@Axoren "Do you expect us to decide what to do, Mr Villain?", "No, player characters, I expect you to die!"

@Axoren To be fair, we did try to talk to it. It wasn't interested in discussion :p

@Mithical "bwooooughhhhhh-aggghhhhhhh"

@HotRPGQuestions about this question, I'm a bit confused on the stance of the website for designer-intent questions. On one hand there's the following meta post that says those questions are on topic : rpg.meta.stackexchange.com/q/12157/77044

But on the other side, this question got tagged and closed as off-topic, although it deals with designer's intent on official content.

So what's the actual stance? Do I ignore the meta post and consider that designer intent is simply out of the website's scope?

Or is this question in particular off-topic for another reason?

But yeah the main issue I'm getting there is those mixed messages of "this kind of question is on-topic" and "closed because this kind of question is off-topic"

I've seen the argument of "this attracts too many speculative answers", but that's an issue that will happen with any question of that type, so that shouldn't be a proper argument to shut down those questions if they're allowed, right?

Do note that I'm not explicitely asking for that one question to be reopened. I only wish to understand why it was closed, because with the information I have at my disposal it does not make sense to me that it would be closed.

@Matthieu I think main lags behind meta sometimes

So people still remember the old policy/standard/loose agreement

@Matthieu While design intent questions are on prima facie on-topic, when we see that every answer is providing speculation, rather than facts and evidence, it is a sign that there is something else going on with the question.

@ThomasMarkov I do wonder if in the absence of evidence we can make educated guesses? So long as the speculation isn't rampant and unsupported I don't see an issue...?

@AncientSwordRage Personally, I will vote based on how plausible the answers sound. But I don't think that's a good system, and I don't think it's consistent with the stack model.

Based on my understanding of the Stack Exchange model, I shouldn't have to base my voting on which answer I think makes the most plausible guess. But that's all I've got on that question, and so I want the answer that I think makes the best guess to be on top.

As far as close voting, I didn't vote to close, and I don't intend to vote to reopen either.

I was told that my suggestion about how to improve certain design intent questions was wholly contrary to the community consensus. So I want to see how community consensus handles them without my influence.

@ThomasMarkov I can understand both sides for and against guesses, but the conditions for opening/closing seem fairly arbitrary. Then again, if a majority of people are against keeping a question up, then I guess it makes sense to close it.

@ThomasMarkov So, I suppose there's a difference between "There's no evidence, I heard a rumour Jeremy Crawford was attacked by Pointed object as a child, so avoids the words" (Plausibility of intent being judged) vs. "There's no evidence of intent, so here is an answer based on reasoning" (Plausibility of intent not being judged)

does that make sense?

@AncientSwordRage Yes, that difference determines how I would vote on the answers, for sure.

But well reasoned speculation is still speculation.

I do think that matches the SE model

because "Why doesn't my code work?" "Based on the error message I'm speculating it's XYZ you haven't told us about" works for sure

@AncientSwordRage I don't think that's quite analogous to what we have here.

not exactly

Such error messages have documentation explaining their meaning.

Yeah but I've seen error messages or issues where something is undocumented

@AncientSwordRage Sure. But in theory such questions are objectively answerable even without the documentation.

same here

@AncientSwordRage I dont think so.

On your undocumented error message question, were I savvy enough, I could investigate what's going on at the machine code level and tell you exactly why the error message was sent.

My point is just that this sort of question is so very different from a question about computer programming that I don't think there are any meaningful analogues.

Jeremy Crawford and the Wizards team are not computers that we can break down.

there's some benefit to avoiding the phrase, you can ask what the intent was or you can ask what the benefits are

> I could investigate what's going on at the [source book] level and tell you exactly why the [wording] was [chosen]

same deal

@AncientSwordRage Sure. Which is why the question is prima facie on topic.

Again, the issue here was more with the answers than the question.

Though the answers tell us maybe there's some improving that could be done to the question.

A possibly important distinction is with code there is an objective way to test a speculative/suggested solution; "does it make the code work". The same doesn't exist for speculative solutions for designer reasons

Either way, I'm not actually voting and will let the mods sort things out

Yay...

:p

@Someone_Evil You made your bed, so to speak :P

@Someone_Evil You could ask "If I did use this phrase, would it be confusing?"

@Someone_Evil Right! This is sort of my motivation for the suggestion I provided for improving certain design intent questions - if I provide a ruling based on my experience, that solution is testable. Did it resolve the problem OP was having at the table? Does it resolve similar problems at my table?

@AncientSwordRage That's skirting opinion based, but something like "If I used this phrase, other than just being inconsistent with the usual construction, will it actually create any inconsistencies in application at the table?" is perfectly on topic, and focuses on resolving (or preventing) actual problems at the table of play.

@ThomasMarkov ahh you better phrased what I intended

FWIW this is the kind of thing I meant with the "questions should be explicit about what they're looking for", though I think in this case we didn't quite realize the ambiguity until answers were in

It's also possible that the community needs some time/exercise/tuning in evaluating this kind of ambiguity. That's wrapped up in the history of the question type and trial thingy

@Someone_Evil I think that's wise

@NautArch what happens if someone comes along and posts an answer to the question you just edited with a quote from the designers explaining their intent?

@AncientSwordRage I think it changes the question significantly

(but I'm going to stay out of it beyond giving my opinion here in chat)

@ThomasMarkov I think it's too big an edit

@AncientSwordRage Here were my thoughts behind it: Designer reasons were largely disallowed because of rampant speculation. We okayed bringing them back, but don't want rampant speculation for designer intent.

But we got several answers with speculation - so we can either keep the question looking for designer reasons and then close it because we can't have nice things.

Or we change it to what's been answered so that we can keep it.

But if others, or mods, feel otherwise, that's fine.

I just don't really get the let's bring it back and let's let everyone answer with speculation option.

It's an option, I just don't get it.

@NautArch counter: nobody is speculating on the designer reasons part. Of the two answers that aren't heavily downvoted, I think they both own up to that

So there's this story I got told a while back, about someone who cut the end off a joint if meat before roasting it in the oven. When asked why they said "it's what my mum did, it makes the meat taste better." So someone asked that person's mum, who said "it's what my dad did, it stops the meat drying out" so they went and asked that person's dad who said "my parents did that, I never asked why but if they didn't, the joint of meat wouldn't fit in the oven"

The first two answers in the story are speculative, but the two we have on the question aren't in the same way

I've been thinking about Fate aspects lately, and found this: wiki.rpg.net/index.php/Aspects_List#Character_Aspects

I work well with examples so that's really handy

I mean, my blatant speculation on the whole thing is that it's a cheap way to keep down submitted word count.

@Glazius huh?

the standardization of "damage" vs "points of damage"

@Glazius ahhh ok