New Wiki Working Group

[stonegod]

Looks good; its similar to LEB's organization (LEB:Main): - ENWiki Player's Guide, Campaign Guide, and Setting.

 

[weldon]

Fragsie, your outline looks like a great start. Do you want to divide up the outline into tasks and take your pick of topics to start with. I imagine some of other people interested in this thread will volunteer to help fill in the outline with content.

There are some special tags to link to forum posts that would be great to use for links to the stickies in the L4W forum.

 

[Fragsie]

I'm going to go ahead and create that main page this evening, and link in the pages that are already present in the new wiki, someone said a while back in this thread that the category page doesn't show all of the pages that are present. How can I see all of them?

Edit: According to my enworld posting rules i "may not edit articles. I am at the correct address aren't I? 'http://www.enworld.org/forum/showwiki.php?title=L4W'.

 

[covaithe]

I could edit the article at that link. I added some categories.

 

[Fragsie]

Here is what I have written/copy-pasted so far for the introduction page:
[sblock]
Welcome to the 4th Edition Living EnWorld (abbreviated to L4W); a ‘play-by-post’ fantasy roleplaying game that uses Wizards of the Coast’s Dungeons & Dragons rules and our own community created setting: The Transitive Isles.
L4W is a community campaign setting where a large number of characters can interact in multiple different adventures, campaigns, and stories. Multiple adventures run simultaneously with their own DM and players. What happens in one adventure can directly affect another adventure, and what happens in all of the adventures affects what is happening in the world; this form of setting is often called a ‘living world’.

Our Vision Statement

• Be inclusive: We would like Living EnWorld to include as many participants as reasonably possible.
• The community will decide how the setting develops.
• Thorough polls for big issues.
• Individual creative efforts by players and DMs.
• Anyone can play.
• Everyone will be treated equally.
• Rules will be clear.
• Be accessible: We would like to have the setting be accessible and communal (specifically by using Wikis).
• Be scalable: We would like the setting to be scalable (i.e. to grow over time without becoming too difficult (to play/run games/judge), ceases to make sense or be a fun world to play in).
• Ease of Judging: Judging is a difficult job, and finding people who can be fair, effective judges is difficult. Some former and current judges have suggested that we work on creating clear rules and designing a setting that would be easier to judge.

Play-by-Post and the L4W Forum

Play-by-post (PbP) gaming is a way to enjoy table-top roleplaying games (RPGs)like Dungeons and Dragons online without loosing the vast open-endedness that make them so spontaneous and exciting.
The most frequent form of PbP gaming (L4W included) uses internet forums to keep track of adventures and other goings on in the setting. The L4W forum is where you will find all the action of the Transitive Isles, both in character and out of character. Most threads in the forum fall into one of the following groups:

Discussion Threads (Link to main discussion thread)
The main discussion thread is a place for all members of the community to chat and get to know one another, though conversations generally relate to roleplaying and the L4W world, this is by no means a rule. Other discussion threads can be created by anyone who wishes to talk about a topic that relates to the setting or rules and get a feel for peoples views before the creation of a Proposal Thread.

• Discussion threads are Out of Character (OOC).
• Get to know your fellow roleplayers; we’re generally a friendly lot.
• If you have any rules questions or problems getting started with L4W someone in the main discussion thread will probably help you out.

Tavern Threads (Link to the hanged man)
Tavern threads are where characters that are not in an adventure get to stretch their legs and relax, as well as a starting point for new characters. When a DM has a new adventure and wants to recruit some players, they will usually do so from the tavern thread.

• Tavern threads are In Character (IC), if you wish to talk out of character please prefix what you want to say with ‘OOC:’; if you are writing more than a sentence it is polite to place your out of character statements in spoiler blocks like this (but without the apostrophes): ['sblock=OOC:']text['/sblock'].
• The actions of common non-player characters (NPCs); such as the landlord and staff, can be described by players when those NPCs are interacting with their own characters.
• Central meeting place for all characters.
• A Place for recruitment into an adventure.

