White Wolf:Paw Prints archive

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Contents 1 Same Word, Different Game 2 Canon Policy and Computer Games 3 Sources 3.1 New Reference System 4 Timeline Issues 5 Adding to Articles 6 TB:CoG Rev. as Canon 7 Table Format vs. Reference-Footnote Format 8 Glossary 9 Moving to WW? 10 Pre-2000BCE Time Periods 11 Nomenclature change 12 (book) or (supplement)? 13 Citations

[edit] Same Word, Different Game

Running into this more and more when editing my W:tA entries; there are a lot of terms that are used in more than one game and can refer to very different (or confusingly similar) things; the obvious solution is to point to an article that clearly refers to the term as used in that game (Auspice (WTA) vs. Auspice). But would it be a good idea to edit the "Auspice" entry (as an example) such as to make it an entry of disambiguation - linking to all known examples of that term? --PalominoMule 22:28, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

There's a similar porblem with terms that have a meaning in game and out of the game. For example, Vitae mean both blood in both editions of Vampire, but is also specifically used to mean "blood points" in V:tR. I suggest the following convention.

* The Generic term is used for a disambiguation page.

* all instances of the term for a game use a WikiWord formatted as TERM_(game) where game is the short form of the game (i.e., WtA, VtM, EtA and so on), with 'real' reserved for the term outside of the game.

So for using Vitae,we'd have Vitae, Vitae_(real), Vitae_(VtM), and Vitae_(VtR)...eventually. Similarly, Shadowlands, Shadowlands_(WtO) and Shadowlands(E) for the different uses of Shadowlands in Exalted and Wraith. We also can probably just skip the disambiguation if the target pages are less than, say, a typed page each.

--205.201.9.174 01:31, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

The system I've been using (and would prefer others use) is to keep the abbreviation all in caps, like so: Trinity Universe (TU), Age of Sorrows (AOS), Vampire: The Requiem (VTR), Werewolf: The Apocalypse (WTA), Mummy: The Resurrection (MTR), and so forth.

I'd prefer people use AOS for stuff in the Exalted universe.

Also note that some stuff will include lower-case for clarity's sake: New World of Darkness (nWOD), Old World of Darkness (oWOD), Mage: The Ascension (MTAs), Mage: The Awakening (MTAw).

So the pain old link will be disambiguation, link (oWOD) and link (TU) will point to seperate terms. In the case of vitae as mentioned above, I suggest something like advantage vitae (VTR), or something similar. However, sspecifically with vitae, I think we can keep both entries on the same page. A seperate page for the Blood and for the game term aren't really necessary. IanWatson 01:35, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Canon Policy and Computer Games

Well i'd say this wholly depends on how well the content was transferred between the games and the new form of media... for instance Bloodlines got the mood and details rather well, as did to some extend Redemption (even if it was mostly Hack and Slash). On the other hand... Kindred The Embraced... well i think that falls somewhere under "Star Wars Holliday Special" (the one that Lucas said he'd gladly pay to never have made ;)). How do we define it anyway? The number of other media creations is rather limited, and most of us probably have a modicum of access to it... Thoughts? --Asmodai 16:51, 27 Jun 2005 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned, only the game books constitute Canon-with-a-capital-C. Where novels and game books contradict, game books take precedence, although novels can certainly elaborate on certain events (like the 1999 Sabbat invasion of Atlanta).

The electronic games are not to be referenced except where the games themselves are concerned. They're not canon as far as the site is concerned, but they are material we're going to be covering. If that makes any sense. The same goes for Kindred: The Embraced and any future media go. IanWatson 21:23, 21 Aug 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sources

I'd like some clarification on where and how to cite sources for material. I'm inclined to offer every source on a topic available, but for some subjects its spoken of in a great many books. Should a Source section be included at the bottom of applicable pages, such as the Anarch Revolt? On the other hand, I feel like stating sources on the Timeline will get quite cumbersome, since I don't want to cite just one out of five sources.

Sources should be cited wherever appropriate.

That is, if a given paragraph comes from two different sources, cite each one at the end of their specific entry. If an entire article comes from a single source, feel free to cite at the end of the article.

