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List of Dungeons & Dragons monsters

There has been some discussion on finding a good solution for the D&D monster list(s), and User:BOZ has come up with a Draft:List of Dungeons & Dragons monsters as a basis. I would like to quote his ideas about it:

"1. Rather than a list by edition (and since most of the edition lists were deleted, one more was redirected, and it makes little sense to have this as the only one), we will have one single list. To preserve the original work of the individual lists, it will be a list by edition, but we will only least each creature once, starting with its first appearance. So for example, anything that first appeared in the 1974 white box would appear there. Anything that first appeared in the 1977 Monster Manual will be there, anything that first appeared in the 2E Monstrous Compendium or Monstrous Manual will be there, the 3E Monster Manual, etc. This will preserve a sense of publication history, I think, and allow the current tables to be used as they are instead of having to modify them as we would need to do if we were going to reconfigure them alphabetically. 2. The list will be limited, but allow for expansion. We will not generally be listing normal animals for example, or every single instance of when a different dinosaur was added to the game, or separate entries for every single variant or subtype that appeared later, or other minutiae. Most of the giant animals can also be skipped, with the exception perhaps of giant eagles or giant lynxes which are intelligent and not simply oversized creatures. Importantly, this does not mean creatures will need to be deleted from the page. Using brackets like any creature can be hidden from appearing on the page. [...] This method should make it easy to add or remove creatures from the list by simply adding or restoring the brackets, and makes it unnecessary to permanently remove any entries. As far as which creatures to include in the list then, for starters I have seen in multiple AFDs last year that even the people pushing for deletion would have been fine with seeing anything with at least one secondary source on the list. As to which sources are best to allow inclusion, that is debatable. I also think we have some wiggle room to include anything for which it seems likely that there could be sources in existence. I personally favor inclusion rather than exclusion, but I also agree it is unnecessary to document every single creature that ever appeared (most, perhaps, but not all)."

I really like the general idea, and hope this attracts some interest besides mine! But would like to ask for input on three points: Daranios (talk) 20:15, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Which creatures?

What should be the criterion/criteria about the creatures to include? To be on the safe side, we could start with hiding everything and then display bit by bit what can be supported by secondary sources. That would sadly hide most content for long periods of time, though.

In the other direction, do we need to also remove hidden monsters? Which ones?

Do we want to have any specific criteria for the "Variants" section? Daranios (talk) 20:15, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

comment It's a crying shame that 3rd party publications evidently contribute nothing to GNG. I would have thought that using the monsters in the System Reference Document would be a great backbone for the list. The notable proprietary monsters like Mind Flayers would still be ok. AugusteBlanqui (talk) 18:06, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

It depends which 3rd party publications you mean. Anything using creatures under license from WotC unfortunately is considered a primary source. Other sources that just talk about the creatures might be independent. BOZ (talk) 21:24, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Size

The list as it is now is very big! Obviously it will shrink a lot when the duplicates are removed. I am still very much concerned, that it will be considered too large by those critical of the present state of D&D articles in Wikipedia in general, and there is a rather rough wind blowing at the moment. How can we deal with that? What's the opinion on the chances of keeping a list which such a byte-consuming hidden part? I am quite afraid to spend many hours getting this list running to see it deleted again.

As a technical aspect of that, I think there are different ways to avoid spelling out the books in the "Other Appearances" section all the time. We could use abbreviations and somehow link to a section at the bottom that explains them. Or we could define a "Note" for each (often recurring) book, but that has the disadvantage of not showing up at first glance. Opinions? Daranios (talk) 20:15, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

To be clear to interested parties, of course, it is worth noting that the size of the list is meant to be decreased dramatically. :) Many of the monsters appear in the list several times each (for example, without looking, I am sure that some monsters appear in OD&D, at least one BD&D book, at least one 1E AD&D book, two more more 2E AD&D books, and at least once in 3E, 4E, and 5E), so merging all of the appearances into a single appearance will as I say reduce the overall list dramatically. It may still wind up being pretty large, but when all is said and done I expect that it will be probably something like one tenth or less of its current size. :) BOZ (talk) 01:39, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello BOZ, I have seen your edit and see now where I have misunderstood you before, thanks! If we keep the duplicates and bracket them out, unfortunately ,that will make the page even larger, as can be seen from the edit. I fear a page with a size for more than an MB will not be kept.

