How should we properly handle answers that show an apparent lack of system mastery?

Question

I'm sure this is a problem in other tags, but it seems to come up relatively often in 4e and I feel like most of the time we handle it well. However, today was an exception.

A few questions about mounts

Was asked and while there are some questions there that merit advice, but largely the question is seeking to understand the rules of the game.

Shortly after this question was posted, this answer came through. The poster of the answer doesn't seem to have played 4e, at all. Their answer contains the basic advice "stop worrying about the rules and do whatever seems right" which might be good advice in some systems, but is terrible advice for 4e. Specifically this paragraph was troubling:

A mount is a creature. Treat it like it. An enemy could attack it or attack the rider. Don´t really pay attention to the 4E RAW about it - prefer using commom sense instead. It will make a game more imagininative and fun over time, and you will get away from that "MMO-with-dice" that 4E feels like. If you like that feel, well, that´s ok, however. [sic]

This is nothing more than system bashing, and shows a clear lack of both expertise in the system and respect for the person asking the question. At best this is an unhelpful answer, at worse it's a clear non-answer.

However, when this was pointed out in the comments, and (assumably) in a flag, the moderator response was:

4e does not equal RAW, there are plenty of people with a variety of play style preferences that pick it up as their first rpg just because it's on the bookstore shelf. This answer is valid since the question does not say "raw rules only, no advice." Therefore this answer is not challenging the frame of the question. No more comment fighting about it please.

Do we really want inexpert answers being validated in this way? This question was asking for some advice, yes, but mostly it's a rules question. And unless you're going to provide both the rules, and the advice, it's not a complete answer. Add blatant system bashing to it and it should be deleted on sight. Leaving answers like this make this community poisonous to all play styles.

Answer 1

Downvote them. You're right, we don't want to validate answers giving poor advice, and that's why we have our downvote button. Use it liberally.

Ideally, if you can, provide a competing answer, but naturally understanding whether an answer is bad doesn't mean we also know the right answer.

As for whether the answer is valid: it is. The question is asking: "what's the rules for all this stuff?" and the answer is saying "stop fretting about the rules, just handle it like this." That's a valid way to respond to a question, and we've provided a lot of good answers around that format. So it's a valid answer to the question, and won't get removed as Not An Answer.

That said, whether it's a valid answer doesn't affect its quality level.

Answer 2

Well, this escalated quickly.

I'm the guy who started it, I guess, because I flagged the answer and made a few comments on it. And I did not flag it or comment on it because of "lack of system mastery," nor did I ask for deletion.

I agreed with the answer's points, but it had two fundamental problems which I thought made it a bad answer despite my agreement, and which I felt were imminently fixable: it was rude and it ignored part of the question.

First, the answer (and other comments made by the author, which are now gone) used non-useful anti-system language, saying that any system which didn't make "common sense" a core priority was inherently and objectively bad. It specifically used the "MMO" language which is historically associated with knee-jerk anti-4e diatribes that aren't based on any understanding of the system. I felt these were inappropriate to the site's behaviour policies, made the poster look less informed than he seemed to be, and obscured the good points the answer brought up.

Second, the answer deliberately avoided addressing a core part of the question. The question asked explicitly for certain 4e rulings, which the answer did not provide. That doesn't mean the answer should only have provided RAW --obviously the querent was asking for guidance too-- but that it clearly ignored a major part of the question, and that made it a poor answer.

After a quick back-and-forth in comments in which I realised the issues would not easily be solved through comment input, I flagged it because I thought a moderator might be better able to address the points. It seemed like the basic "don't bash systems, answer the whole question" issues which moderators deal with regularly.

I did not intend to call for deletion, nor to claim that RAW was the only acceptable kind of answer. I'm not sure where these ideas came from, but they did not willingly come from me. I am rather appalled that they have arisen at all.

Answer 3

First, system mastery is not the end all be all of gaming. GM techniques span systems and gaming groups and many groups have loads of fun without "system mastery." System mastery is not a requirement for being an expert gamer. But that's not really relevant to the issue at hand, this question's title is disingenuous. It's about what playstyles are "allowed" to answer 4e questions; that an answer based on rulings-over-rules "is not in line with the querent's chosen system."

Many people play 4e as a RAW-fest, but not all do. As D&D is (was?) the leading brand in RPGs, it is often played by many people on the strength of it "being on the bookstore shelf" and people try to bring their own playstyles to it. That's been its boon and curse over the years, as people have used D&D to play everything from pure minis combat to high concept sci-fi games to historical accuracy games (to, apparently, "Finding Nemo" type games)... All those kinds of gamers are welcome here, regardless of how well they fit the majority opinion, "designer intent," or other presuppositions.

I will remind everyone about the long-standing question Can D&D Fourth Edition be played effectively in a non-gamist manner? Some folks here are basically saying "no, and non-gamist answers regarding 4e are invalid." That is not actually what people answered that question with, by and large. They largely said "well, it tends towards that, but you can do it differently." Let's all keep that in mind, that others can do things differently than we would.

