Questions tagged [discussion]
The question you're asking is designed to solicit opinions or best-practices on a particular topic, with the goal of reaching community consensus.
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A thank-you to you all
I am retiring as a moderator this week.
I made this decision with my heart a few months ago, made it with my head and let my fellow moderators know a few weeks ago, and now that the paperwork is ...
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Can we affirm that RPG.SE embraces a plurality of playstyles?
I've recently had the dubious pleasure to have been told both that the high visibility of RAW-centric optimising online is an illusion and nobody actually plays that way in a real game, and that old-...
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Use real headers instead of fake headers
It's a somewhat common habit at RPG.se to use bold sentences to make the appearance of a header for a section of text, rather than using our existing header formatting. This is probably because it's a ...
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Purveyors of fine cheese!
[modeled on this well-posed and highly ranked meta over at WB.SE]
We've got some answers that've really gone above-and-beyond in answering rigorously and completely some superlative questions. And by ...
nitsua60Mod
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Officially stepping down as moderator
I know it's been a while so it's not going to be any surprise to hear that I'm handing in my diamond.
As for reasons, it's multifaceted. Certainly I got burnt out on a lot of issues (handling the ...
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to every thing there is a season
Thank you all for this opportunity.
TL;DR: so long, and thanks for all the flags.
I will soon be stepping down as a moderator on RPGSE. (Effective shortly after the conclusion of the 2020 election.)
...
nitsua60Mod
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A little bit of Thank You to the undervalued janitors of the site
So, with the recent changes on Rep, I got bumped over the few points I was missing to get access to moderator tools.
With that, came the possibility of seeing deleted stuff, and with that possibility,...
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How do we handle a desire to challenge the frame of a question?
Sometimes, someone asks a question that seems like it might suffer from the XY Problem (asking about your attempted solution instead of your actual problem) and you want to point that out. Or you ...
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In which a doppelgreener becomes somewhat less shiny
I’m stepping down from moderation soon and putting away my shiny diamond. Just like nitsua60 I’ll be sticking around for a bit longer post-election, so this is not immediate. (Don’t worry, this isn’t ...
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RPGs by and for white nationalists
So, I see RPG Stack Exchange has a MYFAROG tag, and MYFAROG questions in that tag.
MYFAROG is a game by Varg Vikernes, an infamous Norwegian murderer/arsonist who espouses white-nationalist and "...
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Don't signal your edits in text
To amplify the bullet from here:
Stop using the "Edit:" syntax of forums. We have explicit revision histories on everything, so everything should read as if the best version was the first ...
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So long and thanks for all the fish
Due to this farewell and associated persistent abusive behaviour from SE, I will no longer participate in any sites until such a time as SE becomes less abusive.
My thanks go to all users of this (...
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“Is something wrong?” Yes: Too much moderation
RPG's users and moderators have a number of problems as summarized in this question's answers. However, several mods have said that they can't accept meta feedback in the form of anything other than ...
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Stack Exchange general moderation and curation strike begins today (concluded as of August 7th)
As of today, community members and diamond moderators across the Stack Exchange network are commencing a general moderation strike in protest of bad policy and worse treatment from Stack Overflow, Inc ...
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Should this stack ban ChatGPT?
Over at Meta Stack Exchange, the guidance to date is that each Stack Exchange network site needs to decide for itself whether to ban ChatGPT-generated posts. RPG SE Meta is the correct format for ...
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Are game recommendation questions on topic? [2011] [duplicate]
This Q&A is out of date - see the new answer (no) in Are Game Recommendation Questions On Topic, Revisited
Many Stack Exchange sites, like the similar gaming.SE, do not allow game recommendation ...
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Can our tag-prompt nudge toward including system?
We get questions every day that need to be put on hold while we wait for a new querent to specify what game/edition they're playing. As of this writing I've seen three so far today--they get quickly ...
nitsua60Mod
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Re-revisiting the "don't guess the system" policy [duplicate]
Note: As of September 3rd, 2021, this policy has been removed
Following the results of Revisit III: Don’t Guess the System policy this policy is no longer in effect. New guidance pending.
Sometimes ...
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The gremlin in our answers: "Fate is narrative" answers to mechanical Fate questions
It seems like there's a gremlin in the Fate answers. He bites without warning, no one is immune, and while he'd been quiet for some time, he's back now. And he's making it hard to get good answers, ...
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Thank you, mxyzplk: appreciation thread for long time mod
Jon Ericson let slip that mxy will be handing in the diamond badge now that the election is over.
FWIW, this is the RPG.SE first post by mxyzplk:
And the first meta post I could find: (But ...
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Should I be requesting people answer the question independently?
For a while now, we've had answers like these ones which fail to really answer the question on their own, but just add some extra information building on other pre-existing answers. They often even ...
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Design for RPG.se
Thank you for your helpful suggestions in the design brainstorming post.
I am very excited to present to the community the design I've been working on. The overall look and feel I'm going after is a ...
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We should talk about the word "should"
Occasionally a question gets asked that is approximately of the form:
I have this problem, what should I do?
or
I have this problem, should I do X?
These are then closed as opinion based, ...
Someone_EvilMod
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Should we reprotect the 700 or so questions that were unprotected in the last few weeks?
Someone recently and quietly unprotected about 700 mainsite questions. (Whether or not one should do that is under discussion here.)
Should we re-protect those questions in advance of a broader meta ...
nitsua60Mod
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Why are site comments being deleted?