I have tried around with truly eliminating duplicates, but now I am still strongly in doubt about the end size: I have gone through easily recognizable duplicates of more or less letter A, which corresponds to roughly 5 percent of all creature entries, and which already took a significant amount of time, and could reduce size by ca. 20 kB. If we assume that is a typical margin, we could roughly reduce the size by 400 kB to around 600 kB end size. That's unfortunately still beyond Wikipedias longest pages, and I doubt that we will be allowed to keep that in the current climate.

So I am afraid, if there is no other idea to significantly reduce size, I would put this project on hold for the time being (and try improving the List of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition monsters in hopes of being able to safe that). Daranios (talk) 21:04, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

So, as long as we do not have a clear plan how best use the list, should we keep it in the slightly trimmed version from 4 February 2020, where 5 % of the work is already done in case we want to trim duplicates? Or should we go back to the ""pristine" version from 27 January 2020, where we have all the information and are free to implement any new strategy, but loose the 5 % of work in one direction? Daranios (talk) 14:40, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

I've got no particular preference; which version do you find easier to work with? The original version is in the edit history for anyone who wants to see it (and is willing to wait for the page to load). BOZ (talk) 00:04, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Technicalities

What would be a good way to deal with the now quite massive table of contents? Is there perhaps a way to make sections of a TOC collapsible, with them being hidden as default?

When can the page "go live", i.e. be moved from draft to an article? I guess at the least we need a rewritten introduction and do the major size reduction first. If the latter should be done by me alone, I would delete duplicate entries first and postpone caring about filling in the "Other Appearances", otherwise it would be to much work for the first steps. Thanks to anyone bearing with me through all that! Daranios (talk) 20:15, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Possible Featured Article review for Dungeons & Dragons

If you are interested in the idea of a Featured article review to determine whether the main Dungeons & Dragons article should stay as a Featured article, you may want to review the concerns brought up in this conversation. BOZ (talk) 12:45, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Proposed restructuring of book lists by edition

This proposal originally came out of a conversation at Talk:List of Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks#Should the modules and adventures be there for 5e?.

Neonchameleon originally noted that the List of Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks article lists the adventure modules for 5th edition (5e), but not for any other edition. The 5th edition section also lists the "Unearthed Arcana" (UA) playtest content for 5e. Arguably, neither of those are "rulebooks" depending on one's definition of the word.

As I noted in my response, there seems to be quite a lot of repeated info between the List of Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks, List of Dungeons & Dragons adventures, and List of Forgotten Realms modules and sourcebooks and List of Eberron modules and sourcebooks articles. It seems potentially useful to have a list of UA content somewhere, but the table of UA content in the rulebooks article is also getting a bit long at this point; on that point, these articles will only continue to get more and more massive with each new release. Also, the current format tries to categorize all D&D products into "adventures" vs. "rulebooks" across all editions, which I don't think is always a meaningful distinction and is somewhat inconvenient to readers in terms of finding relevant information; it also leaves out official products that can't be neatly categorized as "adventure" or "rulebook" (e.g. a rulebook that contains an adventure).

