I just showed up here. Should I be somewhere else if I play other RPGs more than D&D?

Question

Seems like in name 'role-playing games SE' is as such, but by the numbers this is really D&D (and mostly 5E) SE.

I've seen this happen before on other sites (Usenet even), where the most obviously-named outlet for a hobby is kind of about the most currently-profitable aspects of that hobby, and enthusiasts sometimes need to use a different one.

1. First: I don't want to bother y'all; should I just plain be on another SE?
2. Second: If not, is there anything like the ability to filter questions by relevant game?

Answer 1

Our site is for all* tabletop role-playing games, not just D&D 5e.

It is true that D&D 5e questions seem to dominate the questions on our mainsite (Role-Playing Games StackExchange) for the past few years. The game is popular and its rules contain many ambiguities, therefore there are many users asking many questions about it.

However, our stack is for all* tabletop role-playing game systems. We also have questions that are not specific to any system, and deal with social issues and broader techniques.

* (There are some exceptions, a few niche games that are considered too inappropriate to discuss and we don't want to give them publicity.)

How to filter questions according to game system:

Questions can be sorted by tags, which are written in bracket notation. If you check the search bar on the mainsite, you should see some prompts for suggested tags. For example, searching [fate] will search for questions related to the Fate system.

You can also exclude specific tags from a search, with a hyphen prefix. Entering -[dnd-5e] will ignore all search results that are tagged as [dnd-5e].

Lastly, you can customize filters to ignore certain tags. On the main page, look for a box titled "Ignored Tags". If you enter a list of tags here, then the mainsite will hide all questions with any of those tags. You can also use wildcards to include a broad category of tags. For example, ignoring [*dnd*] should hide most Dungeons & Dragons questions from your display.

Answer 2

You're welcome here no matter what tabletop RPGs you like to play*

By volume alone we do have a pretty disproportionate amount of questions about D&D, but that reflects the player base and the cohesion of that game system more than any sort of policy here.

We badly want content relating to other games. It can be surprisingly hard to encourage. There are a handful of other game systems I've played, but most of them have hardly any questions for me to answer and I happen not to have any pressing questions about them. There is less than one entire page of questions for Stars Without Number, despite it being a decade old, based on the D&D d20 system, and having a revised edition released several years ago.

(Can you guess what RPG I just bought a bunch of books for?)

Content can be filtered with game system tags, like dnd-5e, l5r, world-of-darkness, and similar.

If you like non-D&D tabletop RPG games, please consider sticking around!

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* The asterisk indicates an issue with some explicitly, intentionally racist RPGs designed to introduce people to white supremacist ideologies which had a rash of questions here several years back. So there are some limits on what's allowed here, but it has nothing to do with D&D.

Answer 3

99.9999% of all RPGs are ok here!

There are only a handful of games that we won't ever cater to. Those games are games that most players will not mention by their name. Their themes are so dripping with racism, misogynism, anti-semitism, and other non-tasteful topics, that merely mentioning the names of these games can upset players.

Just tag whatever game you ask about and if there is none, ask and we make one for you!

Answer 4

You are welcome, but I don't want you to have false expectations.

You are welcome here as long as you follow our established rules, such as not propagating questions about white supremacist propaganda TTRPGs, and you follow our code of conduct. You have many filtering tools at your disposal to filter via tags - see our guidance on finding topics you are interested in.

But you also have to ask yourself if we can provide the signal to noise ratio that .se networks pride themselves on if any given site of fifty entries shows you about five questions. You will not be able to participate on some days nor stay in the loop for site developments like someone who follows D&D, and D&D5e in particular. Many of our meta decisions reflect that we have been 88% D&D and umbrella for several years.

So while you are welcome, if you are not interested in the D&D umbrella, I don't want you to have false expectations. Some active people spend a lot of effort on answering non-D&D questions and will go out of their way even beyond the generous help that people offer on .se websites e. g. because of their interest in sharing their joy about the hobby with you, but using rpg.se when you don't want to interact with the D&D umbrella requires more effort and leaves you less room for participation.