Getting a straight answer from questions filled with frame challenges

Question

On the question How to create a villain for level 1 players, there are many great answers, however they are all frame challenges. They don't help someone who needs to actually create a conventional villain for a level 1 party.

I added a bounty requesting non-frame challenge answers, but it was suggested that I ask a new question or post an answer myself. The former seems like it would just be closed as a duplicate; the latter would be great if I already had an answer, but I don't.

I know frame challenges are a core part of the site, but there doesn't seem to be a mechanism for getting straight answers.

Answer 1

It's all about the original question, the querent's goals, and the community's additions

This is really a tough question because the question was fairly clear in it's request:

• Wants a BBEG for level 1 players
• Wants to know how to go about making one

The answers that came in were some frame challenges, but some also did directly answer the above question and need.

The bounty

But then your bounty came in, and you wanted additional material on:

• How to create a conventional villain for a level 1 group

Which really is the same thing and already answered. You also included a specific idea (Vorka from We Be Goblins.) It's unclear to me that if you already have something specific in mind, why not create an answer around that yourself? You've got the goal and the tools to do that.

And it remains unclear what is missing from answers, or if you simply misread the answers and didn't realize your clarification wasn't answered. If you did see those and think something remains missing, then being clear as to exactly what's missing would also have been helpful.

Otherwise, looking at the clarification to see if it really is a clarification or if it's a separate question you'd like answered that wasn't included in the original or in existing answers would suggest asking a new one would work better.

Chicken or egg?

After reading several responses of yours in the comments, I think the disconnect here for many of us is that the original question really just focuses on the creature itself.

Your bounty, however, is about the encounter with the BBEG. While BBEG encounters can be different, and usually are, it is encounter design - not creature design. And while those are very much tied together, I've often found the need to change my future encounter plans after player narrative actions.

Designing the BBEG is the first step. Figuring out how to make the encounter, with that specific BBEG, is a separate question and should be asked separately.

Considerations on how to alter BBEG and encounter for a level 1 player group is a concern, but I honestly don't feel that it's different from much other encounter design in terms of planning, considerations, and balance.

In general, it's always okay to ask for more!

As long as the request fully fits in with the content of the original question. If it does, then you are simply bountying for more directly relevant information or asking for something that is missing.

But if the community leans on the frame challenge, one should likely listen to the community. It's always okay to ask, but don't be upset if you don't get it because you may be asking the community do something that they already said they don't really agree with. The frame challenge exists for a reason!

Answer 2

It's really hard

Getting a straight answer to a question that expresses a minority viewpoint can be extremely difficult on this site. Here's what I do:

1. Accept you are going to lose ~50 rep on this question and it's going to be very downvoted. If you are very low rep, you have to be careful to ration asking real questions with asking popular ones. When I was low-rep the balance I found was to not ask more than one real question every 2-3 successfully popular ones, but the exact ratio will depend on how much you want answers from the site v.s. how much you want rep-growth.

2. Post the question during a low-activity period. Most frame-challenge answers that don't actually answer the question at all are posted quickly with very little effort put in, and are pretty reactionary. If your question can get off the front page, it's much more likely to get a good answer. In my experience, question posting drops less than bad-answer-posting during off hours, so you can improve your odds somewhat that way.

3. Preempt frame challenges as much as possible in your question. Make explicitly clear the positions that make the frame challenge incorrect and require answers to adopt them or be more flagrantly insulting. Frame challenges that reach a sufficient level of insulting can usually get flag-deleted as not-an-answer or possibly even significantly downvoted. For example, with the question you're asking about, you would say something like "For campaigns that are played entirely at level 1, how does one create a climactic, campaign-ending BBEG fight?" You'll still get some ignoramus posting "maybe consider not ending it with a fight with the BBEG", but you probably won't get more than two or three of those, and possibly none if you implement more strategies to discourage that sort of answer.

4. Make your question long, with significant complex discussions of the issues at hand. Most people posting low-quality answers without putting much thought into it think they are being helpful, because you are dumb and so their 5-second google search or immediate reactionary gut-feeling is sufficient to enlighten you. If your question uses proper grammar, spelling, and syntax that helps a lot, of course, but one assumes you are already doing that. Complex discussions-- as opposed to more reasonable concise research-showing-- discourage the idea that you are dumb even for people who post low-quality content without reading very much. Also most of them will give up on your question as soon as they see it is page-length rather than paragraph-length, because reading takes effort, so that helps, too.

5. Stay online for a couple hours after your question is posted so you can immediately post negative comments on answers that frame-challenge your question without answering it. Point out that the answer doesn't address the question, and explain how what it is doing is bad and dismisses your kind of gaming as not valuable. Downvote it immediately. Negative comments significantly discourage drive-by upvoting, and if you can get a bad answer to even just -1 it will incur drive-by downvoting.

6. If an answer is sufficiently insulting and a frame-challenge with no real answer, you can flag it as 'not-an-answer' and it might get deleted. Don't flag it as offensive, even though that's the actual problem with it, because the bar for that is astronomically higher, and 'not-an-answer' lets the moderators and the user in question both save face/ be nonconfrontational in their interaction. Usually, though, in this circumstance, it works better to just wait and let the moderators or another user post a comment and delete it of their own accord-- the bar for deletions recommended by not-the-op seems to be lower especially for frame challenges.

7. Wait ~ a month. Usually, if you can keep your question unanswered for a week or so you will eventually get a good answer.