As such, I suggested that perhaps all those articles could use some dramatic restructuring, and came up with two possible solutions:

1. My initial idea was to create lists of all D&D products by edition (i.e. one list per edition). Rather than having one list for rulebooks and one list for adventures, It seems much simpler to have an article that lists all products for each specific edition. That way, products could just be categorized as needed on the appropriate list page for the edition, rather than forcing readers to check multiple different pages to find all the products for an edition. The current method also leaves out official products that can't be neatly categorized as "adventure" or "rulebook" (e.g. a rulebook that contains an adventure).
2. Alternately, rather than just being a list of products for that edition, we could have an article devoted to each edition, and list the products for that edition as part of that article. As Sariel Xilo mentioned in our conversation, Editions of Dungeons & Dragons provides some info about each edition; some of this info is repeated at Dungeons & Dragons#Edition history, whereas other info is included in one article but not the other. I do think each edition has been independently notable (5e most of all, since it's basically outsold all previous editions combined), though I'd need some help from the community in establishing this; I'm sure there are quite a few third-party sources talking about each of the editions (5e especially, given its current popularity). Sariel Xilo did seem to think this approach had a better chance of withstanding notability tests.

Either way, I am thinking that if either of these proposals is accepted by the community, then any relevant information could be moved from the List of Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks and List of Dungeons & Dragons adventures articles above to the new ones. The original articles would then be turned into redirects or disambiguation pages or whatever is the preferred way to handle such cases. I'm unsure of what would be done with List of Forgotten Realms modules and sourcebooks and List of Eberron modules and sourcebooks; it seems useful to have all the material for each campaign setting listed in one place, but it seems like there's some repetition/redundancy happening there. (Perhaps with my proposed change, those 2 articles become more useful, as there would no longer be a list that already encompasses "all rulebooks" and another encompassing "all modules".)

Hopefully this is the right place to bring some more attention to this proposal. All feedback is welcome! I'd also appreciate guidance on how to proceed with this proposal if people think it might be worth pursuing. And let me know if I've forgotten anything! If you reply, feel free to ping my username (e.g. using the Ping or U templates, or just by linking to my userpage) to make sure I get a notification and check the page. V2Blast (talk) 09:28, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

New book: The Monsters Know What They're Doing: Combat Tactics for Dungeon Masters

I picked this book up last week. It is published by Saga Press which is an imprint of Simon & Schuster. It contains specific information on the most common or well-known Dungeons & Dragons monsters. Four pages on Rakshasas for example. I have added the information for the book to the references section of the Wikiproject. AugusteBlanqui (talk) 11:15, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Hey, thanks! :) I know that Daranios has been using that book as a source already. Sounds like a good one! BOZ (talk) 15:30, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Keep in mind that that is not an official WotC product, but rather a third-party one. I assume it draws on official material, however? V2Blast (talk) 08:32, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Not being an official product makes it valuable as a source, since people often argue against using official products as sources since they are not independent from the publisher. I have to assume it draws on official material too, though. BOZ (talk) 13:12, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Proposing a new approach to subtopics

A big discussion about Proposing a new approach to subtopics is taking place at Talk:Dungeons & Dragons. If you are interested to chime in, please go there. Daranios (talk) 21:19, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Heck. I took a look at that section of that page. Too much for me to figure out right now. I probably have a opinion, but we will see. If you make it easy, I might do a few edits! Peregrine Fisher (talk) 09:09, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Hey you guyessssss!

I checked out this "library" book, so ask me for help if you need it.

https://archive.org/details/dicingwithdragon00ianl/page/100/mode/2up/search/alignment

Peregrine Fisher (talk) 08:52, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Sweeeet. :) I don't know if I have ever seen the inside of "Dicing with Dragons". :) Obviously, that could be a big help on Alignment (Dungeons & Dragons). BOZ (talk) 14:54, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

It has several short paragraphs that basically reiterate what the game books say. Then it has a couple sentences of out of universe info, which I added as a quote. I also have "Dungeons & Dragons Art & Arcana" but my copy is not searchable, and the text is teeny weeny. Whatever. Onward Christian Soldiers! Peregrine Fisher (talk) 06:47, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Every little bit helps. BOZ (talk) 12:50, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Kobold Quarterly

