Is '5e' a clear enough statement of game system by a question asker?

Question

This post is now outdated. See the revisit instead: Revisit: ‘5e’ as sufficient system statement

---

As a community we have a long established policy of not guessing game systems. In cases where the game system is unclear we require question askers to clarify, before answering their questions.

This is a policy that I support, and is more generally well supported among longer-term site users.

However, in recent weeks (and possibly before that), one particular aspect of the enforcement of this policy has led to disagreement between a number of very experienced site users - including those who are normally staunch proponents of our 'never guess the system' policy.

Specifically, there have been a number of instances where a new user has identified their game system as '5e', in the body or title of their question and not added a system tag.

A couple of examples can be found here (check the edit histories - some explanatory comments have been deleted):

Can I use a bonus action to ready an action?
How many opportunity attacks can you make per turn before becoming exhausted?

(These questions are both from the last fortnight, any other examples are welcomed.)

There have been two competing responses from experienced site users to these sorts of posts:

1. D&D 5th edition is commonly referred to by its players as simply '5e' - it was your clear intention here to name that specific system, I will add the appropriate system tag for you and we can get your question answered.

2. There are hundreds of RPGs in the world and many of them may have a fifth edition. Please be more explicit, are you playing the fifth edition of D&D? Until you clarify the system your question should be closed to avoid the possibility of it accumulating wrong answers.

In an attempt to resolve this community disagreement, and avoid future edit rollbacks, what should our response be to these kind of questions, going forward?

Should '5e' be considered a clear enough statement of system, such that it doesn't require further clarification under our 'never guess the game system' policy?

---

FWIW, I tried in this question to not position myself on either side of the debate - let me know if you think I failed in that respect and I'll try and adjust accordingly.

Answer 1

I think we should be OK interpreting “5e” as “D&D 5e” when the question is also talking about D&D-isms. (If they're talking about things that don't sound like D&D 5e, like talking about hackers, we should not guess.)

There are other games with a 5e, but their players tend to be acutely aware they're not the only RPG and not the only 5th edition RPG, so they'll say what their game is.

D&D players are the ones who have an observed tendency to forget or not know that other games exist, or get asked about on this site, or have a fifth edition. This means if someone says just “5e” and they're talking about monks or fighters or warlocks, they'll reliably be talking about D&D 5e. I honestly can't think of a time this hasn't been true.

Our super strict “don't guess the system” guidelines were created during a time when guessing was almost always wrong, and we had a disaster once a week or so: high frequency × lots of trouble = tons of trouble.

In this situation, almost zero × lots of trouble = almost no trouble, maybe once in a blue moon.

We shouldn't just guess though: tell them “Hey, we're sure you mean D&D 5e here, so we've edited that onto the question. If you didn't mean that please let us know and we'll adjust.” When we're wrong we do damage control: we revise the question, remove the answers, ask someone to create a new D&D 5e-specific question to house them, and people repost their answers over there, and the original question continues on with its correct game. I expect this won't happen even once a year.

Answer 2

Yes. Pragmatically, the system known in wide circles as 5e is D&D 5e

It is correct that there are many different systems that have a fifth edition. However, D&D is the most widely known TTRPG and in recent times has gained wide exposure through the netflix series stranger things as well as youtube/twitch streaming (critical role and many others). This has led to a large influx from people new to the hobby.

Accepting the common/colloquial use of 5e for D&D 5e is a good way to improve newbie friendliness for rpg.se

Answer 3

Get clarification first / promote better engagement with new users

One of the advantages of asking the question "What game/system/edition are you playing?" and waiting to get that answer is that we treat whomever asks the question as a person (which IMO is important for the new user experience) and engage with them in discourse in the process of helping them write a good question. While our help center has 'how to write a good question' guidance, it is apparent that this is not resorted to very often by new users.

This early engagement supports a point that @Carcer makes in his comment under V2's answer; it allows us to coach/teach new users on how to best use the site.

A much more compelling argument about being extremely strict about policy here is that this is about teaching the querent how to use the site properly.

5e with contextual clues: that's a bit less clear

For the example question where the comment stream ran a bit off the rails, I was able to see the same in-question contextual clues that @thedarkwanderer did (above and beyond the word 5e). Both @doppelgreener and @SevenSidedDie have written answers that are reasonable that include this consideration. But if we are asking about agreeing on a policy, then I have to agree with the larger policy point that both @Rubiksmoose(in chat) and @V2blast(in the above answer) have made.

We serve our site's functioning better by engaging with the new users to clarify system rather than guessing. One benefit is: we don't confuse answerers. Another benefit: we engage with new users directly and help "bring them on board" the site as better users by coaching/teaching.

How we engage, and the tone we use in our comments and various "help piles" will inform how welcoming, or not, our response is received.

