Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dungeons & Dragons

Ratman (Dungeons & Dragons)

Ratman (Dungeons & Dragons) is up for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ratman (Dungeons & Dragons). Just a head's up. Cool Blue^{talk to me} 01:51, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Good, it should be. I warned people from day one about creating pages for every little monster, and this is a clear example of something that lacks notability.Piuro 05:25, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Stop and read this

This wikiproject was created with the intention of making a clearer, more authentic series of articles about the D&D roleplaying game, instead it has turned into nothing more than a template used to defend articles that should never exist in the first place, that violate WP:Notability to a degree I have never even seen before outside of vanity articles. We need to stop making pet articles, the debate further up the page about modules shouldn't even be an issue, as almost all the modules ever created are not notable enough to warrant an encyclopedic entry. Even those that are, such as "The Temple of Elemental Evil" should probably not have their own articles, and should probably redirect to another article, such as Notable D&D Adventures. This same principle should apply to all monsters, even the mighty dragon does not deserve its own specific D&D article, let alone Dire Rats.

Please, consolidate pet articles into a more comprensive (and more concise) overview article, and focus on the big articles, such as Eberron, the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, and the main Dungeons & Dragons articles. Please reel this in, this has got to stop. Wikipedia is not a place to put all the fanboy information you can find, it is not a comprehensive resource for roleplayers. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, please remember this when you even think of pushing that "create this page" button. Piuro 05:47, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

While I tend to agree on almost all the creatures we have, and most of the classes as well, I think the modules are one of the things which there are verifiable, second-party sources for; see eg the White Dwarf review cited in Dragons of Despair. Sure, most of the articles need these citations adding, but Wikipedia requires things to be verifiable, not necessarily verified. --Pak21 11:24, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

The problem with White Dwarf is that it's hard to determine if it is "Independant of the Subject." Though it is not advertising, it certanly inst an outside source. If a module crated controversy and ended up in a publication outside of the gaming industry, or something to that effect, id say it warrants notice, but as it stands, a "review" does not seem to be enough to cover WP:Notability. On that note, I'm going to start consolidating articles into a "Predominant monsters" article and putting AFDs on most of the various monster articles. Anyone interested in helping make a new monsters page, lets go to wikipedia:WikiProject Dungeons & Dragons/Monsters, I'll make a note of this on the project page, and we can decide on what to actually name the article when it comes time to put it up.Piuro 02:59, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Piuro has a point. Many of the D&D articles are fancruft, just as bad as the Pokemon stuff. I mean, White Kingdom is cool and rather well-written, but not notable in the least and rather fails WP:V (none of the sources are independent, third-party ones). I think we should consider transwikiying (if possible) a majority of this stuff to a D&D-oriented wiki, and just stick to the core, notable stuff. -- Kesh 03:24, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I'd certainly agree there are far too many D&D articles here, but I don't want to throw away the baby with the bathwater. That said, White Kingdom was clearly non-notable, so I've redirected it to Abyss (Dungeons & Dragons). Cheers --Pak21 07:58, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, there is this: [1]. Of course, it seems to be mostly original research & fan creations [2]. There's also a Forgotten Realms wiki, and many of the FR articles on Wikipedia have a template linking to the corresponding FR wiki article.--Robbstrd 07:44, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't see why White Dwarf isn't independent. It has (as far as I know) always been published by Games Workshop, who have always been an entirely independent of TSR (and WotC). Sure, for Warhammer 40,000, it's not independent, but what's the problem for D&D articles? Secondly, don't AfD the monsters - just redirect them to the list. --Pak21 07:46, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Should have done more searching. There's also this: [3]. There's are also wikis for Planescape[4] & Eberron[5].--Robbstrd 07:52, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

My claim about white dwarf is that it is not independent of the industry, and though many other articles use that kind of resource as cites, we should be very careful if that is the best independent source we can come up with.Piuro 08:07, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Of course it's not independent of the industry. Who else is going to review it and be a reliable source? It's certainly not "self-publicity, advertising, self-published material by the subject, autobiographies [or] press releases", which examples are the non-independent sources listed by WP:N.

No, it isn't independent of the industry, just as sources for music related articles are usually from musical publications, sources for articles about crime are from books about crime and newspapers, and articles about science are sourced from science books, science magazines and science journals. What's your point? I am not going to go and delete an article on an element because no one outside of the scientific community has ever written about it... (On another note, I have expanded a few monster articles, I have no objection to people doing what they think is best with them. I have no strong opinions on the matter, but I am happy to help with whatever we decide it best.) J Milburn 10:54, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

It just seems to me that a single review in White Dwarf does not count as enough outside sources to warrant an article. Anyone else want to weigh in on this?Piuro 18:56, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

No, a single source doesn't count as multiple, independent, reliable, published, significant sources. Counts as one though. J Milburn 16:19, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Monsters & Statement of Intent

The start of monster article migration can be found here Wikipedia:WikiProject_Dungeons_&_Dragons/Monsters. Please, we're trying to keep fancruft to a minimum, so join the discussion on that page to try and define the criteria.

We want articles, not lists, from this point on we should work on making the various lists about D&D into full fledged articles with things to contribute to the wiki, this, I believe, should be the goal of Wikiproject Dungeons & Dragons. We don't want hundreds of articles clogging up the wiki with useless information, we want to be a shining pinnacle of reigning in our fanboyish natures for the good of the entire wiki. Please, lets make our contributions to Wikipedia actually matter.Piuro 08:03, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I've started some AfD, in this case for the Dire Animal article. Can we get some people who can go around AfDing some of these articles? Theres tons of them on the most worthless stuff. Be sure to look out for articles which are copyright violations, as many of the planar articles and the main planar article are (they all step beyond the realm of the OGL and contain specific information about published content, something WotC tends to frown on), and they also fail WP:Notability as far as I can tell. If you published one of the monster articles, please Speedy Deletion it, as it will make this process of cleaning up hundreds of articles. Piuro 19:24, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't think we need to bother with the AfD- just turn them into redirects to the parent article. J Milburn 19:30, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

That could work quite nicely, but right now the parent article lacks any real content. That said, that's a very good idea. Also, for anyone suggesting what we are going to do about monsters, please do not suggest lists, the monsters are not notable enough, and any suggestion is going to fall under WP:Listcruft. Please, lists are not a viable alternative, we are not writing an encyclopedia for roleplayers, and a list of monsters is not a useful resource. Piuro 19:38, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Let's discuss what we are going to do about it on Wikipedia:WikiProject_Dungeons_&_Dragons/Monsters, so as not to clutter this page. I have made my suggestion over there, I welcome input, and I think we would all like to see some more possible alternatives. J Milburn 19:43, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

We need a policy on lists

This is based off reading Wikipedia:List_guideline, Wikipedia:Lists_in_Wikipedia, and [[Wikipedia:Listcruft

Dungeons and Dragons lends itself very well to lists. The nature of the rules are more mechanics the storytelling, and in order to keep everything memorized we generally need the material published in such a way that we can easily locate it, and because of this, even WotC has published their own lists. The problem becomes when we flood Wikipedia with lists that only our fellow roleplayers can find relevance and reason in, not the average Joe who reads Wikipedia. Therefore, in order to keep our listspamming down to an absolute minimum, I propose the following guideline for Wikiproject D&D;

• We shall not make lists unless every item within the list is a freestanding article (or a major subsection of a freestanding article) that has been around for at least predetermined amount of time (to avoid people creating new articles simply for the justification of creating a list). Lists shall have relevance even to those who are not familiar with D&D (A list of D&D book articles would be okay, a list of monsters that a 1-5th level character can defeat would not be). Lists should span multiple articles, not just be a summary or a suppliment to something contained in an individual article (For example, if an article discusses "Feats", there should not be a side article with "Lists of Feats"). Finally, any and all lists created under wikiproject Dungeons & Dragons should be posted in a "lists" section of the project mainpage, so it can be reviewed by other members of the project.

Please keep in mind this would be a guideline, not a policy. I would really love to see peoples input here, but I want everyone to keep one section of the above articles I mentioned (for the tl;dr crowd);

• "The usefulness of lists in Wikipedia is very clear as it often provides the starting point for readers to research a particular subject. For example, when researching Typesetting, the List of type designers and List of typefaces are excellent resources from which to begin exploring the subject." Piuro 20:43, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

This proposal fails for all sorts of reasons, but the most glaring is that it assumes some sort of ownership over articles which this WikiProject does not, and cannot, have. What's going to happen if a D&D related list is created which doesn't meet this guideline? It's going to have to go through the normal AfD channels, were deletion will be based on Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, not anything this WikiProject says. Also, it should be noted that Wikipedia:Lists in Wikipedia and Wikipedia:Listcruft are both just essays, which do necessarily have any real form of consensus behind them. Cheers --Pak21 20:59, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Pak21, and think that lists can be useful even when not every entry has it's own article, for reasons I have listed on the monsters discussion page. We are in no position to dictate a guideline such as this anyway. J Milburn 22:30, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm not saying a mandatory enforceable guideline, I'm saying we need something that frequenters of this wikiproject can look at. This would be entirely self-imposed by an individual editor, and if someone decided to do something against it, we would have no special grounds. I also noticed I said policy in the title, then specifically said not a policy later. Damn. Either way, you should consider this as a rule to impose on yourself, not have imposed on you; if yuo want to ignore it, fine, but there are a good number of regular contributers who could benefit from something like this. Piuro 23:50, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures Game

I don't know if we technically cover this, but there is a potentially nasty situation developing with an IP address canvassing against Pak21's suggestion that some of the many fair use images be removed. I stepped in and removed some, but others may want to take a look before all hell breaks loose. J Milburn 16:30, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Redrawn monster images?

File:Mindflayer.jpg

I recently came across the image on the right. I wondered where we stand on such images? Surely, as that is how the artist pictures the monster to look, this would violate our no original research policy? Just looking for a little input here. Would this be a feasible way to have free images of all monsters? J Milburn 18:00, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Drawing a picture of a fantasy creature is in my mind not OR. If you needed a free picture of a human, any picture would do, as long as its clear that it has a human in it... It could be a anime style drawing, it could be a a painting, hell it could even be a stick figure... Besides, this wan was not drawn for D&D, it was drawn as a generic illustration for the Nethack article...--Alexia Death 18:43, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Just look at WP:NOR#Original images where it says, Pictures have enjoyed a broad exception from this policy, in that Wikipedia editors are encouraged to take photographs or draw pictures or diagrams and upload them, releasing them under the GFDL or another free license, to illustrate articles. That seems pretty clear and self-explanatory to me.

