Questions tagged [policy]

For questions and discussions about RPG.SE policy, or policy on the meta site itself.

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85 votes
7 answers
3k views

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-...
SevenSidedDie's user avatar
45 votes
8 answers
1k views

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 ...
KorvinStarmast's user avatar
42 votes
7 answers
3k views

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2021, this policy has been removed Following the results of Revisit III: Don’t Guess the System policy this policy is no longer in effect.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 ...
Rubiksmoose's user avatar
  • 94.7k
35 votes
8 answers
1k views

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This post is now outdated.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 ...
Tiggerous's user avatar
  • 25.1k
33 votes
3 answers
2k views

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_Evil's user avatar
  • 48.3k
31 votes
12 answers
2k views

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 ...
doppelgreener's user avatar
29 votes
5 answers
2k views

Revisit: Is "5e" a clear enough statement of game system by a question asker to determine that the question is about D&D 5e?

Following the results of Revisit III: Don’t Guess the System policy this meta now refers to an outdated policy. This is a revisit of Is '5e' a clear enough statement of game system by a ...
Someone_Evil's user avatar
  • 48.3k
26 votes
4 answers
1k views

Let's talk about 8chan

In our faq “I've been told my question is better suited to a forum, but where should I go?”, an answer was posted recently suggesting people might find 8chan a useful discussion site. The usual ...
SevenSidedDie's user avatar
24 votes
2 answers
550 views

The site's availability to newcomers seems startlingly low

I'm new to this site and to RPG Stackexchange where I have been spending my time so far. I only have a moderate experience with DND and most of my friends have none. I've been looking for a reliable ...
Nemenia's user avatar
  • 3,226
23 votes
4 answers
534 views

Should we encourage users to wait 24 hours before accepting an answer?

There are those here who encourage users not to accept answers before waiting at least 24 hours. Most of the time it is presented as something that "we" recommend or encourage. Some even refer to it ...
Rubiksmoose's user avatar
  • 94.7k
23 votes
6 answers
1k views

So, let’s talk about rule intent and question closing

Admittedly a bit slower that we’d have preferred (our bad), this is a continuance of rule intent discussion. (See why I’m avoiding saying revisit below). As a brief summary, questions asking for ...
Someone_Evil's user avatar
  • 48.3k
23 votes
5 answers
539 views

How to improve/maintain the quality-of-life of small fandoms in the face of a dominant big fandom on an open Stack Exchange?

Back when I joined RPGSE, I of course noticed how big the D&D demographic is here. And at first I thought, 'Hey, I can just Ignore all the AD&D tags and Watch tags of my games and everyone has ...
vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica's user avatar
22 votes
2 answers
590 views

Should RPG.SE enforce not enforcing a specific standard for handling gender pronouns?

This is a follow up to our standing guidance on pronoun use in Q&As around the site: Should RPG.SE enforce a specific standard for handling gender pronouns? The question asks: Should RPG.SE ...
Thomas Markov's user avatar
21 votes
2 answers
367 views

Can we generalize our policy on linking system-specific rules, toolsets, etc. as clearly stating the system?

Following the results of Revisit III: Don’t Guess the System policy this meta now refers to an outdated policy. We have this question about reopening a question and tagging it pathfinder-2e on the ...
Stop Being Evil's user avatar
20 votes
2 answers
300 views

Are one-line "mic drop" answers merely frowned upon or actually prohibited?

Are one-line answers merely bad answers (presumably meant to be down-voted or commented upon to suggest improvement) or are they actively against the rules for posted answers (beyond salvation and ...
Bloodcinder's user avatar
  • 30.1k
19 votes
3 answers
359 views

Can we develop a system to avoid/discourage subsequent homebrew critique question edits?

While our policy on homebrew-critique questions makes a lot of sense as the questions are certainly able to be answered effectively by experts and fit all the criteria for an on-topic question, these ...
David Coffron's user avatar
19 votes
6 answers
528 views

A Modest Proposal for answers that aren't backed up

This has happened many times, but I'm going to focus on the most recent question where answers have flooded in that aren't backed up but are highly upvoted. If we do, in fact, want people to support ...
NotArch's user avatar
  • 125k
19 votes
4 answers
556 views

The [rules-as-written] tag is a good tag, but we've made it sick. Let's cure it

rules-as-written has two purposes right now: "this question is about the rules as written" "answer must obey special rules" The latter makes it a meta tag. Meta tags are never, in the long run, a ...
SevenSidedDie's user avatar
18 votes
1 answer
311 views

Can I use a bleeped-out-swear if that's the name of the article I'm referencing?

