OP: "thing"

>Fuck discussing settings or Veeky Forums things!
>I just want to snark about things and pat myself on the back about how witty I am for not contributing!

God forbid you have to hear about a setting you hadn't before and maybe like it.

The idea that you have to discuss specific settings and can't answer a question with discussion on how it is answered in numerous settings is one of the leading causes of general culture.

Every time someone says "depends on the setting" and demands the OP specify one, they are effectively saying "I want threads to be about one system only with no cross contamination to further encourage tribalism"

Depends on the question.

>Actually, you could easily give an answer for your own setting

Because that's not what the question was. If OP wants to hear about shit in your setting, they should damn well phrase their question properly.

If they left it generalist, then they did phrase the question properly.

This and this.

OP's defending lazy OPs, because he most likely is one.

Goddamn, you guys will take any excuse to not contribute these days, won't you?
This is getting to extreme levels of finnicky choosiness about what you will grace with your legitimate conversation.

True but maybe everytime someone asks a vague lore question we should answer as if he's talking about forgotten realms. I hear there is enough lore to cover it too.

I usually answer it for whatever system has my fancy.
It works out pretty well.

>Goddamn, you guys will take any excuse to not contribute these days, won't you?
No one on Veeky Forums has an obligation to contribute anything.

>You can't make me be a productive member of the community!

>I ask vague questions and when I get vague answers, it makes me mad!

Don't make shitty threads, OP. Learn how to ask specific questions and you won't get answers like "Depends on the setting." Because when you specify the setting your question is about, no one can say "Depends on the setting." It's like ya know... Common fucking sense.

>You can't make me be a productive member of the community!
You literally can't.

Shame on you for having that takeaway from this.

shit,
was right on the money.

Vague questions get vague answers. I see no problem with this. There's nothing extreme about the response "There are a lot of kinds of 'dwarf'; what exactly are you looking for here, OP?", because there ARE a lot of kinds of dwarf. Admittedly, the exact response "Depends on the setting." is a rather passive aggressive one, but it's no less accurate. A 'wizard' could be any of literally dozens, if not scores, of basic ideas. has it, unsurprisingly, literally backwards: the pleading need for a basic communal understanding and agreement on what a 'wizard' or a 'dwarf' or whatever is is a DESPERATE need for tribalism, the exact kind of need that drives people to form subcultures to begin with. "We all agree a wizard is this at its core, because we all have the same basic context" is a plea for sameness.

On the other hand, passive aggressive responses aren't much use either. Simply vomiting snide rebuttals gains no one anything except for a clear, defined sense of superiority, a particular breed of dominance that is one of the few of its kind available in this modern age of nuance.

This doesn't make the similar reply of "That is a vague question, please explain better what you are looking for" passive aggressive, though; trying to engage with the OP and actually foster discussion is one of the primary purposes of this board to begin with, and calling someone out for exercising that kind of will to interface is ridiculous.

tl;dr Everyone's an asshole, but we're all assholes in different ways.

I dunno,
seems completely accurate, as demanding a one-system thread means that there will be little to no cross contamination, effectively making the thread an (X-system) general.

Someone's angry his shitty question got shitty answers.

You all god damn know the OPs in question are just trying to bait anyway.

No, user.
I feel like they are trying to get a discussion started.
Not all light discussion starters are bait, user.

No one's demanding a one system thread. The answer 'depends on the setting' isn't saying 'we should be talking about Forgotten Realms wizards, not Dragonlance Wizards', it's saying 'I have no real answer to that question because there are literally hundreds of answers to that question'. It's a passive aggressive way of saying 'please write a better question because the question you just asked amounts to 'what color scales does a fish have'.'

>write a better question
With the tacit implication that a "better" question would involve specific system.
Thus, being a demand for one-system threads.

but user, "what color of scales does a fish have" is a valid question and fish discussion starter.
All sorts. Some even have GLOWING scales. Check it out!

No, that's idiotic. Make your question, state your setting, then people can talk about other settings. It almost always pans out that way.

But user, the same thing happens if you don't specify a setting, with the exception that a few hipsters will come in to snark about depends on the setting, pat themselves on the back, and leave.
And happens more reliably, since you prevent the one-system-thread trap.

That's the problem when you're an optimist willing to work for conversation surrounded by lazy, picky pessimists.

Jesus christ. Have you considered that people sometimes ask questions because it's relevant information and not because they want to actively undermine a thread?

I'm not talking about people asking questions, I'm talking about people giving canned snark responses like some kind of badly written sitcom character.

If I make a thread saying "coffee smells like chocolate", is it wrong to say it depends on the specific type of coffee? It's a non-issue. You're simply interpreting a completely innocuous question as people being assholes because you apparently can't fathom how being more specific could nurture discussion. Or, god forbid, it could lead to the WRONG type of discussion.

