How about a generic [playtest-materials] tag?

Question

We have unearthed-arcana right now, which is just the current “brand name” for D&D 5e playtest material. Why not call a spade a spade and have a playtest-material tag for all our playtest material question needs?

Naturally unearthed-arcana would be a synonym, so it would still pop up for people looking for that tag name when writing questions, but what would show up after submitting would be playtest-material.

As a side benefit, this might also solve our old tagging problem with old D&D Next questions that can't be rewritten to be about the published D&D 5e rules, especially since the consensus that developed in that meta was that we should tag them distinctly somehow. I think playtest-material is the natural solution to that specific problem as well as to the general problem. We wouldn't go on a tagging spree for old Next questions, but playtest-material could be added to them reactively as they get noticed or bumped, slowly putting that difficulty to rest.

Other games occasionally see questions about playtest materials too. I think it would be useful to be able to distinctly tag questions about playtest materials regardless of game, for searching and future clarity. I think that would be an improvement over having brand-name tags for playtest material for different specific games.

I think playtest-materials would be useful and we should adopt it. Are there any thoughts on downsides that should stay our hands?

Answer 1

I do not think we should make this change. I mulled it over and I do not feel it solves any problem we have, nor do I feel we have any compelling reason to have a generic tag like this.

• The current tag unearthed-arcana is calling a spade a spade. As you may be aware, the "call a spade a spade" idiom means to speak plainly and straightforwardly. What's more straightforward than "I'm asking about material from the Unearthed Arcana column, so I'm going to tag this unearthed-arcana"? There are no problems cited here with the Unearthed Arcana tag; neither of us have observed any ambiguity problems as you mentioned in a comment. The folksonomy seems to be working just fine here.

• This doesn't solve our D&D Next issue. If I see a question about so-and-so game mechanic tagged dnd-5e playtest-materials, is this a question about the olde D&D Next, or Unearthed Arcana publications, or some other source of playtest material such as from a third party publisher testing new content slated for release under the D&D 5e OGL?

  In fact this creates new ambiguity, since dnd-5e unearthed-arcana is already quite clear it is neither D&D Next nor playtest material from any source beside Unearthed Arcana.

• I am not aware of any tagging or communication problems around any other game's playtest on the site so far. None have been cited here other than the D&D Next issue. We could speculate on when and how we might use the tag, but tagging is based on current need, not projected need.

  In fact the only other playtests I've been aware of so far have had a form of non-disclosure agreement (NDA) attached, so we couldn't ask questions about them here even if we wanted to. For example, we have no questions about the recent Dresden Files Accelerated playtest — my playgroup participated in it, and we had questions, but we couldn't really ask them without giving away information we agreed to keep secret.

• I am concerned that I cannot really meaningfully say I'm an expert in playtest-materials. I would rather see us examine case by case whether a particular playtest would benefit from certain tagging practices, or communication in posts about it (as I did for a D&D Next question).

  I think presuming a playtest-materials tag is appropriate for all playtest-y stuff is also jumping the gun — BESW's Surgadores is a perpetual no-NDA playtest; great-ork-gods is unfinished; both are quite playable on their own. This may be a strike against using the tag at all.

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Despite responding in the negative I approve of you coming forward with such an idea. We might see a need for it in the future, but at present I don't think we benefit from this tag, and replacing unearthed-arcana with it is unwarranted and probably does more harm than good.

Answer 2

One slight concern, that I think can probably be safely ignored.

Unearthed Arcana has been the name for optional rules for D&D for several editions - a book of that name is part of the 3-3.5e SRD, and another was published for AD&D (1e?). While these are optional rules, they are not specifically playtest material.

But having a quick look at questions with that tag, all are 5e, so I think it should not cause any confusion with these other UA's. There have been several 3.5e questions about UA 3.5 that do not use any tag to signify it - it's just another source in the 3.5 library.