The Arcana Wiki is a new wiki project which attempts to gather information from the real world - on history, mythology, fiction, geography, and any other conceivable topic - and then add rules-free adventure seeds and gaming suggestions to it. If you ever browsed a Wikipedia article and thought for yourself: "This would make for an awesome adventure!", then this wiki is for you.


To stir up some more interest and community participation, I offered a contest for writing up Mythological Creatures page for the Arcana Wiki. This contest has recently ended, and so I now want to start a new one.

The topic for the August contest is Places of Myth and Legend. I will accept two types of submissions:

• Entirely mythical places - those who never existed in the real world. Avalon or Atlantis are good examples.
• Real world locations that nevertheless have significant myths and legends attached to them. The Brocken and the Bermuda Triangle count as such.

While they are appropriate for the Arcana Wiki in general, places from modern literature - such as R'lyeh or Numenor do not count as viable contest entries.

Contest entries should detail basic information about the locale, links to other websites with more information or a list of book references used, as well as a list of adventure and campaign ideas. See the wiki entry for Pilatusstadt, a sunken legendary city of Germany, for an example what an entry should look like. The best entry - as judged by me - will win a $25 Gift Certificate at the ENWorld Online Store, which is also valid for RPGNow/DriveThruRPG.

To submit an entry, follow these steps:

1. Search the Arcana Wiki to see if no one else has submitted an entry for this locale already.

2. Write the entry for your creature, and [url=http://www.enworld.org/forum/blog_post.php?do=newblog]publish it on your ENWorld blog[/urk] (the entries will be judged on their blog entries, since the wiki entries might change over time). Use the following template:

(Note: If you find it impossible to register at ENWorld, you can send your entry to me per email to jhubert@gmx.de, though I much prefer publication on the ENWorld blog to attract more attention.)

Do not enter any game rule information - the Arcana Wiki is intended to be system-independent.

3. Register at Wikidot.Com so that your entry at the Arcana Wiki can be properly attributed to you (becoming a member of the Arcana Wiki is not required for editing it, and your entry will be attributed to you as long as you have registered at Wikidot.Com and are logged in when you enter it).

4. Enter the same information into the wiki. If you are submitting a real-world location, go to the page of the appropriate country and add a link to your location there (if the country in question does not have an entry yet, create one). If you are submitting an entirely mythological locale, go to the Mythological Places page, edit it (click on the "edit" function at the bottom of the page) and enter a link for your locale. For example, the link for the Aufhocker looks like this:

Then save the results and click on the new link. You will be automatically taken to the "edit" page for your new entry. Follow the instructions of the page template (and if necessary, read this page for further explanations of the wiki syntax).

5. Notify me of your entry by commenting on this post and adding a link to your blog post to your comment.


The deadline for this contest is August 31st, 2008. After that date, the winning entry will be judged by me as soon as my time permits.

Happy writing!

Jürgen Hubert

I've reviewed the entries for the Mythological Creatures Contest, and decided on the winner. And the winner is...

<drumroll>

Black Shuck by Carnivorous_Bean!

Of all the entries, the entry for the Black Shuck was the most comprehensive and had the best sources. He will get his $25 gift certificate for the ENWorld shop shortly. If you missed the opportunity to participate in this contest, don't worry - another one will be up soon.

And above all, don't forget to visit the Arcana Wiki for the latest attempts at distilling real world information for gaming!

Jürgen Hubert

I've mentioned the Arcana Wiki before - an attempt to collect real world information and distilling it for gaming. Now I've hit on another idea for expanding it - adding entries for specific tropes. After all, RPGs use tropes just as much as any other story-telling medium, if not more so - so examining how specific tropes can be used in adventures and campaign settings is certainly a worthwhile task.

For this endeavor I'm building on the structure and knowledge of the TV Tropes Wiki, probably the largest accumulation of tropes on the Internet, and a must-read for gamers and anyone else interested in deconstructing storytelling. If you want to help out by adding specific tropes to the Tropes section of the Arcana Wiki, please follow these guidelines:


Mirror the TV Tropes Wiki

There is no need to reinvent the wheel, so just follow the overall structure of the TV Tropes Wiki - use the same name for tropes, and link the relevant TV tropes wiki from each trope entry in the Arcana Wiki.

