694This also only works because that human brain only needs to explain the concepts to other human brains who have a shared frame of reference. And it's not really emulating a living, breathing world. More like emulating an emulation of a living breathing world. :)
I think a pc game just needs way too many different scripts depending on every action the players can do. It's that whole interactive story thing they are trying to make for years. It usually becomes pretty lineair and the opposite of a sandbox. The only games I know that really let the world respond to what you are doing is a game like The Walking Dead. Only the options are still limited, because otherwise it would mean they have to program a zillion different scenarios.
Quote from: The Ent;775672Sounds right to me.
Fishtank = "City/town-sized sandbox mostly about people (and their goals and actions)"?
Well, that was my interpretation. Me being used to WoD city sized settings with a lot of focus on social interaction and politics. But on this site I found out a lot of people play other settings (fantasy, sf) like this as well.
I always thought people played fantasy more like a board game, very min-maxing and combat focused. Like how I used to play Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. Making sure you use your pants +2 in the next fight and focusing on the combat roles of the characters.
Quote from: Doctor Jest;775685Until the city you are fighting to conquer or protect also happens to have a major scriptorium and library for the scroll hunter faction. And something very much like that happened in my Hellfrost game.
Yes, I don't mind that. I love that. Hellfrost has great factions. Very appealing. And I don't mind the interaction. I was just trying to point out those splats are different than vampire covenants or mage orders imo. The are all completely independent organisations doing their own thing in this world. In WoD games you form one society. There is a loose alliance between those factions and every splat fits a certain role. Which is great, but also very static. I find Hellfrost more dynamic in the way it's set up.
Quote from: jan paparazzi;775911Yes, I don't mind that. I love that. Hellfrost has great factions. Very appealing. And I don't mind the interaction. I was just trying to point out those splats are different than vampire covenants or mage orders imo. The are all completely independent organisations doing their own thing in this world. In WoD games you form one society. There is a loose alliance between those factions and every splat fits a certain role. Which is great, but also very static. I find Hellfrost more dynamic in the way it's set up.
I have only the most cursory knowledge of WoD, so I'll have to take your word for it. But I can say that having factions which are balanced against each other can also work well, especially if that balance is tenuous or fragile. At that point when the PCs enter the scene they are the proverbial bulls in the china shop that will see that delicate balance disrupted. Which in itself can be a lot of fun.
I think this is what most people do with the WoD.
WoD splats are usually with an idealogical focus. For example in vampire there is the Invictus (or the Ventrue clan in the old vamp) which is focused on power- and wealthmongering. This group is very traditional, because the current favors them. Then there are the Carthians (or the Brujah clan in the old vamp) who want radical change. They want to shake up the system either by talking or by force.
It's very unlikely these two groups want to work together. They will always be each other's nemesis and need to find some allies to make things go their way. I find this pretty static, because most games turn out the same. The relations between the factions are pretty fixed. It makes it predictable and doesn't appeal to me GM'ing such a game.
The Hellfrost factions are very practical as most fantasy splats are. They want to collect artifacts, fight for money or keep slavery at all cost, because they make money out of arena fights. There isn't a lot of words spend on how these groups relate to each other. With the exception of the Watchers of the Black Gate and the Seekers of the Black Key.
Someone once told me Fading Suns is a lot like new WoD, but I find that game much more dynamic as well. So it might just be me.