On asking game questions in the developer's blog

EDIT: Sorry, folks, I meant to save this as a draft to finish later and accidentally published it. Please re-read it now if you last saw it ending in an incomplete sentence :-)

Robin D. Laws, pen-and-paper game designer (including the cult classic Feng Shui), explains why his blog is an achingly slow source of of rules support for the games he has designed. While I was working on a live product I occasionally fielded support questions on my blog, but I saw and experienced the issues he talks about far more on the official forums. You don't have to look far in official game forums to find players asking why, even with developers participating, game design questions are answered infrequently and slowly.

Robin has the advantage of being the sole named designer for Feng Shui and HeroQuest, and he still can't answer these questions off the top of his head. When you're instead talking to a community manager, or a random non-designer (such as myself), or even the wrong designer, it gets even slower. On the bright side, when you're talking to a developer or community manager on the forums, or going through other official support channels... answering your questions is part of the job. The community manager might have tools to help track and manage questions to make sure they get answered, people in support definitely do, but for people like me it's a matter of personal discipline, memory, and note-taking to be able to get back to these a week or two (or more) after they're asked with answers.