Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dungeons & Dragons/Archive 3

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

→

Archive 10

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)

no ideas or comments yet on what may need to be done to the OGL page? shadzar-talk 22:49, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

update: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4news/20080417a what do we do about this? new article under the new name, or add in to the existing Open Gaming License article in a new section? shadzar-talk 21:31, 17 April 2008 (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)

• Not quite. Real-world impact means that there is an article written about a monster or character, and that article comes from a reliable source which is independent of the subject matter (e.g. The New York Times). Rule books published by Wizards of the Coast are not independent of Dungeons & Dragons, although they are a real-world source. The problem with many D&D articles is that they rely on the rule books for their content (which is a breach of copyright), or they are a synthesis of D&D rulebooks, but this usually fails WP:NOT#PLOT. What is needed is reliable independent sources which contain real-world content about D&D creatures: real-world content being details of the creatures literary origin, significance to Role-Playing games or some other analysis by which the reader can the significance of the creature or character in the real-world. I hope this helps. --Gavin Collins (talk) 22:30, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

with the exception that again i think you failed to understand a few things about what you just said.

• you do not fully understand the SRD/OGL presented by WotC for D&D and the edition in which many of the monster articles are written within or mostly directed towards. so i don't think you know what is a breach of copyright or not in regarads to D&D.
• rulebooks have no plot. there are not stories as you wish to classify D&D as. yes The Complete Book of Halflings & Gnomes' from AD&D 2nd edition does contain a story of Littlman. but the book is not a story in and of itself. if you would remove your personal bias towards D&D being a story you probably wouldn't make this mistake. and instead try treating the materials as parts of a game and you may better understand D&D and be able to contribute more effectively to the articles about the many games that are D&D.
• since you don't understand the game i don't think you understand the significance you speak of that some of the monsters or other things have have on the real world. it would be a fools errand to try to say some thing in D&D have not impacted the rest of the world. Harry Potter and other fantasy genre books/movies/etc, video games, card games, board games... heck the entire gaming industry as well probably the entertainment industry all have been impacted by D&D in one way or another.

once you accept D&D as a game and not something else, then maybe you will better be able to present your cases with some validity. the curx of the matter is that not everything on D&D needs to be here. some monsters recent went under the axe because they were simply not something of importance enough to show impact that D&D has had other than by their existance. to quantify the shear amount of impact D&D has had over its 30+ years user:Boz is working hard to come up with a solution to the problem of every monster having an article just to show they exist. the fact that so many exist (30,000+) in various forms or versions of the game shows that the monsters themselves have had an impact even if the most obscure of them did not directly impact the world other than that they are a part of the whole. which makes those things like Veshar and Tressym only notable as part of the whole rather than needing their own individual articles. so for a monster to have its own article i think the monster existing in D&D needed to have a real world impact. not necessarily that it was derived from one that already existed in mythology. and this is something different from characters. i am speaking simply of the basic unnammed monsters like Beholder or Drow rather than Drizzt. shadzar-talk 08:19, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

D&D's monsters, as a whole, are probably one of the most significant and well-known aspects of the game. What do you do when you play D&D? "Kill monsters and take their stuff!"  ;) And I'm doing my best to get them consolidated, but it's definitely taking some time. J Milburn is helping as well, as is new user Baron Taltos. BOZ (talk) 04:52, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

sadly it seems some people wont jsut udnerstand anything about the game and try to make it something its not, or belittle it and people who play it by trying to destroy it with false accusations due to ignorance of the subject matter. not a very good morning for me or i would be working on those lists as i planned, but i think you all ahve it pretty much covered, and i am not really sure about those tables and my ability to make them without destroying them. and you are right one half of the game is the non-story elements. which it seems people try to deny when trying to classify the game or makes it hard for them to understand how to classify it. shadzar-talk 09:58, 2 April 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 [1] 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? Casliber (talk · 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. :) Casliber (talk · 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..Casliber (talk · 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 :) Casliber (talk · 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.[2] - 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: [3] 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)

That's worth having a look at; I can certainly agree that text space is starting to get cramped in J.Milburn's mockup. BOZ (talk) 14:36, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

A possible downside is it gives people too much room for the description, but in my experience even if it's a one inch cell people will write a bunch anyways and then each monster's row will get super tall with only one cell having info that fits it. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 15:41, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

