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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8582178" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Sooo....Have we actually gotten anywhere since my first post on page 3, here? Because it doesn't seem like it. We all agree that &quot;sandbox&quot; and &quot;railroad&quot; are terms with meaning (whenever those terms came into being). And it's been generally agreed that it's possible to mix the two ideas: a &quot;sandroad,&quot; a sequence of smaller sandboxes where the overall structure is &quot;linear&quot; but each area is a (semi-contained) free-for-all, or a &quot;railbox,&quot; a collection of fixed-event adventures that are all purely opt-in such that the final path or destination of the campaign is hard to predict but each individual segment is &quot;on rails.&quot;The &quot;bingo card&quot; example is similar to a railbox on this analysis, while a sandroad is perhaps the ideal end result of the &quot;card trick&quot; example, where players feel they have had sufficient freedom but ultimately everything they did was All According To Plan. So those seem less like four distinct options and more like two options, each of which allows (at least) two further variations.Then we have the &quot;matrix&quot; campaign, which seems to take elements of both railbox and sandbox: the GM works with the players to develop goals that the characters naturally want to pursue for one reason or another, and the world is then populated with threats and intrigues relevant to those goals. Clues can point proverbially inward to parts of the matrix already known, or they can point proverbially outward to new locations of interest. As time goes on, there will eventually be some limits, more analogous to the walls of the metaphorical &quot;box.&quot;There's been mention of &quot;node-based&quot; campaigns, but I'm not sure how those differ from either a matrix or a sandbox.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 8582178, member: 6790260"] Sooo.... Have we actually gotten [I]anywhere[/I] since my first post on page 3, here? Because it doesn't seem like it. We all agree that "sandbox" and "railroad" are terms with meaning (whenever those terms came into being). And it's been generally agreed that it's possible to mix the two ideas: a "sandroad," a sequence of smaller sandboxes where the [I]overall structure[/I] is "linear" but each area is a (semi-contained) free-for-all, or a "railbox," a collection of fixed-event adventures that are all purely opt-in such that the final path or destination of the campaign is hard to predict but each individual segment is "on rails." The "bingo card" example is similar to a railbox on this analysis, while a sandroad is perhaps the ideal end result of the "card trick" example, where players [I]feel[/I] they have had sufficient freedom but ultimately everything they did was All According To Plan. So those seem less like four distinct options and more like two options, each of which allows (at least) two further variations. Then we have the "matrix" campaign, which seems to take elements of both railbox and sandbox: the GM works with the players to develop goals that the characters naturally [I]want[/I] to pursue for one reason or another, and the world is then populated with threats and intrigues relevant to those goals. Clues can point proverbially inward to parts of the matrix already known, or they can point proverbially outward to new locations of interest. As time goes on, there will eventually be some limits, more analogous to the walls of the metaphorical "box." There's been mention of "node-based" campaigns, but I'm not sure how those differ from either a matrix or a sandbox. [/QUOTE]

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