Yes, this means that timelines will get cumbersome. See the Trinity Universe timeline. But if we want complete info, that's how it's going to have to be. IanWatson 21:17, 7 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Then can I recommend that we use abbreviations for product titles, such as VTM: CbVR (Clanbook Ventrue Revised). Since we'll be including links to the article with the full product name they'll still be able to check which book we're referring to, and it'd reduce clutter, at least in the timeline and when we're citing sources in a paragraph (as opposed to listing them at the end). Moogle001 16:26, 8 Sep 2005 (UTC)

If you want to use abbreviations, go for it. Some people will, some people won't. It's entirely up to you. Just as long as the link points to the correct book and is in the form described in the Game Books section above. (VTM: Clanbook: Ventrue Revised, p 34), fr'ex. IanWatson 17:05, 8 Sep 2005 (UTC)

[edit] New Reference System

There's a new system for citing sources. The general format is the same as above, minus the parentheses.

Create a new heading called "References" or something similar, like so: == References ==. It should be at the bottom of the page. Then, next to the appropriate block of text, make your footnote link as follows:
{{ref|yoursource01}} (where "yoursource01" is whatever name you choose to assign). Then under References, start a new line like so:
* {{note|yoursource01}} VTM: Clanbook: Ventrue Revised, p. 34
Or whatever.

This way you'll get fancy little footnotes which will link to the appropriate reference at the bottom. References at the bottom will likewise link to the appropriate block of text at the top. IanWatson 11:27, 20 Sep 2005 (EDT)

Example: This is some obscure reference to pants. ^[1]

Not Elfpants? I'm disappointed, chief. 8-) AberrantEyes 11:31, 20 Sep 2005 (EDT)

Indeed. Check the Werewolf 2nd Ed Players Guide, under "P." It lists "pants." Which, of course, points to the page about the Nuwisha.

• ^  WTA: Werewolf: The Apocalypse Second Edition, p. 332

[edit] Timeline Issues

I was considering working on the timeline, when I started running into problems. I'm not sure how to handle events that are described as having occurred somewhere in a range of time - for instance, the Silent Striders may have been banished from Egypt by Set's Curse anywhere from 1880 BCE to 1633 BCE. And then there are events and trends described as happening within a century or decade - for instance, the Uktena are described as first arriving in Australia during the 1840s CE. How should I handle this stuff? --PalominoMule 23:05, 11 Oct 2005 (UTC)

If it's during the 1840s, I'd say you add a mention of the Uktena arrival in Australia to 1840d (oWOD). For the Silent Striders, you might note the dates you mentioned as the earliest and latest dates for Set's Curse. AberrantEyes 00:36, 12 Oct 2005 (UTC)

Yeah. Stuff set in a particular decade would go in (fr'ex) 1840d (oWOD), as Austin mentioned. Something in a century would go in 1800c (oWOD). Set's curse would have a "earliest possible date for Set's Curse" entry in 1880 BCE (oWOD), and a "latest possible date" entry in 1633 BCE (oWOD).

Since there will never be very many entries under BCE, if you prefer, you can put those entries in the decade or century instead of the year. IanWatson 03:32, 12 Oct 2005 (UTC)

This is probably far-fetched, but is there any way we could make an overall Timeline without having to update it constantly? In other words, add something to 2000 (oWOD) and have it appear on a Timeline page under 2000, with everything under 2001 after it, etc. The individual articles have their advantage, but its not very good if you want to see the progression of events. Moogle001 07:20, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Given the sheer number of entries we'd have, it'a a little far-fetched, yeah. Although I suppose theoretically you could do it the same way we're doing dates... June 5 is just Template:June 5 with a navbar. So if you wanted to manually edit every single year page to refer to a template, and then have an overall Timeline page with links to every single year template, then it could be done.

But also keep in mind that the history of the oWOD, fr'ex, has dates defined as far back as 5000 BC and up to 2004 AD, so you'd need to account for about 7000 potential dates, as well as covering more general events which happened in a given decade or century rather than a specific year.

Probably far more trouble than it's worth. --Ian 01:56, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Adding to Articles

As someone who is contributing, especially on the Aberrant pages at the moment, it's always good when people can further add to your contributions. In some cases a contribution may be in the process of being completed and another user may add their own contribution to such an article half way through. I was just thinking that in these kinds of cases, it would make it easier for the original author to continue with their updates if any other contributers were to say what they had changed or added in that articles discussion page. I don't think that is against policy and hopefully it will make things run smoother for returning authors. Luthaneal 11:20, 24 Oct 2005 (UTC)Luthaneal 24 Oct 2005, 12:18 GMT

In cases such as this, the system warns you that the page you were updating has been changed since you started, and shows you both versions. Additionally, by clicking on the "diff" link next to each change listed under the Recent Changes link on the left-hand side, you can see exactly what has changed between different versions of a page. I see no reason to clutter up Talk pages with stuff that's already incorporated into the Wiki system. IanWatson 14:00, 24 Oct 2005 (UTC)

Thanks Ian, I didn't realise. Will use that in future. Cheers.Luthaneal 21:20, 24 Oct 2005 (UTC)Luthaneal 24 Oct 2005, 22:20 GMT

[edit] TB:CoG Rev. as Canon

I must start with a warning - when it comes to Tribebook: Children of Gaia Revised, I am heavily biased. I loathe the book on a level best described as visceral. Hate it. Hate it very hard, but as it turns out, I'm far from the only one. It's by far the Revised Tribebook most often cited as being the worst of the lot.

