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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8528461" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Not...really sure I get what the difference between "Card Trick" and "Railroad" is. I don't really think it's a different gameplay style if you're giving the illusion of choices that matter. Is the idea that a "Railroad" game is really only for module play, whereas "Card Trick" is hand-crafted?My style isn't listed, though Bingo Card is closest. I write some things, attempting to fill the world with interesting opportunities. But the players have also hared off on their own and spawned entire other adventures that I only "wrote" because I had to prepare something for a session the next day or the like (I do plenty of improv, but it helps a lot when I have some materials to work with--my well of spontaneous improvisation is much deeper than I ever expected, but it does run dry now and then.)That is, the implication I get from the "Bingo Card" label is that it's like a book full of color-by-number images. The players can choose which ones they want to fill in, but they only have the listed images and have to follow the numbers within that image. Mine has some pre-made elements. But it also has elements created by the players (e.g. Rahim and the Silver Thread, good-guy underworld types) and locations dreamed up because a character half-remembers something relevant or the like. Players declaring certain allies they have, or collaborating with me to determine new locations to visit, etc. It can't be a Bingo Card because some of this stuff is getting written onto the card by the player--and other stuff may get clipped off of the card by player actions.The description of the "Matrix campaign" is closer, except that I have chosen not to actually make any true hard limits, and only very very gently enforce any soft ones. That is, I have told my players that if they wish to, they can totally just pack up and leave, and I'll adapt to that. If they did so, they would likely eventually hear about bad things that happened in the lands they left (unless they intentionally avoid that possibility, which is feasible). But nothing happening there is big enough to affect the whole dang world, so the only consequences would be leaving behind the people they've met to whatever fate awaits them. They have, unprompted, brought up that they value that I respect their decisions enough to do that, but that they're sufficiently invested in the local area that they don't really want to leave. (One character has struggled with this--he wants to see the whole world, but he also wants to put down roots and teach, and it's actually really delightful seeing him struggle over those conflicting desires.)For myself, I would call this a "sandroad" (there is a road, but it's got lots of messy sandy bits along the way), whereas a "railbox" would be one where you have many pieces that are railroads individually, but the setting surrounding them is much more open-ended and doesn't really have any set destination. The first part of the term refers to the micro scale, the second to the macro scale: a road made up of sand vs a box filled with rails, as opposed to a road made from rails and a box filled with sand.</blockquote>

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