Why Are Our 5e Questions Terrible?

Question

I have to say, I am not a fan of most of our 5e questions that are basically along the lines of "sum up the rules for me." Many don't appear to even be real questions, just information seeding. I understand we want 5e to be a success for the site but should we really encourage questions like:

How does wizard & cleric spell preparation and casting work?

What does an average monster in the Starter Set look like?

What are the major differences between the final playtest package and D&D 5e Basic?

When teaching D&D 5e basic to players of previous editions, which terms have new meanings that will likely lead to confusion?

I believe all these questions should be closed, as they are basically just saying "Hey, read and regurgitate the Basic set to me." They're not real questions solving an actual problem. Some are self-answered, which while "not technically bad on SE" is, in this case, IMO just creating 5e content to create 5e content.

Answer 1

Self-answering is hard to do well

It's hard to write a good question when you're planning on self-answering, and a few of our 5e questions suffer from this. It's even harder to write a good answer to such a question. If the problem as-written boils down to "X in 5e is different from [other edition], help help", whatever other virtues the question might have are going to be dragged down by the lack of specifics presented, and the resulting answers are going to suffer the same.

The general problem with self-answered questions is that often the problem is not well-explained, because it doesn't need to be: the answerer can read your mind, because you're the same person.

Solution: Unless one is confident in their ability to write a rockin' question even when self-answering, it may be useful to pause a moment: consider not self-answering for a day or two. Having to explain the problem clearly to others makes it easier to avoid subconsciously taking shortcuts while writing the question. To gain that effect, strongly consider writing the question to the community, and letting them have a crack at it first.

Do research to avoid asking about the really low-hanging fruit

Our question about statistics of the monster math is a valid question but suffers a cardinal question-asking sin: it doesn't just lack evidence of research, but it can only exist as a question because of lack of research.

Solution: We're all excited about 5e, but it's doubly important to take a few moments to consider what research can be done toward solving the problem before asking. It might mean the question becomes moot, but if the question remains after research, it's going to be a good question. And those are what we want.

Broad questions are still broad

When a new edition is out, lots of questions we have are pretty broad due to the nature of how we, as humans, approach a new subject: in a top-down manner, engaging first with the high-level overview and then moving downwards into the nitty-gritty details. Right now there will be the temptation to transform our current questions of engagement into posted Stack questions. But many of those are by their nature fairly broad.

This is not terrible or wrong. But it does mean that taking some extra care to consider the question while writing it can make a large difference in quality.

Solution: When trying to come to grips with a large idea, like "how does X work" or "what is different about Y", try to be as specific about your problem as possible. Remember than being general to help the most people is not actually helpful. Instead, ask yourself some questions: Why do I need to know this? What does knowing solve for me? Can I ask for help solving that instead?

If a problem-centric question doesn't result from this introspection, it's possible that the question simply is too broad. In those cases, the solution is to either not post it, or to post it knowing that it will likely get closed.

For a contentious example of broad question, we have the "What terms have new meanings" question. I think this can be significantly improved by moving away from the broad edition-focused question as written, to a more problem-focused question that's implied, using those questions and some hypothetical (but I think, not too inaccurate) answers:

• Why do I need to know this? Because lots of my players are going to assume they know what terms mean.
• What does knowing solve for me? I can focus on the terms that contradict their assumptions when teaching the game to my players.
• Can I ask for help solving that instead? Yeah, actually: I could ask a question like "When teaching 5e to existing D&D players, what invalid assumptions can I expect them to make?" or something like that.

And if rewriting it as a problem-centric question simply doesn't work somehow, it's probably just too broad.

Answer 2

I consider what you've said a pretty fair assessment of some of our 5e questions, and that "please read the rules to me" is a pretty fair description of some of them. As we receive D&D 5e questions, we should keep an eye out for those and close them.

I think some of us may have noticed things that could be new and/or confusing, and in our excitement over 5e or creating new 5e questions, we've forgotten those questions have to actually contain problems. Real, actual problems, that someone actually had, whether it was someone at our table or ourselves at some point in the past.

If the problems would be solved by just reading the rules, that's the kind of situation where in the past, we've told the asker: "Hey, maybe you shouldn't be here yet. You should read the books first, and come to us when you've at least got the basics down pat."

The wizard/cleric spellcasting question, if genuine, would be asked to explain exactly what's confusing the user. (It's also problematic that the answer largely relies on the rules to provide its explanation, which wouldn't be helpful if the rules were actually confusing.) The terms question has been a puzzle for me, but may be better off asked as individual instances of "I find {specific concept} confusing because {reasons}. What's with this?", which is an actual problem with some specific correct answers.

However, there's one exception to the ones you've listed:

• What does an average monster in the Starter Set look like?

This isn't a "read the rules to me" question. It wants a statistical analysis of numbers of the Starter Set's contents. Valid question, if the premise is valid: in D&D 4e, "average monster stats per monster level" was meaningful, if you were comparing per role. (If you weren't, it wasn't meaningful.)

In 5e, hopefully the asker and answerers can manage this so the premise is actually something worth worrying about.

Also, the playtest vs release question you asked may be similar to our D&D 3.5e vs D&D 4e Pathfinder trifecta (and other version comparisons of that nature).

Answer 3

First and foremost, 2 of the questions on your list aren't terrible, and the other two are only marginally bad.

However, I think there's probably a relatively easy answer here.

• Most of us haven't played a real 5e game or two yet. (sure, many of us have run playtest sessions, and that's good, but probably most of the questions that came up during those have been answered.

