Differentiating between house rules, homebrew, and game design

Question

It struck me earlier that a few questions are being labelled homebrew when the house-rules tag is more appropriate. It also strikes me that the three tags (the previous two plus game-design), whilst related, are not exactly the same, with homebrew somehow straddling the two.

Definitions from the internet:

house-rules:

A common use of the term is in role-playing games to signify a deviation of game play from the official rules.

homebrew:

A roleplaying game played using house rules, or devised entirely by its participants

game-design:

Issues related to designing RPG system mechanics

My first question is, do we need to do anything about this? If so what can we do?

Answer 1

Those are three different sheep:

• house-rules are variant rules and worlds from the published ones. Often, these are to fix (perceived) issues or alter gameplay. It can also cover changes to the world, that have a deep impact, e.g. stripping Magic from Shadowrun or introducing widespread guns to the Forgotten Realms.
• homebrew is mainly trying to emulate official content. E.g. statting a single monster, class or weapon. Commonly comes as a homebrew review, where we are presented the work.
• game-design is for dissecting or developing a mechanic or comparing different mechanics against one another.

The aims of them are very different, so the tags should stay apart.

Answer 2

I would break it up thusly:

house-rules

Questions asking about user-generated tweaks to existing systems.

game-design

I don't really see an issue with having this tag cover analysis of existing mechanics and the creation of new ones. Both are an application of the same skill-set. However, it may grow to become meta if we develop a more refined set of sub-tags.

The distinction I would use: game-design is about generic principles, and the creation of mechanics for outside use. house-rules is about tweaking existing systems and mechanics for personal use.

But I haven't sifted through those tags yet to double-check.

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The one that feels a bit odd is homebrew. This question should probably be tagged house-rules:

Players rolling all of the dice in D&D 4th Ed

This question might be tagged house-rules or game-design, depending on whether you view the One Roll System as an engine to create new RPGs (tag it game-design), or a consumer-usable system in its own right (tag it house-rules):

Adding an explosive dice mechanic to the One Roll Engine

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That leaves the question: is homebrew about rolling your own things in an existing setting, or is it a system tag about playing with a custom-built system (a la dnd-4e, 7th-sea, etc.)?

These questions support the former:

Guidelines for creating homebrew classes (base/PrCs)

Custom magic item creation standardization

Are there any low-magic 4e home-brew settings?

This question supports the latter:

What tool(s) have you used to manage spell lists, especially in a home-brew?

I'd lean towards using it as a system tag, but the actual usage leans towards using it to describe user-generated content. I'm also not sure how the homebrew and systemless communities interact... Whether systemless gaming is truly without rules, or if it can fall under the umbrella of a group-specific customized system.