...no, a better question would be, for example "What are wizards like in your setting?", "How old are most of the wizards you guys play?", "How do you feel about modern wizards against fantasy-setting wizards?", "Do you guys tend to use wizard towers in your campaigns, or do you prefer to use arcane colleges, or both? Why?", "How isolated are wizards in your setting?", "What was the last kind of wizard you played?", "How prominent do people like to have their wizardly orders be?", "How do people usually view wizards in your campaigns?".

Please note, I'm only talking about OP questions that are miserably vague. Anyone responding with 'depends on the setting' to a question like the above is just being an ass, but we both know that people post OPs like "My dwarf just got a quest to deal with a wizard, wat do" all the god damn time, and those kinds of questions are useless.

Hell, the OP of this thread itself never even specified the kind of threads that they see 'depends on the setting' in; it's almost like OP was deliberately vague, and created two 'opposing' sides of an argument that probably actually agree.

See, but there's the thing. No one replies with "Depends on the setting" answers to:

>Fish Thread

Hey guys, I'm doing an Aquatic game for my group soon and I need more ideas for my fish! What are some radical fish colors and designs? Also, fish discussion, go!
But they give passive aggressive "Depends on the setting" answers to a retarded image of an anime fish with the OP just:
>What color scales do fish have?

Like everyone has been trying to point out for most of the thread, it's not the question that's asked, it's about HOW the question is asked and how much information is provided to better refine the answer.

user, your example is the definition of strawmanning, as you take the asking a vague question idea to a ludicrous extreme by not even having it be a grammatically correct sentence.

Though, that aside, I'm fine with people asking questions, since you can give the answer "whatever system you are into right now".

People complaining about this stupid variety of OP aren't asking for the thread to be about just one setting.

For instance, consider the following:
Instead of asking
>What do wizards do? Should they be better than fighters at everything, or just most things? Why don't they just take over the world?
say
>What roles and powers do magic-users have in your games? Is there a setting you thought had an interesting take on them, or a particular way you've liked to use them in your own settings? How did it handle the power balance between magic-users and non-magic-users, and what- if anything -stopped them from just running the world? I know it varies depending on what kind of setting you want, so just share something you liked or thought was interesting.

Not only is this completely immune to the depends-on-the-setting problem, but it's actually less specific to an implied setting than the D&D-ish assumptions of the first OP.

I've seen "depends on the setting" answers to shit like the example you posted.
They're EXTREMELY picky little bastards, and demand their discussion be handed to them on a silver platter.

those are the same questions, just in the second example you made yourself sound more self important and talk down to the reader like they are unable to form conclusions on their own.

I like those vague questions. They lead to good discussion about various types of dwarf and wizard.
I guess I have the inborn power to insert "in your setting" to vague questions, as it is strongly implied by not specifying a setting.

I'm usually productive, it just depends on the setting

>not being productive regardless of setting
Get with the PROGRAM, dweeb

Ah, I understand now. You fixate on this because by some unquantifiable property, the very specific fact that discussions on Veeky Forums don't always progress to vague question to each person giving several diffeernet answers, to people giving specific answers once the meta-discussion is over all while putting an active effort to keep it going regardless of the amount of interest they have on the topic, irks you to the point you literally go around complaining that people want "the discussion to be handed to them" because they don't always follow that order.

I'd rather someone do that than give one of the most pointless non-answers out there.

"depends on setting"
means OP should specify what setting(s) he wants to know about so that user doesn't have to answer the question for hundreds of different settings you fucking RETARD

Jesus christ, use periods occasionally you smug cunt.

Ok.

What do you do when the OP wants answers from many settings, and is OK with your "useless" brainstorming?
You know, because it's part of the creative process.

The first can be answered with "depends on the setting", because it's asking a question about what is correct.

The second can't, because it's asking a question about what you liked or thought was interesting. I was trying to make that as obvious as possible.

Of course they're asking the same thing. That's the point.

Depends on the thread.

>We both know they are asking the same thing, but I think "depends on the setting" is okay with one of them because it's fine to be a pedantic asshole
Whatever happened to attempting to be a good conversationalist?

You have two ways to control how the OP behaves.
You can use legitimate discussion to guide them towards being more informed and improve the board as a whole.
Or you can shitpost about it, and lower general board quality.
This holds true for most, if not all, problems like this. I'm sure if I thought hard enough I could find exceptions, but I'm not going to.

Sure, and that's your preference. A lot of people have a different preference. A point of rebuttal: what would you lose when someone made the question less vague? What would you, yourself, lose by being slightly more specific in the framing of your questions?

It's never been a thing on a informal setting

Even less so on Veeky Forums. I don't know why you would ever expect it

I was never one of those people who would answer "depends on the setting" most of the time, but now I'm going to do it a lot more just to watch all the butthurt anons in this thread get even more buttblasted.

exactly as much as someone would lose by a thread being too vague for their preference.
Exactly one thread of possibly productive conversation.
That's why it's not worth it to ever drop into a thread you don't like to shitpost.

