Layering Investigations to create the Ultimate Sandbox

[salientmind]

Ok. I'm trying to understand the investigation system a little better. I've read through the long discussion of investigations that came after the core book release. I understand that it is meant to provide players with more sway/input over how the story goes. I generally decide on an Antagonist at the beginning of a chronicle and a general "end scene" I think it would be cool to have. After that I work towards those things, but I change the chronicle according to players actions. So that scene might happen, or that antagonist might end up an ally. Whatever.

If I wanted to create the ultimate sandbox. I would take that Antagonist. In my M:tA game, his name was the Mandarin. He was inspired by the villain of big trouble in little china, but he was far from comical. He was a long lived Thysus desperately seeking the immortality promised by legends of Taoist alchemists at the end of his life. He had a lot of plots happening at once to accomplish this. Some were straight forward to uncover, and some were not.

Let's say he had three:
1) Steal an Artifact from a Censor through a gang he has influence over
2) Kidnap itinerant young people and hide them in his shadow palace
3) Use the artifact & young people to compel a powerful spirit of Resurrection to take the youth as a sacrifice and remake him as a young man.

In the beginning of the Chronicle, I decide the following:

1. I want the Chronicle to last for 20 sessions.
   1. Main Mysyery: Use the artifact & young people to compel a powerful spirit of Resurrection to take the youth as a sacrifice and remake him as a young man.
      1. Requires 10 clues
      2. Once per session interval
2. I want the first story to last 10 sessions, for a slow start.
   1. Main Mystery: Steal an Artifact from a Censor through a gang he has influence over
      1. Requires 5 Clues
      2. Once per Session Interval
3. I want to plan for the second arch to take 10 session, but I want it to be faster paced.
   1. Main Mystery: Kidnap itinerant young people and hide them in his shadow palace
      1. Requires 10 clues
      2. Two per session interval

So, I established my mysteries. The number of clues required, and the interval. I write down in detail the plans of the Mandarin, what his people are up to, the names of his people and the names of their victims. I also prepare other NPCS as necessary. Then I start the game.

As they inspect an attempted break in at the censors home, I ask them "What are you looking for and how do you do it?", and my player responds with "I am looking for DNA Evidence", so they roll and get a success. So I give them the clue. It is "A small amount of blog is smeared on the wood base the glass cabinet is in.", and it has an element. This is a clue applying to the mystery of the first story. Later that day, the character runs the blood through a database looking for connections to mages. They roll, and they get a success. Then they get a clue to the main mystery. "They are directly connected to a servant of the mandarin." This clue doesn't really help solve the immediate mystery, but it contributes to the larger mystery. So by layering many interconnected mysteries, playing with intervals and careful setup... Chronicles of Darkness becomes the perfect sandbox.

What do you think?

[wyrdhamster]

I just run face paced with Clues. I make limit of them needed to Uncover the Truth and roll with this. In Mage you can quickly get next Clues from simple Knowing spells ( I hope it will be addressed in Signs of Sorcery ) so unless Mystery has high Opacity, cabal can quickly crack ANYTHING you will present them. And it's OKAY - Mage is about using what you learn, not only learning itself.

My London group uncovered by using plot ( not Clues ) great Mystery of Yellow Sign that mages of City could not uncovered in centuries. They also are hunting 7 connected Archmasters, each as separated Investigation, with different Clues Pool.

In my New England/Boston group, they uncovered as Sleepers basic Mystery of High Speech - but once they become mages, most invested researcher just solved 'all the pieces' on her own, seeing so samples.

My advise is simple - Investigations and Clues are nice framework, but if PCs solves Investigation by means of story - they just solved it. Artificially holding 'you did not collected everything!' or 'we need next 5 game session to come to this, sorry' just miss the point of system.

[salientmind]

Right, but Clues could be a good tool for managing pacing. I would never deny my players the solution. If they worked out the solution on their own, I would rather reward them then bind them to an arbitrary system element.

But from a chronicle planning perspective, does the original post make sense?

[Charlaquin]

It sounds like an excellent pacing tool, but I wouldn't really describe it as a sandbox. It looks like a classic branching adventure structure to me.

[Claire Redfield]

It's a great way to weave different plot threads together, and give a sense of freedom in pursuing various goals. Great work!

[K9ine]

It sounds like an excellent pacing tool, but I wouldn't really describe it as a sandbox. It looks like a classic branching adventure structure to me.

In my experiance a sandbox still needs some structure to start with. When you run a sandbox do you not come up with antagonist/motive?

[Charlaquin]

In my experiance a sandbox still needs some structure to start with. When you run a sandbox do you not come up with antagonist/motive?