I know there's a pretty strict policy on swear words on this site. I just wrote an answer referencing an article by The Angry Gm, the title of which is How to Build F$&%ing Awesome Encounters! I ...
Alex's user avatar
  • 8,100
17 votes
3 answers
417 views

'We do not enforce style' - how to react to discrepancies between policy and reality?

I've seen it repeatedly Officially Declared that 'we' do not enforce styles, and do not do trivial changes that have zero effect on clarity. And yet in practice, over the course of my stay here, I ...
vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica's user avatar
15 votes
1 answer
140 views

What to do if seeking the answer to an existing question that's been closed because the system wasn't specified?

A long while back, when I was first starting to get confident about asking questions on this site, I had a question I wanted to ask. However, I searched, and the question I wanted to ask already ...
ZarHakkar's user avatar
  • 848
14 votes
4 answers
415 views

Are questions about specific people's campaigns on topic?

As in individual games rather than the game system itself. A recent question, What is this story I recall about an extremely long ever-changing character backstory?, had the following comment ...
Please stop being evil's user avatar
13 votes
3 answers
778 views

Should I use a narrow system tag, or use a broader tag?

I am playing D&D 4e and I have a question about how I can create an excellent pirate adventure. Since people have pirate adventures in other RPG systems, and Stack Exchange is about useful answers,...
doppelgreener's user avatar
13 votes
1 answer
387 views

I want to post some questions that will require (finite, community wiki) list answers. Kosher?

Basically, while there is a sort of search system on d20PFSRD, I still find certain categories of feats very hard to locate when I need them. I would like to make a few questions asking for lists of ...
gatherer818's user avatar
  • 22.2k
13 votes
2 answers
476 views

Does adding the system tag to this question violate the "never guess the system" policy?

This question: Would Zorquan be a Unity domain patron? As I said in a comment, given that the question includes "2e Forgotten Realms" (provided for background context for lore purposes) and "we're ...
NathanS's user avatar
  • 79k
13 votes
2 answers
244 views

When do homebrew suggestions need to be playtested by an answerer?

It is unclear to me when someone needs to provide playtesting for homebrew suggestions and when they don't. As an example, in this answer, MattDM provides a really good answer for the first half, ...
NotArch's user avatar
  • 125k
13 votes
1 answer
235 views

Do we want a banner/help page about AI policy?

Per a previous discussion, “generative AI” is banned on this site. Per a recent site-wide announcement, we can request a banner in the answer box stating this policy, and linking to a new Help page ...
KRyan's user avatar
  • 352k
12 votes
2 answers
1k views

What's our policy with answers advocating piracy (accidentally or not)?

In my question about legal 5e PDF's, it has, more than once, attracted answers advocating piracy or even linking to pirated versions of these PDF's. Is our policy just to downvote and move on, or ...
user avatar
12 votes
3 answers
303 views

How Trivial an Edit is Too Trivial to Make?

I know that trivial edits (and style wars/most style edits) are inappropriate on RPGSE. But the question arises, how trivial is trivial? For example, I recently saw this edit on an old question: one ...
vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica's user avatar
12 votes
1 answer
744 views

What is the “Don’t Guess the System” policy?

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 a user ...
linksassin's user avatar
  • 30.9k
12 votes
1 answer
159 views

How does one propose policy?

Suppose I wanted to put forth a policy for discussion, refinement, some sort of decision process, and eventually formal adoption/rejection. Say... a policy to explicitly allow tool-recommendation ...
nitsua60's user avatar
  • 101k
11 votes
4 answers
177 views

Question about asking and then answering questions currently not up

I want to know the communities opinions on whether or not I should ask and then answer questions that I have the answer to, aren't on the site yet, are appropriate to the site, and, often times, have ...
sebsmith's user avatar
  • 2,762
10 votes
5 answers
414 views

Shall we review the various World of Darkness tags' use? [duplicate]

The recent spate of V:tR questions from a new user has brought the mess of WoD tags to my attention. (And I do like cleaning up messy tag clusters.) According to its tag wiki, world-of-darkness is ...
SevenSidedDie's user avatar
10 votes
2 answers
474 views

The policy change regarding game-rec questions needs review

A recent meta post about the efficacy of game-rec questions, which had the initial tone of "How are we doing with this question type?" became a tacit vote to ban the question type. This is ...
Tritium21's user avatar
  • 9,838
9 votes
4 answers
458 views

We need to talk about late votes to “policy” metas

Let me start by trying to give a definition. We’re here talking about meta discussions which strongly guide or dictate behaviour, and in particular where there are opposing, incompatible options and – ...
Someone_Evil's user avatar
  • 48.3k
9 votes
4 answers
197 views

Cross-system Fate tag protocol

This question started out tagged fate-core and fate-accelerated. It was retagged with just fate, and then the two original tags were re-added. Now, as I understand it Fate Core and Fate Accelerated ...
BESW's user avatar
  • 53.3k
9 votes
1 answer
228 views

Can I include a screenshot of a diagram to support my answer?