Getting tired of a meme here an oldie but goldie.

OP is a faggot.

Seriously people really should put system and setting in alot of these questions.

depends on the salad

I at least would expect people to hide that they are not trying to be good members of the board.

I'm gonna take a different approach to this nonsense.
After seeing "Depends on the setting", repeated endlessly, I've noticed a few OPs add "in your setting" to the end of their post.
Those anons are alright chaps for avoiding all this crap.

People usually don't try to be good or bad members of Veeky Forums. The main draw it's that the site is responsibility-free, no questions asked by virtue of being completely anonymous. I would get your point if this was a serious forum

It's a sad necessity to deal with all the argumentative pedants we have on this board.
Nobody does the implication and innuendo anymore.

If reading that made you feel talked down to, you probably have self esteem issues.

>not trying to be a good member of a non-serious forum
Come on, people try to be basically good, right?
Riiight?

I wouldn't concede the point, he doesn't have one. You're being too nice.

I think the need to over-explain everything and tack on "in your setting" when it should be understood implies some issues with basic human conversation.
It's like these people have never made small talk before.

>What do you do when the OP wants answers from many settings

If he specifies that then I will attempt to do so to the best of my ability if I can be bothered.
But ask nebulous questions and get nebulous answers.

I think "come on guys, at least try to be good posters" is a fair point.

Small talk is mostly an automatic thing done out of politeness, not an ideal people pursue as a scale model of human interaction

Ideally, nebulous questions should be answered with numerous specific answers, as each user gives an answer to the best of his ability in his area of specialization. You know, take advantage of the varied community a large site like this has.

>But ask nebulous questions and get nebulous answers.

yeah i agree
the more effort you put into your thread the more effort people will put into their answers

if you said "in dragonlance, how do you feel about this political plot hook i've drawn for this group" you'd get some pretty specific answers

but having some anime pic and one line of greentext only warrants a report and hide

It's still a very low hurdle that these people have stated they are not willing to attempt to jump.

>It's like these people have never made small talk before
Not everyone here spent half their life socializing with people, you know. It all depends on the person.

user, don't abuse the report system like that.
If you know it won't get deleted, don't report it. It just spams up the report channels and distracts the janitors and mods from actual problems.

Remember when Veeky Forums was good?

Do you ask yourself "What is the ideal answer I can give to this question based on the current context?" before giving any answer?

I try to, assuming I have the presence of mind.
I'll settle for "pretty good" in most cases, though.

Doesn't everyone?

i didn't think of it that way, you're right

Yes, but then again, there are always the people who insist everything is bad who will disagree with me.
It's still good, even though parts of it may miff me as they are counterproductive

>Ideally, nebulous questions should be answered with numerous specific answers

I disagree.
When it comes to fiction people can know a lot of contradictory things about one subject.
>Where do wizards get their magic from?
I could probably go through a dozen settings explaining where each branch of wizard within gets their powers, but I do not want to waste my time on such a post when the question is so shit. Even if I did I do not know if any of what I wrote is anything the OP is actually interested in. If he specifies a setting of interest then I can do better work and he will get better results.

If he wants a scatter shot answer then he should ask something like
>What is your favourite way for wizards to get magic, what is your least?

Ya'll ever hear of the phrase "put garbage in, get garbage out?"

Applies to Internet forums as well as computers.

I am glad we can at least agree on responsible reporting practices.
Though, it can go awry if you and everyone else in a thread are CERTAIN one guy is going against the rules, but he gets off on a technicality.

This is literally what I do.

Most people don't. It's at most an unconscious decision that goes with the natural flow of a discussion, which are almost never made mostly in a state of self-awareness. This shouldn't even need to be stated and at this point I'm pretty sure you're keeping this back-and-forth going for humblebrags

In this thread, we have two parties.
The realists, and the idealists.
They aren't very compatible.

I dunno user, trying to think of an appropriate answer to the question is pretty much universal to working conversations.
And is a functional synonym with trying to find the ideal response.

I'll give you a simple and easy example for why "depends on the setting" is the best answer to a question: good necromancy.

RTFM

It's a remarkably civil disagreement though.

>people who do things specifically to make other people mad
Bad. Bad anons.

Once upon a time, when Veeky Forums was still young, everyone assumed 3.x generic fantasy land was the default. Then the edition wars came, and Veeky Forums ceased to be a near monolithic collection of nerds with exactingly similar interests. 'Twas the beginning of the end.

I think getting an inferiority complex over a hypothetical post on an anonymous image board implies some issues with basic human interraction.

>muh Greyhawk

Most people point to low-effort DMs importing the usual D&D pantheon as evidence that most games of D&D take place in Greyhawk.