I think a lot of the creature articles suffer from an obvious lack of a picture of the creature, where it would clearly be useful and appropriate. I see the point that WotC publishes essentially articles much like ours, so using their images in our articles would be reducing the value of their copyright, but that just means that we should use our own images. (And avoid any key details needed to use the creature in an adventure.) We should have a campaign of creating editor drawn artwork released to public domain to provide a much-needed illustration to each creature article. It's impossible to clearly underestand what a creature looks like without a picture. -- Lilwik 20:28, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm- the way I look at it, editors have no right to decide what the characters look like, only the D&D designers. Therefore, we can't draw a picture and say 'this is what it looks like', as that is our own interpretation. Obviously, Wikipedia is not a place to put our own interpretations of things- we should show/say only that which can be sourced. J Milburn 20:34, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

That's an interesting point. It's true that editors have no right to decide what a creature looks like. It's not true that only D&D designers have that right; we are here to report the truth as it appears in the majority of reliable sources, and that can easily include other sources than D&D designers. The only reason we are not allowed to decide what a creature looks like is that we are not allowed to be a source ourselves.

However, none of that applies in practice. If someone drew a picture of a clown and the used it as a picture of an Illithid, then you'd be right because we're not allowed to decide that an Illithid looks like a clown. In real life, this picture is free artwork that shows what an Illithid actually looks like according to most reliable sources, D&D designers included. -- Lilwik 20:48, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I would make a distinction between creatures or characters which were created by D&D and those which TSR or WotC took from existing mythologies. They certainly can't claim copyright to what a manticore, a harpy, or even an orc looks like. However, I would be a little more wary of using free images of beholders, or especially named characters such as Drizzt or Orcus. --GentlemanGhost (talk) 02:53, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

D&D alignment userboxses

Ive made some time ago a set of Alignment userboxes. Since I ended up here for an other reason, if figured you might want to know:) --Alexia Death 19:30, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Nice. You might want to add the sources to those images, even if it is just 'Own work' at the top of each image page, or they could face deletion. J Milburn 19:32, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I thought the licensing, that says I, creator release hem to public domain, is enough? What sources could I list? I did them particularly FOR these userboxes...--Alexia Death 19:34, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Doesn't count as a source, in practice. As I say, just add a note that says 'own work' and you should be fine. J Milburn 19:38, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I dont understand... Does not "I, creator" say the same?--Alexia Death 19:50, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

In a word, no. Too often, people just don't read the boxes that they are ticking. I deleted a big batch of images the other day that used that box which were all copyvios. J Milburn 19:53, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

This is a bit nutty, sorry... but ive added "This is my OWN WORK. Ive been told that the Public domain box is not enough..." to the images. Thanks for the tip.--Alexia Death 20:05, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks and sorry- 'tis better to be safe than sorry. J Milburn 20:06, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Classes and Prestige classes.

Hi everyone. I just recently joined this group and I hope I can contribute well to make DnD articles the best they can be.

I had a question though on the Classes and the Prestige Classes. I have in my possession almost all of the DnD books up to date and if I am allowed I can create all the missing Prestige and Classes in the lists that are on wikipedia. For example I was thinking of making a Invisible Blade article For the DnD book: Complete Warrior. But I wanted to be sure if I wasn't going to be breaking any rules or anything. I appreciate any feedback. Bognus Hecken 13:25, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi and welcome! My personal opinion is that the vast majority of D&D class articles (ie everything not in the PHB) are not notable and should probably be merged into a much smaller set of articles, so I wouldn't recommend that you spend your time doing this. However, other people may disagree with me. Cheers --Pak21 13:17, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Welcome to the project, and I agree with Pak21. Our time, at the moment, will probably be best spent working out what is to be done with the articles we do have, rather than writing others. J Milburn 13:21, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Okay perfect. Just making sure cause I was itching to writing up the Invisible Blade since it was one of my personal favorite classes but from the looks of the articles that already exist they do need some work on. heh. Thank you :) Bognus Hecken 13:25, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

(from an outsider) To continue this thread... yeah, there's definitely something to say about Fighters, Bards, and other core classes in D&D, but most of the other class articles should definitely be merged to something akin to the List of prestige classes article (though possibly with slightly more detail). I disagree with Piuro's statement above that lists should have an article as the target for each item linked; I doubt that these classes can support articles, but a list as a whole has some merit. Maybe a title like (List of?) Alternate Dungeons & Dragons character classes? SnowFire 06:23, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

That sounds good to me. Personally, I'd just go with "List of Dungeons & Dragons classes" and include all classes there. Any classes which are notable enough to have their own article can be wikilinked out, and everything else can just get what it gets in that page. It should be noted that there is nothing in WP:LIST which requires every entry in a list to have its own article. Cheers --Pak21 10:54, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

That sounds like a good plan Pak but if we do something like that add all forms of classes that could not support itself on it's own page we might be adding quite a bit of classes on only one page which would look say the least silly. Unless you are implying we categorize classes based on the books they appeared.Bognus Hecken 13:43, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it'd look that silly. There are plenty of longish list articles on Wikipedia; you'd be surprised, as they can work out pretty well. Also, lots of these articles are frankly asking to be transwikied/redirected with as little as one-two sentences saved. Look at Favored Soul or Dragonfire Adept; I highly doubt that there's anything to say aside from repeating the book in which they appear.

Anyway, I took a shot at rewriting the Character class (Dungeons & Dragons) article, though it still needs more work. The new list article can have lots of those classes merged into it, I think. When the merging is done, the {{Dungeons & Dragons character class}} sidebar template can probably be deleted and just {{D&D character class}} used instead. SnowFire 05:54, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I like the List of... idea, as anyone who has seen my proposal for dealing with monster articles will know. J Milburn 22:24, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Familiar/Companions

I noticed in the to do lists there is a request to create a Familiar article. My question is should this really be created or merged with the Wizard/Sorcerer class. Or if it does deserve it's own page should we as well add the Companions that the Druids and rangers get? Also if a page for Familiars are needed should there be a detail of all the animals that can be a familiar to the wizard/sorcerer? Bognus Hecken 13:58, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Nope, probably not needed. It was me who added it to the to do list. To be quite frank, we need very little of what we have. J Milburn 19:22, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Request feedback on guidelines

I would like to have the feedback of active wikiproject members on the following. Wikipedia has a number of guidelines on articles about fiction, predominantly WP:FICT and WP:WAF. These guidelines have been rewritten some time ago, but this appears to have been done without substantial input from editors who write about fiction.

Guidelines on Wikipedia are supposed to be a description of common practice. At present, however, these guidelines call for the removal of most material that does not include real-world information, which could be read as to include most articles about fictional characters, locations and concepts, such as those about D&D.

This does not reflect actual practice, because Wikipedia has thousands of such articles. Now there's no need for alarm, because to my knowledge, nobody is actually deleting any of this. However, it would be prudent to reword and update the aforementioned guidelines to accurately reflect how, and on which aspects, articles on fiction are written.

Please feel free to update the guidelines as needed, or direct your feedback to their respective talk pages. >Radiant< 10:44, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Mass AfD

• Succubus (Dungeons & Dragons)
• Basilisk (Dungeons & Dragons)
• Gorgon (Dungeons & Dragons)
• Hag (Dungeons & Dragons)‎
• Harpy (Dungeons & Dragons)
• Cockatrice (Dungeons & Dragons)‎
• Chimera (Dungeons & Dragons)‎
• Centaur (Dungeons & Dragons)‎
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dungeons & Dragons creatures, et al.

(Comment: Going over the editor's history, it seems they started this deletion kick by removing info from articles related to the Will-o'-the-wisp and Succubus, and branched out from there.)

I just finished going over his history as well, and he does appear confused over the massive amount of keeps that have been flooding these. Turlo Lomon 06:05, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

His talk page has a thread on it in regards to an AfD he disagreed with. -Jéské ^{(v^_^v Kacheek!)} 17:08, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

How am I supposed to react to his comments? He made it clear on his talk page he is persuing this. He has stated that he is planning to go after the rest of the articles after this latest set gets deleted. He has already performed very questionable acts on multiple articles. I want to scream. Turlo Lomon 06:00, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Bring him up to WP:AN/I. -Jéské ^{(v^_^v Kacheek!)} 06:46, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

• The fact is that a lot of those articles have no place in Wikipedia in the first place. The only outcome consistent with Wikipedia policy is a mass deletion, but it is doubtful we're going to see it. --Agamemnon2 12:23, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Now, here's what I'm wondering. Just how many existing D&D articles actually *pass* Eryan's standards of notability in the first place? I'm sure it's very few (10% or less). How many have you seen discussed (not just mentions, or quick pop-culture references) in third-party sources? I can't think of a single thing presented that way, perhaps outside of an article on the Dungeons & Dragons game itself. If the standard becomes to delete such articles, there soon may not be much of a WikiProject left for D&D. Do any other WikiProjects have standards differing from the norm to determine what is an is not notable within that field of knowledge? If so, what can we do to set up a system to prevent the wheat being thrown out with the chaff? What third-party sources, if any, actually discuss various aspects of D&D? If there are none, then I'm sure that D&D Wikipedia articles are about to be whittled away into near-nothingness over a technicality. BOZ 13:43, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

There are very few articles that would remain, yes. Maybe gelatinous cube and beholder, and that's about it. --Agamemnon2 16:31, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Mark you, the situation is lamentable since I myself have started some articles that fall among those ultimately in danger in deletion, such as Maug, Eshowdow, Jergal and Ubtao. But if they insist on enforcing the reliable-third-party-sources rule, then all of those articles should justly be deleted immediately. --Agamemnon2 16:35, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Agamemenon2 is right. If we really apply Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, most of the D&D articles here are going to get deleted. It might be best to see if someone is willing to start a new wiki on Wikia and move the articles over there. -- Kesh 17:31, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

The Forgotten Realms Wikiproject seems to have done just that, moving content to Wikia. I myself have been working to preserve Greyhawk content on a wiki located at Canonfire!. In short, I'm sick & tired of defending content I, & others, have worked so hard on from foaming-at-the-mouth deletionists.--Robbstrd 23:11, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Foaming at the mouth doesn't enter into it. The rules are the rules. Maybe you should have actually read them before uploading your articles? --Agamemnon2 10:58, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Damn right, Rob, I agree 100%. In fact, long ago I gave up on writing D&D articles and moved to comic books - the detractors there have far less ammunition to work with! That said, if we have a dedicated D&D (or RPG, or whatever) wiki to work with, we won't have to worry about that kind of mindless determination to deletion. I'd be glad to create or re-create any articles at such a place and just leave Wikipedia to the hata's.  ;) BOZ 20:14, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, that may be for the best. It looks like this guy is determined to take everything down, and despite fierce opposition he may have the stronger argument. It would suck to lose all the info and hard work people put into making the good, bad, and ugly articles.  ;) BOZ 18:14, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I cannot, with full conscience, lament a lot of these articles. Golem (Dungeons & Dragons) is a good example of what's wrong, it's nothing more than a list of golem types by name, of questionable usefulness to a D&D aficionado and a pile of incomprehensible jargon to everyone else. --Agamemnon2 18:32, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Agamenon2, I agree with you. Looking over the current crop of proposed deletions, I have to ask myself: Is any of the information in these articles of any use (or even any interest) to non-D&D players? Furthermore, is it even possible for the topic of a run-of-the-mill D&D monster to incorporate any non-deletable information?