I recently answered a question where the best support I could find is in a diagram presented in the beginners rules. I attempted to translate the diagram to the best of my ability but it isn't as ...
linksassin's user avatar
  • 30.9k
8 votes
1 answer
126 views

Are answers that include designer reasons on-topic and allowed on this site?

This question was based on a thought I had in reaction to this: Is a question that ends up only having 'designer reason' answers off-topic even if designer reasons aren't specifically what ...
NathanS's user avatar
  • 79k
8 votes
2 answers
286 views

Improvement on Deleted Answers Help Page - deletion due to rpg.se policies

Deleted answers help page starts with the sentence: Answers that do not fundamentally answer the question may be removed. And goes on to give examples of non-answer answers. Yet, deletion can ...
ZwiQ's user avatar
  • 22.1k
8 votes
1 answer
149 views

Is there a list of site rules which can be linked to new users?

New visitors to the site are routinely linked to the Tour, which introduces certain banned topics: Questions which are off-topic, primarily opinion-based, have too many possible answers, or would ...
Quadratic Wizard's user avatar
8 votes
1 answer
336 views

What are the rules and policies of RPG.SE?

Is there a list of rules I need to follow here? What are the site policies I need to know about?
Someone_Evil's user avatar
  • 48.3k
7 votes
2 answers
292 views

Why doesn't this site allow opinion-based side questions?

I have asked several questions which contain side questions. For example, in a question regarding familiars using magic items, I asked What would be the best magic item(s) to give an imp (for ...
Josiah Riggan's user avatar
7 votes
4 answers
332 views

Is trivia on-topic?

We have an old question about trivia questions that we wrestled with, without a real consensus emerging: How do 'Trivia' Questions meet the requirements for posting? I went searching out ...
SevenSidedDie's user avatar
7 votes
1 answer
136 views

How to show the most recent community consensus in meta?

This meta: What to do when an edit guesses the system being used rather than waiting for the querent to clarify? is an old post that has received faq tag. However, there is an attempt to revisit the ...
Vylix's user avatar
  • 32.6k
7 votes
1 answer
2k views

Whose Law do we follow?

Whose copyright rules do we abide by here? Wikipedia's list of parties to international copyright treaties outlines five major international copyright treaties, which apply in various combinations to ...
Please stop being evil's user avatar
7 votes
1 answer
193 views

Confusion regarding the topicality of and differences between "history-of-gaming" and "designer-reasons" questions

The current policy on "designer-reasons" questions states that they are off-topic and are considered to be off-topic because they often receive answers that make guesses and do not involve ...
Exempt-Medic's user avatar
6 votes
4 answers
551 views

Is it time to revisit rule intent questions?

In June '21, Someone_Evil began a discussion: We need to talk about late votes to “policy” metas. As part of the summary of her overwhelmingly supported answer, doppelgreener includes this point: If ...
Thomas Markov's user avatar
6 votes
2 answers
235 views

What is the Nature of Stack Policy Decisions?

Note: I understand the reluctance to use a word like "policy" here. But it appears to me to be a fact that, when any sort of in-the-moment dispute arises, there is an inevitable appeal to ...
Upper_Case's user avatar
  • 21.8k
6 votes
0 answers
168 views

Is it acceptable to append the "dnd-5e" tag to questions that lack it but are about Adventurers League? [duplicate]

This question was missing the dnd-5e tag but is asking a question in the context of an Adventurers League game. I know we have a policy against guessing game editions but, in this case, no guess was ...
Rykara's user avatar
  • 29.5k
5 votes
5 answers
552 views

Is it acceptable to use LLMs for improving the English of answers and questions?

When writing an answer or a question on this stack, I try to be the clearest possible for exposing my problem or for proposing a solution, but I recognize two main issues1: I use the same sentence ...
Eddymage's user avatar
  • 28.7k