...anyhow. I'm working on my timeline stuff again (I know I disappeared! I'm still working on it! Just...wanted to do everything at once in my text file first before updating everything here), and against my better judgment I decided to look in this book, see if there were any dates of interest. And then, then I realize...this book is an insanely awful mess. I hate it, but that's beside the point - the thing doesn't even make sense *within itself*.

• For instance, the whole thing is set in Summer 1999 (Woodstock II, good Lord), but they keep referring to the secession of the Stargazers - which didn't happen until 2000. Similarly, a letter shared within that moot is dated 2001.
• True Silverheels is described as a Philodox, though he's an Ahroun (as statted in RANY). For that matter, Cries Havoc is *also* described as a Philodox, even though in appropriate art and in the novels he's a Galliard.
• It describes the Wars of Rage as happening before the Impergium, the opposite of what just about every other source lists.

As a sampler. In the shitstorm of criticism that followed this book's release, Ethan Skemp mentioned on the official W:tA forum that the book had been rushed to the printer and he hadn't had a chance to look it over and edit it.

So, I don't feel I can trust it as a source, but as I said, I'm biased. I wanted someone else's opinion about this. ...frxing book.

Well, the thing is, it's still valid as a resource. If someone wants to know more about the CoG, that's a book we'll point them to. It may suck, but it's what we've got.

Where necessary, just post the conflicting information as another "opinion" or something. Like "some [ref] believe that True Silverheels is a Philodox." Maybe a note that he may have undergone that Rite which enables you to change your Auspice. Whatever the error is, incorporate it as best you can, either as a different opinion or a possible development.

If all else fails, post the conflicting info as Background Information. "Tribebook: Children of Gaia Revised states that the War of Rage happened before the Impergium, but developer Ethan Skemp admits this was a mistake." Let's try to turn this whole thing into a feature rather than a bug. Hell, Mage's history contradicts itself umpteen times, but so far I'm having some success getting something cohesive out of it. --IanWatson 14:58, 31 Oct 2005 (UTC)

Y'know, this puts me in the mind of something I consider related - dealing with different versions of the same thing. Which relates to the "Version Differences" section I've noticed in all of the W:tA Tribal templates. Now, I don't know if you mean, like, different stages of that tribe during its development (like the many stages the Glass Walkers went through), but I hope not, because the Glass Walkers are the only ones who have really changed all that much. So I assumed - and I hoped - you meant different versions of the tribe as presented in canon.

An even more potent example is the changes the Ajaba Bastet went through between the Bastet breedbook and Players Guide to the Changing Breeds; it's really very dramatic. I'd like to be able to discuss the two different versions, because I can't really provide one single form of canon. Is a "Version Differences" section for this sort of thing? And if not, can I *make* sections for this kind of thing? PalominoMule 21:33, 31 Oct 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I meant. Differences in how they're presented between different editions of the game. First Ed, Second Ed, and Revised. Stuff like the changes the Glass Walkers go through are to be discussed in the relevant history sections (Dark Ages, Wild West, etc.). --IanWatson 22:14, 31 Oct 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Table Format vs. Reference-Footnote Format

This pertains to Disciplines and similar lists of powers, merits, and what not. Upon using the reference footnote system that places all page numbers at the bottom of the screen, I think it may be much better to use a table format instead. The footnote requires jumping to the bottom of the page repeatedly, it isn't easy to quickly distinguish which reference is being linked to, and makes it makes figuring out the most recent powers (as opposed to Pre-Revised) complicated. Secondly, its just a gigantic pain to make footnotes for every page, sort them, ensure that everything is aligned properly, and in the end just isn't very good looking. You can find both versions in the history of Serpentis, and since we'd ideally like to use the same format for powers everywhere I'd like to know if there any objections to using tables for this. Moogle001 20:21, 12 Dec 2005 (UTC)

I should note that Moogle001 has posted a combined approach on the Serpentis article, which is sort of the best of both worlds. I approve. Anyone else want to comment before we make a decision? --IanWatson 02:23, 21 Dec 2005 (UTC)

