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Specifically I am referring to games like Magic: The Gathering, which have large tournament/competitive play scenes.

Are questions not necessarily related to the rules of play, but around the subject of playing these games at tournaments on topic?

The question I was considering asking which brought me to meta was:

Are there any reliable methods to secure my belongings at a large tournament or event?

Would the above, and questions like it, be considered on topic?

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I think questions about tournaments -- structure, tournament-specific rules, game logs (for games/tournies that produce them), etc are all on-topic. We've seen questions about things like that.

However, your question isn't really specific to a tournament; it's the same question as "how do I secure my belongings at a large {conference, training class, meeting, SF con, etc}". There's nothing game-tournament-specific about it. So that would be off-topic here. (On the other hand, if, say, GenCon did something special about security and you had a question about that, that would seem to be borderline on-topic.)

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  • I disagree: tournaments in general have specific rules about what you can and cannot bring in (to prevent cheating). Also the logistics of tournaments are different than a conference. While the answer might be hard to formulate into an objective, answerable question, that's due to the nature of the question itself, not because of the on- or off-topic-ness of the question. (I'm sorry. Off-topic-ness is not a word. But this isn't ELU.se! :-)
    – corsiKa
    Jun 12, 2013 at 15:32
  • @corsiKa, government facilities, hospitals, certain workplaces, and airports also have restrictions on what you can bring in. I grant that a question in this area could be on-topic, but it would have to be something about the game con itself, not about the general practice of securing your belongings where answers might involve your car, the hotel safe, leaving things at home, etc.
    – Monica Cellio
    Jun 12, 2013 at 15:56
  • if I bring my Magic cards to build a deck to the waiting room at my hospital, I can easily identify what is mine - it's the only magic stuff around. At a tournament (which includes LGS tournaments) it becomes much trickier. And, the answer may actually be "the same general practices apply" - but that answer is based on the experience of experts who have been there. You can't rule out a question because of its answer.
    – corsiKa
    Jun 12, 2013 at 16:05
  • OTOH, if I have to deposit my smartphone at the entrance to the government lab, it probably looks a lot like the others that have been deposited. (I also read "secure" as being about theft, not identification.) I think a question about bringing cards to an MTG sealed-deck tournament would be on-topic because of the context, but one about where to stow your iPad wouldn't be.
    – Monica Cellio
    Jun 12, 2013 at 16:10

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