A few times I've seen a question where the asker specifically only wanted answers to the game he tagged (usually 4e, not to flame, just to illustrate). I've read the question and responded to myself, "darn, I'd like to see answers relating to _". What is the etiquette on either asking a specific question over again without the single tagged game/version, or getting the original to be expanded a bit?
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Ask the OP in a comment if they really want system specific or not. Often they'll swap over to generic willingly once you explain they are probably limiting the amount of good answers if they're not really looking for stuff just about their game's mechanics.
If they are not, or they are one of the easily confused kinds of user that don't see/respond to the comments, and you want to know a more general answer, open another question. Then prepare to fend off accusations of duplication, but them's the breaks. I've got your back.
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3\$\begingroup\$ With regards to duplication, if you make the community aware that you are aware of the previous question and your reason for opening a new one, I almost certainly won't vote to close :) \$\endgroup\$ Apr 30, 2011 at 0:55
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Per the blog
http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/the-wikipedia-of-long-tail-programming-questions/
It is OK to edit a question to make it more general. With the power of editing comes the power to take someone’s selfish, very specific question, and edit it a little bit until they’re asking the more general question that hundreds of people encounter. For example, if someone asks, “I set up a web server at home but I can’t access it from work,” it’s OK to rewrite the question as, “What things should I check when a web server running at home is not visible on the Internet?” In fact, sometimes selfish, stupid questions of the “do my homework” variety can be easily edited into a form where the answer will provide an extremely valuable resource for the internet at large.
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3\$\begingroup\$ I don't think that's always relevant in this case. It's like editing a programming question to be generic across C# and Java. In some cases that may be a good idea but often it is not. That's what RPG systems are like. Sometimes people legitimately need answers tailored to their set of rules, sometimes they are looking for general tips, and there's a continuum in between (like there's stuff common to modern OO languages that is cross-relevant but not to other sets of languages). \$\endgroup\$– mxyzplkApr 30, 2011 at 15:48
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\$\begingroup\$ @mxy it's just a guideline, the golden rule of "use your judgment when applying this guideline to the situation at hand" still applies of course. \$\endgroup\$ Apr 30, 2011 at 20:29