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There have been several questions recently that have churned up confusion with regards to and Critical Role 3PP content. Most recently, this one. Specifically this comment:

Should Blood Hunter questions have the "Homebrew" tag? Or is it treated differently because it's from Critical Role?

It has also caused conversations and confusion in chat.

So, should Critical Role 3PP content such as the Blood Hunter class be tagged as when it comes up in a question?

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    \$\begingroup\$ Related: How "Official" is the Blood Hunter class? \$\endgroup\$
    – Ruse
    Sep 12, 2018 at 5:49
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    \$\begingroup\$ As the person who made the comment quoted above, I asked because it seemed strange to me that questions about Mystic, Artificer and Revised Ranger are tagged with the "unearthed-arcana" tag, but this question about Blood Hunter is not tagged with a corresponding tag. It almost makes Blood Hunter seem more legitimate than the above-mentioned classes. UA is "published" in the same sense that Blood Hunter is. If the "homebrew" tag has a different purpose, fine, but IMO there should be a tag to indicate that Blood Hunter is not an "official" class. \$\endgroup\$
    – mdrichey
    Sep 12, 2018 at 15:41
  • \$\begingroup\$ @mdrichey your comment was appreciated! If you had the time, maybe you could expound on your thoughts in an answer below? Opposing/additional viewpoints are always valuable here. \$\endgroup\$
    – Rubiksmoose
    Sep 12, 2018 at 15:44
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Rubiksmoose Do you think my comment above is acceptable as an answer? Because that's all I really have to say about it. If it is acceptable then I will make it an answer. \$\endgroup\$
    – mdrichey
    Sep 12, 2018 at 15:46
  • \$\begingroup\$ @mdrichey It seems like it should be at least expanded a bit if you want it as an answer, but that is just my opinion. One thing I would make sure to do in an answer is to address what the tag description says and how it fits your recommendation. These things aren't static, so if you think homebrew should be the tag we use for such content and it disagrees with the description then you can always try to propose we change the tag description to allow that use. Or you you want a new tag to cover the material you could recommend we do that. \$\endgroup\$
    – Rubiksmoose
    Sep 12, 2018 at 15:48

2 Answers 2

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No, this tag is about helping people homebrew their own content.

Firstly, let us look at the current guidance offered by the tag description:

For questions about homebrewing new rules content for an existing system, this tag should be used when locally-created, non-published content is at the heart of the question.

and

This tag is for questions about creating new rules material

This tag is supposed to be used on questions whose core focus is on actually developing homebrew. That means helping people to develop new content. As it is written now, its purpose is not to mark questions whose content comes from non-official sources.

Generally, tags are for categorizing the core focus of the content of a question, not what book or URL that content happened to have originated from.

Not only that, but marking such questions with this tag also goes against the tag guidance in another way since it says it is explicitly for

when locally-created, non-published content is at the heart of the question.

Blood Hunter is published 3rd party content. It is published on DnDBeyond and it is even published on DM'sGuild. Thus, it does not qualify as homebrew-related for our tagging system.

Is the DMsGuild considered Homebrew and if so, should we always use the homebrew tag in parallel? also came to the same conclusion with DM'sGuild material in general.

So, unless a question is about developing homebrewing content around or with this content, the tag is not appropriate.

We could create a new tag for Critical Role content

(as suggested by @Oblivious Sage)

I'm not sure if it is necessary, but since people keep trying to tag Critical Role material with something I think it might be worthwhile to create to be a tag that can fill that role.

As @doppelgreener points out, we have a standing policy of tagging 3rd party publishers so this would fit that as well.

Regardless of whether or not a tag is created, though, is not appropriate to use for questions about Critical Role content.