As I understand it, in order to not be deleted, we need to have articles about things that are notable and verifiable; and the bulk of the article should relate to the subject's place in the real world. Is this possible with a D&D monster? I think so, but not with all of them. The Illithid article contains one or two links to non-TSR/Wizards articles about Illithids, so that's notability. It's fairly well referenced and much of the prose is written from an out-of-game-world point of view. I think it could be cleaned up a lot to get rid of large sections of in-game stuff, but the article as a whole looks pretty non-deletable to me.

I think we should review the Monster article structure to help us create non-deletable articles. I suggest that we require articles to include a reference to a non-TSR/WotC article from the introductory section to establish notability upfront. We should de-emphasise in-game fictional material by containing all fictional info (Description, Ecology, Society, Related Creatures, etc) within one limited, well-referenced section. We should replace non-essential fiction sections (e.g. "Monster X in Campaign Y") with non-fictional ones ("Monster X in other media", "Creative Origins"). We also need some new ideas for non-fictional sections. This way we can concentrate our efforts into the creation of high quality articles that won't be deleted, rather than more and more stubby articles with no references which will be added to the above list and rightly removed. This is just my 2c so please comment. BreathingMeat 21:10, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree, if possible we need to make sure any D&D articles have notability established. Don't know how much time this failed AFD will buy us. BOZ 22:54, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

• Ideally, there should be a D&D-related Wiki very much in the same vein as there is Memory Alpha and Wookieepedia. That way, we could both have our cake and eat it too. --Agamemnon2 16:23, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

• What about the D&D Wiki at Wikia?[6]? IF there was one place that everyone could agree on then we could begin a Transwiki migration. Web Warlock (talk) 17:16, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

• I can only heartily agree (although I might be even happier with different notability rules on wikipedia). Daranios (talk) 20:01, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

My big complaint about a lot of those Wikia sites is they are incredibly simple. Here, we have all these rules that say that something is notable, and in the fervor to keep the article around, people add in a ton of stuff and make fairly comprehensive articles. By contrast, I find a lot of Wikia wikis to be full of poorly written, incomplete, unreferenced garbage. Compare our Eberron to their Eberron[7] for instance. You may think to yourself "Gee, having all these rules about notability really sucks ass! I hate having to back up my claims about this topic!" but it gives us vastly better articles as a result. If you want to move some of our articles over to that Wikia site, go ahead, but keep at it here. These standards you may chafe at are actually helpful, and the proof of it is right over there on Wikia. Don't just take your ball and go home. Our articles here are wonderful, and it'd be a shame if the people who write them go away and write on a place with no standards, where any article on anything about D&D is allowed, no matter how pointless and shitty. Howa0082 (talk) 20:56, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Generalization of content

many articles still sem to discuss particulars of 3.5 edition. with 4th edtion aroudn the corner i think it would finally be a good time to remove edition specific things and take a more general approach to describing D&D. this will help when 4th edition does come out and help removie the bias towards newest edition rather than describing what D&D has been over the years. with the changes proposed or implied to much of the mechanics of 4th eidtion many articles will be obsoloete that speak in a way to say that 3.5 is the only way something is done. has any thought been given to this predicament and in case of even future edition how to generalize articles yet still have them provide informatino on the subject? shadzar|Talk|contribs 19:57, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

• Difficult to do right now given that we don't know all the specifics that will change in version 4. All we have to go on is a few announcements from WotC, really, and since Wikipedia is not a crystal ball, it's probably best to leave most things as they are in this regard until there is a lot more clarity on what will actually change in V4. Fairsing 00:13, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

We can still generalize with respect to the past editions (the original, AD&D, AD&D2E, and 3E). However, 4E is off-limits until it is released. -Jéské ^{(v^_^v Kacheek!)} 02:53, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

How is it off limits? "Wikipedia is not a collection of unverifiable speculation" The keyword is unverifiable. The announcement has been made. Articles are being written on it. The information could be put together to make a page. Turlo Lomon 03:46, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

This discussion is about discussing edition-related things, and as 4th edition isn't released yet, anything we add to articles unrelated to the edition history (i.e. Beholder or Forgotten Realms is speculation. This is not about announcing its announcement; this is about mechanic specifics. -Jéské ^{(v^_^v Kacheek!)} 06:37, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

You are correct. I misunderstood. I do feel we need to keep edition specific information list as such. Turlo Lomon 06:53, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I will agree that D&D wikipedia articles should not be Edition-specific. However, rather than removing all such material, I think it should be spelled out which information applies to which edition. That, I think, would be more encyclopedic than it currently is, or how it would be with such info excised. BOZ 02:28, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

but even having masses of the content from the games editions kind of goes against WP:NOT Wikipedia is not a manual, guidebook, or textbook. we clearly have things that tell the current differences in editions, but continuing to give specifics on everything is like reproducing all the game on wikipedia and removing the need for the books. shadzar|Talk|contribs 06:01, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Congrats!

Dungeons & Dragons is finally a Featured article!  :) BOZ 01:55, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I'll drink to that! Allegrorondo 20:15, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Dungeons & Dragons (album)

Hi, I am working on what I hope will eventually be a featured article, in the form of Dungeons & Dragons (album). I have recently submitted it to peer review, and my request can be seen at Wikipedia:Peer review/Dungeons & Dragons (album). Any comments that anyone may have would be very much appreciated. J Milburn 20:09, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

At the advice of another editor, I have decided to skip the peer review and send it straight to FAC, and its nomination can be seen at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Dungeons & Dragons (album). Again, any comments are very much appreciated. J Milburn 20:35, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

This is now a featured article. J Milburn 18:44, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

SkiersBot

All members please keep an eye on the talkpages of any D&D stubs you can find. User:SkiersBot has been mistagging them as Comics WikiProject stubs. I have informed the bot operator and AN/I; I am asking that you revert any Comics WikiProject templates you find on D&D-related talkpages. -Jéské ^{(v^_^v Kacheek!)} 05:28, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

The bot has been fixed. -Jéské ^{(v^_^v Kacheek!)} 23:09, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

future of the OGL/d20 license

http://thedigitalfront.com/2007/09/05/episode-02-ogld20-panel-at-gen-con/ the one hour and half mp3 from the GenCon panel has someone stating that the existing d20 license for 3.x will no longer exist as well potentially the OGL for it as well under the new 4th edition licenses. someone with better hearing than me may want to listen to and update the relevant pages with the information given at this panel. shadzar|Talk|contribs 17:44, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

D&D articles up for deletion

Forgotten Realms articles up for deletion

Since the FR project has declared itself basically dead, I figured I'd post here. Dove Falconhand is up for deletion, as are Wulfgar (Forgotten Realms), Qilué Veladorn‎ and Dragonbait. Szass Tam has already been deleted. BOZ 12:35, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Also up for deletion, non-Forgotten Realms related, are Wind Dukes of Aaqa‎, Miska the Wolf-Spider‎, and Brandobaris. BOZ 13:45, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Ravenloft article up for deletion

Ravenloft domains is up for deletion. — RJH (talk) 15:20, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Place to move articles up for deletion

Dungeons and Dragons, an external wiki
It has, as yet, little content. But I think if an article has to be deleted not because it is badly written but because it's subject is not notable in terms of wikipedia, it should be moved there. In contrast to D&D Wiki it focuses (I think) on canon material, not on homebrew material. Daranios 17:04, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

How many articles? How many stubs?

How many articles about D&D topics do we have altogether, and how many of these are stubs? I suspect that there are at least 1000 articles, and possibly 5000, but that at least half of these are permanent stubs or start-class, and therefore a sweeping series of mergers, like what happened at WikiProject Pokemon, would be a good idea: they'd mean all articles were a good length, the article count reflected the actual degree of coverage rather than being deceptively large, and some redundancy of formatting and contextual explanation could be eliminated. Some examples of mergers that I think could be made:

• Olidammara, Hextor, Garl Glittergold -> Default pantheon of Dungeons & Dragons
• Complete Champion, Complete Divine, Complete Mage -> List of Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 Edition supplements ("Complete")
• Faiths and Pantheons, Races of Faerûn, Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting -> List of Forgotten Realms source books

NeonMerlin 18:37, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree that there are a lot of D&D articles that are about individually non-notable subjects, which become notable as part of a collective. The three examples of notable collectives that you give above are all good ones which illustrate the point. My only issue with what you say is a minor one, but the pedant in me insists on saying that a "good length" is not necessarily desirable in a Wiki article: Surely the ideal article is complete but is as concise as possible whilst remaining easily readable? This is assuming that by "good length" you mean "long", of course. I think during our merges we should aim to prune out a lot of fictional detail that is not important to the understanding of the subject. Just because we have a long article on Heironeous now doesn't mean that we should keep all that info in our merge: much of it is unnecessary detail which belongs only in sourcebooks. BreathingMeat 20:32, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

The trouble I see here is that, per the newly refined WP:FICT, every article needs to assert its own real-world importance. Which sources do we have for "Default pantheon of Dungeons & Dragons"? Cheers --Pak21 14:30, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Many of the suggested article names above are new names for articles that exist such as List of Dungeons & Dragons deities. -Harmil 23:20, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Dragon as a secondary source

duplicated here from a comment I made on a user page

This is something that I've been discussing in a number of places recently. Dragon does *not* always constitute a secondary source. However, when you look at the articles they range from clearly secondary sources: those that evaluate the state of the industry, the history of various fictional elements and games, etc. (the core beliefs series comes to mind); to the clearly primary sources: those that are original game mechanics or fiction. When you have a single magazine that has acted as the center of the genre for 35 years, it's hard to nail down exactly what it is. Certainly it has been a primary source, but I'm trying to note those places where it has been reference as a secondary source. One great example that comes to mind is The Shadow Over D&D which I used as a secondary source in Lovecraftian horror, and was entirely a survey of the history of Lovecraftian elements and direct inclusion in D&D.

PS: When you have such concerns, please come right out and question me on them. Please don't assume I'm a sockpuppet because you disagree with me. -Harmil 23:16, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

The Cartoon

I didn't see it in the archives, so I'll ask here. The cartoon. Does it fall within the scope of this project? I feel it does, but would like to save the effort of including it if someone's just going to turn up their nose and remove the tag. Howa0082 17:30, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely, as I see it. J Milburn 18:37, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Squerrik

The above article has been prodded for deletion. John Carter 17:22, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

AfD's for main characters

It has gone too far. The continuous hunt for D&D articles goes on, and soon we seem to be left without any character article. Even Artemis Entreri is nominated now!