The best questions come from actual play experience and seeing what becomes a problem in your games. That's not to say we can't come up with good questions from simply reading the rules. I've done this with several systems, and lots of questions come up from preparing to play a game.

These questions aren't as good as questions generated from actual play, but they aren't bad or illegitimate questions. Question quality will pick up a great deal as more of us get the starter set (and the PHB, MM and DMG) and start hosting games on a regular basis.

All that said, we need to support all stages of play. We need to be able to ask and answer conceptual questions, questions about switching editions, character creation questions, and questions about preparing as a DM. Most of the questions you highlighted fall into these categories and as such are legit questions.

To address the questions highlighted specifically:

• This is a platform for a good answer. Yeah, not the best question, but it highlights a clear break in spell casting rules from previous editions of D&D. It's definitely worth a call out. As with more self ask/answers, it needs some work on the question front, but a marginal improvement would make this a great site question.

• This is my question, and it's been addressed in a few places. But it's a basic char-op starter question. What does the average monster look like at a given CR level so you can have a legit comparison to run the maths. It might seem silly, but it's analytical, answerable, and solves a real world problem (what number do I use for AC when I do average damage calculations).

• This is a pretty basic edition transition question, we've got a few dozen of them. What are the major differences between edition X and Y. It's not the best style of question, but it's a type of question (and questioner) we should support.

• This is the most marginal question on the list. It's pretty iffy really, but it falls into the same category of edition changes, what are the unexpected pitfalls of starting the new edition with knowledge of past editions type question. I don't love this particular one, but this style is squarely in bounds.

Overall I think you're making a mountain out of a molehill here. Yeah we're champing at the bit a little, maybe a touch overexcited about the new edition, but really, nothing bad or worrying is going on here.

Answer 4

I'm finding a lot of the issue with the 5E questions having a simple root concern: the full game is not out yet. We've got a Starter Set, "Basic Free Rules" that give you character generation and a little bit of task resolution, and a several playtest rules which differ in significant ways.

So, you've got people coming from several "entry" ways to 5E and even if they have all 3, sometimes people will ask a question just hoping someone else will know.

For example "What's an average monster in the Starter Set?" is a question that makes perfect sense if you've gotten the free basic rules but haven't bought the Starter, BUT you want to run a game, right?

What we have at this moment is a lot of interest, incomplete information to really have a full game for a lot of people, and until further rules come out, the questions are going to remain either speculative, built of minimal information, or attempts to squeeze for information that isn't out yet.

If you go to the major RPG forums and look at the discussions around 5E, you'll see a lot of it is in the same vein. "We don't know, the rules aren't out yet." isn't a particularly satisfying answer, even if it's the most accurate one for a lot of the questions. Neither is "The 80% of other rules you need to run a full campaign aren't printed yet, no one can give them to you, sorry."

So maybe the more useful question to ask is to consider which of these kinds of questions are worth entertaining, and in what fashion, for the next 2-3 months? Kill off too many and it doesn't do well, entertain too many and the site becomes just like any other random forum. Finding that line is not easy!

Answer 5

Of your four listed questions:

• The first answered questions I had about how the system works and clarified it pretty well, so I consider it a useful question that solves a problem. Going by the votes, I'm probably not alone.
• The second was covered by Jonathen.
• The third is extremely useful to anybody who played the playtest and wants to get up to speed on what's changed without reading the new rules and trying to play Where's Waldo by spotting the differences. It probably won't be useful at all next year (as the playtest won't really be a comparison point once the final release has been out for a while), but it clearly serves a purpose right now. It could be a useful place for a community wiki.
• The last one is... yeah, that is too broad. The summary answer is good though, if only for the "don't assume any terms mean the same thing as they did before" advice.

Sorry, I don't see the problem here. I do see people trying to seed the site with questions and answers so that other people with questions can find those answers (and us) in the game's early days. As I recall, that was a stated goal of giving out free copies to certain users and running a contest.

We really shouldn't be asking people to do something and then complaining when they go out and do it.

(It's also not like "read the rules to me" questions are exactly unheard of. An awful lot of the 3.5/Pathfinder questions amount to reading the rules and explaining them. That the rules are better written this time doesn't suddenly invalidate those types of questions.)

Answer 6

All the questions you have listed, are real actual questions, that I have needed answered. I'm sorry that my confusion is not your confusion or that you don't believe me, but they are real actual questions.

The latest example, that about how spell casting works, took me more than a few hours on the forums talking to people to grasp the difference.

It's a new version of a game, with many same or similar elements to previous editions of the game. Not everyone is able to so easily grasp why something is different, and or they might read the rules and miss a subtle difference.

For most of my questions that I self answered, I only did so after not being able to get good answers from the community.

A very important point here is that no D&D manual will ever tell you How it's rules are different from the rules previously. They don't spell that out, and it's exactly something that only people with expertise in both/multiple game systems can point out.

Answer 7

It is not our fault.

Every edition has these kind of questions, but they have more of the good kind, so the proportions are better.

There are 2.5 types of good questions in my opinion.

1 How can I make an efficient character? (Optimization)
2 Does this work? (Rules interpretation)
1.5 How can I achieve this effect? (The mix of 1 and 2)

There are in fact only a few of these kind of questions, but the reason can be found at Wizards of the Coast, and not on this site.

The first type is rare, as there are no options to optimize. No Feats, no Paragon Paths, no Themes, no Epic Destinies, no Magic items.*

The second type is rare, because the rules are better written than in 4e. Much less confusion.
This is a good thing, we should be happy we have few of this kind.

The third type is also rare, because the rules are clear and the options are few.

*Ok, there are magic items, but you have no control over them as a player.