The questioner did not clarify whether they wanted "a RAW answer" or "a GM advice answer," and given the statement of the question and its tagging, their intent was unclear. I posted a comment asking for that clarification, instead of assuming my own playstyle is the one associated with it. @JonathanHobbs says I pointed out the answer was challenging the frame of the question - actually the reverse, others claimed that and (incorrectly) pointed to the meta Q as some kind of "proof" that answers challenging the frame should be deleted (not a valid interpretation of that meta) - I disagreed, saying the answer does NOT clearly challenge frame and it only does if you make the "4e = RAW and that's the only playstyle" assumption.

Furthermore, the answer is legitimate by any and all of this site's rules and guidance. You may not like it or agree with it and that's what the voting system is for. You trot out the banner of "oh but it's poisonous to other playstyles," but basically you want this question removed so that its playstyle is silenced. That's unacceptable and will not be tolerated on this site. Propose a comment or an edit to the language you consider "bashing" if you would like. Could the answer have been stated better? Yes, sure. To be fair, it's a lot more coherent than the original question was, we get all types here.

One last piece of advice - be patient. The answerer has now replied here on this meta Q, stating his 4e experience and explaining some of what's going on, which has mollified some folks already. The questioner may also chime in given time. This is why we don't immediately delete things someone doesn't like. Instead of just rapidly escalating more and more - this has escalated from me declining a single flag to delete a not-so-great answer to comment wars and meta questions and shrieking about "abusive moderation" in chat in a couple quick hours - try to use the system. Vote. Comment on why you think something could be improved. Let people respond. The nuclear option is not always the best, and immediate escalation when one doesn't get one's way breeds conflict instead of a happy site. Give questioners and askers more than a couple minutes to refine their thoughts. Edit your previous comments to refine rather than turning them into a mini-chat. Give people the benefit of the doubt. We try to keep high quality here on the site but that doesn't mean things have to get perfect in 5 minutes or be mod-deleted. We err on the side of NOT mod-closing or mod-deleting things immediately (or at all), as that would really be abuse. The line can and should be wide.

Answer 4

First of all. I´ve played 4E since birth, and all versions of D&D for a long, long time. If I don´t see a rule as "good", that doesn´t mean I don´t know the system "at all", as people were saying. My viewpoint is different. Not wrong, just different.

Im the author of the anwser and I'm really... surprised by all the grudge against that post. Ive played 4E for a good time, and I suppose that "Don´t liking 4E as-is" is a valid viewpoint. I don't enshirine 4E rules - I admit that some of them are good, and I can see that some of them are not. That question was not Raw and i suppose I can say that a rule of the system is bad. It´s my opinion, my advice. He asked for advice. Not for RAW.

It seens a crime proposing a variant rule for the system for some people. Im not Bashing 4E. 4E is a good system for some things, a bad system for others, and it goes into the same pitfall for all D&D games - mount rules sucks. I would say the same for 3.5.

My advice may seen "terrible" for some, but it worked for my group. It works for most non-gamist groups. My intent is to make his game FUN, not RAW-Viable, and that the point most people miss.

Sometimes books simply don´t work. This is to be an site were EXPERTS give advice. Just trowing rules at people without considering their implications is not what an RPG Expert does - it is what Rules Lawyers do. Im feeling really uneasy about all of that negative repercussion. My point was to be helpful, not to be "aligned with 4E people".

Also, my mother-language is not - as you can see - english. Im sorry if my words may seen a little off, but I´m trying my best.

Answer 5

I put my mind on this overnight and starting to see something that is becoming clearer as I read more 4E questions here. That´s not an 4E bashing issue, that´s an issue of Bashing someone that seens to bash 4E. I never said that "4E is bad as a whole", never raised the flag "don´t use 4E". I was talking about 4E mount rules and that they suck, IMHO, and some people took that as system bashing.

4E have an MMO feel, and that is not a bad thing. Some people, me included, don´t like it, but I won´t be blind enough to say that 4E is trash. Some people like that feel, and for some games, I can have fun in it too. WoTC build that game on the wake of WoW, so is kinda obvious that they tried to appeal to that public. It was a marketing strategy. WoW is already D&D-ish in essence, but 4E put lots of MMO-Mechanichs (Powers, for start) on the table, making it possible to play games that have an MMO Feel (again, it is not a bad thing) on the table. Heck, I used 4E to play countless WoW Games, and it just works for that. It´s another feel, not classic D&D feel.

Saying that comparing MMO´s to 4E is "historically related to bashing 4E" is a poor excuse to what happened here. I was not - again - was not bashing 4E. It was even stated by WoTC that that was the whole point from the start. Look at what Collins said about 4E:

"As professional game designers, we look at all games for lessons. Certainly, the lessons we learn from online games are going to be the most obvious ones because they have a lot of people familiar with the sources, but there's also lessons about turn management from European board games, interface ideas from card games."

Emphasis mine.

Look at this artcile for the complete context., but keep in mind that I just wanted that quote from it. I don´t think that Andy did a bad work on 4E. As the 4E proposal, it´s good. Some people don´t like, but it does not mean that 4E is "trash".

If I was to bash 4E, I would start poiting another game to the questionner, but that was not the case.

So, people, when the designers say that a game is similar to a MMO in some way, STOP bashing people that agree with it. Please.