When I was first getting into Vampire: the Masquerade, it seemed like the perfect setting for an urban sandbox campaign, but as I learned more it seemed the procedures just weren't there. At least for a long time, the publishers eschewed random encounter and event tables as a shibboleth, and rather than creating procedures for sandbox play like I like, they encouraged DMs ("storytellers") to craft their own intentional narratives. That's a great approach, but I always wanted to see my own proceduralist vision of Vampire realized.
After playing in a couple campaigns using rules from the Revised Edition era, I finally cracked VtM 5e and found some interesting additions. Rules for predation to give a framework for night-to-night play, and rules for domains and turf that suggest a basic blood economy. An appendix procedure for downtime projects. It was all loosey goosey, but with a bit of effort could be a great boon to the creation of proceduralist sandbox play.
Welcome to the Greater Stirling Metropolitan Area, centered around a fictional city that is to Iowa as Chicago is to Illinois. Home to about a hundred kindred, each district and ward is fleshed out in brief, enabling specific and creative challenges as a coterie of PCs attempt to establish themselves, both fighting street by bloody street and engaging in the complicated social scene of a vampiric society turning against itself in a city of wasted potential and renewing sorrows.
Here is the doc, including the basic procedures (still a bit loose but less loosely goosey), the random tables, and Stirling by night, including a roster of all vampires and a social calendar in overview.
Here is the social calendar sheet for Stirling in 2024, which you can copy and add to.