Sure you do. Every adventure needs motivation, resolution, and structure. Sandbox is a type of structure, one where the players can engage with the scenes in any order. The proposed adventure here isn't a sandbox, it's a branching structure - one where scenes are interconnected in a nonlinear but not completely unbounded fashion.

[who.is.matt]

When I run my own games (as opposed to running published modules or campaigns) I generally take a sandbox approach. I don't really come up with a scripted story, since in my experience the players tend to go off the rails at the first opportunity. Instead, I detail a few key locations, figure out the important people in the setting and their motivations, figure out a basic timeline of what will happen if the characters don't intervene, and come up with various clues or hooks that might get the characters involved. I'll come up with an initial scene or two to introduce the characters and the setting, then I let the players take the wheel and I modify the goals and motivations of the NPCs and the timeline of events based on the characters' choices and actions. So yeah, CofD's Investigation mechanics play into that pretty well.

[Charlaquin]

I'm of the opinion that improvising is just planning and executing in the same step. So while you might not plan your story's structure before the players engage with it, it still has a structure. Just more of an emergent structure than one you planned ahead of time. Improvosed structures tend to end up as hybrids involving linear, branching and open (or "sandbox") elements.

[who.is.matt]

I'm of the opinion that improvising is just planning and executing in the same step. So while you might not plan your story's structure before the players engage with it, it still has a structure. Just more of an emergent structure than one you planned ahead of time. Improvosed structures tend to end up as hybrids involving linear, branching and open (or "sandbox") elements.

If it's not scripted, and the players control where the story goes, how is that not the very definition of a sandbox game? It's going to be linear in the sense that one thing happens after the other, but so is life. The events could happen in any order, depending on the characters' choices. The timeline I mentioned that I sketch out is purely what the NPCs would do if the characters don't intervene -- basically the result of their motivations and goals. What actually happens depends entirely on the characters. Most video games described as sandbox games have more of a scripted plot (with the notable exceptions of games like Minecraft that have no plot at all). So if this isn't a sandbox-style game, I'm curious as to what you would consider to be one.

[Charlaquin]

If it's not scripted, and the players control where the story goes, how is that not the very definition of a sandbox game? It's going to be linear in the sense that one thing happens after the other, but so is life. The events could happen in any order, depending on the characters' choices. The timeline I mentioned that I sketch out is purely what the NPCs would do if the characters don't intervene -- basically the result of their motivations and goals. What actually happens depends entirely on the characters. Most video games described as sandbox games have more of a scripted plot (with the notable exceptions of games like Minecraft that have no plot at all). So if this isn't a sandbox-style game, I'm curious as to what you would consider to be one.

Like I said, most improvised structures do end up with openstructural elements, as well as linear structural elements and branching structural elements.

The way I look at it, every story has a motivation (or, why the protagonists should care), a resolution (or, how the players know when it's over), and a structure (or, how one scene connects to another). You might plan those elements all ahead of time, or you might improvise them as you go, but one way or another they're there. There are three types of structures: linear, branching, and open. Linear structures are where there is only one path from one scene to the next, scene C always follows scene B, which is always preceeded by scene A. This is the simplest structure to plan, but leaves the players with the least agency. Open structures are the opposite, where scenes can be engaged with in any order. These leave players with the most agency, but are the most difficult to plan ahead of time, which isn't necessarily a problem if you are good at improvising, but can lead to pacing issues since you have no way of knowing what order the players will engage with the scenes in. Branching structures are a compromise between the two, where certain specific scenes connect to other specific scenes, but instead of A always following B, A might connect to B and C, and B and C might both connect to each other, but only C leads to D, and from D you can hit up E, F, or G, but you only have time to hit up two of those scenes before H happens (or whatever). Branching structures afford the players less agency than open structures and are more difficult to pace than linear structures, but they tend to strike a pretty good balance. And stories don't have to stick with just one structure, they can use elements of all three. The part of my example branching structure where only scene C leads to scene D is actually a brief element of linear structuring, and the point where you can go to E, F, or G from D is a brief element of open structuring. A truly hybrid structure would probably involve larger open segments and/or longer linear segments, with a branching structure tying it all together

What most people refer to as sandbox games are usually either games that are entirely open structure, or games where the storyteller doesn't actually have any structure planned, which can lead to improvising one or more of the above structures (often without even realizing that's what they're doing), or it can lead to a hot mess where the PCs kind of fuck around at random until something happens, depending on how skilled the storyteller is at improvising. Personally, I have ended up doing the latter enough times that I know I need to plan my structure more intentionally and in advance. However, I do plan sandbox games, especially in CofD. When planning a sandbox game, I create scenes under a primarily open structure, though there might be some places where a few scenes follow after one another in linear fashion, and/or a few scenes that branch out to other specific scenes. Other Storytellers are better at improvising these things than I am.