Wow, that's nice. It makes reading those a lot easier. I say go for it. BebopKate 03:33, 21 Dec 2005 (UTC)

Glad you guys approve :) I was scratching my head for a while trying to figure out something that would provide all the information cleanly. Moogle001 04:25, 21 Dec 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Glossary

So someone want to tell me why we have a glossary for every White Wolf game and also a general glossary that everything seems to get dumped into? It seems rather repetitive to me. Whispering 01:17, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Joe Gamer keeps hearing the term "Lamia" thrown around, but has no idea what game line it's for. Instead of searching through every single game line glossary, he can just search the root glossary. Or perhaps he sees Arcana in reference to the new Mage, thinks it sounds familiar, and so he looks in the master glossary for similar terms (coming up with Arcanos).

Besides, I like the idea of having a single glossary of terms covering the breadth of WW. --Ian 03:44, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

So we should put every page in WWiki into the category glossary then? Whispering 04:51, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

We've got several generic categories, three of which apply to most articles. Most stuff will be under Glossary. Individuals are instead filed under Category:Character, and locations are under Category:Geography. I'm happy to look into other methods of categorization if people have a better suggestion. --Ian 21:29, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Well ok maybe I'll go sort the Glossary now that I'm mostly done with the uncategorized pages. Whispering 23:39, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Moving to WW?

Okay, so White Wolf now has their own Wikis for Exalted and for the World of Darkness (both new and old). However, they're really not giving the Wikis any structure, they're just leaving them up for the fans to do with what they will.

Should we stay our own seperate entity? Or should we start moving our WOD/AOS articles over there? Maybe keep to the Trinity Universe, Sword & Sorcery and Arthaus games for now? What do you guys think? --Ian 01:07, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm...I'd say let's wait and see at this point. If people start adding a decent amount of stuff to the new wikis, then I say we join in the fun. If things remain quiet and/or low quality, keeping to ourselves for the time might be a better option. Ultimately though, I leave it your hands, fearless leader. ^_^ BebopKate 03:09, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I was thinking the same thing. For one thing, the White Wolf wikis don't support user accounts; how are we supposed to keep track of who's changing what? Presumably IP addresses can be blocked, but if user accounts can't be created that makes tracking changes on pages in which you're interested, and attributing good or bad work, pretty difficult. I'm with Kate, we should wait out here and see what happens. -- Guybrush 03:43, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Methinks we should wait as well. Unless of course people start adding lots of stuff. Of course with a Wiki like that people are going to add a lot of fancruft. Me I'd rather stay here were the options and moderators are rather dandy. Whispering 04:01, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

White Wolf's Wiki seems to support user accounts, I've made one and the the history seems to be working fine. All in all, its somewhat obnoxious for them to make their own without consulting this project. I'm in favor of us moving our stuff over there, and using the opportunity to cleanup what we can. But I think Ian should talk with whoever runs their wiki to make everything as smooth as possible. Moogle001 06:08, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

I'll have to agree with the others in saying that I'd like to wait. I can't be too confident about the future of that wiki, and if it does prove to be a decent piece of work, transferring articles will be as easy a year from now as it is today, right? PalominoMule 00:03, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the thoughts, all. Looks like the consensus is to take a wait-and-see approach, and keep doing what we're doing. If the time comes, as PalominoMule mentioned, it'll be just as easy then as it is now. --Ian 01:29, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

As Moogle mentions, they have had user accounts for just under a month now. I moved over all our help files initially, just to help get some sort of basic framework for people to work with, to try to help them out. The response was immediate: a flurry of activity to rename files, move them to a more appropriate place, and report pages on the Votes for Deletion page.

In response, I've been made a moderator over there, too. ^_^ Their nomenclature is a bit different (i.e. clan (Vampire: The Masquerade) rather than clan (VTM), but for the most part things are getting rather tidy. So if people want to start moving stuff over, that's fine by me. They cover the old WOD and the new, as well as fanon stuff and pages for their official chats. So someone can make a page for their character on the chats if they want. I'm happy to go into more detail or whatever if people want.