Bottom Line: No, other games have 5e so 5e in the text doesn't suffice

_{As V2Blast points out in his answer}

Answer 4

No, doing so causes actual harm to our site

First I will state the obvious reasons that have been mostly stated by others:

Multiple systems have a 5th edition

D&D is not the only game to have reached a 5th edition. It isn't even the only game that is currently on 5th edition.

Guessing wrong is worse than waiting

Sure, in 99% of cases we may be right. But the 1 in 100 that we get wrong would cause more issue in total than simply asking a clarifying question. As I said in this answer, it costs us nothing to wait for OP to clarify. If they don't come back then they weren't going to use the answers anyway, no net loss.

Not guessing helps new users learn the system

By not guessing and prompting the OP to include the system tag, we teach the requirements for a good question on this site. This helps to prevent them from having this issue again in the future and in turn they can help teach it to others, helping to maintain our high standards.

A strict policy is easier to comprehend

As you have said in your own excellent post:

Our current policy is very clear, easy for new users to understand (even if they disagree with it) and relatively simple (if not always painless) to enforce.

Any alternative to this policy, however well intentioned (and perhaps both sensible and justifiable in the abstract), will be much less clear, more contentious and harder to enforce.

---

Now for a view that isn't included in the other answers:

Allowing this promotes the D&D-centric view of this site

We are rpg.se, not dnd.se and we want to remain that way. We have a history of D&D dominating our site. See Dungeons and Dragons is dominating the site in terms of page views for just one example. It is likely that our high proportion of D&D content is what leads to missing system tags on D&D 5e questions in the first place.

New users come to the site and see tags for various D&D editions and some other tags they don't know. Then mention 5e in their question assuming that is enough because, as far as they know, this site is only about D&D. By not assuming 5e = D&D 5e we might just be telling them for the first time that there are game system's besides D&D. That is an opportunity for new users to learn and expand their horizons that might otherwise be lost.

Additionally, on the occasions we are wrong we are harming the quality of life of smaller rpgs on this site. There is an excellent meta question (How to improve/maintain the quality-of-life of small fandoms in the face of a dominant big fandom on an open Stack Exchange?) that addresses this issue. I think it is important to keep that issue in mind when discussing policies like this.

In conclusion; no, 5e is not enough to add the dnd-5e tag, and it should never be.

Answer 5

Not by itself… but maybe when it’s clear

I see a lot of good reasons to make new askers engage more, and to use it as a teachable moment.

But practically? I think there are some questions where as a community we spend too much energy on this detail, for little or no gain. If there’s an opportunity to just get things done without causing problems, that’s worth considering. We only need to spend energy on actual problems.

I don’t think “5e” by itself is ever enough. But “5e” along with unambiguous question details about D&D 5e mechanics: that’s vanishingly unlikely to be anything else. I don’t think we’ve ever had such a question turn out to be anything else.

By all means, if they don’t even bother to mention a game at all, let them clarify. After all, we do want people to realise that they should identify their question’s basic topic from the start.

But if a question asks about “5e” warlocks casting eldritch blasts or a beastmaster using bonus actions in “5e”, I think they already have. We know what game it is. Maybe we should just mark it [dnd-5e] and let the wheels roll that little bit more smoothly.

If ever we get a question where that’s wrong, we can stop it again. But I don’t think we will.

Answer 6

For context: I've ended up coming around on this subject in the time since posting this answer, as indicated in the mods' answer to Re-revisiting the “don't guess the system” policy, but I'm leaving this answer as-is so as not to invalidate others' votes and references to my answer. My current stance is more lenient than this; I think it's reasonable to use clear evidence that the question is about D&D (e.g. quotes/page numbers/references to something uniquely tied to D&D) in combination with a reference to "5e" to interpret that the question is about D&D 5e.

---

My original answer:

No; multiple systems have a 5th edition.

There are multiple games with a 5th edition, besides dnd-5e:

• vampire-the-masquerade-5e
• hackmaster-5e
• l5r-5e
• shadowrun-sr5

If the querent doesn't explicitly mention that they're playing D&D in addition to mentioning 5e, we'd be guessing to assume that "5e" means "D&D 5e". We can definitely surmise that it's D&D 5e, and we might even be right most of the time, but we can't know for sure that we're right - so it's a guess.

Guessing causes problems

To quote your own linked answer to the previous meta on guessing the system:

Our current policy is very clear, easy for new users to understand (even if they disagree with it) and relatively simple (if not always painless) to enforce.

Any alternative to this policy, however well intentioned (and perhaps both sensible and justifiable in the abstract), will be much less clear, more contentious and harder to enforce.

[...]

If we say that 'we'll only guess a system when we're 100% certain that we're right' there will still be rare occasions when the most experienced users turn out to have been wrong, despite all of the cues. The much bigger issue however, is that, if we legitimise guessing in any form, less experienced users will also be empowered to guess when they are '100% certain' and they may not be as well equipped to make such an assessment.