That is true. Are we going to watch this article indefinitely, in case 2 years from now someone wants to write three paragraphs of text into each of those little boxes and make each monster six inches tall? Better, as a precaution, to have a description box below the other fields (see how I began the sanbox page: [4]). BOZ (talk) 21:06, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

i do watch many articles daily. not that editing out large lcumps of unneeded description would be fun, but in this case it might be something eneded. i will do my share to reduce the description size in whatever method is chosen. shadzar-talk 22:51, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, as long threatened, I finally came up with a mock-up for one of the first major sources to focus on monsters, ye olde "White Box" (not White Album). Feel free to have a look and discuss. Notice how the Peregrine Fisher format is slightly smaller when the text gets its own row; imagine how much more cramped it would be to have the descriptive text in a column when you have even more columns than what I used in the first example? BOZ (talk) 16:12, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

On a related note, I did discover one very minor problem with the "description on bottom" format; if you try to use the sort function, all the descriptions get sorted under "D" and thus get misaligned. :) Like I said, very minor, but we can't do a sort and have the description beneath the columns like that. BOZ (talk) 16:15, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

4th Ed alignment?

Just giving this its own section so that the discussion above doesn't become too messy- shadzar mentioned alignment is changing in 4th Ed- are they no longer using the nine alignment, L/N/C - G/N/E, system? If not, I support removing the alignment column. If they are, this keeps alignment as the real constant throughout the edition history. As for the alignment changes, just list whatever it says in that particular book- you're mentioning that alternative stats are also listed in other books anyway. This little subsection can also be used to discuss the alignment column in general- I'm for it, because of its consistency and the way it defines a monster, Peregrine Fisher is against it, what do others think? J Milburn (talk) 18:32, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I have heard that alignment is not going to be elimited, but will perhaps change radically. It would be nice to hear from someone who has been studying the 4E news more closely than me. BOZ (talk) 21:02, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

they have removed the Great Wheel and changed the generic cosmology. the Great Wheel was replaced by the Astral Sea. some demons and devils switched sides. for benefit of law and chaos reasons and why the demon or devil does what it does. Good and Evil it seems will only be used for primarily extreme factions of monsters that have an agenda. it seems a bit trowback to the original 3 L/N/C rather than AD&D 9 part alignment. but as of yet until the actual release of the PHB in June there is no real way to tell with the tidbits WotC releases on DDI, what little was released from DDXP. most is still in speculation from what little info is being released. it just may mean 4E will require a different table template than older editions. not something that would have to be the same for every table as i think about it today. shadzar-talk 22:58, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Good point - we may not be quite standard on every table for every edition, so maybe being fluid with the implementation of the tables would be best? I'm going to make sure we have at least one book from every edition (pre-1E D&D, 1E AD&D, basic/expert/etc D&D, 2E AD&D, and 3E/3.5) before this list goes live. For example, any pre-3E editions won't need an OGL stats column. BOZ (talk) 03:07, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Negotiable concepts

I think maybe what we should do is put it to a vote for each of the negotiable concepts as far as the tables we're building at User:BOZ/Monster Sandbox - put it on the table for all to decide. That way we build consensus rather than just take what each of the four of us wants, no? In our case, the negotiable items seem to include, 1) An alignment column 2) An image column 3) A OGL url column 4) Sortable tables 5) a row for Description and/or Creative Origins rather than a column 6) Anything I'm forgetting? I think the items we all agree are definite keeps include Other appearances, page #, and having a spot for Creative Origins and any other out-of-universe info we can source. BOZ (talk) 03:13, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good.

1) No. We're trying to be respectable and alignment may be the least crufty stat, but it's still listing a stat. It't kind of like the creatures personality. We could include it in the description if we want, I don't know.

2) Yes. WP has rules about always putting external links at the bottom, but I think an exception can be made in this case.

3) Yes. I think Milburn said this wasn't going to be needed by people not familiar with D&D, which is true, but I think a lot of the readers who will come to this page aren't D&D newbies.

2-3) Comment. Havent' thought about it much yet, but there is probably some slick way to provide the image and OGL stats link without taking up too much space in the table.