And no, I haven't abandoned this place. Don't be silly. :D --Ian 15:06, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Just wondering: I flipped around a bit over there and didn't find my answer...how are they going to keep fanon clearly marked away from canon? I don't have any issues with mixing the two, I just want to know if there's a clear way I can distinguish between them when using the wiki as a reference. BebopKate 19:32, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

That's one of the things I'm discussing on the Community page over there. Right now I'm thinking of attaching a {{fanon}} template to everything, which marks it and adds it to the appropriate category. See the template. --

Ian 22:59, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

I've been messing around with adding cannon, totally didn't notice they were two separate places to put info. I have found no way to separate Fanon and canon, i like the tl attachment, may i use it as well Jarons 2:12, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Hey Ian I don't know if you have any power over there but is there anyway to talk them into making a separate wiki for the fanon stuff? It's really overcrowding the wiki. Whispering 18:40, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pre-2000BCE Time Periods

In the timeline, I'm dealing with some fairly ancient dates - like a rough date of 5000 BCE - and I'm considering something about the time periods currently used. The oWOD timeline main page lists back through the 2000c BCE century; beyond that it only lists 3000s, 4000s, and 5000s BCE. AS linked, though, they're to 3000c_BCE and the like - centuries. Considering the very rough nature of dates so far back, and the relative scarcity of the same, should we treat them instead as millennia? So, for instance, 3000m_BCE?

Furthermore, there's a listing of "Prehistory" there as well. I'm curious about that, but it gets into some very...confusing things. I can't speak for other gamelines, but past around...2000BCE, things get very murky and conjectural in W:tA. Is there any particular way in which Prehistory is supposed to be used? PalominoMule 00:10, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Using a millennial nomenclature is an excellent idea, and I'm sorry I didn't think of it. Good idea.

Prehistory is for all the murky stuff that we know happened, but have no real idea when it happened. It would be listed in rough chonological order. So, fr'ex, from Vampire: God creates Adam and Lilith, Lilith leaves Adam, God creates Eve, Caine kills Abel, and so on. There aren't any defined dates for these events, but we know (sort of) that they happened. So that's the sort of thing that would go under Prehistory.

A link from that page to the Exalted timeline wouldn't be out of order either, come to think of it. --Ian 01:34, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Nomenclature change

Apparently, people have historically gotten confused over the "Wikicities" name, believing it to be a Wiki specifically for cities. Obviously, this isn't the case. So starting next week sometime, Wikicities.com will be changing to Wikia.com. The old URLs should still function for a while, but everyone should update their bookmarks and such. --Ian 23:02, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] (book) or (supplement)?

I want to create a few more entries for books in my collection, but I want to clear up which convention we prefer for books whose titles that match game concepts. The most obvious example is Gehenna, which is the first book I'll be doing, since it's in the most wanted links list. Most of the links for it point to Gehenna (book), but I've seen at least one (and similar ones for other books) which uses Gehenna (Supplement). Personally I think book is better because its short, but then you run into trouble with ambiguity for things which are both fictional and real world books, like The Book of Nod (I've seen The Book of Nod (Supplement)) or Revelations of the Dark Mother.

Do we have a standard for this? For that matter, do we have a standard for differentiating the core rulebook of a game from the game as a whole? I think they're mostly along of the lines of Vampire: The Masquerade Revised Rulebook, but I thought it best to check before I create a bunch of articles. -- Guybrush 13:25, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

No, we don't have a standard, but we should.

For my part, I tend to use (book). But in the case of the Book of Nod, I use The Book of Nod for the supplement, and simply Book of Nod to refer to the in-game book. Ditto for stuff like Ordo Dracul and The Ordo Dracul. That's probably not as explicit as it could be, though.

Yeah, the game line is Vampire: The Masquerade. The first rulebook printed for a game line is always in the form Vampire: The Masquerade Rulebook, and then Vampire: The Masquerade Second Edition and Vampire: The Masquerade Revised Edition.

As always, happy to entertain suggestions on alternate nomenclature. --Ian 11:33, 5 April 2006 (PDT)

[edit] Citations

I'm going to start getting a little more hardnosed about citations, and I encourage everyone else to do that, too. In the end, I feel it makes for a stronger article and strengthens the validity of the Wiki as a resource. Mark relevant pages with {{pna-cite}}. Thanks! --Ian 13:32, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Rather than just randomly mark pages as uncited as we come across them (as there are a lot of them), perhaps we could make it a wiki-wide focus for the upcoming month to work on citations for pages? I know not everyone can cite everything because they don't have access to all the books, but if we can concentrate on areas we do have the information for, we could knock out a good many of the pages and then just mark the ones that we really don't have anything on. BebopKate 18:21, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me! I'm gonna name this the Month of Citation, if everyone's amenable. --Ian 18:26, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm all for it. We should probably have a link on the front page to the reference notes above (in place of the usual Year of the Lotus or whatever), or better, create a page something like White Wolf:Citations. Having read over the guidelines here again, I'm going to overhaul the Blood Sorcery references to something that more closely matches the (new) Discpline layout. -- Guybrush 00:50, 8 June 2006 (UTC)