Ironically, outside D&D chars, no one cares about characters articles notability. SOmething like Category:The Elder Scrolls characters or Category:Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles characters bears no more notability or references, but never nominated. Garret Beaumain (talk) 14:46, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is not a useful arguement to make it AfD discussions. --Pak21 (talk) 14:56, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Editor removing cleanup tags

I guess most people here have seen this already, but an editor is removing many of the valid cleanup tags added to the D&D articles, typically with edit summaries along the lines of "Revert vandal attempting to destroy Wikipedia". They're getting blocked for personal attacks and the like, but keep creating sockpuppets. See Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Innerupon for a partial list. I'm generally re-adding the tags (especially given our WP:FICT problems), but if anyone else feels that any other action is appropriate, please shout. Cheers --Pak21 (talk) 09:21, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Not sure if this is the right place to post this, but anyway... I happened to look up the Ghoul (Dungeons & Dragons) page, and it had three tags up the top, including Primarysources and In-universe, taking up half the screen. The thing is, if something is in the primary AD&D books, it doesn't need third-party backup, because it isn't possible to disagree with the AD&D definition. If they say an AD&D ghoul has a paralyzing touch, then it has a paralyzing touch. And as for being in an in-universe style, if you look at e.g. the main (non D&D) Harpy page, it says "in Greek mythology" and then just talks about them as if they were real. I think people will get that AD&D ghouls aren't real. So I don't see the need for either of these tags. (Not that I condone removing unilaterally, just that I saw this topic when I was looking for somewhere to note this point.) --Mujokan (talk) 17:01, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but you are just plain wrong there. Please take a read of our guidelines about writing about fiction. The articles shouldn't just rehash what is in the core books, a mistake I made when I first started writing about D&D, the articles should be about the monsters from a real-world perspective. If the monsters have no real world impact, we shouldn't have articles on them. Figures and monsters from legend are not quite in the same boat as these- legend =/= pop culture fiction. J Milburn (talk) 17:17, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

So if I understand correctly, you only have a D&D monster article if that monster exists in real life (e.g. vampire bat) or some established legend. And then what you write about in the separate D&D article is subsequent flow-on use in pop culture or something, not its place in D&D per se? (Sorry if I'm slow here, it's not deliberate.) Personally, what I would find most useful as a user is details on the in-game characteristics of the monster. That to me is just as valid as whatever real-world impact the D&D monster has later acquired. Rule books are real life too, in a sense! :-) Otherwise, most of the "Monster (D&D)" articles should technically be deleted, surely? Almost none of them have their own independent real-world impact. --Mujokan (talk) 13:53, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Githzerai and Pharagos: The Battleground

I have removed the link fo forerunners in the Githzerai article to the Pharagos:_The_Battleground and also removed the Pharagos:_The_Battleground category of Campaign Setting as per my edit reason. While all 3 magazines are "official" the article itself states it was never a fully developed, and only proposed as a setting. I would consider this like any other content found in the magazine as fan submission since no actual product was created and released; and therefore should not be classified as an actual campaign setting. With my limited knowledge of that which is 3.0/3.5 material I would suggest that someone else should look through other said campaign setting in the category and cleanup any other that may not be official. Example: Warcraft:_The_Roleplaying_Game that was produced under the d20 license/OGL, but not by HASBRO/WoTC. shadzar|Talk|contribs 11:33, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

The first consolidation

As there seem to have been no objections, I have merged all creature type articles except dragon and elemental into the main article at Creature type. This eliminates a bunch of redundant text (including the uncompletable infoboxes and about ten repetitions of "In the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game, ... are a type of creature, or creature type"). I expect that this will be the first in a series of consolidations that will bring both the total number of articles and the number of stubs within the scope of our project under control, and eliminate a lot of redundant text. NeonMerlin 03:58, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I hate to say it, as the one who contributed these and many other D&D articles, but I do support what you're doing. It's better to have it this way than to see all this stuff deleted. Plus, if the consensus regarding fiction ever changes to allow these things as they are now, we can always bring them back, which is something that is harder to do if they are permanently deleted. BOZ (talk) 05:15, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

While I think this is a good start, the merged articles only reference is still a WotC product. I still don't think it would stand up to an AfD in its current state. (Not trying to belittle your contribution here; one article on this subject is certainly more defensible than 13 or however many it was). Cheers --Pak21 (talk) 18:04, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

The same would have applied when they were separate articles: all the references were primary sources. I'm afraid the only readily available secondary source on the notability of most D&D subtopics is the popular demand for the articles themselves. NeonMerlin 17:12, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Dm2ortiz

Is it alright if I removed him from the participants list? He's currently banned from Wikipedia unless and until he rescinds the legal threat he made. -Jéské ^{(Blah v^_^v)} 19:38, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

*Very* useful resource

I've just discovered that rpg.net list magazine reviews of each D&D module in their database; see for example, their entry for Dwellers of the Forbidden City. This should help a lot with getting rid of a lot of those notability tags on module articles :-) Cheers --Pak21 (talk) 14:51, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Given that a user is claiming that the notability of Dwellers is still not established, I've put this at AfD to establish a precedent. I hope this doesn't go horribly wrong... --Pak21 (talk) 15:40, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I've said it elsewhere already, but the results speak for themselves.  :( BOZ (talk) 23:33, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Category of the Dead

Do we really need a category for dead D&D deities? This seems to violate the spirit of Wikipedia:Writing about fiction, if not an actual policy. I mean, there's no comparative category for "dead Greek gods". I would think that the super-category Category:Dungeons & Dragons deities would be sufficient. But, I'm not feeling bold enough to nominate it for deletion. I figured I'd see what you thought first. --GentlemanGhost (talk) 03:00, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with nominating it. There's an awful lot of clutter in this project, and a thorough AfD-sweep would be beneficial, I feel. Howa0082 (talk) 18:06, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Paladins

There's a Paladin (Dungeons & Dragons) and a Paladin (character class). Merge? GusChiggins21 (talk) 08:36, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

A merge is definitely appropriate here. Rray (talk) 12:49, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

No, the one article is about the character class of Paladin as it applies to many different games. The (D&D) disambiguated one is solely concerning (surprise!) D&D. Really, the generic-sounding one is almost a disambiguation page out of control, but hey. Howa0082 (talk) 03:35, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Er, I guess I should say that, with my above arguement, I do not believe a pagemerge IS in order, as I do not feel they are compatible. Howa0082 (talk) 03:36, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Notability issue

OK - an editor placed a fair few notability tags on numerous D&D sourcebooks, citing they fall under Wikipedia:Notability (books). However, I reverted then as they are all (as we know) game resources and supplements rather than books per se. Like other games it would be prudent to tidy up and get independent reviews etc. (which I know exist but have done virtually none in this area and my time is limited) as per game articles. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:06, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I couldn't agree with you more - if we could get as many independent sources into articles as possible to combat the deletionists' efforts as much as we can. Unfortunately, if I had any idea how to do this, I'd be doing it already instead of putting up my weak "I Like It" defenses. :( BOZ (talk) 05:11, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Some have links on them - so putting them into 'cite wp' format may help. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:19, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Category talk:Non-article D&D pages

Anyone know why the articles in this category are there? I would usually suspect that such categories are reserved for redirects, lists, and such, but most of the articles in this category are regular articles (no matter what deletionists/drive-by taggers may think of them). BOZ (talk) 13:34, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I thought it was an excuse tag used by deletionist to mark articles they wanted to delete. I say we remove the tag from the articles then put the category up for deletion. It seems to serve no purpose. Web Warlock (talk) 14:14, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me that Gavin has added it to some articles, but the category originates with this project. Someone might ask Peregrine Fisher who created it. --Jack Merridew 14:24, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Probably for redirects, like I said. I've seen categories like this on other WikiProjects, and they're generally for things like that which the project wishes to maintain. If there is to be a "D&D pages for cleanup" category that people want to add using templates, that would be fine (as such things like that also exist for other projects IIRC); the template itself should be edited to reflect that. This category isn't for pages for cleanup (or deletion, or anything other than articles to be maintained as non-articles). If I'm wrong though, it would be nice to be educated otherwise.  ;) BOZ (talk) 14:43, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I, for one, would have no problem with moving to such a clean-up category. I think it would be great if project members would go along with this. I left Gavin a note pointing him here, so lets see what he has to say? --Jack Merridew 14:53, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

It's probably a matter of some D&D-specific template that, once applied, puts an article in that category. Finding out which one it is, and then altering it to taste, is probably all that needs doing. Or, maybe creating a new template(s) and switching that out with the current ones on various pages. BOZ (talk) 15:03, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Comment - Er wait, this isn't an AfD! Anyway, yes, I too think a "D&D Articles Needing Clean-up" page would be epic win. I think a lack of organization in that way is part of the reason for the jihad against D&D articles. No one really knows what to do, and well-meaning people just kinda figure everything needs it's very own special page. Howa0082 (talk) 16:47, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Comment' Agree with Howa0082. Such a page would indeed be greater than level 20 :-) Hobit (talk) 22:06, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

In case any of you haven't noticed yet, I've been (slowly) sorting Category:Articles that need to differentiate between fact and fiction into various genres/subjects via custom templates, one of which has been Category:Dungeons & Dragons articles that need to differentiate between fact and fiction. As far as I can see, this is eliminating the need for Category:Non-article D&D pages. Not to say that a separate "D&D Articles Needing Clean-up" wouldn't be useful at some point, but most articles that are tagged with "Non-article..." are done so via some variant of {{in-universe}}. —Disavian (^talk/_contribs) 13:34, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Talk:Drizzt_Do'Urden#Removal_of_in_universe_tag

If anyone has time to weigh in on this discussion of the tags I've removed from this article, I'd appreciate it. Thanks. Rray (talk) 15:48, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Death Knight

Hey folks. Death Knight is up for AfD Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Death_knight, so I was hopping if I could get some help wordsmithing the article some. I have added a number of new references, many from third-party publications, I just need some help making the article a bit better. Thanks. Web Warlock (talk) 03:35, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I've copyedited the entire article, but I'm sure it could still use some polishing. Rray (talk) 04:22, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Rray! If you did them same quality of job you have been doing on the Drizzt article then I know it is much better already. Web Warlock (talk) 11:31, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Anyone want to have a look at the Influences section of the Death Knight article. I refuse to get into a pissing match with the likes of Gavin about this. In particular I think the Role Aids part is self-evident, as are the BESM, Inferno and Abyss games. I am willing to loose WoW since it really does not add that much anyway. Web Warlock (talk) 15:18, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