4) Yes, unless there was a reason not to. The processing is done on the readers computer so it doesn't take any longer to load. There are ways to create sort keys too, if what's visible in the cell isn't exactly what we want it sorted by. I might have missed why sortable isn't good, so if there's a reason not to, that's fine. One reason might be that the books are alphabatized, so sorting by page number is basically the same as by name and not super helpful. I guess it depends on the fields and how crazy we want to go. Sorting by Other appearances in a good way may require a bit of sort key work to make it useful, or may be unworkable, for instance.

5) Milburn mentioned somewhere that a seperate row for info will lead to long cruft, and he's partially correct. Either way will require a lot of watching and reverting to keep descriptions small. Longer descriptions will look a lot better on their own row, which might promote length. If someone adds a long description to a narrow cell and no one reverts, the table will look funky, though. If someone actually finds sourced info, it won't fit easily into narrow cells. See List of Carnivàle episodes for one way to include out of universe info along with a description.

6) I think we should make a template like Template:Episode list so that it's easy to see where you're adding the info and not have to use double pipes (||) or whatever. I can probably make it, or maybe someone else is better at templates than me.

Anyways, that's my thought. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 03:48, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I meant to start a new section for that, but yeah that's the sort of input I'd like to solicit from people. We need a wider-cross section than just the four or so of us who've already been debating it to develop consensus. It's getting late; I'll work on that tomorrow. BOZ (talk) 04:14, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

My votes:

1) No. We could include it in the description if we want, and even then I’d call it editor's option (alignment is not noteworthy in all cases – sometimes "evil" is enough, or whatever. Slaad are Chaotic Neutral, but do you care about a giant slug's alignment?).

2-3) No, thanks to Milburn’s latest fix in his template, these can be stacked effectively in other columns. :)

4) Yes, but only if description is not on a separate row, which leads to sorting issues. If we add a separate row, then I'd have to say No.

5) Yes, I like this option as it both books better in the column, and allows for critters which require more than a sentence's worth of description to get such.

6) As I’ve said before, I’d like to see either a second row (which can be made invisible when blank, if we figure that out?) for out-of-universe notes on inspiration and things; otherwise I’d like to see that included in the “Description” row.BOZ (talk) 17:48, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Peregrine Fisher has just given me an idea. I'm gonna go and have a fiddle with my table. Ok, knocked something up. Check Boz's monster sandbox. Also definately agree with the idea of a template- I'll have a fiddle, see what I can produce, though I'm not too experienced with templates. J Milburn (talk) 17:24, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Feel free to solicit for people to come vote here.  :) BOZ (talk) 17:48, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I'm not big on voting, but here's what I reckon-

1. No, what Boz said. Alignment can be included in the description if needed.
2. No, can be included as shown in my new fix.
3. No, as above.
4. I'm not seeing any real advantage in being able to sort- we can sort by page number and alphabet, but, as Peregrine Fisher said, there's usually little difference. We could possibly work out how to sort by other appearances, meaning that you could sort the table to show which monsters in the book have appeared in D&D in some other form beforehand, but it would be awkward with little benefit. If I'm honest, I don't think I support being able to sort the tables, there's no real point.
5. I still think columns are fine- check my new table design; cutting down to five columns really leaves a lot of room, plus the fact that there will be a couple of lines in the name column in a few cases will give that little bit more space anyway. Other appearances will probably be the deepest column- just a couple of other books will mean a couple of lines.
6. I'm just wondering what real world info we could include that wouldn't fall under 'creative origins' or 'other appearances'? J Milburn (talk) 18:02, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

• My turn. :)

1) Yes. It is a stat, but I would keep it as part of the "this is more than an index" idea. Still, I'm happy if others don't want it.

2) I like J Milburn's approach, so I'll go with no.

3) As per 2.

4) Provisional no. I'd really like to see sorting work, but I'm concerned about complexity. If it is easy to add, and will provide a real advantage, then cool. If it is even moderately tricky to maintain, (hidden sort keys and the like), then I wouldn't go near it, as others will be maintaining this too.

5) Definitely yes. :) If the description is in a column, and it isn't carefully watched, it will get really ugly if it gets long, and makes the list difficult to read. In another row you need an indicator to separate entries, as the entry takes two rows, but you gain the ability to make bigger entries if needed, and can cope if any do get a tad longer than strictly desired.

6) Templates are a great idea. :)

Bilby (talk) 07:11, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Feeling of Dread... Dear God, it's the Pokémon Megamerger All Over Again!