Give examples of how to use the trope in an RPG

The Arcana Wiki is supposed to complement the TV Tropes Wiki, not supplant it. Therefore, lists of television, movie, literature and other examples where the trope appears are not appropriate - readers who want to learn about those should follow the links to the TV Tropes Wiki for them. Instead, come up with examples on how to use the trope within an adventure or campaign setting (if your idea closely mirrors a movie plot element, then that's okay - tropes aren't about originality anyway...).


I hope to see some of you over there!

Jürgen Hubert

The Arcana Wiki is growing very nicely indeed, so to my mind it was time to give it some more structure. For this reason, I have created a timeline, where you can browse through the different years, decades, and centuries of history similar to the equivalent pages on the Wikipedia. There are obviously still a lot of gaps in the timeline, but I have created some page templates which will help contributors when they want to add new pages covering these time units.

I expect the timeline to be used for three types of entries:

• Events: Historic events that happened in specific years.
• News: News articles published on specific dates that aren't connected to specific historic events. This could cover articles on technological or social changes, or other material useful for gaming.
• Fiction: Many classical works of fiction, television series, movies, and so forth have specific dates attached to events within these works. If these works of fiction represent material that can be useful for gaming, contributors can add related events into the timeline as well. In that case, they should add a separate entry for the work of fiction in question and link to it from the entry.

Other than those, there are also a couple of rather interesting new entries which I haven't mentioned before:

• Cargo Cults - one of the stranger religions to come out of the modern age.
• Ferret Legging - a sport where grown-up men put ferrets down their trousers.
• Icelandic Phallological Museum - exactly what it sounds like.

As usual, additional contributions are highly welcome.

Jürgen Hubert

The following entries have been submitted to the Mythological Creatures Contest for the Arcana Wiki. Remember - the deadline for winning a $25 gift certificate is August 1st!

• Attis by Alexondria
• Black Shuck by Carnivorous_Bean
• Elves by Alexondria
• Kelpie by Alexondria
• La Llorona by Alexondria
• Pooka by Alexondria
• Shape Shifters - Fast And Wise Animals by Alexondria

Jürgen Hubert

Some new entries from the Arcana Wiki (and don't forget the contest - there might be a $25 gift certificate in it for you!):

• Amway - and how to use their business model in fantasy cults.
• Grimsby - a British port town.
• The Hodag, a mythological creature from the wilds of Wisconsin.
• The Marathon - and what role long-distance runners might play in fantasy societies.
• Montevall - a haunted town in Alabama.
• Sport - and how to use it in fantasy cultures.

All articles can use expansion, either by adding more basic information, or by adding more adventure seeds!

Jürgen Hubert

I have recently created the Arcana Wiki, a wiki that attempts to gather information from the real world - on history, mythology, geography, and any other conceivable topic - and then add rules-free adventure seeds and gaming suggestions to it. If you ever browsed a Wikipedia article and thought for yourself: "This would make for an awesome adventure!", then this wiki is for you. For an example, read the entry for the Aufhocker, an evil spirit from German folklore.

To stir up some more interest and community participation, I'm offering a contest for submitted entries. The topic for this contest is Mythological Creatures - participants should submit creatures from real world mythology and folklore (creatures from literary fiction - such as Tolkien's hobbits - do not count). The best entry - as judged by me - will win a $25 Gift Certificate at the ENWorld Online Store.

To submit an entry, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Mythological Creatures page on the Arcana Wiki and select a creature which has not been listed there yet.

2. Write the entry for your creature, and [url=http://www.enworld.org/forum/blog_post.php?do=newblog]publish it on your ENWorld blog[/urk] (the entries will be judged on their blog entries, since the wiki entries might change over time). Use the following template:

Do not enter any game rule information - the Arcana wiki is intended to be system-independent.

3. Register at Wikidot.Com so that your entry at the Arcana Wiki can be properly attributed to you (becoming a member of the Arcana Wiki is not required for editing it, and your entry will be attributed to you as long as you have registered at Wikidot.Com and are logged in when you enter it).

