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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gorgon Zee" data-source="post: 7421788" data-attributes="member: 75787">The three concepts you mention are part of differentiating experiences, but they are aspects, not classifications. In answer to your question "What are the different kinds of 'game' you can have?" I'd suggest that the answer is "too many to list".The email you quote suggests a parallel to boardgames: "Catan versus Jenga versus Gloomhaven"In boardgames there is a useful concept many people use to compare boardgames. It's very hard to list "the best game of type XXX" as types are ill-defined and they have overlap. Gloomhaven might be the best "dungeon-crawl style game best with two-three players who don't mind a fair amount of book-keeping" but that's not a terribly helpful statement. Instead there is the concept of only keeping games for which you personally find no other game has the same experience/feel that is better.So I keep Gloomhaven because it has much the same feel/experience as (say) Descent, but I like it more.So, for roleplaying games, I think the quote above that helps most is "If you can swap one world for another and gameplay doesn't change much, why bother?"So, if I am playing in a d20-based game set in the Forgotten Realms where I wander around and play isolated modules (DDAL) I am unlikely to want to play a d20-based game set in a similar world where I wander around and play isolated modules (Pathfinder). They have much the same experience. However I would want to play Call of Cthulhu or Night's Black Agents.So mechanics generate a different experience. However I've also run a dozen long campaigns in many systems -- often repeating mechanics. So then it falls to world-building or setting to make a unique experience.As an example, I ran two Numenéra campaigns. One has the players flying a spaceship off through portals and exploring strange new worlds and unique civilizations. Another has the players as part of a military expedition force dragging a large artifact by foot very slowly back from the wilds to the home lands. Same system, same world, but the setting for the play is very different.Overall, my take-away from this email is: Try something different. If you find you are thinking of building a world and it seems similar to someone else's, maybe change something. It's not like there's a list of 200 different experiences and you can pick from them -- it's a call to look at what is out there, and be different</blockquote>

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