This last round brought up a few questions about the conventions of the group that I as a new player would like clarified. I don’t have a strong opinion one way or another on how to handle these and would be happy with whatever people decide, but I just want to make sure that there isn’t any confusion and ideally do it between rounds rather than in the middle of the round when even asking for clarification about a DQ could give things away.
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What constitutes an unusual name.
I took the dividing line on this to be anything that would appear in a book of baby names in the case of first names, or as a natural sir names on earth in the case of last names. So Aisling, Balthazar, or Kaczynski would be uncommon but not usual while but Adric, Legolas, or Oakensheild would be unusual. Is this the way it was generally interpreted by the group or am I being way to strict? -
To what extent should semi-binary answers be handled (gender in particular)
This came up with my “not female” answer. I interpreted the questions to be strictly binary and so a given question of “female” would elicit a response of Female if the subject was strictly female, and of “not female” otherwise, similar to the way if the question was “American” we would answer “not-American” rather than answer “European”. Now given the demographics of famous people “not female” nearly guaranteed to mean male in a way that doesn’t hold for “Non-American” and “European”. And by convention we break this rule when it comes to “First name begins with …” which is taken as “Which name begins with…” where the appropriate response might be “only name begins with” So perhaps we should similarly interpret “Female?” as meaning, “what is the gender” and so the response should be “Male”, “Female”, or a clarification (“Neither” “Both”,“fluid”)
Probably the best way to handle these would be when in doubt provide maximum clarification, such as I did when asked about was the show in which the Brigadier in Dr. Who appeared is contemporary and clarified that the character was strictly contemporary but the series spanned multiple eras.
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Speaking of European, Is the UK European? How about Russia? Also is India Asian?
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How are years handled
Is an event happened in 1950 and I’m asked “After 1950”, how should I respond. My inclination would be to make a rule that says that a year refers to Jan 1st 12:01AM of that year. So that if the character was created July 27 1950, the answer to “Before1950” would be no, and the answer to 'After 1950" would be yes, and that between 1950 and 1975 would mean between January 1st 1950 and December 31st 1974.
Finally, what did people think of my summarizing the DQs in a separate list. Was it helpful or too cluttered?