In this case I think you need secondary sources to verify the "influence" otherwise it's on the verge of (if not directly) original research I think. --Craw-daddy | T | 15:50, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Planetouched AfD

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Planetouched is the latest from Gavin. BOZ (talk) 13:39, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks BOZ, I was going to add that myself. I have to admit feeling a bit neutral on this one. I don't know enough about it to be able to speak authoritatively on it (I was mostly a 1st Ed AD&D gamer before moving on to horror games) and was wondering if all the planetouched races (Aasimar, Tieflings and the like) be merged into one article. Of course there is one significant notability issue. The new 4th Ed rules will feature for the first time ever in D&D's 34 year history planetouched as a core race. We need some info on that as well I guess. Thoughts? Should I move this to the talk page? Web Warlock (talk) 14:17, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Not sure what to do, but yeah you bring up a good point about Tieflings in 4E. Whatever you want to do, I imagine, would be fine. BOZ (talk) 14:45, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

At this point, unless secondary sources can be located it's best to delete this. When/if such sources appear for the 4th edition characters, such an article can be recreated. I don't think there's really much there in the article to be lost anyway as it's mostly just a list, correct? Sometimes you just have to let an article be deleted, and I think this is one of those cases as I think it probably fails WP:N (not having done much of a search, admittedly). --Craw-daddy | T | 15:54, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I think I've dug up enough references (see the AfD) to keep, but we'll see. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hobit (talk • contribs) 22:10, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Creature Type

There is an article for Creature type but the comment was made that it really should be Creature Type (Dungeons & Dragons). Anyone care to weigh in on this? I think it would be good to move it myself, but will an article ever be created called "Creature Type" that mean something else?? We can just reverse the forwarding that is being done now. Web Warlock (talk) 03:03, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

If someone knows how to move over a redirect, that would be fine. BOZ (talk) 06:05, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually, there's no trouble performing a move over a redirect. I've just done that now. However, I haven't fixed any of the "double redirects" (no time right now) that really should be done in a situation like this (e.g. Construct (Dungeons & Dragons) redirects to Creature type, which now redirects to Creature Type (Dungeons & Dragons) so the redirect for the "Construct" should be updated to point directly at the now-moved page. Click on the link to "Construct" and you'll see what I mean.). As always, you can use the "What links here" page to help figure out what needs to be updated. Cheers --Craw-daddy | T | 10:41, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

P.S. Of course, I really don't know if the article should be called "Creature Type (Dungeons & Dragons)" or "Creature type (Dungeons & Dragons)". Note the difference in the capitalization. I chose the first one, but if you think it should be the second, you could always move it again. I would suggest, however, that this decision should be made before updating any of the double redirects (else you're going to have another collection of double redirects to do). --Craw-daddy | T | 10:44, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I'll check for double redirects and fix them. Thanks! Web Warlock (talk) 11:50, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Creature type (Dungeons & Dragons) sounds best to me, personally. BOZ (talk) 13:25, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Okay, after checking the Manual of Styles (which I should have done in the first place), it seems that "Creature type (Dungeons & Dragons)" is be the preferred title. Hence I have moved the page to that title. As above, the (multiple) redirects should be fixed. I can try to do some of that later. And my apologies for the confusion. --Craw-daddy | T | 14:37, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

S'alright.  ;) BOZ (talk) 14:39, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Weasel words templates

I've noticed that User:Gavin.collins is mass tagging RPG articles with the weasel words template. While I actually happen to agree with most of the templates he adds to articles, I don't see the logic behind his addition of this template to massive numbers of articles. On the other hand, I don't have time to follow him around and revert all of them. Does anyone have any ideas about what could be done about this? An RFC in the past seemed to slow down the number of AfD's Gavin was making. Does that seem necessary here? Rray (talk) 16:00, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Not really, and I doubt it would make a difference anyway. He's just trying to stack the odds in his favor by adding as many templates as he can think of. Don't be surprised if you see articles with a dozen ill-explained templates or more, sooner or later. BOZ (talk) 16:10, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I've addressed this with Gavin directly on his talk page. I think the big problem is that any time anyone removes a template that he's added, he immediately leaves a note on the user's talk page instructing them not to remove his templates, which is creating an environment of conflict rather than an environment of consensus here. In other words, the pattern seems to be to tag 100 articles a day with 5 or 6 tags each, and if a handful of those get reverted as incorrect, go instruct the person who reverted the tag not to do so on their talk page. This seems disruptive to me. I'd encourage anyone who agrees to try discussing it with him on his talk page as well. Rray (talk) 16:14, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

It looks like a preamble to a mass AfD tagging. Now, what I can say for sure though is this. A.) A lot of those articles were written before much attention was paid to policy, in fact many of those policies were not even around. B.) a lot of those articles are a tad "fannish" and really do need to be copyedited. But once again it is the lazy way out to tag an article and then expect someone else to do the work to make it better. I mean look at all the work that went into the Drizzt article. That took Rray HOURS to do correctly. Now someone is coming by and saying "ok, now do that with these several dozen articles as well". That is irresponsible in the extreme. PLUS did anyone else notice that these weasel tags were not showing up until it was mentioned by another pain in the ass deletionist editor? Web Warlock (talk) 16:20, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

You're probably right. Honestly, a good percentage of these articles might deserve deletion, too. My problem is that the behavior borders on being bullying. I don't have time to review every template on every article that Gavin tags. I doubt that any of us do. But even when we have time to review them, and in good faith remove an inaccurate template, we get authoritative-sounding notes on our talk pages instructing us not to revert his edits. That's clearly disruptive. My guess is that eventually good editors who want to improve these articles will get tired of dealing with this entire thing and will go find something else to do, which is really too bad. Rray (talk) 16:31, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Wearing down people's resistance would be an excellent tactic to make sure no one opposes you. BOZ (talk) 17:19, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Cleanup of non-notable articles

I saw some discussion about consolidating non-notable articles, but it seems to have gone inactive. Is there an effort underway to assess individual creature articles and merge/redirect those that are non-notable? This would be preferable to mass deletion and will be handled better if someone from this project coordinates it. Pagrashtak 17:29, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

• Working on the monsters above. This is going to be a LONG process I'm afraid. Many of these articles pre-date the "new" standards for articles and there are a ton of them. Any help would be welcome. I'm going to be dropping down to about 2 hours/week on wikipedia (and hopefully most of that constructive rather than AfD debates). So from my end it will be slow. Hobit (talk) 18:15, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

• Opps, the discussion is actually on the main page. Perhaps it should be here. Hobit (talk) 18:17, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

The main page isn't really for discussion—that's why the talk pages say "discussion" on their tabs, right? Considering the scope of this consolidation, it may be beneficial to set up a dedicated page, such as the 40K project has at Wikipedia:WikiProject Warhammer 40,000/Mergers And Organization. Pagrashtak 18:09, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

• clean-up has now started for some of the non notable creatures. shadzar-talk 06:13, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Redirection suggestions

I'd suggest putting in merge/redirection suggestions here for (hopefully) brief comments on them, along with some justification for the proposal. This will be some record of why these things are done then. --Craw-daddy | T | 21:15, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Monsters

Alright, I'll start with Category:Dungeons & Dragons fey at random. The articles Dryad (Dungeons & Dragons), Feytouched, Grig (Dungeons & Dragons), Jermlaine, Nixie (Dungeons & Dragons), Nymph (Dungeons & Dragons), Ocean Strider, Pixie (Dungeons & Dragons), Sirine, Spirit of the Land, and Thorn (Dungeons & Dragons) look like good candidates for merging into Creature type (Dungeons & Dragons)#Fey. Most of these articles have no references. The few that do have only a primary source given. They focus to much on in-universe content such as physical descriptions or their society, and do not assert real-world notability. Pagrashtak 18:04, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Deities

I would suggest that 99% of these can and should be redirected to List of Greyhawk deities or some similar list (if there is another one). For those few that might have some historical context like Baba Yaga, appropriate references should be located and inserted into the articles. --Craw-daddy | T | 11:31, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Go for it. Pagrashtak 18:08, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I would go further. The lists themselves don't have any real-world notoriety, nor do various other D&D articles. If one's interested in following the notability rules, they need to be followed all the way through. I feel a mass deletion would be a logical response. --Agamemnon2 (talk) 17:54, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Suggestion

I was about to put this on the main page, but thought it would be more appropriate to put it here on the talk page. Instead of editing articles in the mainspace, I thought that it might be better to "userfy" some of them. Is it possible to "userfy" them to the WikiProject? I don't know if it's standard practice that a project can have sandbox pages or not. (I'll look into that.) Part of the reason why I suggest this is so that each individual edit to some article won't necessarily be scrutinized by all eyes of Wikipedia, and editors wouldn't feel the need to "defend" each of their edits. Once a page has reached certain standards (having sufficient third-party refs, attributions to statements and claims in the article, etc, etc), then it could be moved into the mainspace.

For example, the project could take some of the material in the current Beholder article to start a new one in a common sandbox article (without having to look over its shoulder at every step). Then when it satisfies current WP standards of notability, reliable sources, etc it can be passed into the mainspace.

Thoughts, reactions?

Frankly speaking (as I said on the main page in my reactions to "Monster of the Week"), it's simply the case that a lot of D&D monsters aren't notable, at least in the WP:N sense.

