Appropriate response to questioning which version of D&D I'm asking about

Question

I play Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (aka 1e) and have for quite some time. Mostly I've been the DM. I've started to ask questions here about the rules to help better understand the game as it was written.

When I ask a question, I tag it adnd. The tag description says it refers to 1e. This clarification was called out in a meta post - adnd is 1e

Most times when I ask a question, someone comes along and asks in the comments: "What version of dungeons and dragons are you playing?" or "Are you actually playing the 197x version".

I don't expect this to go away, but it's annoying and I'd love to have a canned response I can give the commenters. What's the appropriate response for someone who tries to disbelieve my tag?

Answer 1

A short confirming "yes, I play 1e", understanding what they are doing.

I am going to highlight some of the things people¹ coming to your questions are seeing.

• A relatively low rep user (don't worry about it, we've all been that at some point)

• Asking fairly short to one-liner questions about concepts that aren't specially tied to one system

• Tagged with adnd

The problem? People, especially new users, tag things incorrectly all the time. No system tags, just the dungeons-and-dragons tag, so we need to take it with a pinch of salt and if it looks like it could be a mis-tag, we ask for clarification/confirmation.

The adnd tag in particular adds to this, because there are several editions which could all be referred to as AD&D and so tagged such by someone who doesn't know. The fact that you know and use them correctly is great, but it doesn't change how it looks to others.

So, when someone asks, answer them understanding that they are trying to help you get the answers you want and not answers for a different system. Remember to be polite and clear so something like "Yes, I play and ask about 1e".

Now, I'm guessing the reason you've put up the discussion here is that it keeps happening. The first few times it was fine, you're taking part in a niche part of the hobby (I'm basing this on the frequency of questions coming in, which apart from you isn't a whole lot for 1e) so it's fine, but it wears thin and tiring quickly. So, what can you do?

The broadest tip: give people confirmation inherent to the question. Show your research (" I looked through whatever applicable source book, but couldn't find anything", etc.), show your context ("I know it works like this in X system, but"), or tie questions to system mechanics (This probably isn't applicable to all your questions, but it might be worth keeping in mind).

Now this might not work, if the commenters don't know enough about your edition to confirm based on this, but asking a higher quality question (research effort etc.) might make people more inclined to think you know how to use the tags. But, if you want to make sure: "cheat", include the system in the question, such "How does X work in 1e?". You've done this for this question, but that solution feels... inelegant, maybe?

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1: These people (also we/commenters/etc.) ended up coming up a lot; it intends to refer to those users who look through questions for this that need/should/could be corrected/improved. If you've been active enough, you might recognize some usernames that recur in comments and edits.

Answer 2

Make a clear statement in the text of the question

"AD&D 1e is the system we are playing." For the moment, unless we make a tag change, that simple one liner will suffice.

I think we are being inconsistent with our tagging logic

Way back when this site was establishing some best practices, mxyzplk made an observation about the AD&D tags during a tagging discussion.

There already are separate tags, [adnd] and [adnd-2e].

I observe that for other D&D systems we have dnd-5e, dnd-4e and dnd-3.5e. We have an OSRIC tag as well.

Since we offered adnd-2e to identify 2d edition AD&D, perhaps we should replace the adnd tag for 1e with adnd-1e to be consistent in our methodology. I make this suggestion because not that many participants on our site seem to display detailed understanding of the tagging system.

Counterpoint: is a new tag name really necessary?

If any of us mouses over the tag, the info is right there:

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (a.k.a. "AD&D", "first edition", "1e") was written by Gary Gygax and released in three volumes between 1977 and 1979.

How often do people mouse over the tag, I wonder?

Answer 3

Speaking as someone who very recently got confused by the adnd tag on one of your posts and didn't realize that wasn't the same as the generic dungeons-and-dragons tag until after I'd already made a fool of myself in the comments, I think the fault is solely on me and my inability to do five seconds of research and check the tag's wiki to find out that it doesn't mean what I think it means lies with the fact that the tag looks like a generic D&D tag and is easy to mistake as such.

So if the users of this site are amenable to it, I'd like to propose reconsidering making adnd-1e or adnd-1.0 the primary tags for this edition, to make it clearer that those editions are what are being discussed, and that the use of adnd is not just a misuse of the tagging system.

Proposal here: Should we Rename the [adnd] tag to [adnd-1e]?

Answer 4

Put your canned response in the body

Any lasting clarification should be put in the body of the question, because comments are ephemeral. They can be gone at any time, so it is most logical to put it on the body. Imagine if you put the clarification on a comment, then someday it is gone, then another user ask the same question again.

By putting the clarification on the body, you are helping yourself and the community; by keeping the question clean from already addressed comments.