Looking at this, I've already got a feeling of dread sitting in the pit of my stomach, mainly because, while what I see we're basing it off of is familiar territory, the moment that something like this goes live we'll have every Tom, Dick, and Harry spamming a shitload of creatures into the list from sources like the Book of Erotic Fantasy and Final Fantasy into the list in good-faith (I am aware that Chocoboes have been covered in a Dragon issue once) and making the list unreasonably large. And if experience has taught us anything (particularly in re J Milburn) removal of such crap invites wrath. So, while I do commend this effort, I have to ask why we can't just ignore all the nonnotable monsters instead of listifying them? -Jéské ^{(v^_^v Detarder)} 18:11, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I think we can state at the top of the list that only monsters from official supplements and modules are included; this keeps it a finite number (just barely...). The alternative is continuing to nominate the articles, yet not having anywhere to put the information; at least this way it doesn't look like we (me especially) are rampant deletionists. And yeah, I'd noticed the similarities to the Pokémon merger. I think the official monsters are encyclopedic, just very few of them deserve their own articles. J Milburn (talk) 18:17, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

That may be so, but even those from official modules and supplements will eventually overwhelm the list and make it too large. -Jéské ^{(v^_^v Detarder)} 20:35, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, it's gonna be pretty huge- see discussion below. Of course, it's preferable to every monster having their own article... J Milburn (talk) 21:25, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

i don't see so much of a problem. if the monsters are sorted by books, then a Chocobo shouldn't appear in the Monstrous Manual form 1995 because it doesn't appear in that book. for Dragon Magazines Beastiary maybe it could have its own section. that way those monsters wouldn't get added to the other places by knowledgable persons. it won't be easy to watch from vandalism even of the good faith nature, but at least it will be usefull and have something on even mundane mosnters so people don't feel their "favorite" obscure monster if being left out. and the lsit itself will be a great reference sources for gamers and anyone else who wishes to research the mosnters of D&D sicne they can find where the Flumph came from and look it up for any reason, gaming, school, work, etc. shadzar-talk 23:00, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

List hierarchy

I think it is worth starting to think about this now- how are we going to arrange the list? It's going to be too big for a single page, far too big. As such, I advocate having a central List of Dungeons & Dragons monsters which lists only the monsters from the main monster book (EG, Monster Manual with 3.5) for each edition. This page will be split by edition, but link to new articles as the 'main' article for each section, such as List of Dungeons & Dragons 3.0 edition monsters. These (or, at least, the 3.5 one) will need to be split again, probably by year. For instance, List of Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 edition monsters (2003-2004). Thoughts? J Milburn (talk) 18:24, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Oh yeah, it will indeed be insanely huge for one page once it really gets going. I think I stated that at least a week ago. :) By year or span of years seems like a fine way to go, as even by edition might be a bit much. List of Dungeons & Dragons monsters could be something like an index page linking to the other pages? Doing it this way will also reduce, say, the number of times you see "Beholder" listed on the same page.  :) (Note, the size of this project and how long it will take to finish is not really an issue to me, is it for you?) You might have a bit of overlap here and there where edition changes happen (and should we keep basic D&D separate from AD&D?)

The other option would be to go back to talking about A-Z lists, and keeping List of Dungeons & Dragons monsters as perhaps an index page to the individual alpha pages, as well as a list of the contents of the main monster books? BOZ (talk) 19:27, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

No, I think we have a pretty clear consensus that listing by book is the best way to go- splitting the main list by year would work, but I think we should split by edition then by year to cover up for the overlap- apart from the main listings page, I don't think listing monsters from separate editions on the same page is a particuarly good idea; that'll get confusing. This way, you will also be able to separate AD&D from D&D, which will prevent confusion. J Milburn (talk) 21:28, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Oh no, I definitely meant that editions should be on separate pages. I think I see what you were getting at before by making the edition part of the page name - that would take care of any overlap. OK, we're cool there. BOZ (talk) 22:10, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

