Poioumena

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Non-D&D RPGs

Hi, Poioumena. I don't really use email on WP, but I will give share with you a couple of opinions/experiences I have on this topic.

The main thing I have learned here - which is something BOZ and Guinness323 have also learned, from their own experience - is the importance of starting by assessing the secondary sources. Whether concerning BLPs of game designers, or game books, or game companies (and the latter should ideally meet WP:NCORP, which is a high bar), it is important to establish the sourcing before writing a new article (you can see an example of this in my discussion with GRuban on my Talk page, about the GURPS Steampunk line). There is a natural desire to write what we know and look for sources to support that, but the best practice (in terms of Notability and also for content development) is to start with the sources.

Now when it comes to notability of companies, games and authors, our best resources are probably Designers & Dragons (the four-volume version from Evil Hat) and the major awards. Reviews are also great, and BOZ and Guinness323 have done a good job of working from magazine reviews, but web reviews are often self-published (in which case, even if reliable and expert, they don't technically count for article Notability) and magazine reviews are scarce for the last 10 years or more. So we can get content from online reviews, but it is important to make sure you have independent RS (for which awards thankfully count) before starting or committing to an article.

So one problem I have with working from reviews is a default of creating quasi-stub articles for each RPG release based on its individual reviews. I find that, from a reader's perspective, articles built around a game line (including many publications) are potentially more useful. It is easier to establish Notability, and the restrictions placed on game designers articles (by BLP restrictions, which some fundamentalists argue prevent us from including friendly anecdotes about a BLP based on anyone else's interviews or self-publoshed comments) and company articles (by NCORP) thankfully don't apply to games/game lines.

Finally, you might have thought I was missing your point about the "D&D-centrism" of the synthetic articles about RPG concepts. My sense is that this problem is hard to fix, except in cases where D&D-centric editors have added material from that perspective without independent sourcing. But while the ludology literature has started to deal with tabletop RPGs, there still aren't a whole lot of independent sources on the experiential side of RPGs in general, which make these articles harder to write and edit. So I'm afraid that outside these broad strokes, I don't have much advice for that specific aspect. Newimpartial (talk) 17:03, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Hi Poioumena, thank you for your email! I'll add to what Newimpartial wrote for transparency and because other editors might want to give their input as well, too. I think it's important to understand that Wikipedia articles should be based on "reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy". That means our job as editors is to summarize writing from scholars, journalists, reputable entertainment websites/magazines/books, and so on. We shouldn't add our own research or analysis, for example. Also, we should try to weight our articles proportionally with the available sources, so if more sources talk about Game A than Games B or C or D, then our articles are going to focus on Game A.

Now because role-playing is still a relatively niche subject, there aren't as many reliable sources compared to many other subjects. Also, many of the sources that do or did exist—like RPG magazines—are published by the games companies, which means they're not independent. D&D is kind of the exception here. It's by far the most popular tabletop RPG and it gets plenty of coverage from mainstream sources. So you're right that our articles do make it seem like RPGs = D&D, but that's because reliable sources do as well and we need to reflect that in our writing.

I'm just not sure there's any way around all that, short of looking for coverage of other RPGs. I suspect that you'll probably find more coverage in older books and magazines, because I think the emphasis on D&D has only increased over the past 5-10 years—since 5th Edition was announced and increasing with the success of Critical Role.

I hope all of this helps! Please let me know if you have any questions at all. Cheers! Woodroar (talk) 17:17, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Since this is turning into an actual discussion:), I'll respond with a few nuances I want to make. First, concerning RPG magazines, they don't necessarily lack independence. A magazine owned by one gaming company can (and most did) publish reviews of publications for game lines from which they are entirely independent, and those reviews are independent RS. (This has been discussed and consensus reached at WP:RSN and many AfDs.) So Dragon reviews of White Wolf publications and White Wolf reviews of Games Workshop publications, etc., are each considered RS.

Also, there is an important carve-out in WP:SPS concerning experts. I'll quote the relevant sentence: Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications. So, for example, something Ken Hite or Robin Laws has published on a blog (or stated in a podcast) can be considered reliable in their areas of expertise (Hite having published in independent RS, analyzing the state of the RPG industry for many years, and Laws having written several volumes about narrative theory and game mastering that are independent RS publications).

There is no requirement that sources be mainstream either, in that context: the New York Times is not a more reliable source for what goes on around a gaming table than Robin's Laws. But it does take some discernment to assess the quality and relevance of people writing in the RPG area, since the easiest things to find may well not represent any expertise in the sense meaningful to WP policy and practice. Newimpartial (talk) 17:45, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Thank you guys for the topo. I don't know the ways around here, but I first want to say how much of a help you are. I can assure you my intention is not to do Original Research on the fly. I have gathered an amount of historical and theoretical knowledge and sources, designers, editors, podcasters, that I want to make space for in the RPG articles, invoking "significant minority". @Newimpartial, your last paragraph is precisely my best hope. Now, I just have to take care of my "unduely weighted" views. Sorry I thought signature was fully automated. Poioumena (talk) 21:59, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Could you try adding four tildes at the end of your comments - e.g., immediately before this reply? It makes it much easier to discuss things. See: I'll do so right now. Newimpartial (talk) 21:28, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Sorry I thought signature was fully automated.