It also seems like this project could also use some more members, or more participation by its current members. I mean, heck, I'm not even a member.  :) Web Warlock seems to be currently taking up a large portion of the slack, but the project shouldn't expect him to always be so prompt to reply (although I'm sure, collectively, they are thankful for his input and location of references to this point). --Craw-daddy | T | 21:15, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Sandbox pages are acceptable, but I question the need for them. If there are secondary sources to establish notability, start with this in the article space and your edits will defend themselves. If there are so no sources, there is no need to spend time on the article, sandbox or otherwise. Pagrashtak 22:48, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

<shrug> I only suggested this because at this point in time it almost seems like any edit by almost any party is called into question, either on someone's talk page, the talk page of the article, a request for comment is made, quasi-legalistic sounding language being invoked by both "sides", etc, etc. In my opinion there seems to be lots of ill feelings from many editors (whatever "side" they seem to be on), and my suggestion was to try and alleviate some of that. As with anything, your mileage may vary... Obviously, I agree with you that the most relevant thing to do is to locate appropriate references. --Craw-daddy | T | 11:41, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

If you think a sandbox would be beneficial, feel free to do that. These edits being called into question—are you referring to the ongoing notability about fictional topics debate, or is this something D&D-specific? Pagrashtak 14:11, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Great idea. I have actually setup some sandbox pages on my own user page User:Webwarlock/workspace/, please feel free to use that as needed. I do however prefer the idea of working on live pages on live pages. We can use the sandboxes to "try out" page designs or potential merger pages, like what I am trying to do with the Greyhawk pages at User:Webwarlock/workspace//WorkTemp2 and the Desert of Desolation Modules at User:Webwarlock/workspace//Desert of Desolation. Let me now what I can do! Web Warlock (talk) 01:23, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Notability help

Hi, I'm involved (sometimes) with WikiProject Notability, and I couldn't help but notice an awful lot of D&D-related articles being tagged for notability in the past few months. For example, see this old version of Cormanthor which I recently attempted to clean up. Unfortunately, there are a lot more like that. I'm not remotely familiar enough with the subject to know what should be kept and cleaned up, redirected, or just deleted. I get the sense that you don't necessarily want an article on every individual artifact or weapon. Is anyone from your project monitoring D&D articles tagged for notability? If not, maybe you could set up a subpage where notability sorters could list articles for evaluation and cleanup. That might save both sides some futile AFD debates. Dchall1 (talk) 04:33, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

• We've asked those that are tagging them to create such a page. But given the rate they are being tagged, it would be a full-time job to keep up. If there are tools that would help, or you have other suggestions about how to do this, that would be great! Hobit (talk) 17:25, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

No tools I know of, but it wouldn't be that much work to copy-paste an article onto a subpage. Dchall1 (talk) 17:40, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

The biggest issue is that the person doing all this tagging is not a part of this project, nor willing to work with us, and is doing all of this as a means of moving towards getting the articles tagged for AfD. So there is a Bad Faith rationalle behind most of this tagging. We spend 90% of time undoing the damage of one individual on a jihad. Web Warlock (talk) 18:18, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to have to agree with what Hobit and Web Warlock said. When the editor in question got a lot of flak for taking a number of these articles straight to AFD, he switched to mass tagging intstead. This has been going on since about October, and doesn't show any signs up letting up. BOZ (talk) 18:42, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I guess that would explain why they all popped up around the same time. Regardless, do you have people trawling for articles with notability tags so they can be removed if unwarranted? Anyway, take this as an offer of collaboration. Dchall1 (talk) 18:46, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

If you remove the tags, he (or another simpathetic editor) puts them back up and warns you not to remove them. There's not much to be done that will satisfy him. I personally don't have the slightest clue how to find non-primary sources for anything, really, so I just let him have his way as far as that goes. Anyone who conflicts with him, he tells them that they are the ones who are wrong. BOZ (talk) 19:30, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Your offer is very appreciated! We have been working within this project to come up with suitable notability guidelines. To date our efforts are slow due to shear ammount of time we need to spend just keeping up with deletionist editors. Web Warlock (talk) 20:15, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Certainly any help is welcome! I'm not even a member of this project but got sucked into editing some things here and there that I can help out with. The fact of the matter is that there are a lot of articles about non-notable D&D related material (characters, deities, fictional locations). In all of that chaff, there is certainly some wheat. Sorting it out takes far longer than simply adding tags to articles (which can be done in seconds, and apparently often is, resulting in some articles seemingly not being read to properly judge which tags are appropriate). Recently there's a trend towards adding many "OR" and "weasel" tags. I would think that a lot of those particular tags aren't correct, but might be more correctly labeled as "needs reference". All in all, there's been a lot of what I would call ill-will generated on both "sides". While the average editor isn't expected (nor required) to be experts in the minutiae of the D&D world (I'm certainly not), there's also some editors who seem to put on blinders when others make suggestions and comments (again, to some extent, on both "sides" of this debate). The collaborative spirit needs to be recaptured. --Craw-daddy | T | 20:37, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

P.S. Unfortunately, the situation hasn't been helped recently by several suspected sock puppets that haven't done anything except revert the addition of notability tags. I think that has been sorted out to some extent. As a result, as may have been noticed, many articles have now been semi-protected for a time period because of this. There are some (at least a few) that have been trying to locate and add (third party) references for some articles. As I said, doing this obviously takes more time than simply tagging an article for notability (or as being "in-universe" or whatever). --Craw-daddy | T | 20:41, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

TSR owns D&D again?

oddly by [8] it would seem that somehow TSR is alive once again and is in control of D&D copyrights. did i bump my head somewhere thinking Hasbro was still the owner and the ones producing 4th edition via WotC? thanks for clearing this up for me. shadzar|Talk|contribs 10:02, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

That would imply that WotC had an abortion; last I checked TSR was still defunct and still in WotC's closets. -Jéské ^{(Blah v^_^v)} 10:04, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

thanks. i now know i hadn't lost my mind entirely and was looking in the wrong places for certain things about 4th edition. shadzar|Talk|contribs 11:07, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Need a list

Alright. To all members: I need a comprehensive list of all Dungeons & Dragons articles that are not currently semi-protected that have, or have recently had, cleanup tags on them. For background, see Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Grawp - he's been targeting us. -Jéské ^{(Blah v^_^v)} 03:07, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

That... would seriously take some time and work to put together. Why not ask Gavin Collins, who has been putting up most of the tags in the first place? Just check his past few thousand edits over the last 4 months or so. Not trying to be sarcastic, just saying you'll find most of them there. :) BOZ (talk) 00:30, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Black Gate

I was wondering if anyone has a copy of Black Gate: Adventures in Fantasy Literature, Issue 11, Summer 2007. It has a review of Red Hand of Doom that I would like to reference, but I'm not sure if I can get hold of a copy over here, so I was hoping someone else could add it to the article. :) Bilby (talk) 21:54, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Kobold - a 3rd party reference from book about D&D

Dear all, we have a tricky problem at the Kobold page which focusses on folklore, and I was looking for something which may not exist. As a person who played D&D from 1978, I would have thought D&D was the first gaming genre to introduce a kobold figure into fantasy role-playing (and later computer fantasy gaming). My impression is that Gygax borrowed the word and used it in a fairly reductionistic sense for a goblin-like critter, with size and the elf/goblin being status the only attributes it has in common with the older kobolde of German folklore. And that since then the use of the term has mushroomed into other gaming systems, but clearly derived from D&D. However, all this is OR if we can't get some refs for it. Thus my search for one of those books about D&D, or interviews, and how Gygax etc. decided what critters to use etc.

Does anyone recall seeing one? [[::User:Casliber|Casliber]] ([[::User talk:Casliber|talk]] · [[::Special:Contributions/Casliber|contribs]]) 12:31, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

We could check the interviews with Gygax or Robert J. Kuntz. Kuntz came up with a number of the monsters too.Web Warlock (talk) 12:44, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

If you could somehow access some and find anything that would be really really helpful and much appreciated. :) [[::User:Casliber|Casliber]] ([[::User talk:Casliber|talk]] · [[::Special:Contributions/Casliber|contribs]]) 12:54, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I will look, but it can't be today. Sorry. Web Warlock (talk) 13:09, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Hey, there's no hurry. it's not at WP:GAN or anything yet..[[::User:Casliber|Casliber]] ([[::User talk:Casliber|talk]] · [[::Special:Contributions/Casliber|contribs]]) 13:22, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

might it be in the Dragon Magazine Archive? i still have the mag PDFs but the GUI doesn't work and i could check them one mag at a time to see if where the kobold came into D&D and how is in there if need be. shadzar|Talk|contribs 17:51, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I suspect that most stuff in The Dragon may be too in-universe-y, but I could be wrong, unless it is an interview with Gygax or something. I have just about all the White Dwarfs from the period where they covered D&D (issue 7-100) or thereabouts. I do recall one interview with Gygax about 1979 but there is no mention speciifcally of kobolds there. I will be grateful if you look though :) [[::User:Casliber|Casliber]] ([[::User talk:Casliber|talk]] · [[::Special:Contributions/Casliber|contribs]]) 18:33, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Supplements list?

I'm thinking that, although the non notable monsters aren't, the minor supplements and modules are worth listing in some kind of centralised article, so that we have something to redirect to when the minor ones (maybe stuff like Tome and Blood, I dunno) end up at AfD. I would imagine that we would have a list for 3.0 and 3.5, a list for second edition, and a list for fourth edition. These would list first party products only. Thoughts? J Milburn (talk) 22:14, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Such an article would be too long. I have most of the 3.0/3.5 supplements in pdf form on my computer, and all in all they total 63 titles (and I'm missing some, like Stormwrack, Complete Scoundrel, and Magic Item Compendium). -Jéské ^{(v^_^v :L10 Lucario Cleric of Mew)} 22:19, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

can wikipedia support a page with such a list? ok well maybe it can but to be honest the list of supplements for 2nd edition is HUGE. since 1e and 2e were so interchangeable i don't have a real list, but this page shows most or all of the publications for campaign-free AD&D http://home.flash.net/~brenfrow/dd1/dd1.htm now if you were to try to include the campaign specific supplemetns into a list also then there are about 17 campaing settings from AD&D with numerous supplements. not sure about 3.x but i dont think a list would work for any. thus striving for the most notable ones to be listed would be beter than also including the obscure ones that made no real impact on the game or for people to have noticed them outside of the gamers. shadzar-talk 23:14, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

I've noted above that 3.x has upwards of 60 (possibly upwards of 70 or 90) books, campaign specific and otherwise. -Jéské ^{(v^_^v :L10 Lucario Cleric of Mew)} 23:18, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

[ec] Well, I'm thinking that, over time, I'd like to get the majority of supplements up to the same standard as Libris Mortis, which I enjoyed writing. I was thinking a central list would be a good way to help organise, but I guess we could just stick with the navbox. All the 3.x (official) supplements are listed on the WotC website. J Milburn (talk) 23:21, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

i just don't think all the supplements are noteworthy enough. while i am a fan of the Complete series for 2E, the 15 books didn't individually make a big impact on the game, but as a whole they did start a trend. this only come to mind because of my recent looking at the Complete Book of Humanoids article. they set a precedent for todays releases of books as that there are now going to be multiple PHBs in 4h edition which resembles these PHBRs from 2E. so in that case i think a single article on the compelte series would be better than one for each book for 2E, 3.x, 4E, etc. the major milestone books that define editions may really deserve their own article. form 2E i recal the player options books which s now refered to as 2.5, but again this wasn't individual books making an impact but the series. i can't recall which 1e book at the moment made sort of a 1.5 edition, book of artifact or manual of the planes? but that may deserve its own article if it doesn't already have one. supplements like Deck of Wizards spells, and Deck of Encounters I and II probably don't need its own article. or were you just meaning books and not other supplements? like Monster Manul I and II from 1E, the binder version of the Monster Compendiums, the DragonLance or Forgotten Realms Player Guides, or even something like Legends and Lore? i would love to have an article on each, but as with the recent mosnters, are each of the books/supplements notewothy enough to have its own article for ANY edition? shadzar-talk 23:43, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, they're notable enough. Most of them are reviewed in many third party publications. Or, the major ones are. J Milburn (talk) 23:58, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

oh boy. well they are listed pretty much all there in the TSR archive i posted sbove. just need to find 3rd party sources for each one i guess. shadzar-talk 00:41, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, will do. I'll focus on 3.0/3.5 books, but I won't really be doing them at any pace. J Milburn (talk) 18:40, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Gary Gygax