We're already in a position where new users occasionally guess systems inappropriately - but currently the response 'Sorry, we never guess systems here', while potentially annoying, is pretty clear. Saying instead 'Sorry, we do sometimes guess systems here but you should not have done so in this instance' is going to be much trickier to enforce in a way that people find to be consistent, fair and reasonable (and don't take personally).

Answer 7

'5e' unambiguously refers to Dungeons & Dragons (2014), as long as it's clear that's intended as a name

There are many systems that have a 5th edition. Sometimes new querents asking a question badly phrase their question like this:

Hi i was wondering if trolls can cast spells thx. [Edit]5th edition.

That's not clear. 5th edition may be being used to describe what edition of the system is being played, rather than naming the system itself. For example, it's possible the above question is being asked about Shadowrun rather than D&D.

Other times, new querents might ask a question like this:

We just started playing 5e and I wanted to have the party fight a troll that casts spells. Can trolls do that?

This question is still not great, but it's no longer unclear what game they are playing. 5e here is used as a name, and right now there is only one game called '5e'.

D&D-centrism is bad, and 5e centrism is worse! But this isn't the way to solve it

Our site's 5e centrism is out-of-hand, and a problem. For example, we recently had a new user get repeatedly harassed for asking properly tagged AD&D questions because somebody decided that frequent tag misuse is a good enough excuse to take questions in bad faith (for the record, it's not and that's offensive). Coming up with good solutions to our 5e-centrism problem would be a good thing to do. This is not that.

Passive-aggressively singling out 5e players for obtuse facetious BS as a barrier to site entry is not cool. It's Not Nice, which is a serious problem that should bear consideration, and it's not actually productive because we rely on common-sense judgements for pretty much the rest of our site's functionality so it basically reverse-trains new users into thinking about what our site policy can and can't do the exact wrong way. It's just mean-spirited, ineffective moderation and we should stop doing it.

That's not to say our 'don't guess' policy needs to go away. We just need to do a better job of treating every system's community as justly as we can when adjudicating this policy-- we don't treat any other system the way we do 5e with this. For example, one of my favorite systems is Polaris. I've never had a question closed as unclear which system I was playing when asking about that, even though there is this other system which is literally named the same thing and which does not yet have a separate tag. If we treated my Polaris questions like we do 5e questions they would all have been closed until I specified not only that I was playing Polaris but also that game's ISBN. That's absurd. No expert on either system would ever confuse any of my questions for a question about the other system. Not 'probably wouldn't', wouldn't, hard stop.

If a ask a question that's obviously about Shadowrun and don't include an edition or system tag I don't get a patronizing formula-comment asking what system I'm playing and what edition as if that question made sense without already knowing I'm playing one of the very few systems where 'edition' is the right term and matters, I get the question closed as unclear and one person asking "Is this Shadowrun? Also what edition-- the Matrix rules vary a lot" or, if it's clear what edition, "Is this SR4?". That's what I should get on 5e questions; a closed question and an honest comment that tells me I need to confirm that I'm playing D&D 5e. If it's actually unclear, it's totally fine to ask. But pretending like you don't know when you totally do know is just being a jerk.

It's worth noting that the downsides of our bad behavior here are particularly intense for 5e. Wizards made the very-bad decision when releasing the game to hide the edition as much as possible in order to accomplish business objectives by misleading people. This has, predictably, lead to lots of new players who have no idea what edition they are playing and no idea how to find out because that is extremely non-trivial for the newest edition especially if an online community of experts is acting like it should be obvious.

In any case, I think the best thing we can do here is to treat 5e like any other system for this policy as much as possible. We should avoid guessing system tags in edits, but not in comments. We should accept commonly-used colloquialisms/abbreviations like 'SR5' or 'D&D 3.5' or '5e' or 'LotFP' or 'Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition' as names as long as they are clear and unambiguous and widely accepted. We should post honest comments that simultaneously respect the intelligence we assume of our querents because we give people the benefit of the doubt while also acknowledging their inexperience with the site.

Answer 8

Context is everything. While in the strictest sense, many games have "5th editions", D&D is the only game my entire gaming community calls "Fifth ed" verbatim to distinguish it as a self contained system.

If the question uses D&D language "In 5e, how many hp does a 10th level drow paladin need?" then I don't see it as a terrible sin. Shadowrun has a 5e and champions has a 5th edition, but I've only seen people address editions in those games while at those specific tables and games discussing editions.

Think of it like the "Ma Deuce" in the Army. The M2 is synonymous with a .50 BMG machinegun, even though many other things are designated M2.

It seems most appropriate then, that the "default" RPG for "5e" is D&D, while other RPGs are their title + edition where necessary. Clearly, if you are asking about guns, you need to add 5e D&D when discussing things like black powder or time travel, otherwise we might expect you to be talking about some mystery modern or scifi RPG.

So adding a label next to the 5e explicitly defines it as NOT D&D. 5e Shadowrun, for instance.