Our usual practice (for questions put here first that we consider off-topic but think might fit somewhere else) is to usually avoid âautomaticâ migration to other sites. Instead, we just close them as off-topic and comment with a link to the other site to look intoâwith the explicit warning that itâs the querentâs responsibility to check that siteâs rules and make sure their question fits there, too. We do this because itâs hard for us to remain up-to-date on the expectations and policies of each other site, and it seems unfair for us to shove our mess onto another site, particularly if it wonât fare any better there than it did here.
After all, having a question closed is frustrating and disappointing, but having it constantly bounced around and re-closed is way worse. Itâs like waiting on hold with customer service, only to be immediately transferred to another department where youâre put on hold again.
That said, personally, Iâm not like, opposed to automatic migrations or anything, or expecting other sites to treat us the same way. In my mind, we do it that way primarily because no one has wanted to put the effort youâre putting in now. So long as there is a reasonable amount of care to avoid bouncing stuff weâre just going to close, itâd be fine, in my opinion.
As for the guidelines, well, huh. As usual for Stacks, our rules about topicality and question handling are, of course, spread around a dozen different Meta discussions. Things that do stick out,
We donât do recommendation/âshoppingâ questions. Someone asking for the best system to use to play in SF&F world X is not a question we can handle hereâas a question, anyway. You could perhaps point people to Role-Playing Games Chat for that kind of conversation, or to our list of RPG discussion forums which may be better-suited to such a discussion.
We donât do idea-generation. So even if someoneâs got a system in mind, say, something like âI need some ideas for monsters to use in my D&D campaignâ isnât a question weâll be able to answer. Again, the chat room or the forum link might be appropriate.
We donât do âwhy did the authors/designers do things this way?â questions. They just always turn out poorly, with a lot of unsourced speculation and extra moderation headache. We do handle âhistory of gamingâ questions, with the distinction being questions that are less âwhat were they thinking?â and more âwhat was the precedent/context in which this choice was made?â In any event, I suspect this kind of thing would rarely be asked on SF&F.
We do answer questions about the worlds/settings of RPGs, which I imagine is the kind of thing that would be most likely to get asked on SF&Fâbut SF&F handles those kinds of questions, too, as I understand things. Just because we would accept those questions doesnât mean you have to migrate themâitâs normal for there to possibly be more than one Stack that could handle a question, and âbeing on-topic elsewhereâ does not automatically mean âis off-topic here.â Still, if for whatever reason, SF&F felt they couldnât handle such a question but it could be handled (i.e. you are the wrong people to answer it), that might be an acceptable thing to migrate here.
We only do this, though, for questions that really have to do with the RPG world. There are plenty of RPGs set in Middle Earth, but questions about Tolkienâs work are largely better off on SF&F, and we would âmigrateâ such questions that way. But if, say, a particular Tolkien-licensing RPG made some unusual choice for its world that isnât in Tolkienâs work, either a new invention or even a discrepancy, we might handle that. But usually we just handle settings that only or primarily exist for RPGs (e.g. Eberron, Forgotten Realms, Golarion, World of Darkness, etc.).
The rest of our rules are the usual Stack Exchange rules, more or less, I would expectâquestions have to be clear, with enough details to allow there to at least theoretically be a singular âbestâ answer, they canât be too broad, they canât just be a popularity contest or asking after peopleâs personal preferences, etc.