If you haven't looked at the Gary Gygax page in awhile, you should probably do so now. :( BOZ (talk) 00:02, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I heard too. Sad news. :( J Milburn (talk) 00:05, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Holy... -Jéské ^{(v^_^v :L13 ½-Raichu Soulknife)} 00:08, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Fey redirects.

just checking to see if i missed a decision to redirect many monsters to one article. the Grig (Dungeons & Dragons) article brought it to my attention that a handfull of mosnters had been redirected to the Fey creature type article. shadzar-talk 03:32, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Check this out.[9] - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 04:59, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

yes i saw the bit about redirecting, but didn't know that was the course decided. it jsut took my by surprise is all i have no problem with combining usefull article stub to make one better article was just wodnering if it had been discussed on a page i didn't know about and i missed it so i didn't end up going against the grain. shadzar-talk 00:00, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

List of Dragonlance creatures might be a good model on how to avoid all the deleting that's been going on lately. BOZ (talk) 15:13, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I've given that idea some thought. One page for all D&D creatures would be crazy-stupid huge. I'm thinking to break it up into List of Dungeons & Dragons extraplanar creatures, List of Dungeons & Dragons undead creatures, List of Forgotten Realms creatures, and leave the rest for List of Dungeons & Dragons creatures (with possibly a few more smaller categories). I would break it up this way rather than by each individual creature type for two reasons: one, we don't know how 4E will handle creature types (I can't see them ditching the concept, but they are sure to shake it up), and two, prior to 3E there were no specific creature types. However, undead and extraplanar have always existed in the game and always been fairly consistent, and are two of the largest groups. This would probably also eliminate the need for the Creature Type page altogether, much of the content of which could be on the list pages. Thoughts? BOZ (talk) 15:56, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I would prefer to list monsters by book they were introduced in- more metagame, which is good, and also prevents homebrew/third party and the like drifting in. J Milburn (talk) 18:49, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

We could definitely do it that way. It would take more work, but it could be done. It might be the best way, as you say. I've seen some pretty complete indexes which we could use to determine what came when. For example, the 1974 booklets over the 1E MM. Do you have an objection to splitting the pages the way I suggest, though? If not, articles like List of monsters that debuted in Monster Manual (1977) won't fly too well, though we could conceivably clumsily break it up by edition. Suggestions? BOZ (talk) 19:26, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

There is a problem with this idea. First to find a monster it would require we know the book in first appeared in. Then we also have the edition issue; for example Succubus is changing from 1-3rd edition to 4th. Web Warlock (talk) 19:29, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps we could have List of Dungeons & Dragons monsters by publication (A-C) or whatever split would be needed, as is done on some other very long lists. Monsters that have been reworked, leading to them being 'published' twice, can simply appear in the lists twice, perhaps with a note saying they were reworked from the original. J Milburn (talk) 19:41, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Organizing into some sort of set of lists would be good. Maybe tables with where they first appeared and other info would be appropriate. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 20:15, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

• That's a point, what is considered relevent information to include? I think the monster name, the initial publication, the date of the initial publication, a very brief ingame description and a section for metagame notes (EG- "appeared in module x"). We should also list monsters with their own articles, but ensure we include a link. J Milburn (talk) 20:19, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Exactly. Not sure about alphabetically by publication, but chronologically has promise. I'd agree to mentioning it twice. Let's say something first appeared in Monster Manual II (1983). If it later appeared in the Monstrous Manual (1993) we can backlink it to its previous appearance and mention any differences worth mentioning in these subsequent appearances. The only other workable alternative as I see it is alphabetically by monster, such as List of Dungeons & Dragons creatures (A-H), List of Dungeons & Dragons creatures (I-M), List of Dungeons & Dragons creatures (N-Z) and therein state publication dates and product. BOZ (talk) 23:15, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I would tend to think that the alphabetical listing would be best. Not being familiar (or as familiar as I once might have been) with all the D&D books, I think it'd be easier/better to use the alphabetical listing. Chronologically would also only seem to help those that have some familiarity with the publications too, which isn't something that you should assume in this case I think. Some shorthand code (obviously explained near the top of the page) to denote the book it first appeared in, then differences between versions can be noted, etc, etc. You can then (relatively easily) break the list into small chunks as the lists get larger. --Craw-daddy | T | 23:29, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I am just worried about ending up with loads of in-universe cruft- exactly what our current cleaning is hoping to remove. Listing by book ensures that the articles are primarily from a real-world perspective. J Milburn (talk) 23:55, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

"Loads of in-universe cruft" is a perpetual problem that will perhaps never be solved so long as Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone.  ;) But I'm sure you knew that already. Listing by book remains a very viable option based on everything you've said about it, although the criticisms brought up are valid as well. BOZ (talk) 00:04, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I think a table will keep the level of detail down. Something like Smallville (season 1), but a much smaller cell for the description. Out of universe info can go at the top or something as sources are found. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 00:13, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

A table like that could work. I think a few sentences or a paragraph for anything not having its own article would be fair. I could see the cells being the same size, if you include info such as publication dates and any other out-of-universe info.BOZ (talk) 00:34, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Expanding on that, here's an idea if we want to go chronological. We could could have one page for each edition (or we could go by decade for pub date? or break it up some other way?), and using separate tables like that to represent each book. Conversely, we could have a separate table per letter if we go that way. BOZ (talk) 00:38, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Pernally, I prefer alphabetical, simply because you would need prior knowledge to find a particular item if it was chronological or by book, while you only need know the name to find it if it is in alphabetical order. As an aside of sorts, I spotted List of Honorverse characters today - while overly complex, is the model with the abreviations of any use? - Bilby (talk) 03:28, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

You mean, using the abbreviations to denote monster books? That could work. BOZ (talk) 12:15, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Something like that, yes. The Honorverse one is so complex it seems impossible to follow, but the idea seems viable - otherwise the text becomes too dense. And it looks encyclopedic. :) - Bilby (talk) 12:19, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

[undent] I agree with Boz's first suggestion. Listing by book means that people could find monsters by book, which is more encyclopedic than looking up the monster to find out which book it came in. We should focus on being about the book rather than the monster, as the books are the notable bit. J Milburn (talk) 17:44, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

yes i agree. a quesiton then would be does a mosnter get lsited with each book it appeared in or does it jsut get listed with the book that has its first appearance? i think first appearance would be enough and the list for a monster could include the other books it has appeared in. shadzar-talk 19:20, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

JMilburn, can we have a pause on new deletions while we discuss what to do? It would be easier to capture info from articles that have not yet been deleted. Then we can redirect what's left to the list pages. Shadzar, I think just a mention (name only, maybe a sentence worth of notes on differences from previous appearances at most) in subsequent books, and have the main text be in the first appearance. BOZ (talk) 22:37, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Ok, a break in nominations. Sorry, I assumed these lists and all the deletions were unrelated. Anyway, I think we need to be careful about including too much in-game info- it's just not needed. A sentence per monster about in-game info would be enough- we should focus on real world stuff (appearances in games and modules, etc). J Milburn (talk) 22:49, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

If you go with books that's fine from my perspective - however, they don't need to be listed by books to establish notability. The books just need to be notable, and that is fairly easy to establish for the monster manuals and similar works. My only query is what would work best for people who wish to use the information. - Bilby (talk) 22:53, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

In my opinion, alphabetical by monster would work best for people searching... but for terms of encyclopedic content, J Milburn may be right that listing chrono by book is best. I'm going to work up a model and see what we can do with that. BOZ (talk) 23:51, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Cool, either way. I dug up some of my old books a couple of days ago, so I may be able to help here and there. - Bilby (talk) 23:53, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I have a moderate collection of 3.0 and 3.5 supplements, but not a huge amount (40 odd hard copies, if I remember correctly) so if anyone needs to know about one, let me know. J Milburn (talk) 00:03, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Come play in my sandbox. :) I left most of the options open so that we can decide what information's most important to include. I picked some of the more notable creatures from the first big monster books just to get a feel of how the template would look; let's work out the format and then we can move on to more specific details. I have damn near everything worth having as far as monster books go. BOZ (talk) 00:05, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

ok i have nearly 100 pre-3.x books/supplements/etc as well as the Dragon Magazine Archive CD set, and a few Dungeon Magazines that survived. what exactly are we doing in this sandbox and how are we listing things? i just want to know before digging out boxes and sorting through countless pages so i don't do it the wrong way. shadzar-talk 01:12, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I just want to set the format. Save the heavy research until we have that part hashed out.  :) But yes, thanks for volunteering, we will need that help when it's ready. I have many of those same books no doubt, but more hands/eyes means less work for any one individual. BOZ (talk) 01:23, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I'll go and have a play later this evening- at college at the moment. I'll format a few monsters as I think they should be formatted, and see how it looks. J Milburn (talk) 11:13, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Sure, and let me know what you think of the tables on my sandbox page, and feel free to edit. What other tabs could we need besides the creature's name? We'll have the book's name and publication date as a header. Maybe page number for one? BOZ (talk) 12:16, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

That's how I would do it, with 'notes' used for relevent links to modules, video games, supplements, novels, films etc that the monster has appeared in. J Milburn (talk) 21:16, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

