4
\$\begingroup\$

Today I saw a Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game question (or rather, question spanning both GURPS and DFRPG), and decided to add the latter tag to it, started typing dungeon-fantasy-roleplaying..., didn't see an autocomplete, realised it's too long, added instead because that's how the community seems to usually refer to it anyway, added a wiki explaining what it is and pointing out that it differs from GURPS Dungeon Fantasy (and had it approved).

Then I noticed that there have been other DFRPG questions, with a confusing tag . And now that I know it exists, I think it should be replaced, but was unsure whether to just do it, or bring it up on meta. I asked for advice and was directed here.

Why It's a Misleading Tag:

TL;DR: it mashes together two titles - GURPS Dungeon Fantasy and the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game, which are already easy to confuse.

The original GURPS Dungeon Fantasy line is a series of products meant to be used together with GURPS 4th Edition, requiring the Basic Set and strongly suggesting having Magic. Functionally it's an expansion, a series of supplements.

The Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game is a standalone boxed set (also available in PDF) that is fully self-contained, and whose rules differ from the main-line GURPS rule-set (e.g. slams) and have been otherwise streamlined. Officially that is termed Powered by GURPS.

While there is a large level of compatibility between main-line GURPS and DFRPG, it's still considered 'unsafe' to just assume that a mechanic is the same between the two. In fact, on the official forum, DFRPG resides on a separate subforum (not a subset of the GURPS subforum).

(Note: so far only two questions are using the old tag, though there may be more DFRPG questions around already - I only made a quick search. This is why I considered just doing the replacement without bringing it up.)

The Question

Given the above reasoning for keeping the distinction clear, I would like to completely replace the older tag (), and/or leave a wiki warning elaborating that the two are similar but distinct, and asking to use either of the appropriate tags. Should I just do it, or should I not (and why), or is there an alternative procedures that should be followed?

\$\endgroup\$
1
  • 3
    \$\begingroup\$ related meta on tagging GURPS editions; it does mention Dungeon Fantasy in passing. \$\endgroup\$
    – nitsua60 Mod
    Mar 23, 2019 at 12:53

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
6
\$\begingroup\$

Clearly at least a couple other people found the other wording more meaningful.

I don’t see how “dfrpg” is less ambiguous and in fact I’m pretty sure there was a dragon flight rpg at some point... avoid unnecessary abbreviations. ‘Rpg’ is a safe well understood way to save a lot of characters but in a world full of “d” RPGs probably chill at that point.

I worry you are fixing a theoretical and not a real problem here. Has anyone actually confused the two? In the two extant questions? Doesn’t seem so.

I could see talking about removing the gurps- from the tag so it’s dungeon-fantasy-rpg, which would be more correct and not nearly as ambiguous, but IMO tag meddling should be saved for a real problem. If you had paused after typing “dungeon-fantasy” the existing tag would have popped.

Tags are an emergent folksonomy by design and intervention in them should be minimized.

\$\endgroup\$
9
  • 10
    \$\begingroup\$ strongly agree that dfrpg should not be the end result: I had to reread the original post a few times to figure out how Dresden Files RPG and GURPS intersected. \$\endgroup\$
    – nitsua60 Mod
    Mar 23, 2019 at 12:50
  • \$\begingroup\$ The argument against DFRPG. I still think it should not start with 'GURPS' since I've seen people confuse DFRPG with GURPS DF, and having a tag that doesn't even reflect the title of the game (which was very deliberately made a standalone) is not helping. \$\endgroup\$
    – vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica
    Mar 23, 2019 at 17:27
  • 7
    \$\begingroup\$ ok, my proposal is to split the tag to dungeon-fantasy-rpg and gurps-dungeon-fantasy (at least one of the questions needs both), delete the dfrpg tag, add tag wikis as appropriate. sound good? \$\endgroup\$
    – mxyzplk
    Mar 23, 2019 at 19:20
  • \$\begingroup\$ @mxyzplk Yeah, that's good. Maybe also add a note that DFRPG could mean either SJGames' or Evil Hat's game. \$\endgroup\$
    – vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica
    Mar 23, 2019 at 21:27
  • \$\begingroup\$ I will delete the dfrpg tag to get rid of that kind of confusion. \$\endgroup\$
    – mxyzplk
    Mar 23, 2019 at 21:47
  • \$\begingroup\$ Also, i'll leave tag-wiki'ing to someone who cares... \$\endgroup\$
    – mxyzplk
    Mar 23, 2019 at 21:47
  • 2
    \$\begingroup\$ Yeah, we probably shouldn’t have [dfrpg] at all, due to the ambiguity. @vicky_molokh Tags have to mean something specific, as we don’t have 1:many disambiguation like Wikipedia, only 1:1 redirection via a synonym. Lacking any way to decide which DFRPG to grant the tag to, we should have just [dungeon-fantasy-rpg] and [dresden-files-rpg] with no abbreviation synonym. \$\endgroup\$
    – SevenSidedDie
    Mar 23, 2019 at 21:48
  • 3
    \$\begingroup\$ OK. There was also "dungeon-fantasy" as a preexisting tag that was used for gurps-dungeon-fantasy questions (meaning there were already two tags being used correctly...) Anyway, I have created gurps-dungeon-fantasy and dungeon-fantasy-rpg and merged in all the other tags mentioned here. \$\endgroup\$
    – mxyzplk
    Mar 23, 2019 at 21:58
  • \$\begingroup\$ @SevenSidedDie Yeah, I shouldn't've used it, probably. I just don't tend to think of Dresden Files, just as nitsua60 didn't think of Dungeon Fantasy. In retrospect it is an interesting coincidence that I apparently ran into two wiki approvals who seemed to agree with the choice. I'll get back to all of this in more detail (checking whether wikis are OK etc.) tomorrow. \$\endgroup\$
    – vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica
    Mar 23, 2019 at 22:57

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .