Question About Games in General

Question

Which of the following is true?

1. General questions about games are Off Topic.
2. General questions about games are On Topic.
3. General questions about games are On Topic if they meet Some Condition.

I was told that my question, What's the name of the theory that the player with the most options has the advantage?, was off topic because it was not about a specific board or card game.

[Your question] should be closed because it's not about specific board or card games and is therefore not on-topic on this site.

In any case, the on-topic help page says "For a question to be on topic, it must relate to a game that is on topic."

Questions about kingmaking, analysis paralysis, and other concepts that are not specific to a single game have all been treated with high regard on this site. This question about house rules even declares that it is not about a specific game. Why does mine have to be about a specific game?

I think the reason that my question is being treated unfairly is that there is a deeper issue that is bugging voters, and they are looking for a made up reason to close vote. I'll enumerate the reasons that I think could be bugging the voters:

• "Your question doesn't specifically apply to board games."
  • The same could be said of almost every question on the site. Kingmaking was born from war, money, and politics. Analysis paralysis has its roots in software development workplaces. My question is apparently born from trivial set theory, according to another user.
• "Your question is trivial."
  • The theory is trivial. I am looking for the name of that theory. There's a difference.

Answer 1

General questions about games should be on-topic — as long as it's a question appropriate for board or card game enthusiasts.

In terms of the comments you've received, I believe the following:

• Your question is about something relevant to board and card games.
• The question doesn't apply specifically to board games, but neither do some very good questions we've had. I can pick out a couple from a non-game specific tag like dice fairly easily, which also apply to roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons (which definitely isn't an on-topic game):
  • Is there a standard way to number the faces of a 20-sided die?
  • Why do the opposing sides of a D20 generally add up to 21
• Your question isn't trivial. Even if it is, that's not a reason for closure. It would suggest, maybe, you haven't done your research, but I imagine you have.

But it's hard to draw a rule of thumb on general questions.

I propose a guideline

There's a guideline we can use to determine whether general questions not directly related to a board or card game are appropriate for our site or not. A version of it has been used on Game Development and Role-playing Games for years, and it's produced great results.

It'd be something like this for us:

Questions about a general topic, such as terminology, might more likely belong on another Stack Exchange site (e.g. English) than here. A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself …

Would a board or card game expert give me a better/different/more specific answer to this question than a Linguist, Video game developer, etc?

If yes, then feel free to ask it here.

For Game Development, where this guideline first originated, the major problem was non-game related programming questions, so their FAQ specifically mentions it in that context. They now can recognise when a question isn't suitable for their site in that area and others (art, animation, mathematics, etc).

For RPG.SE, our problem was real world topics - people developing a campaign would ask historical or geographical questions, or how fast certain boats were in real life. It was hard to tell what to do with those questions, since while many were totally appropriate, others weren't, and it was hard to know where to draw the line. It was a real problem for us and it took a couple of years before we found and adopted that guideline (heck, the meta question I linked was 'part two' - part one was two years prior). RPG players usually aren't the right people to ask about that stuff. Our FAQ calls those out explicitly, and it's worked really well and finally made it clear which ones we should keep or close.

For us, here on Board Games, the current issue is just a terminology question. There might be other stuff more appropriately mentioned here. I'm not sure if this has come up a lot for us.

So by this rule of thumb, is your terminology question on topic?

Yes. Whether you ask it on here, or on English as a term identification question, a basic answer will just be the name of the strategy (if it has a name). However, you'll get a more specific response on Board Games: someone spirited enough to do so may elaborate on why this isn't always advantageous in games, or may sometimes leave you worse off, or so on, elaborating on certain situations offered by certain games.

So whilst it's kinda borderline, it's borderline on the side of yes, it's fine here.

Answer 2

Games in General

I do agree that requiring a question to be about one specific on-topic game is unnecessarily narrow. However, questions on this site should at the very least be specific to board games and/or card games. The help center's on topic page defines the site like this:

Board and Card Games Stack Exchange is for expert Q&A from people who like playing, discussing the strategy of, and getting rules clarifications of board games, designing board games or modifying the rules of existing board games.

Considering your examples in that light:

• Kingmaking is not a concept that is specific to board or card games. However, that particular question was asking about the strategy of kingmaking in board/card games and about designing and modifying the rules of existing board games to take those kinds of strategies into account.
• Analysis paralysis, again, is not a concept specific to this subject matter. But, again, that particular question was about playing board games with people who act that way.
• The "taking back actions" question, finally, was also about modifying the rules of existing board/card games (that's what "house rules" means, after all) to allow people to reverse actions, and whether that was desirable.

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Your Specific Question

First, your question is not just not about a specific board or card game. It's also not about playing board or card games in general. It's about games in general, and only then because the wording of the question uses the word "player." It's not even asking for any knowledge related to playing games. Your question, in essence, is asking

Is there a [formal or mathematical] term for the idea that "it's always better to keep your options open"?

That doesn't fit with any of the categories specified in the help center. The information you are looking for isn't really about games, in particular or in general; it's about terminology. If anything, the question might fit on English Language and Usage.

Answer 3

To (rather belatedly) flesh out a comment Jefromi made: While I don't think it's a primary consideration, one relevant consideration to appropriateness that may have been being applied here (consciously or not) is the question of whether this is the most appropriate site for a given question. In the case of the terminology question you posed, I don't think that B&CG is inappropriate for it, but I feel that the Mathematics StackExchange site would be a better fit for it, since the 'core content' of the question is primarily mathematical (you're looking for a formal term).