If you're going to list them by book, then there's no need to have footnotes in the manner that you have. Just include the name of the book (and ISBN number, etc, etc) at the top of the list and then include the page number in the table itself (as a column field if you like). I dislike using the word, but having the "alignment" field might be considered "crufty" by some editors, and I can imagine someone (sometime) objecting that saying the alignment of creature X is "Neutral (usually)" constitutes original research, even if this is exactly what it says in the book itself. (I think the "(usually)" is going to suggest to some that it's OR.) I would also check into issues that might arise by having so many links to the Wizards website for the images. Obviously you can't have the images themselves on the page, but I can again imagine some future objection to having links to each and every image on the Wizards website. <shrug> Just a few thoughts that I have. Take them for what they may or may not be worth. --Craw-daddy | T | 21:47, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I can see where you are coming from with alignment, certainly, I put it in on a whim, it isn't stricly needed. I disagree with your citation idea- it goes against the manual of style, and doing that generally isn't a good idea. I can also see where you are coming from with the image links- all the external links could be considered unprofessional, but I think that the majority of readers and editors (once they have considered it) would think them to be useful and encyclopedic. J Milburn (talk) 22:02, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

i took your idea a bit and made an addition to the sandbox there as an idea of how to incorporate some of that. not sure how good it looks or useable it is, but i like the idea of having the ISBN and page number. having everything cross-linked also helps easily find articles that may or may not exist on the mosnters that survive as well as the books. i also think it might be of importance to list the first appearance, then other appearances maybe in chronological order? or maybe those bits are just a me thing and don't fit here. shadzar-talk 22:21, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with much of what Craw-Daddy is saying. No need to list and relist the ISBN when stating it once at the beginnig of each book-section should do it. Aside from that, I agree that page # could work as a small column - putting that as a citation instead seems overly repetitive and would take up much more space, and the information would be located at the bottom of the article rather than with the pertinent text. I also agree on alignment - I was actually not sure on whether to list it as a column, but I'm not against it; let's keep that open as an option. I do however feel that links to the images might be fine. If there are later objections (assuming there is no specific rule forbidding it), I don't see why we can't have that. Images may be scarce online for anything pre-3E however. First appearance does not need to be listed as its own column, though I could see an "other appearances" column being fine. I've updated my idea of the table, since this seems like the one we're likely to use (rather than the "Smallville" one I first played with). BOZ (talk) 23:36, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

so without the first appearance colum would we list all mosnters in all books they appear, or jsut list them in their first appearance book if an article on it exists? i think listing every mosnter in every book would be a bit large task. maybe more informative, but will make all the lsits longer especially for books that are only monster books that contain many repeats of older monsters. while modules may have a new monster and fully detailed only within the module itself. at least being able to tell where it first appeared may add some historical reference to the monsters. at least for gamers who read the articles that hold these tables. shadzar-talk 23:43, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I'd strike "first appearance" as a column, simply because we can cover the creature's first appearance in the "other appearances" column. It helps if you read that as "appearances in books other than the book for this section". Maybe we could have some kind of short-hand to indicate that a monster in a particular book had its first appearance there? BOZ (talk) 00:30, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Bold the monster's name. J Milburn (talk) 00:33, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Bold or italics will work as well as anything, as long as it's explained somewhere in the lead of the article what that indicates. :) BOZ (talk) 00:37, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

that's so simple it just might work!shadzar-talk 00:48, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Everyone is welcome to contribute on my sanbox page, as well.  :) BOZ (talk) 17:41, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

"Geek Love"

Here's an opinion piece you might enjoy: [10] BOZ (talk) 12:33, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

i see nothing but page errors when trying to view. think maybe you have to log in? shadzar-talk 02:54, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't know what to tell you - I don't have a login, but I have no problem with that page. BOZ (talk) 12:16, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

articles proposed for deletion section.

ok even with slowing down AfDs /this is a bit confussing. can we just used the closed debates format for all articles? this way it won't require moving them between the sections as they would already show the staatus of the debate. or at least using the closed format and then just moving it without the nom name and adding the closing date to it and such. just a suggestion as they appear in two different format in the section this would help editing the closed ones by jsut copy and pasting them to the closed section within the small text formatting. example below: current:

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Avariel - J Milburn (talk) 22:15, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

proposed:

• Avariel at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Avariel (11 March 2008) - J Milburn (talk) 22:15, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

or does this and my example break some wikipedia coding/template/functions itself? shadzar-talk 01:58, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I suppose that is more logical; when I first started listing them, I wasn't familiar with the template, and it seemed to take too long to list them like that, so I just didn't bother. This way will save time when moving them to the 'closed AfDs' section, too. J Milburn (talk) 11:11, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

3.0 and 3.5 Manuals

I'm pretty new here, and by the looks of things a great many pages are being critically looked at and their validity questioned. In this atmosphere I would like everybody to weigh in on the status of the 3.0 and 3.5 manual pages, which are mostly stub articles. I am prepared to go through them and add cover images (many of which I already have uploaded) and flesh out the pages a bit more, if everyone thinks it is a good idea. However, I don't want to waste my time or your time by building these pages that are then going to be 'executed in the purge' so to speak. So I propose the question: should the 3.0 and 3.5 manual articles be expanded individually or not? Any comments would be really welcome. Thanks! Baron (talk) 02:31, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

you mean the articles on the individual books? it is likely any article could be swept under by the flood of AfD we have recently wrought. but the better an article the less likely. just remember to find some third party sources on them to include so they don't get caught up in the motability factor going on with the mosnters. i think the current is jsut that every monster in D&D doesn't need its own article and that is a problem some see here. and that some of the articles are jsut copies of the SRD. work on any article and don't feel you have to wait to work on it. hopefulyl we can make good articles about all things D&D. i would suggest starting with the core 3 manuals as they will probably survive any AfD attempt. that way you don't feel you have wasted time while other chime in their ideas responses to what may be next in the "great purge" or D&D spring cleaning. and welcome to D&D project, thanks for the help. shadzar-talk 02:45, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I will certainly be fighting tooth and nail to keep as many of the module/supplement articles as possible- they are what we should focus on covering, not every monster ever. Some of them may possibly go, but if you can find a couple of reviews for each, then they almost certainly will not end up getting deleted. I also believe that the modules/supplements can be written to a fairly high standard, making them far more useful- see Libris Mortis and Red Hand of Doom. J Milburn (talk) 11:09, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

List of Dungeons & Dragons creatures

I started a new section since the above one is getting pretty bloated. We've been working on this one for the last week or so, and it looks like we're just about done. Personally, I think JMilburn's version is about right on target for where we need to be. If anyone disagrees, please display a more workable version. Otherwise, I intend to start putting it together on Monday, and when it's got a good start, I'm going to move it to the above wikilink. BOZ (talk) 18:03, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I'd say that, once you've got the main books down (the core Monster Manual type book for each edition) wap it into the article space, and just stick a 'this list is incomplete' template on it, then we can all work on it and there's something for readers. We can then start splitting it up by time period once it gets too long. Before it is moved in to the article space, I am happy to do the table for the 3.0 Monster Manual (bought it before I knew the difference between 3.0 and 3.5, never bothered to buy a 3.5). I've just realised we could also link to OGL stats where applicable- is that worth doing? J Milburn (talk) 18:40, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I grant to you the 3.0 MM and any other 3E books you like.  :) (As for the 3.5 MM, since the contents are 95% the same, we could just include a paragraph of text that says so, and list the dozen or so monsters that were added.) Let's wait until Monday for further comments before we start on that. Also, I'll add the 1E MM, FF, and MM2, and the 2E Monstrous Manual, as well as a few pre-1E books from the mid-70s. Anyone else, after I reformat the sandbox page, can feel free to add any other books they wish, within reason (starting with the more notable sources). Once we at least have most of the main monster books covered, we'll move it to article space and let the whole of wikipedia get to it.BOZ (talk) 18:59, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Oh, sorry, about the OGL links. That would be fine, but I wouldn't want a separate column for it, since it would only apply to a small number of books (2-3 of them, or fewer?). BOZ (talk) 19:07, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I still think that the "alignment" column may not be good to include in the table for reasons that I have previously mentioned. Your opinions may vary.  :) --Craw-daddy | T | 18:47, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Correct me if I am wrong, but is alignment not one of the few ways to categorise creatures that has remained constant throughout the edition history? I don't mind if we don't include it, but I think it is useful information for those researching D&D monsters and those just interested, while aiding in the definition of the monsters. J Milburn (talk) 18:52, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

My viewpoint on that is, that since we couldn't think of anything else to put there, alignment is as good as anything.  ;) If "future generations" wish to remove it and can state a good reason, then this is their right to do so.  :) One of the nice features about alignment is that it works with every edition of D&D that has existed (not entirely sure about the pre-1E books, I'll check on Monday). Better alignment than HD or AC. :) Also, I agree with J.Milburn that alignment helps define a monster, unlike the more abstract number-related stats. BOZ (talk) 18:59, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I have just thought that a 'creative origins' column would also be a useful addition- further meta-game information, information extremely useful to anyone researching D&D's creative origins and some nice links to related mythology articles. My only concern is that there could be a lot of original research in these columns- I mean, some are obvious, a D&D unicorn is obviously taken from the mythical unicorn, but do we have a good source saying that Monstrous Spiders are based on those from Tolkein? J Milburn (talk) 19:39, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

That might be an acceptable column, though in many cases info may be difficult to obtain. I used to be able to ask the big EGG directly, but as of a week or so ago that's no longer an option. :( Still, he and other designers have commented on the internet, and it can be found with enough "legwork". Asking around at placed like EN World will likely turn up a lot of info. For now, we can keep other keep info like that in the description column? BOZ (talk) 22:48, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I say create the page with the column, just keep it under populated. We and others can then add them in as we find them. J Milburn (talk) 22:53, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough. Do you then want to take out Alignment, or cram this extra column in there too? We can mine existing articles for this info - most don't have it, but a few here and there do. BOZ (talk) 22:55, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I still think alignment is relevent information, so I reckon we should cram the column in if at all possible. As for the information in the current articles- it's mostly unreferenced. J Milburn (talk) 22:58, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

You want to play around with your version, then, to see how the column looks there in place? BOZ (talk) 23:01, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Done, tell me what you think. While I'm here, I think we should name this list List of Dungeons & Dragons monsters rather than creatures, as that's what they're generally known as both in-game and out of it. J Milburn (talk) 23:09, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I suppose that would be OK. BOZ (talk) 23:35, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

You could always create a redirect from "List... creatures" to "List ... monsters" if that would help too. --Craw-daddy | T | 23:40, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Might as well. :) BOZ (talk) 00:02, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

on the alingment the only problem i have is that 4th edition is changing again many alignments and removing some aspect of the older emchanics in respect to them. while i don't like this idea, the problem may occur where things that are duplicated, and with monsters they wil be; will you need to have the alignment presented in each book, or just the original books alotted alignemtnf or a given monster. for example, demons/devils have switched sides or some such. while it would be good to list the alignments for older editions, will this cause a problem with the new edition and how it is being done? most things shouldn't change alignment, but with WotC stance of rewriting the entire game there may be many that do change so we should figure something out to prepare for that scenario. but in the event alignment is book and monster specific it may not be a problem with newer book formats. we just change tables/lists to comply with newer books for their monsters. shadzar-talk 02:13, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure that alignment needs its own field in the tables. Anyways, I was thinking we could copy Template:Episode list with Name, Page, Other appearances, OGL Stats, and Image as the first line for each creature and then a cell that spans the table for Description and an optional cell that spans the table called Publication history or Notes where we can include whatever info from secondary sources that we find. I think any field that's likely to have more text than the other fields should probably get its own line so the formatting looks good. Other appearances may need its own line/cell too, since it may become large compared to the rest. I made a poor mock up on the sample page, but my wikitabling is a bit rusty. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 06:13, 16 March 2008 (UTC)