Location Threads
As well as the Tavern, certain other locations serve as mustering points for adventures. If a group of PCs are interested in an adventure but want to know more before signing on; or if a large number of PCs want in on an adventure and there are only limited spaces, the Dungeon Master (DM) can transfer the IC conversation to a location thread (examples: The Back-Room, The Temple of Lauto) where they can iron out the details before starting an adventure thread.
Locations can be used by characters and DM’s at other times as well (mid-adventure), but it is polite not to do so if the thread is already in use by another DM.

• Location threads are In Character (IC), if you wish to talk out of character please prefix what you want to say with ‘OOC:’; if you are writing more than a sentence it is polite to place your out of character statements in spoiler blocks like this (but without the apostrophes) ['sblock=OOC:']text['/sblock'].
• Players may only describe the actions of their own characters; NPCs are controlled by the DM.

Adventure Threads
Once a DM has his party of PCs and they have signed on to the adventure, they will create an adventure thread; this is where the adventure itself will play out.
Each DM will undoubtedly run their game a little differently; usually they will outline any specific rules or methods that they like to be used, the most common of which are bulletined below. Characters will typically stay in an adventure thread until they finish that adventure.

• Tavern threads are In Character (IC), if you wish to talk out of character please prefix what you want to say with ‘OOC:’; if you are writing more than a sentence it is polite to place your out of character statements in spoiler blocks like this (but without the apostrophes): ['sblock=OOC:']text['/sblock'].
• Players may only describe the actions of their own characters; NPCs are controlled by the DM.
• Each player should choose a text colour and use it for their character’s speech throughout the entire adventure.
• A short stat block summarising your character sheet should be displayed during encounters (within a spoiler block). Many people put these stat blocks in their EN World signature permanently.

Proposal Threads (see Communal Decision Making below)
Any player may propose that the rules be changed or that a setting element be added or changed. To do so, a player should create a new thread in the forum with a title beginning with "Proposal: ". In the proposal, they should explain what the proposed change to the rules is, and why they feel that the change is needed.
The judges, after allowing time for refinement and discussion of the proposal, will vote by indicating YES or NO in a post in that thread.

• Proposal threads are Out of Character (OOC).
• Anyone may discuss the proposal. Players are encouraged to discuss and put forward any suggestions they may have; the more people who give their opinions, the better informed the judges are of the community’s overall feelings.
• Only judges may vote.

Living Worlds

Key Differences between a Living World and a "regular" Dungeons and Dragons game

• While they may be playing in different games run by different DMs all of the player characters in a living world exist in one setting.
• The setting is persistent. In principal an item a character finds in one adventure will carry on to the next, and so forth.
• In addition to the two roles everyone is familiar with (Player and Dungeon Master) Living Games include judges whose job is to arbitrate the rules of the setting, approve characters, step in to take care of a game (and it's players) if a DM disappears and so forth.

Key Differences between Play by Post Living Worlds and WotC Living Worlds

• Everyone is a volunteer (so be nice).
• We don't do "modules"; generally speaking a DM runs one game and only the characters in that game experience that adventure.
• In some respects Living Enworld Games exist at a mid-point between "regular Play by Post" games (where each DM does their own thing) and WotC's Living Worlds (where there are dozens of characters doing the same adventure at the same time).

Judges

Judges are an integral part of running a successful Living World setting, especially an online one. They have many responsibilities that include:

• Write, update and oversee the Wiki that helps define the setting.
• Vote on new rules content (e.g. player-created prestige classes, feats, etc.) or changes to official WotC content (house rules). This allows us as a community to put forward our ideas and make the setting our own without the game becoming unbalanced or unnecessarily complicated.
• Read and approve adventure proposals. This provides some fairly limited control over world-building, and ensures that adventure rewards are balanced compared with one another. It also ensures that a brief of the adventure is stored somewhere other than with the DM.
• Each adventure must be watched by a judge who is neither a player nor the DM for that adventure.
• Adjudicate rules disputes (rare).
• Approve experience awards (common, but mostly rubber-stamp).
• If an adventure's DM disappears, that adventure's judge fills in, either continuing the adventure or wrapping it up neatly so that the players aren't screwed.

