We should probably talk about publishers, like me, replying to questions about their products. Just so we know what the community standards are in this regard. I am a small press publisher so I didn't really expect to see the question about my Majestic Wilderlands pop up so soon. But it did and we should probably talk what we want to do in the future.
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\$\begingroup\$ Related: Is there an established way to handle a game's designer on the site?, To what extent does a well known representative from an RPG company who represents their product need to provide evidence of this in their answers?, Do Authors Overrule Users? \$\endgroup\$– V2BlastJul 22, 2020 at 10:04
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5 Answers
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Yeah, just identify yourself as such when you post and it's fine. If anyone gets obnoxious about it (shills posting questions to be answered, general lording-over), the community will just start downvoting.
Oh also I will note there is a statement in the FAQ covering this already... https://rpg.stackexchange.com/faq
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My feeling is that it is OK as long as the answer or question is not an outright ad and replies answer the question. That the mechanism of closing the question and downvotes will deter blatant attempts at doing this. I think is should be OK for a publisher to ask design question like:
I'm making X RPG and for social interactions I am looking at Y and Z; which you think is better and why?
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My thought is that publishers come with equal footing as everyone else. I liked your answer, because it gave me a sense of the setting. I also get a sense that someone who plays MW might experience it differently and have something else to add, but you didn't "pull rank" as publisher.
If a publisher were to get on and answer questions in a way that pre-empted the community's ability to answer differently or disagree, or if (for example) someone from WOTC got on just to spout their party line that we can find at their website, that would be a different story. (No disparaging of WOTC or the existence of party lines in ANY business intended).
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I bounced an idea off the design group. Let's see what they think.
https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6472/optional-advertising-area
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If a publisher answers a question, that's awesome I say. If Knuth answers a question about TeX on Stack Overflow, that's only a good thing.