Here is Poioumena (talk) 21:59, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for that. No, the wiki environment doesn't distinguish between article space, talk pages and project pages, so we have to actually place our own signatures. Next maybe you can work on the "::" that WP:LISTGAP documents as the main form of threading on Talk pages. It is also helpful.

So you're right and you're wrong about having to take care of my "unduely weighted" views. You're wrong in that each editor will being their own POV to discussions, and there is nothing wrong ( or unDUE) about that, since WP:DUE is a content policy not a conduct policy. But you're right in that working in article space requires us to take the WP:BALANCE of RS into account, rather than cherry-picking those sources with which we agree.

In any case, I would want to break things down even more. When Wikipedia makes statements about tabletop RPG in general - which it does surprisingly often, perhaps because WikiProject RPGs was active in early days - it should in fact speak generally, based on available RS information, and not defer to terminology or practices that are specific to one game, however popular.

Meanwhile, though, there have been a lot of attempts to abstract from or otherwise characterise RPG "space" that have been every bit as particular as the individual games. (The Forge community would be an example of what I'm talking about.) The sense of what the differences are among RPGs and RPG "philosophies" was very different in 1995 from what it was in 2005 and from what it was in 2015. So while our articles should follow RS in abstracting from the ideosyncracies of particular games (and WP:GAMEGUIDE, while focused on video games, offers relevant inspiration to avoid in-universe and in-rule system explanations of RPGs), we can't allow the articles to follow particular interpretations of the tabletop RPG activity, even reliably sourced ones, when they conflict with other equally plausible interpretations. This is where WP:DUE, and even in-text attribution of analytical concepts, become essential.

So I hope this helps; I am just an old grognard, who has never shown a real gift for article creation, trying to pass on some "life lessons" as it were. Newimpartial (talk) 23:22, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

• Hello. Responding to your email, I think everybody else pretty much covered what I would've said, (better than I would've) but I will add a couple of thoughts anyway:

There is a lot of disagreement on Wikipedia over where these lines lie about sources. I think that over-reliance on any one source is a problem. For RPGs, using only a few sources creates a distorted view of how important these games and supplements are, which misinforms readers. For example, I think that Designers & Dragons is a over-used, even though it is a great source by itself. It is good to have, but we need more. Unfortunately, this topic suffers from a lack of sources, and the only solution is for more reliable, independent sources to be found. If they cannot be found, we have to wait for them to be published.

Another thing is this: Remember to make articles understandable to a general audience. Far, far too many RPG articles are incomprehensible to people who don't already play RPGs. Too much jargon, too many unexplained world-building references, and too much esoteric game mechanics. I think because we, as players, tend to like these details, we lose sight of how tedious and confusing they can be if not explained carefully. Explaining things succinctly is a challenge, but it's worth it. Arguably, it's the entire point of this project. Remember that when writing articles, we are writing for people who don't already know about the topic. That includes people who dislike or cannot play RPGs.

I hope that helps. Grayfell (talk) 01:38, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

When I read an article on benzene on Wikipedia it's clear where the standard is. OtH when I browse gateway RPG articles on the Pedia, I don't see that. The consensus, namely that RPGs are funny conversations, is not reflected. Some articles are not up to date (TheForge is a thing from the past). Many are sloppy. Many RPG articles are simply not up to the basic standard, when selectivity is supposed to be more intense in fringe topics.

So it's hard to hear arguments relative to Wikipedia high standards opposed to you only when you touch topics regarding significant minorities in RPGs. Which makes it clear to me how much the Wikipedia consensus is conservative.

Understand that nothing I say here is against you personally. What happens here is that, with your help, I am quickly (in a few days) calibrating my actions and expectations regarding Wikipedia x RPGs. My POV will certainly evolve again and again.

My project is this : showing my sources, tagging lacking gateway articles for lack of source and probably ask for merging some wheel reinventions and doing some linking around the place.

Poioumena (talk) 07:42, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I mostly agree with what you are saying, and this is a good project. My observation is this: There is a small number of very, very active editors who create extremely detailed articles on D&D minutia. Periodically, these articles are scrutinized by the larger community and then deleted (via WP:AFD) and turned into redirects to larger articles. Category:Dungeons & Dragons monsters used to be massive, and this is partly why there are so many long list articles for D&D.

As for Wikipedia being conservative, if you meant in the non-political sense, then again, I agree. Wikipedia has gotten more conservative over time, but as you say, it's wildly inconsistent from topic-to-topic. The project's standards for chemistry, or for medicine, are completely different from games or fiction and this is frustrating.

If you meant politically conservative, it's worth looking at the specific topic. I think RPGs, even as funny conversations, are inherently at least a little political. They are also commercial products. To completely ignore the politics of that is a mistake. I have tried, for years, to remind Wikipedia editors that RPGs are bought and sold for money and must be treated as the commodities they are. Our admiration for a product doesn't transform it into a non-product. Grayfell (talk) 22:31, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

I meant conservative in its action rather than politically. I see we are on the same page.Thank you for the history of D&D monsters. Poioumena (talk) 04:26, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

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Happy editing! Woodroar (talk) 17:18, 18 February 2021 (UTC)