Character Checkers
Character checkers are an overlapping group of people; Judges are all character checkers, but not all character checkers are judges! When a new character sheet is submitted or changes are made to an existing one (such as when levelling up), it is necessary for the sheet to be checked through to ensure that it is ‘rules legal’, that all the math is correct and adds up, and that the characters background does not obliterate the shared setting.
In L4W character sheets require two checks before being fully approved; this ensures that any issues brought up in the first check though are corrected, and that an error is not missed. Only one of the two checks a character sheet gets needs to be from a judge.
Being a character checker is a reasonably informal job, and it helps to reduce the judge’s workload a little so that they can concentrate on their other responsibilities.

Judge’s Characters and Adventures
The player characters run by judges are just the same as any other PC in the setting. In order to ensure impartiality judges who appear in an adventure will only read the adventure summary section of that adventure and not the spoiler section during approval.

The current judges are covaithe, garyh, Dunamin, Lord Sessadore, Ozymandias79, Atanotatos, JoeNotCharles, and TwoHeadsBarking.
Halford and Graf are also judges, but are currently on hiatus. covaithe is in charge of moderating, including the moving, closing, and deleting of threads. The judges can be reached at l4w.judges@gmail.com.

In order to volunteer be a judge or character checker, you must already be participating in L4W and should have a good standing as a consistent and reliable player or DM. This means that judges should be people that frequent the forums. If you want to volunteer to help with any specific functions, ask the judges and we will probably find a way to use you.

Desirable attributes for Judges
The following is a list of what is expected of you if you apply to become a judge:

• Experience DMing, at least enough to be willing to jump in and rescue a game if the DM disappears.
• Familiarity, if not expertise, with the rules. I imagine this can be pretty flexible at first; we're all still learning 4e.
• Willing to volunteer some (possibly lots of) free time on a fairly regular basis.
• Reliable, i.e. not likely to disappear without warning.
• Regular email access outside of ENWorld.
• Knows something about the history and purpose of the community, and buys into the idea.

[/sblock]

I've not gone on to the section dealing with communal decision making yet because the info on the current wiki main page is from before L4W got fully up and running, and needs a fair bit of rewriting, I'll get onto it after the weekend probably.

What do you guys think? Anything I've missed, should add or could have worded better?

 

[Fragsie]

In ENWorld's homebrew forum, when you create a new thread there is a drop down menu that allows you to select whether the thread is for a class, race, monster etc doing so automatically adds a prefix to the thread title, but also allows users to list threads of a specific type.

Is it at all possible to add a similar feature to the L4W forum, so that when creating a new thread you could specify whether it was a proposal, adventure, discussion, location etc? I think it would add an extra bit of organisation to the whole community, as well as helping keep track of proposals that sometimes seem to get lost or stalemated then forgotten about.

 

[Fragsie]

Fragsie, your outline looks like a great start. Do you want to divide up the outline into tasks and take your pick of topics to start with. I imagine some of other people interested in this thread will volunteer to help fill in the outline with content.

[sblock=Outline]
Player's Handbook

1. Introduction
   • Our Vision Statement
   • Play by Post and the L4W Forum
   • Living Worlds
   • Judges: roles and responsibilities
   • Communal decision making
2. Character Creation
3. Approved Sources & Amendments
4. Backgrounds & Regional Benefits
5. PC Index

Dungeon Master's Guide

1. Adventure Submissions
2. House Rules
3. Hints & Tips for PBP DMing
4. Adventure Index

Transitive Isles Setting

1. Adventuring
   • Races
   • Languages
   • Religion
2. History
3. Magic
4. Cosmology
5. Pantheon
6. Geography
   • The Shifting Seas
   • Daunton: the main isle
   • The Proximate Isles
   • The Near Lands
   • The Far Lands
   • Under the Isles
7. NPC Index
8. Threats & Organisations

[/sblock]

Divide it into task eh? hmmm...
well as you can see i've already made a start on the introduction, and would be happy to continue on with the rest of the 'player's handbook', as the majority of the work will simply be cutting and pasting from various places in the old wiki and the forums and editing it all together.

