FAQ Index for Role-playing Games Stack Exchange

Question

For frequently-asked questions common to all sites in the network, see FAQ for Stack Exchange sites.

For official guidance from Stack Exchange, visit the Help Center.

Asking questions

• How do we ask and answer subjective questions?

• What kind of questions can I ask here?

  • Are Game Recommendation Questions On Topic? [2015]

  • Are tool recommendation questions on topic?

  • Are questions about alignment on topic?

  • Are character build or optimization questions on topic?

  • Are campaign research questions on topic? [2012]

  • Are "choose your own adventure" questions on topic?

  • Are "list questions" on topic?

  • Are questions about rule intent on-topic? [2022]

• I want to ask for recommendations, but that's off topic. Is there any way to ask my question?

• I've been told my question is better suited to a forum, but where should I go?

• Should I use a narrow system tag, or use a broader tag?

• How is the [system-agnostic] tag supposed to be used?

• How can I ask a good homebrew review question?

• Should questions include System/Setting in title if tagged with system/setting?

Writing answers

• What are the citation expectations of answers on RPG Stack Exchange?

• Is homebrew an acceptable answer to a question?

• Should I be requesting people answer the question independently?

• How do we handle a desire to challenge the frame of a question?

• What's a frame challenge?

Comments

• Why are site comments being deleted?

• Should users refrain from answers (or partial answers) in comments?

• Why is an answer being downvoted without any comments?

• A question has some facts majorly wrong: should I be correcting them in comments or an answer?

Etiquette

• Can we affirm that RPG.SE embraces a plurality of playstyles?

• Is this site for experts, or not?

• Is profanity allowed on RPG.SE?

• When a Question Changes Completely, Should it be a New Question?

• Eek! A troll in the Stack! What do I do?

• What is an "edit war" and is it ever appropriate?

Editing and formatting

• Don't signal your edits in text

• Is there a functional purpose to putting things in code text here?

• Use real headers instead of fake headers

• Is there a style guide for posts?

• MathJax guide for RPG.SE: How to format pretty tables and equations?

Community moderation and curation

• Why was my question closed as too broad, unclear, or opinion-based?

• How to deal with questions that just don't understand the scope of the RPG landscape?

• How to deal with feedback questions about house-rules?

• What should I do about spam questions?

• How should we use Community Wiki? [2016]

• Does "Ask the DM / GM" equate to "Primarily opinion based?"

• If an answer to question A can be found in question B, should we close A as duplicate of B?

• What should I do when a question does not specify the game system being used?

Miscellaneous

• How does all the various Stack Exchange functionality work?

• Can I send private messages to users?

External links

• Good Subjective, Bad Subjective

• Writing the Perfect Question by Jon Skeet

• How to Ask Questions the Smart Way

• What is the XY problem?

• Gorilla vs. Shark

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Is your question missing? How to add a question to this FAQ:

First check whether it's part of the FAQ for Stack Exchange sites.

Also check to see if a question tagged faq-proposal matches your question.

If the question doesn't exist at all on meta yet, you'll need to create it first: ask a new question on meta asking only the question, stated plainly and simply, in the question body. The answer goes in an answer.

Given you've checked all of the above, you can propoes a question for this FAQ using the following procedure:

1. Tag it as faq-proposal.
2. Propose its addition to the FAQ in FAQ Proposal Index for Role-playing Games Stack Exchange
3. When the community is in favor of adding to the FAQ, diamond moderators will add the faq tag plus a “Return to FAQ Index” link at the end of the question.