A current AfD brought a magazine I'd never heard of - Kobold Quarterly - to my attention. It strikes me that a print magazine focused on D&D but from a third-party publisher could be a goldmine of "reliable" sources about various D&D-related topics (designers, books, fictional elements, etc.). Has anyone read these before? It looks like you could get a full run for about US$100 on DriveThruRPG. Josh Milburn (talk) 17:02, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

I currently have the bundle in my shopping cart. Before I pull the trigger on it do you think that it would help? Look how much casuistic resistance there is to The Monsters Know What They're Doing and it's full of social theory and cultural commentary--the discussion of tribes, just take one example, is an excellent precis of anthropological theory! AugusteBlanqui (talk) 17:38, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

Honestly, I don't know. I've been a little surprised at some of the claims made in recent AfDs - I think some people have a too-conservative vision of what counts as decent source. I had a very quick look through an issue, and I'm sure I'd love to sit through it if I was still gaming, but it's mostly new content (e.g., stats for new classes and monsters) rather than reflections on old content. That said, there are definitely bits that would be useful. There are articles that seem to be reflecting on how to design encounters and so forth... An article on the Ninja character class (wasn't our article on that deleted recently?)... And an article about game balance by none other than Monte Cook! Reviews would be useful, but in that issue, I think the reviews are of novels rather than game books. Maybe the thing to do would be look through one or two issues, add some useful references (to further reading sections at least) and then buy more issues if you think it worthwhile. Josh Milburn (talk) 20:51, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

I tend to think that most of the "Sure, it's covered in detail, but it's not covered the right way" comments you see are more based on opinion than policy. RPGnet has an index to the 23 issues of KQ published between 2007 to 2012[1] and while it looks like most issues featured reviews of fiction and other books (including one of my favorite sources[2]), unless I am missing something I did not see any games reviews. BOZ (talk) 22:17, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

Article proposed for merger - Table Titans

This proposal was not picked up by the bot that collects these things, so I'm posting it here.

An editor is proposing removing the article on Table Titans, a D&D comic, and merging it into PvP. The discussion is here. HenryCrun15 (talk) 20:03, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

I'm sure the Article Alerts will pick it up tomorrow, but thanks for the heads up. BOZ (talk) 23:39, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

Murlynd - should everything really be deleted?

Hi, I'm new; sorry if this is not the proper way to bring something up!

I just noticed that until March 10, there was quite a long page about Murlynd (with many hundreds of revisions). Now there is almost NOTHING, and I believe this is a mistake. The Murlynd page now just redirects to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Greyhawk_deities, which has NO ENTRY on Murlynd. (It is just mentioned that Phaulkon is an ally of Murlynd, nothing more.)

On the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Greyhawk_characters, there is an entry "M: Murlynd", which just refers to "Main article: Murlynd", which (as i just stated) no longer exists except as a redirect to a page which has no Murlynd entry.

This strikes me as almost surely a mistake. Was the information perhaps duplicated, but now it has been removed from both places? Thanks, Whitman77 Whitman77 (talk) 15:30, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

You can see what happened from the page history. If you like, you could merge the content into either the character list or the deity list (and target the redirect as appropriate). You could recreate the article, but I suspect it'll end up at AFD before long. Josh Milburn (talk) 15:56, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Whitman77, I recommend merging the content as suggested above. 98.220.213.118 (talk) 20:04, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

I also support the proposal of merging the content into the Character or Deity list. However, I would prefer that somebody else does it, because I'm wholly unfamiliary with these D&D pages, and I'm not sure how to do it so it fits with the overall style. (For example, should ALL the content be merged, or only some?). Anybody interested in taking this task? Whitman77 (talk) 17:00, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

We probably don't need to merge all the content, just enough for a summary. I would say a paragraph or so. 8.37.179.254 (talk) 19:03, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Demographics of players