Tasks

The DM's guide:

The adventure submissions page should be a relatively easy cut-paste job, and the adventure index shouldn't be too difficult, 'adventure' is already a category in the wiki.

The house Rules section will require someone who knows all the house rules that have been passed (such as the recent double XP, time gold, time XP DM credits and so forth), or is willing to trawl through all the threads and write up a list.

For the hints & tips page; do we have any budding journalists in the community? Maybe a new thread could be started to help collect tips and advice from all of our DMs here?

The Campaign Setting:

This is undoubtedly going to be the biggest job, there is a lot of stuff scattered throughout the old wiki, some of which is related to the other possible settings that were considered when L4W was in it's early stages, other pages have minimal information on them, I even came across some pages that have maps of regions of Allaria on them!

I would suggest that each numbered section be dealt with separately (or at least one at a time). Each of the different sections of the geography 'chapter' would probably benefit from individual scrutiny; with Daunton obviously being the priority.

The History chapter is probably going to be quite awkward, as much of the history of L4W is reasonably vague, and those stories and legends that are known about (the five, arga the black and the sealing off of daunton) are again scattered throughout the old wikki. All of these elements could do with being collected into one place.

The chapter on Magic, is perhaps a can of worms threatening to be opened; I've noticed from a number of other discussion threads that there is no real consensus on exactly how common and/or mysterious magic is in the Transitive Isles, this too is probably something that would need to be discussed in a separate thread and a general consensus made before too much work is put into it.

Writing up about the pantheon shouldn't be too much trouble; as our gods are based on the ancient Greek & Roman gods, there is plenty of reference material out there. But I do think there should be more info on the wiki itself rather than a brief description and then saying that they are based on such-and-such, expecting the reader to go elsewhere for more information.

If there are any jobs here that someone feels up to, please come forward and let us know what you want to do

 

[covaithe]

Where did the vision statement come from? Is that new? I'm not entirely sure it belongs there...

In general, I think it would be nice to limit the amount of metagame information in the wiki: descriptions of house rules, procedures for proposals, and all that. We have the Charter; I think the wiki should refer to that rather than go over all this again. I say that mostly because we know the charter is going to change over time. It's hard enough remembering to update the charter; if there were another place we had to update, well, the best case scenario is that we'd get tired of updating them both. Most likely, one wouldn't get updated and would quickly become inaccurate.

 

[Fragsie]

The vision Statement, and the majority of the rest of that introduction were taken from the old wiki's main page (you think i should delete it from the new one?).
As for the brief description of PbP and use of the forum; that's all stuff that wasn't there when I joined. I was totally new to RPing online in any form and it took me a while to get my head around some stuff and i had to do a bit of research into how PbP worked by going to other websites; I think that having this meta content on the wiki makes it easy to find for new people. I agree that stuff that is subject to change needn't be rewritten for the wiki for the reasons you give, but as Weldon said earlier it is possible to internally link the wiki to forum posts, so I think these titles should still be in the contents page, but link to the charter and character creation threads, it makes the wiki all inclusive, so someone who has a question about anything to do with l4W needs only to look in the one place to find it.
As for the house rules, i get what you're saying, it is an extra thing to have to keep up-to-date, but i do think that there should be somewhere where they are all listed, so someone can see on a single page how L4W differs from the standard DnD game that they are used to.

 

[stonegod]

FYI: I has some time to punch into looking at the CS (for LEB right now). Found out one very annoying feature that will require every extant character to be redone: You cannot have templates as arguments to other templates. Ie., You cannot use L4WowerToHit w/o L4W:L4WowerToHitSummary.

This is an annoying feature for L4W, but a bit annoyance for LEB where I structured it so that nested templates were used a lot. I'll keep you posted.