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    \$\begingroup\$ I agree that the hombrew tag probably isn't appropriate, but I can see some benefit in making a tag specifically for Critical Role content. It's a narrow enough category that someone can be a proper expert in it, while broad enough and distinct enough to justify having a tag it. \$\endgroup\$
    – Oblivious Sage Mod
    Sep 11, 2018 at 21:14
  • \$\begingroup\$ @ObliviousSage: That thought had occurred to me as well. I don't see a reason right now why that couldn't or shouldn't happen. \$\endgroup\$
    – Rubiksmoose
    Sep 11, 2018 at 21:15
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    \$\begingroup\$ We can tag third party publishers as a policy. We can treat Critical Role as a third party publisher more or less and tag them as such. Definitely shouldn't tag them homebrew. \$\endgroup\$
    – doppelgreener
    Sep 11, 2018 at 21:19
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    \$\begingroup\$ critical-role seems like it could actually be a pretty good tag that would cover both material made by them and questions related to their show/content which we get occasionally. I think that scope would be OK for a tag? \$\endgroup\$
    – Rubiksmoose
    Sep 11, 2018 at 21:26
  • \$\begingroup\$ That sounds fine. \$\endgroup\$
    – doppelgreener
    Sep 11, 2018 at 22:09
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    \$\begingroup\$ Do we really want tags for every publisher? Why? \$\endgroup\$
    – mxyzplk
    Sep 11, 2018 at 23:55
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    \$\begingroup\$ We don't need them for every publisher, but every publisher isn't being asked for here, just critical role. Folksonomy says if people want to tag critical role material as such they can, the tag works. Third party publisher tags came up in past discussions about burniating [3pp] and similar as an option if people felt it important to categorise the source of material. \$\endgroup\$
    – doppelgreener
    Sep 12, 2018 at 0:57
  • \$\begingroup\$ I feel like there should definitely be a distinction between the base rules, and the ruleset used in Critical Role, especially since a large percentage of people that have been introduced to D&D has been through Critical Role. \$\endgroup\$
    – Ben
    Sep 12, 2018 at 4:32
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Ben don't worry, none of this changes at all the way the rules are portrayed or defined. \$\endgroup\$
    – Rubiksmoose
    Sep 12, 2018 at 4:43
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    \$\begingroup\$ To be honest the scope of the homebrew tag seems counter intuitive to me. At least in all the D&D groups I've played with homebrew is shorthand for "anything that isn't from WotC" and Critical Role stuff would fall within that category. \$\endgroup\$
    – Ruse
    Sep 12, 2018 at 5:47
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Ruse I believe by common internet consensus that I can find, your playgroups would have been using “homebrew” overly broadly: it looks like it is generally used to be mutually exclusive from third party published materials. \$\endgroup\$
    – doppelgreener
    Sep 12, 2018 at 9:58
  • \$\begingroup\$ Does critical role have a published ruleset or environment? \$\endgroup\$
    – NautArch
    Sep 12, 2018 at 15:05
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Rubiksmoose would a [3rd-party-content] tag not work for both critical role, DM's guild, and other sources of 3rd party published content? I feel that this tag would be better suited to the situation. \$\endgroup\$
    – rpgstar
    Sep 13, 2018 at 1:53
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    \$\begingroup\$ @rpgstar we have actually tried that before and not found it to be useful at all. See this Q&A for more info on that. \$\endgroup\$
    – Rubiksmoose
    Sep 13, 2018 at 1:59
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Davo we have actually tried that before and not found it to be useful at all. See this Q&A for more info on that. We can always revisit these kinds of decisions of course and we may want to. Though, these comments are not the place. If you want to start a recommendation you can always post it as a new question here on Meta. Thanks for your feedback! \$\endgroup\$
    – Rubiksmoose
    Sep 14, 2018 at 17:00
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It's 2019 now and we appear to have picked up a [critical-role-show] tag somewhere along the line - I've (submitted an edit that) tagged this question with that tag. I'd like to suggest we synonym [critical-role] to [critical-role-show] while we're at it, though I suppose it would autocomplete.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ There's no real need to add a synonym, given (as you yourself point out) that "critical-role" will auto-suggest the [critical-role-show] tag no matter how much of it you type (or how little, as long as you type at least the first 3 letters). \$\endgroup\$
    – V2Blast StaffMod
    Jun 19, 2019 at 8:34
  • \$\begingroup\$ That sounds like a good idea, I have removed that exact tag [critical-role] twice now. \$\endgroup\$
    – Akixkisu
    Jun 19, 2019 at 9:35

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