There is currently no tag for questions about game-specific terminology. How should we address this, if at all?

Question

Currently the keywords tag is restricted to questions about D&D 4e, but it seems like it could be expanded to address the usage of game-specific terminology in other games.

There is also the terminology tag, but it refers to cross-game RPG terms rather than terms for a specific RPG:

For questions about RPG-specific terminology and jargon. Use this tag for questions about terminology used across RPGs in general, rather than the in-game meaning of a special game term within a certain game.

This leaves a gap for questions that want to ask about game-specific terms outside of 4e. Based on the following questions, it appears that users have been applying the terminology tag incorrectly when they actually want the meaning of a term within a specific game:

• Is “Willingly” an actual game term?: This question is particular to D&D 5e because even if the word "willing" is used in other RPGs the question is about the specific mechanical meaning in 5e.
• What is the definition of "creature" and is it used consistently?: A similar issue. The treatment of the word "creature" in 5e is not necessarily the same as the treatment of word in other games.
• What is Fortitude?: The answer to this question refers to the meaning of "fortitude" within 3.5e specifically.

These can be compared to the cases where the terminology tag is clearly appropriate, such as:

• What is "my guy syndrome" and how do I handle it?
• What is a session 0?
• What is 'railroading', and what are its pros and cons?
• and even perhaps: What is the source for defaulting to plain English readings of non-game terms?

So I see four possible ways to address the lack of a tag for game-specific terminology:

1. Expand the terminology tag to apply to game-specific terms.
2. Expand the keywords tag to apply outside of 4e
3. Create a new tag to fill the need
4. There is no problem. Game-specific terminology is either too niche or too broad to deserve a tag.

The first option seems bad to me because the terminology tag already has wide usage that specifically aligns with its current definition.

I don't know whether the second option would be appropriate.

How should this be addressed, if at all?

Answer 1

So, I see the issue you raise. The terminology tag says we shouldn't be asking about in-game terminology, and there's an available tag that appears to cover that territory.

That said though... I have absolutely no idea why the terminology tag description says this. The last sentence was added by @V2Blast relatively recently in March 2019, and I cannot find any meta post or reason why we'd exclude this space from the tag. (For whatever it's worth, V2Blast was not yet a diamond moderator at the time of making this change either.) Maybe V2Blast may recall some incident or reason for making this exclusion in the tag description, but I am not aware of one.

For D&D 4e specifically, keywords isn't being used arbitrarily; it's a specific well-defined game feature that even has its own section in the rules (D&D 4e Player's Handbook, page 55). It's a specific set of tags attached to powers that define things about their type and usage, so that other mechanics can interact with them. A D&D 4e player can point to something and say exactly whether or not it's a keyword and why. This also means the D&D 4e community can achieve consensus on this site in tagging its questions. I added the tag description in January 2019 in response to a meta question asking about its usage: What is the [keywords] tag meant to be used for?

But for games in general, I would in fact say that “is this a game term?” and “what does this term used by the game mean?” are terminology questions. If I showed someone in the real world What is Fortitude? and said “this person is asking about terminology”, it's likely they would find that a completely reasonable thing to say. In fact we're already using it as such, and it intuitively matches—more than a quarter of the terminology tag's contents are questions about game terms:

• D&D 4e has nine terminology questions under its belt asking about game terminology: https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/terminology+dnd-4e
• D&D 3.5e has twelve terminology questions: https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/dnd-3.5e+terminology
• D&D 5e has thirty-three!: https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/dnd-5e+terminology
• There are also a handful of terminology questions each for World of Darkness, AD&D 2e, and Exalted among others.

Tag descriptions are meant to reflect and guide usage. We have used terminology to ask about game-specific terminology just fine and have in fact continued to do that despite the change to the tag description with no actual problems occurring.

So, option 1: change the tag description. The March 2019 update to the tag description in the first place incorrectly narrowed it, so we should fix the error to reflect how we've been using the tag all along. This means that last sentence should be dropped from the tag description, and it should simply say “For questions about RPG-specific terminology and jargon.

Not option 2 or 3: I think the boundaries of “what is a game terminology question rather than a terminology question, and what isn't, and why?” get too fuzzy and will mess with our ability to achieve consensus on tagging. I would not expand [keywords] nor try to create a [game-terminology] tag. We already have an entirely suitable tag available that we have been using, it's just got an incorrect description.