Talk:Saint Jalnir

Greyhawk ties

Other than a tenuous connection to Pelor, does this character have any Greyhawk ties? Has Geoffrey McVey written anything Greyhawk whatsoever?--Robbastard 18:31, 10 September 2007 (EDT)

It's a specific connection to Pelor, not a tenuous one. Other than that, the answers to your questions are "no" and "not as far as I know." Even so, it's not as if a wiki page is so server-intensive that we need to be that choosy about what subjects are appropriate. It's potentially useful info, it's tied to Greyhawk, and that's all that needs to be said. Otherwise, how do you judge if something is "Greyhawk enough?" It's completely subjective. For example, the Throne of the Gods isn't tied to Greyhawk except by virtue of being included in the 1e DMG, and St. Eleador isn't tied to Greyhawk except by virtue of being in the same article as St. Kargoth, but I think most of us would accept both of those things in this wiki nonetheless. To me, one of the valuable things about this wiki, besides offering bibliographies of common Greyhawk topics, is the opportunity to bring obscure Greyhawk-related topics to light where otherwise they'd languish in darkness.

To me, for an encyclopedia to be as useful as possible, it should always err toward inclusiveness. Otherwise it's less a resource for others and more just an exercise in arbitrary editorial standards.

-- Rip 00:43, 11 September 2007 (EDT)

So would you consider Jozan, the 3E iconic cleric of Pelor, "Greyhawk enough" to warrant his own page? What about the numerous other NPCs who have appeared throughout WotC & Paizo products for the past seven years with no other Greyhawk connections other than being clerics of a "core" deity? The Throne of the Gods and St Eleador are easier to justify due to the fact that Gygax created the Throne when his Greyhawk campaign & TSR were tightly interwoven, while Scott Bennie allegedly has noted that he intended Kargoth, Bane, Ceril, & Eleador to be part of Greyhawk, but was prevented from stating so in the article, due to a Gygax veto.--Robbastard 16:43, 11 September 2007 (EDT)

Interesting questions. I wouldn't include Jozan, personally, since the landscape of the novels and so forth that include him are manifestly not Greyhawk at all. However, if someone else really wanted to include an article on Jozan, and did so in a way that only mentioned his Greyhawk ties and didn't blather on overly much about non-Greyhawk parts of the character, I certainly wouldn't complain about it. One of the justifications you've made for this Wiki was to get away from the draconian "notability" standards of Wikipedia, after all, and I wouldn't be so bold as to assume that nobody who used this wiki would find a list of Jozan references useful. I included Jalnir because I think he's interesting and, furthermore, I think the order associated with him adds an interesting shading for priests of Pelor in general. He's not simply an NPC cleric, after all, but a saint.

In the end, there's a clear Greyhawk connection and he appeared in an official source, so there's nothing really to complain about. If you don't like certain sources, you don't have to use them in your own campaign, but it'd be a shame to decide by fiat that nobody should like them. There's a certain threshold of common sense, naturally - I don't think anyone thinks there should be a separate page for every NPC in WG7 Castle Greyhawk, to give an obvious example - but to list notable saints of the various gods? Yes, I think they're awesome. -- Rip 20:03, 11 September 2007 (EDT)

Fair enough. Consequently, I wouldn't necessarily oppose including Jozan & other nonGH-specific NPC clerics of 3x's "Core Pantheon," though I would probably argue that they be grouped together on a single page such as "Quasi-Greyhawk NPCs" or somesuch.--Robbastard 00:47, 16 September 2007 (EDT)