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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jay Verkuilen" data-source="post: 7759143" data-attributes="member: 6873517">Ah. Right, I think that's the part I don't care about. I run things the way I run them and wouldn't substantially change my style depending on the game, though obviously themes will shift. I'll certainly look at the rules but if the designers assume something I don't care for, I will usually change it or ignore, assuming it's possible. Sometimes things are just too embedded in the system to do that. They're fine as far as they go but there are very few meaningful powers (broadly speaking) that help social interaction and they are often highly costly to choose, especially for characters that would logically have them. Hmmm, the big difference between what I tend to do, assuming I have time to lay things out, is create an area with a basic set of conflicts and locations in which to explore them and then turn the PCs loose, filling in details as attention gets focused. It's very much like The Secret of Bone Hill, which is more of a small sandbox campaign setting, though that one didn't have any kind of larger story goal. "Mapping" a city by listing out the power groups and indicating pictorially what their relationships were was something that the original Vampire the Masquerade pioneered, and it works quite well. This just generalized the idea of a dungeon. One thing that I've found as I've gotten older and the folks I play with have similarly is that pure sandbox gaming is too hard for us. We need to get pulled into the conflict more quickly. Still, I like to set up an area with possible directions and choices and do let the players guide things quite a bit, though I will throw them events and such to keep them going. This has become more relevant with the game being mostly online, too, because online systems are clunky for a lot of really large maps.  What I tend not to do, at least when I can, is give just one path. I try to give a few. So, yeah, once you've chosen to go on a particular path then it's going to be more linear or a sequence of events or a small dungeon or what have you, but which path you're choosing can vary quite a bit. I also have events happen to the PCs, for instance once setting up an adventure by having one of the PCs getting summoned and then presenting the rest of the group with the choice of what to do. They followed him via magic and then, having spent a good bit of time solving the problem posed by the summoners, got involved in conflicts there, which lead to various dungeons, social interaction, and so on. I didn't have that all designed and waiting for them, but had the rough overall outline of what was in that location. Had they not been further interested, I would have dropped it.</blockquote>

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