2E and 3E are likely to require the most pages, because that's when monster boooks and therefore monsters really started proliferating themselves. 1E could have either one really big page or split into two (we could start it on one page and see where that takes us). Pre-1E D&D (1974-1976) is unlikely to ever need more than one page. Also, don't discount non-advanced D&D which ran through the late seventies to I think the mid-1990s? That was a wholly distinct entity from 1E/2E AD&D and needs to be treated as such - had many of its own versions of the same monsters as AD&D. Now mind you, I have absolute zero intention of trying to list every monster in every book - let some other poor shmucks do that.  :) (and oh, they will!) I think all we need to do is, as you say, hit the "big books" for each edition and then leave it up to others to grow the rest. We'll lay the groundwork though. I think what I will do for each talkpage is to list the other books which should fit in each timeframe so that whoever wants to pick it up will have a framework to start from. I'm going to continue on to do at least the Greyhawk, Blackmoor, and Eldritch Wizardry from early D&D, because those contain the first appearances of many classic iconic monsters. I'll try to find time for that tonight. BOZ (talk) 22:17, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't start yet- wait 'til we are absolutely agreed on the tables, I say. Maybe even build a template first, as Peregrine Fisher reccommended. I'm gonna get myself working on a load of the 3.5 lists once we have the main skeleton down, but I worry that some stuff will never get itself done- obscure books from forgotten editions and settings... J Milburn (talk) 22:32, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not worried about that - this encylopedia exists for more than two people to build. :) If it doesn't get done, it's left to someone else to fix. You're right, won't type up any more sources now (the white box took enough work, but I needed to get that one in there), so I'll try to work on the tables more tonight instead. It looks like we're mostly OK, and even if more people don't contribute towards the consensus it seems at least as if we're narrowing down among us the things that we don't fully agree on... BOZ (talk) 22:38, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

• trying to clearify here. several pages. one for each edition if possible. the mosnters will be sorted into books within their respective editions. these books will be sorted by year. so like 4 pages of these mosnters if they are broken down as OD&D, AD&D, 3.x, and 4E. if this is correct i got jsut a bit of a question. with AD&D there are many settings over the years. how will the settings factor in? just list the product in order of year it was released and leave it at that?

1990

Monstrous Compendium Greyhawk Adventures Appendix

etc? shadzar-talk 23:20, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't see why we couldn't keep the setting-related products within the edition pages. Thus all those you list would stay within 2E.BOZ (talk) 23:40, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

• That sounds good to me. My only concern is that this doesn't get accused of being nothing more than an index for the manuals - but if there is sufficient cross-referencing, I suspect that it will be safe. And the years as a basic grouping may help. - Bilby (talk) 06:48, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Other appearances idea

Hey, I came up with a space-saving idea a little while ago. Take, for example, the Goblin as I came up with it for the "white box". Keep in mind, after that, it appeared in (if not other places) 1E Monster Manual, Monstrous Compendium One, Monstrous Manual, Monster Manual 3E, Monster Manual 3.5... That's starting to get kind of long for a column, especially if we are considering putting in copyright date and ISBN etc. So, here's my idea. It may not be effectively implementable until the articles actually exist, but couldn't hurt to examine it now. Since each book will have a heading wherein the copyright date and ISBN and all that will be listed, instead of being excessively repetetive, how about just linking to each book? For example, the Goblin will link to the section on the 1E page for the Monster Manual, the sections on the 2E page for the Monstrous Compendium and the Monstrous Manual, etc. This way we'll just have the names in that column, like so: Monster Manual II, Monstrous Manual. BOZ (talk) 23:52, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree that this would be better. However, do we link to the article on the book, some of which are actually quite good, or do we link to the section with the monsters from that book? Also, when listing the other appearances, do we list only the other books that statblocks were printed in, or do we list other relevent appearances? For instance, goblins appear in loads of supplements, modules, video games, miniatures sets (...) but, say, a Wheep (from Libris Mortis) does not. I support listing the main ones (for the goblin, all the books its stats are reprinted in, for the wheep, perhaps some obscure module) and then, after a few (fivish) just saying "others". J Milburn (talk) 23:59, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

i would say jsut the books that contain information on the critter rather than each suplement it appeared in for now. as it may be a large list for many mosnters. i think linking to a creature article works for the creature name, and the book itself for the book within the list/tables. best of both world. when looking for information on the monster you click its name, and for finding out what else is in the book you go to that article. it will save space when dealing with all the ISBN and such within the lists itself. shadzar-talk 00:06, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant linking to the table that has the list of the monsters in that book OR the article on the book itself; linking to the monster articles (which we can start to redirect en-masse, assuming they don't seem to be notable) can be done in the name column, certainly. J Milburn (talk) 00:09, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