There was some talk a while ago about adding a demographics section to the D&D page. I could use some help in finding reliable info on the demographics of D&D players and how that's changed over time. For 2019, Wizards of the Coast says 39% of identified as female and 61% identified as male. 40% of players are considered Gen Z (24 years old or younger), 34% of players are in the age range of 25-34 and 26% of players are in the age range of 35-45. I've seen Gary Alan Fine's Role Playing Games as Social Worlds (1983) referred to & cited a bunch but I haven't been able to track down a copy. Here are some quotes that cite it:

• Article from 1998: "Most players are young, ranging from the teens through the 30s. The bulk of them are unmarried males who learned to play during schoolhood days (Fine)".
• Article from 2004: "We use male pronouns in this study because all the participants in our study are men. Fine (1983) discusses this gender bias in fantasy role-playing games—a bias that, in our completely unrepresentative and very localized sample, appears to remain unchanged in the two decades since Fine’s ethnography was originally published. We admit the possibility that gender has influenced the dynamics explored in our research".
• Article from 2017: "In looking at the description of role-playing gamers in Gary Alan Fine’s (1983) formative ethnography of these communities in the late 1970s and ’80s, his analysis rightly describes the fact that the vast majority of players at the time were male wargaming enthusiasts (pp. 62–63). However, Fine’s assumptions about gender at the time, although fitting in line with depictions of gender in the 1974, 1977, and 1989 editions of D&D, are out of step with the contemporary instantiations of D&D (e.g., “Women as female characters have little importance. Male players comment that female characters should be treated as property and not as human beings”; Fine, 1983, p. 65). The systems of D&D Pathfinder and their players are starkly different today".

Thanks! Sariel Xilo (talk) 20:32, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Wowzers! Yep, that is different. In fact, I would not call that the dominant attitude of 1989 when 2nd edition AD&D came out, when I first started playing, although the 1970s or early 80s were before my time (at least, as far as gaming goes). BOZ (talk) 21:45, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Yeah... So on one hand we have a 1983 article that's been quoted/referenced everywhere since it came out and is considered foundational but at best could be called a product of its time. And on the other hand, the 2019 stats quoted by both the Guardian & ScreenRant come directly from Wizards and those stats are a bit limited (such as only including an age range of 8 years old to 45 years old) and they're probably only including stats that fit their marketing narrative. JSTOR doesn't really have much in terms of academic studies of D&D so if you have any ideas of where to start looking for more info, that would be awesome. Sariel Xilo (talk) 01:07, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Other stats I've found:

• "In the July 1980 issue of Dragon magazine, TSR’s official D&D publication, Jean Wells and her colleague Kim Mohan penned the editorial, “Women Want Equality. And Why Not?” Women from across the country had written in about the “unfair and degrading treatment of women players,” who comprised, they wrote, about 10 percent of D&D’s fanbase. One reader recalled how her adventuring party forced her to seduce a small band of dwarves so her party could kill them. Another told of how her Dungeon Master made her Cleric fall from her god’s graces when she became pregnant".
• "Women now make up close to 40% of the D&D community. While the goal is still for that number to fully reflect the wider population, it’s a huge leap from 2012, when women made up 20–25% of players".

Will update as I find more. Sariel Xilo (talk) 01:48, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

References

Creatures category

A discussion is ongoing at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2020 April 29#Category:Dungeons & Dragons creatures to determine whether the category should be renamed to "Dungeons & Dragons monsters". 2601:249:8B80:4050:926:1F98:8FA2:1D6A (talk) 04:08, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Forgotten Realms Wiki link

Hello everyone! There has been a discussion going on here if a link to the external Forgotten Realms Wiki should be present in the Forgotten Realms article or not. I meant to ask here earlier, but seems I did put that elsewhere. So please, if you have any opinion about that, input there would be very welcome! Thanks! Daranios (talk) 11:57, 15 May 2020 (UTC)