4. Enter the same information into the wiki. Start by editing the Mythological Creatures page (click on the "edit" function at the bottom of the page) and entering a link for your creature. For example, the link for the Aufhocker looks like this:

Then save the results and click on the new link. You will be automatically taken to the "edit" page for your new entry. Follow the instructions of the page template (and if necessary, read this page for further explanations of the wiki syntax).

5. Notify me of your entry by commenting on this post and adding a link to your blog post to your comment.


The deadline for this contest is August 1st, 2008. After that date, the winning entry will be judged by me as time permits.

Happy writing!

Jürgen Hubert

The following entries have been added to the Arcana Wiki by both me and others:

• Aachen - a German city and one of its legends involving the Devil.
• Brother XII - a cultist from British Columbia.
• Public Key Encryption and its parallels to summoning rituals.
• Raiding the Icebox - a news item about plans for an US invasion of Canada.
• Technisches Hilfswerk - a German disaster relief agency and how it would change in a world with superheroes.

If you've enjoyed these entries, please expand them or add your own!

Jürgen Hubert

This is a sample entry for the Arcana Wiki - and demonstrates nicely how a science fiction concept can be adapted for fantasy settings.

Basic Information

Basically, Transhumanism is a movement and philosophy that states that humans can and should use all available technology - advanced medical anti-aging techniques, artificial implants, human genetic engineering, and a host of other technologies that mostly don't exist yet - to escape the current limits of the human body, resulting in vastly extended lifespans (possibly even immortality), increased health, superhuman intelligence, better sensory capabilities, and so forth. Anything stunting "human enhancement" is seen as unethical.

Sources

Wikipedia entry

Game and Story Uses

Fantasy

• There are numerous stories of alchemists trying to become immortal, or at least extending their life spans.
• Becoming some types of undead could be considered becoming transhuman, since undead are often immortal, or at least "undying".
  • Liches are probably the most blatant extreme of this, since this is a deliberate and very involved process done for the explicit purpose of making a wizard immortal.
  • Vampires are another good example - even if the transformation is not alway voluntary, vampires do exceed human capabilities in many ways - they are stronger, frequently more charismatic, live forever and so forth.
    • Pity about the associated drawbacks, though.
• Come to think about it, aren't all the advantages elves enjoy rather suspicious? Good looks, long lifespans (outright immortality in some cases), superior senses, high dexterity... it's as if some human wizard was unsatisfied with his lot and decided that he wanted to magically engineer his children into some sort of super-race.
  • The "forest environment" that elves live in is also rather suspicious. I mean, normally forests aren't known for supporting high population densities, but somehow elves never seem to have a problem with acquiring enough food. So what are the odds that they altered the plants and other creatures living in them to support higher food yields? Pretty high, I'd say...

If you liked this entry, please head over to the wiki and write more for it!

Jürgen Hubert

This is a sample entry from the Arcana Wiki:

Basic Information

Aufhockers are creatures from German folklore. They are small spirits that jump on the back or shoulders of lone wanderers at night, and usually instill such terror in their victims that they eventually collapse from fright, though in other stories they collapse because the Aufhocker increases dramatically in size and/or weight once he clings to his victim.

The precise nature of the Aufhocker is unclear. Some stories describe him as a kobold, a ghost, a fire elemental, or a corporal undead. Sometimes they appear as shapeshifters, in the guise of a dog or an old, pityful woman before revealing their true nature. In some stories, they are driven off by prayer, dawn, or the sound of church bell|church bells, while swearing also sometimes seems to do the trick.

Sources

German Wikipedia Entry

Game and Story Uses

[size]Medieval fantasy[/size]

• The Aufhocker makes for a perfect encounter in a lone forest or a road late at night for those characters who always insist on sneaking off on their own and splitting up the party.
• Introducing one to a certain area can also make it "haunted", especially if the locals tell all sorts of stories about it.
• Trying to drive off or kill the creature will be difficult for a party - after all, it's likely only to reveal itself to lone travelers, but it will take more than one character to defeat it. Stealth or magic will likely be required.
• The ambiguity of its nature also allows game masters to keep players on their toes.
  • If it is a fairy (appropriate in light of its shapeshifting abilities), it might be affiliated with the Unseelie Court.
  • If it's undead (corporeal or otherwise), maybe it drains the life force of its victims, making it similar to vampire|vampires
    • This could be a general drain of "vitality", or maybe the victims will suffer from diseases or supernatural curses.