For redirecting, when the time comes, I propose sending them to the first known appearance (which can always be changed later if that info proves inaccurate). I agree with J Milburn's assessment on what "other appearances" to include. I think that, within the table, we should link to the other tables. But within the header text for each book's table, a link to a separate article is a good idea. Does that make sense? BOZ (talk) 03:41, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I have done some further experimentation with the tables. :) BOZ (talk) 14:45, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

The template is good to go, feel free to jump in any time: User:BOZ/List of Dungeons & Dragons monsters. BOZ (talk) 19:07, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Also, from that page I've linked to other temporary pages to try the template out for the other editions. I'd like to get a minimum of one book per edition written before moving all of this to article space. Plus, on the link above, we need to create an index page to link them all together. BOZ (talk) 06:09, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Let's use this talk page for discussion. BOZ (talk) 03:30, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, after having gone through the first edition Monster Manual, and knowing full well that there are a ton of books of comparable or even larger size, I don't think I'm going to be doing a whole lot with the description line in the near future.  :) I'll probably just add a few per book, but as I'm sure J Milburn is feeling right about know, writing a setence or so for each monster is an awful lot of work. Mostly, I'll come up with the tables for a few more books and leave the bulk work for other people down the line. Anyone who wants can feel free to pick up the slack there. BOZ (talk) 02:55, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

For anyone who's been following this, it looks like we're almost ready to go live. The 3.0 and 3.5 MMs need to be finished, and then I think we've got a good bare minimum to start it all up. Come join and help out if you like! BOZ (talk) 16:59, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

i have not forgotten, just busy this time of year. for anything missing i will try to help more after this weekend. shadzar-talk 17:32, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

No problem - there's other stuff I need to do as well, such as fixing up the index/intro page. BOZ (talk) 19:29, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

recent AfDs

we have had 5 merges in the recent closed AfD listings. as i am unaware of the material for these specific monsters and what may be needed to be moved into the suggested locations of the mergers i think someone may want to check into it. shadzar-talk 09:22, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Nilbog was a merge into Goblin (Dungeons & Dragons), another one was a merge into the main article itself (which I see as nonsensical). I don't have the other three watchlisted. -Jéské ^{(v^_^v Detarder)} 17:56, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

D&D-related articles of unclear notability

Hello,

there are currently about 250 articles in the scope of this project which are tagged with notability concerns. Based on a database snapshot of March 12, I have listed them here.

I would encourage members of this project to have a look at these articles, and see whether independent sources can be added, whether the articles can be merged into an article of larger scope, or possibly be deleted. Any help in cleaning up this backlog is appreciated. For further information, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Notability.

If you have further questions, please leave a message on the Notability project page or on my personal talk page. (I'm not watching this page however.) Thanks! --B. Wolterding (talk) 11:36, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

I've explained how we're dealing with this on B. Wolterding's talk page. J Milburn (talk) 14:23, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Good deal. BOZ (talk) 14:09, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

statistics

thanks to Craw-daddy i have learned two new things in the past few days and have done some work that may help us. the first was yesterday where i fixed the D&D template to the Bannermeta style and updated all existing D&D talk pages that i could find (maybe missing a few) with the new banner template. hopefully this organizes things a bit on the talk pages that it exists on. and a neat little thing i jsut noticed today was the assessment of D&D articles had a little statistics template. i added it on the wikiproject page. it can be moved wherever it needs to be, i placed it above the exists class section at the bottom of the page. this gives us an at a glance look at the numebr of articles that is within our scope/workload and how many of them are what qualirt and importance all at once. i think the sheer number of articles means we need to do some work. out of 749 articles (did i update that many templates yesterday?!?!?!) we have 616 that have an importance rating of NONE. that seems like it may be a bit problematic to our cause. granted with 4th edition around the corner and so much more to consider with adding it to existing articles and maybe even having a few articles on its own nuiances then we need to do something to get to wrok on some of these other articles. granted i think a majority of them are articles on monsters and some are working on that now, but i can't think all 600+ arearticles on monsters are they? what can we do with some of these articles to get them up to code so to speak? or waht aren't we already doing that we should be doing? shadzar-talk 15:27, 30 March 2008 (UTC)