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Why do these questions get closed?
We close these questions because they're list questions, which we declared as off topic in 2010. List questions tend to break our Q&A format: there's no single objectively correct answer, and no answer is better or worse than any other, so long as it simply meets the criteria provided. Our voting and accepted answer ...
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Our guidelines serve two masters, and neither well:
Helping the asker find a game or games that will suit what they are aiming to do.
Ensuring that we can meaningfully judge and vote on the answers.
What I've observed is that how well it satisfies one goal is inversely proportional to how well it satisfies the other: the more perfectly answers follow the ...
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This is what forums are good at
RPG Stack Exchange hasn't evolved mechanisms to accommodate people who really don't have any more detailed requirements because there are already a hundred and one sites that do accommodate those people's needs: forums and other discussion sites, that are excellent for soliciting long lists of subjective recommendations.
RPG....
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You can ask real, relatively specific questions (and answer them)
Quoting from Brian Ballsun-Stanton's answer to "I want to write a Q&A: how do I go about doing that?":
Find real, specific, questions and answer them.
We're not a blog nor a monograph publishing service. When pondering self-answering questions (which we encourage) remember that ...
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You accept the answer that is most useful to you. If no answer is useful to you then you probably want to edit your question or post a comment on it to specify what about the current answers does not fulfill your requirements so that answers can be more tailored.
Never feel like you have to accept an answer if you do not feel your question has been answered....
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As this is a game-recommendation question, please adhere to both the FAQ and the rules for subjective questions as outlined in Good Subjective, Bad Subjective and on our Meta. In particular, all responses should be based on actual experience or cited references to others' experiences.
This is mostly the same text as in tpg2114's answer and that we've been ...
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To elaborate on doppelgreener's answer, I'd like to focus on the fact that StackExchange's goal is to be a repository of experts and expertise.
When a recommendation question contains detailed requirements and criteria, expert opinion and experience can be used to give the best answer to that question. A list question that just wants as broad a list as ...
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Support.
I've seen this cause confusion (hence that comment of mine you quoted), and ideally we would solve that confusion. Some problems are hard to solve at all, but this one takes a mere single tag to solve, and that's about as cheap as an ideal solution can possibly get.
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No, game-rec wants what actually works, not what is supposed to work
The game-rec rules rely on one simple premise: you, or someone you can point to, has actually tried what you recommend, and it actually worked.
A statement of designer intent is a statement that something should work, but that does not mean it actually does work. And "actually does ...
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To SSD's points:
Does [this Q&A] avoid the problems, and so make it ok?
It might. If nothing else, it's a new approach to an old problem: users want to ask game-rec questions, users want to answer them, and direct game-rec Q&A doesn't work. I'm not crazy about asking a question that's known to be off-topic, so that first step needs ...
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It's absolutely crucial that game-rec questions draw on experience (your own or someone else's) with the querent's criteria. In your answer I see your experience with DFRPG, but no mention of having used DFRPG for Harry Potter games. That's really important, because otherwise your answer--no matter how accurate or useful--is hard to differentiate from ...
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No, do not use a self-answered game-id question for this
We don't do game recommendations any more, and trying to "sneak in" game-rec questions as game-identification will just end up causing trouble (game-id's being treated as poor man's game-recs has already been on mod radar for shadiness). This is inappropriate.
What you can do is ask questions about ...
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Remember the game-rec rules. You have to have done it or seen it done. Given that criterion, and assuming the question itself doesn't put it out of scope by saying "no really, something published" then a hack is... kinda OK as an answer, if it's a hack that's online that someone can use. "I did my own private hack" isn't an actionable answer. But if it's ...
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There are two major ways to get your recommendation question asked and answered.
1. Rephrase the request as a problem to be solved
Recommendations can almost always be rephrased by stepping back and looking at the problem the requested item is expected to solve. You can still ask, by letting go of the assumption that you know what will solve it, and just ...
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As Mourdos said, you accept the answer most useful to you. (In fact in general I strongly agree with his answer here.) You're under no time pressure or obligation to accept an answer. What you accept and why is up to you.
However, for a game recommendation, it would probably be logical to accept the answer providing the game that you find works best for ...
