When did the FAQ lose credibility?

[Stalker0]

I've been posting here a fairly long time now, and when I started generally the FAQ was considered a good source of information. People would refer to it, and while there was always a few detractors, people would in general nod their heads and go with it.

But lately I've noticed more and more people don't trust the FAQ. I see statement like, "Its in the FAQ, though I don't know how much you can trust it." more and more.

So when did this happen, and why?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Which FAQ?

 

[Mercule]

There have been a couple occasions, by my understanding, when the FAQ/Sage Advice has pretty much condradicted some RAW or has gone 180 to conventional wisdom.

For my games, I consider the errata to be official and as binding as any other rule (which is sometimes not very, but it's still official). The FAQ is more expert advise on how to handle oddball situations or houserules. It isn't official, but I do give it a bit more credence than some random Joe.

 

[Glyfair]

I suspect that more and more people are noting things that contradict the rules (or seem to) and throwing out the whole document as useless because of those errors. Personally, as I can house rule anything I want in my game, and can discuss it with DMs in games I play, I have no problems with errors.

I do think that Andy Collins (who writes the Sage Advice column these are drawn from), is probably swamped with other work and isn't spending a lot of time researching details. His most recent column has a question about the Artificer that is directly answered in the ECS errata, yet he makes the complete opposite answer. So, clearly he doesn't check the errata for a book before making his "ruling."

 

[Ranger REG]

So when did this happen, and why?

When Gygax quite TSR.

 

[Infernal Teddy]

When Skip Williams quit doing Sage Advice

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Too much non-core stuff.

Andy Collins and the former sage Skip Williams could not "assimilate" non-core material quickly enough to put out common sense advice. There's no way they could reasonably play all the poorly balanced or confusing material that gets put out, and they won't know the background either. Could you imagine them trying to make sense of the "blastificer"? That's item creation/availability played over several levels.

I distinctly remember Mr. Williams suggesting you could balance the 3.0 (broken) Psychofeedback psionic power through psionic combat (so mixed up you couldn't really call it underpowered or overpowered, but complicated is a good adjective), demonstrating he knew little about psionic balance in general and nothing about psionic combat in particular. (Fortunately that power got fixed in 3.5 and psionic combat was changed so drastically a lot of people think it no longer exists in 3.5.)

Also, once you've seen enough rulings you disagree with, the less credibility the source has. 3.x has existed for quite a few years now, and with the large number of viewpoints available, it wouldn't surprise me that it took this long to anger/annoy/other negative emotion enough different viewpoints to cause a reduction in credibility.

 

[Endur]

When Gygax quite TSR.

Pretty much.

Both Skip Williams and Andy Collins give answers without necessarily doing all of the research to see how other books, eratta, etc. previously attempted to answer the question.

When Gygax was writing sage advice, there were a lot less books and his answer was more authoritative.

 

[Teflon Billy]

So when did this happen, and why?

I think it's when Skip Williams was replaced by Andy Collins as "Th Sage".

Honestly though, if I have ever had rules questions I couldn't figure out/decide to my satisfaction (which is rare), I ask EN Worlder Caliban.

He's actually the "Final source" my gaming group agrees on.

 

[Knight Otu]

I think it's when Skip Williams was replaced by Andy Collins as "Th Sage".

I'm pretty sure it was already during Skip's 'reign.' I seem to remember that a few people were relieved to see Skip leave the post of the Sage, and people continue to rail against and pick apart his Rules of the Game articles.