Urban fantasy

• The Aufhocker could be a cryptid lurking in remote parts of central Europe.
• Alternatively, maybe it followed humans to the cities and now haunts desolate slum areas in the cities.
• Given that it attacks its victims late at night when most people are asleep, maybe it doesn't attack them physically but in their dreams - and the victims only think that they have been assaulted physically? After all, when they wake up exhausted in a ditch, is it because the Aufhocker abandoned them there - or because it caused them to fall asleep and experience a particularly vivid nightmare?
  • That would make it related to the Alp, which operates in similar ways.

I hope this entry showcases the potential inherent in this wiki concept. If you liked it, please head over and add your own entries!

Jürgen Hubert

I've just created a new wiki - The Arcana Wiki. The goal of this wiki is to gather information about any conceivable real world subject, and then add adventure and campaign ideas to it.

To understand the basic concept, you can read the two sample entries on the Aufhocker (a nasty German fairy/spirit/undead monster) and the philosophy of Transhumanism. Feel free to contribute!

Jürgen Hubert

With the fey having a greater prominence in D&D 4E, Urbis will follow suit. For this reason I'm currently collecting all sorts of online resources of faeries and mythology in general - and I decided to throw in occultism and the paranormal for good measure. After all, "steal from the real world" has always been one of my guiding principles for the setting.

Here is what I have so far. If you know of any other sites, please tell me about it - this list will be updated!


A Dictionary of Faery Folk of the World
Encyclopedia Mythica
Fairylore
Folklore and Mythology
Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts
Folklore, Myth and Legend Links
Godchecker
Irish Literature, Folklore, Mythology, and Drama
List of legendary creatures by type
Mythology @ Wikipedia (especially the "List of" links at the bottom)
Myths and Legends
Occultopedia
Obiwan's UFO-Free Paranormal Page
PARAseek.com - The Paranormal Search Engine
The Obakemono
Sacred Texts - Legends and Sagas
Secret Commonwealth
Surlalune Fairytales
The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries
Theoi Greek Mythology
Timeless Myths
World Mythology

Jürgen Hubert

I mentioned the Art Tutorials Wiki in an earlier post. Here are some additional wikis which you might find useful:

- The d20 NPCs Wiki: This was created out of frustration when I ran a D&D 3.5 campaign and it took up far too much of my time to create NPCs and monsters. Thus, I created a wiki so that DMs could share d20 NPCs with each other. This site is by far my most successful wiki project, and has several thousands of individual pages.
- The RPG Graveyard: Has one of your PCs died in a particularly spectacular or humiliating fashion? Share your story here - and read the stories of others.
- The Fairfield Project: The wiki for the Delta Green setting. Highly recommended for anyone running a horror or conspiracy-themed game in a contemporary setting.


Does anyone know of any other good RPG-related wikis out there? If so, please share them!

Jürgen Hubert

Every game master has drawn a map from time to time. And many wish to have their maps available in an electronic formats. However, professional map-making tools cost a lot of money - so what's a game master on a budget to do?

Fortunately, there are free alternatives.

The first program I recommend is Inkscape, an Open Source (and thus, freely downloadable) vector-based graphics program. Vector-based graphics program store lines, curves, areas as a collection of vectors instead of individual pixels, and thus it is easy to scale vector-based graphics - perfect for maps, in other words. And as a bonus, any printouts of such maps will always be crisp and have smooth curves, no matter at which scale you print it out.

However, it's not so good with special effects if you want to make your maps pretty. For this, I suggest post-processing with a bitmap-based graphics program. One such program is GIMP, which is also Open Source, and remarkably powerful - it can do most of the things the commercial Photoshop can do.

But how can you use those programs to create maps? Well, there are many ways of doing that, but a good site to start would be this page with cartography tutorials. Hopefully these should give you some starters. And if you come up with some neat new tricks, please don't hestiate to add them - these tutorials exist on a wiki, so anyone who has ever edited one should be easily able to create new tutorials.


And as a side note, if you are interested in art in general, the whole website - the Art Tutorials Wiki is the perfect place to get started. It has huge lists of links to art tutorials on any conceivable subject. I should know - it took me long enough to collect them...

Jürgen Hubert