This is yet another post to try to rationalise the limit between story-building (off-topic) and worlbuilding (on-topic).
A recent question:
How to determine where the nearest mainland shore is when standing on an island?
was first closed for story building, then edited and reopened. It started some discussion on the chat. To make it short, DaaaahWoosh* summarised as
think the main point here is that we all agree the question can be on-topic, we just disagree on if it was in its original wording
So the question can be on-topic. But depending on how it is worded it would or wouldn't cross the line.
What I suggest as an exercise here, is to write simplified versions of the same question. And that all should go over all different versions and
- upvote when the version is on-topic,
- downvote when it is off-topic.
Please don't leave it without voting as we really want to establish a scale.
If you think that all the proposed versions are on-topic, add your own version that would, for you be off-topic. The other way as well: if they are all off-topic, write your version that is on-topic.