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The current guidelines promote objectivity and answers backed up with experience and rationale. Having been on open forums that discuss the same topics, I think this isn't just a good thing, it's necessary for the SE format and a reasoned discussion.
However, the guidelines do not currently suit the purpose of game recommendation questions. A rules question ...
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Note: I don't really have any strong opinions on the wording since I don't actually do anything other than lurk around reading questions. If a mod comes along and leaves a comment on this answer, I'll "accept" it and ping Grace Note to use the wording here. Competing wordings (unless super minor edits to this one) should probably be a separate answer so the ...
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This is a good point. The other mods and I tend to exercise our closes and reopens "once only", so once we've closed a question, if the community reopens, we just grouse and move on, mainly because we get sick of people screaming about what fascists we are. I tend to then contribute an answer that follows our "challenge the frame of the question" site ...
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The mods were surprised by the overwhelming support for the view that "the guidelines don't work and should be abandoned" (+19/−3, and twice the score of any other feedback).
Given the steadily increasing resistance to the guidelines in practice, followed by that unexpected and overwhelming support for a late suggestion to abandon them, holding a vote-...
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What Makes A Good Game-Rec Answer
As we have said many times in our guidance on game-rec questions, they (like all subjective Q&A on the site) need to adhere to core SE guidance on Good Subjective, Bad Subjective. The most crucial part of this is how you support your answer with Back It Up!.
Back It Up! means that your answers must be based on either:...
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This question, specifically, was closed to allow answerers a day to clean up their answers to Back It Up! before they're deleted. I've also commented on every. bloody. offending. answer, such that they know they're in danger of deletion.
The requirement is, in-fact, being applied to all questions in game-recommendation because of this answer. It is the ...
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(Note: Please read the entire FAQ linked below on game-recs, including the Meta.SE blog post and linked Arqade metas linked from it, to be sufficiently informed for your opinion to be taken seriously on this topic.)
Our guidance on game-rec questions as explained in Are game recommendation questions on topic?, I believe, are still valid. We do have some ...
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I agree this was unfortunate and inappropriate from the standpoint of jurisprudence. Nonetheless, it's not clear to me that proper procedure would have yielded a different result and the inappropriate action was neither intentionally abusive nor particularly egregious.
I propose we agree that answering with a plan for community action drawing on the other ...
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I've added the following summary to the top of Are Game Recommendation Questions On Topic, Revisited:
This means the following kinds of questions are off topic:
I want to play (details) kind of game/story. What game should I use to do that?
Which game does (thing) the best?
Are there any games that let me do (thing) / have this specific ...
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Done, tweaked as follows:
As this is a game-recommendation question, please adhere to the FAQ, the rules for subjective questions as outlined in Good Subjective, Bad Subjective and our rules for game recommendations. All responses must cite actual experience or reference others' experiences!
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The Question You Asked But Don't Really Have - "What's Grim And Gritty?"
It means what it means to the poster.
Whenever any poster uses a term you think is ambiguous, ask them to clarify it.
That is the sum total of what we should really say about it. No, we will not come up with a RPG.SE functional definition of "what is grim & gritty."
The ...
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This answer does not entirely reflect my personal opinion, but I feel that it is important for the community to be able to vote on the idea of banning game-recs entirely.
We should ban game-recs because:
They are obviously problematic. 25% of our game-recs are closed, and 36% have been closed at some point in their lifetime. And they have special rules, ...
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This question seems to imply that the terms "shopping question" and "game recommendation" are synonyms. A game recommendation is exactly what it says, a question asking for a recommendation on what game to play. For (a completely made up) example:
"I am looking for an RPG that involves rolling dice. Can someone point me towards an RPG that involves rolling ...
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We are equipped to handle this through community moderation.
We have pretty low volume review queues here. SSD wrote in this answer:
Reviewers can just take bites out of it, and bow out when decision fatigue rears its head. Pressing Skip when at all unsure helps a lot in that regard, too. Others will pick it up and take care of a few more, until the whole ...
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I actually think that we've got a good framework just by looking at our four most popular questions:
Looking for solo (one person) RPGs - do they exist?
Are there any good tabletop RPGs for young beginning players?
What games are out there that could be played in a single night, with no prep?
1 GM and 1 Player games and game systems?
In this case, we ...
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