Some site users have noticed old comments being deleted. This is correct - site comments are meant to be a mostly temporary means of improving questions and answers. Here's an explanation of the ...
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I think this answer might be harmful
This answer currently suggests swimming while wearing a full suit of metal armor would be a reasonable thing to do in real life. In actuality, jumping into water with a full suit of metal armor on ...
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2017 Community Moderator Election Results
Role-Playing Games' third moderator election has come to a close, the votes have been tallied, and the 2 new moderators are:
They'll be joining the existing crew shortly — please thank them for ...
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Links to "D&D Tools" / dndtools and similar sites
I've noticed lots of links to dndtools.eu lately. That site seems to have verbatim text from a lot of non-OGL D&D stuff.
Obviously, that's really useful as a reference! But the site itself is ...
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How to deal with questions that just don't understand the scope of the RPG landscape?
We've had several questions lately that we've been closing. What point-buy systems of magic (like psionics in 3e D&D) are there? , https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/14120/what-are-the-main-...
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As foretold in prophecy, the Hatpocalypse approaches!
As foretold in prophecy and by the tales of our surviving elders, the Hatpocalypse is nearly upon us once again. Every year, when the air gets cold and nights get long,1 hats descend upon the site. ...
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Is '5e' a clear enough statement of game system by a question asker?
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 ...
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Are questions about rule intent on topic? [2018] [duplicate]
A reasonably common type of question on RPG.SE is "Why does this rule exist" or "why is a rule this way?"
These questions come in several flavors, which are not mutually exclusive:
...
nitsua60Mod
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Please avoid using the RAI acronym, or use it carefully & be clear in context
This meta exists to explain some issues with the RAI acronym. It has a couple of issues with its usage, and often get asked to clarify it. You've probably been pointed to this meta in relation to a ...
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Comments explaining downvotes being deleted
When you downvote a post, a popup appears urging you to explain in a comment why you downvoted.
Now this happened:
Wow, can I ask the reason of the downvotes? – Vereos 46 mins ago
I downvoted, ...
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A low-intervention approach [rules-as-written]: back to tagging basics
Sometime during the weeks of wrangling over the rules-as-written tag it occurred to me that, I am pretty sure, we've fallen into a fundamental error that may be the cause of all the problems:
Tags ...
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Is something wrong?
Before you consider answering or voting, please read the whole question.
As the second of three questions mentioned in this meta, I wish to ask if something is wrong. The meta question was inspired ...
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How do we save designer reasoning questions? [2018] [duplicate]
I think we have a bit of a problem with designer reason questions on the site.
A little history: designer-reasons questions were our attempt to save "what is this rule for" questions. Those were ...
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What to do when an edit guesses the system being used rather than waiting for the querent to clarify?
Note: As of September 3rd, 2021, this policy has been removed
Following the results of Revisit III: Don’t Guess the System policy this policy is no longer in effect. New guidance pending.
When the ...
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How is the community doing? [2017] [duplicate]
We wanted to take a minute to check in and see how the community feels like things are going on the site. A little more than a year ago, we had a pretty lengthy discussion about site problems; it ...
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Revisit III: Don’t Guess the System policy
We occasionally get questions which don’t specify which game system they are about, and which are about specific aspects of that game. Because the context and answers depend and vary with the system, ...
Someone_EvilMod
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Hatocalypse 2016 Survivors' Photo Album
This album is for 2016. Check out the 2017 album here: The Hatmas Interdimensional Breach 2017 Photo Album
As prophecy foretold, the Hatocalypse is upon us. Some of us may survive. Some may only be ...
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RPG.SE is 10 years old today! Let's tell some stories!
RPG.SE entered beta on August 19, 2010. The site has been around for a long time and seen a lot of people - some just passing through, others deciding to stay.
As we are a site inherently based around ...
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Stop repeating answers, please
A certain kind of questions attract many answers which are essentially the same answer repeated in different words, or posted with different formatting, or expanded to include all sorts of only ...
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Can non-open-license rules be discussed, or not?
Context
This is in relation to this question here:
Is there a limit to how much stuff you can carry?
And in particular this comment from a mod:
[...] Age of Rebellion is not open licensed and ...
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Should I post two answers if I find contradicting arguments?
RPG rules, in pursuit of flavour, can sometimes be flowery and ambiguous, even self-contradicting[citation needed]. In doing research for improving one of my answers that tries to resolve an ...
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Time to retire the [rules-as-written] tag?
We have recently seen some issues around site users being unclear on how to use the rules-as-written tag and some unpleasantness broke out on the topic. Sadly, this has been happening for more than ...
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Revisiting our "never guess the game system" policy [duplicate]
We have a policy that says we never guess the game system someone's playing when we need to know it but it's not clearly stated in the question. Conditions for our site have changed since it was ...
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Is there a functional purpose to putting things in code text here?
Fellow member @SteveC has been doing diligent work editing questions and answers to put the names of Dungeons & Dragons terms into code text: from Toughness to ...
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"Update: here's how it worked out...." Where does it go?
I've seen three questions in the last few days that have a similar, and unusual, life cycle:
OP poses question,
some good answers come in,
time passes,
OP comes back to report how it went.
That last ...
nitsua60Mod
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Are questions about alignment on topic?
In the various Dungeons & Dragons games, and a limited set of other RPGs, there is the concept of "alignment," which is the ethical and moral disposition of a character.
We have a fair number of ...
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