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The following question was closed as overly broad:

https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/4506/what-unique-mechanics-have-you-seen-in-games-includes-house-rules

I thought this question had potential, but agreed with the closing because it was a multifaceted question that would draw too many, and long-winded answers.

In my opinion, there were actually about three (give or take) separate questions buried under the one framework.

One question might have been, "What mechanics, including house rules, have you seen in games that create scarcities, and therefore keep them tight?" (With examples)

Another question might have been, What mechanics, including house rules, have you seen in games that reduce complexity and therefore speed up the game?" (With examples)

A third question might have been, "What features, including house rules have you seen in games that create exciting asymmetry while keeping "randomness" within a manageable level?

Can a question of this sort be meaningfully broken up into manageable pieces as described above? Or is it necessary to start from scratch?

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  • It's good to break the question apart, but even the smaller sub-questions, it's unclear what the actual problem is that you're trying to solve with these sub-questions.
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Aug 21, 2011 at 2:25
  • Apparently I've made some progress, but even the "fix" needs further work.
    – Tom Au
    Commented Aug 21, 2011 at 13:57
  • These seem like game design questions to me, aka boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/game-design ? So you're trying to design a game, and you want to achieve a certain effect.. maybe drill into why you want that effect and ask for concrete examples with justification.
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Aug 21, 2011 at 20:53
  • @Jeff Atwood: I wouldn't quarrel with that. Perhaps the question(s) could be "migrated" (in some form) to the other site.
    – Tom Au
    Commented Aug 22, 2011 at 12:56

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I think you have to look to the FAQ for assistance with questions like this.

Scoping is handled by

Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.

You could imagine a book being needed to answer the original question, it is too broad as many have noted.

You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.

It isn't clear what problem your proposed three questions are trying to solve. If they were posed as written, quite possibly they would be closed. Perhaps the full question would help specify the problem, and limit the number of answers. Questions that are answered by an open-ended list just aren't a good fit here.

If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK.

Further explanation. We're looking for questions, not discussions. There are plenty of great forums out there that would be happy to host discussions. This site does not exist to compete with them, instead it complements them by providing a better system to resolve questions.

If you've ever tried to find the answer to a subtle question on a forum, you know how much better StackExchange is.

Ever read 5+ pages of back and forth discussion about one rule point and still have no idea what the right answer is?

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  • OK, I may have addressed the "broadness" issue, but there may have been others, like clarity and relevance that I didn't address.
    – Tom Au
    Commented Aug 21, 2011 at 18:23

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