User talk:Abra Saghast

Thanks! Ill check out the guidelines. I didnt realize GH people got crazy about that sort of thing. Oh well. There is a ton more on western oerik that comes from the chainmail articles and game im looking into. I didnt see anything on the Free States. That may be a tough one.

AWESOME work on the Western Oerik page! Love the categorization you did.

Druidic Orders of the Flanaess

Hey Icarus, can we delete the page Druidic Orders of the Flanaess, please? AFAIK, none of the orders listed are canonical, and no other pages link to it. I believe the only source for it is an article by Paul Stormberg in Oerth Journal #15. Thanks--Robbastard (talk) 09:43, 9 December 2020 (CST)

I should've noted a while back this has been done, Robbastard! I didn't get around to it 'til last year, well-after your request since we seldom have new AfD pages—though we seem to have plenty, now. Sorry about that. —Jawal Severnain (talk) 12:54, 30 March 2023 (CDT)

Presenting Resources like Tables of the Books

Hey there, I recently put a table about birthplaces out of the Glossary into one page. It was mostly a direct copy and I tried to make that clear with a citation. Sadly it was removed. I couldnt find a policy that I shouldnt post content directly from the books. How should I present the Information so that it follows the rules of the Wiki? Can i choose a different format and just give the likeliness of a Species beeing born in a certain place? --Nyssara Vexhallow (talk) 09:09, 31 August 2025 (EDT)

Hey there, Nyssara Vexhallow! Good morning! Thanks for taking the time to ask and talk about it.

I can totally understand that it is is entirely frustrating to have something removed that you clearly spent time and effort preparing.

So, it's kind of a dicey thing, sometimes, quoting, right? Like, the first thing is that it's a lore wiki. So, a table about birthplaces would certainly count, right? And that's not inaccurate.

The thing is that all writing must be original. The Manual of Style sets that all work on the wiki must be original and not copied. Also, the guidelines in the General Writing Guidelines (#4) urge us that "articles should not duplicate the source material from which they're derived. Put the information into your own words. Brief quotations using {{quoted text}} and {{quote}}, or in-line quotation marks for shorter quotes are fine, but must be minimal, should establish context, be limited in scope, and be specific to the topic of a page."

It's not so much just about citing (which is a good thing, and you did well), as it is about copying.

All that out of the way, we can absolutely talk about the best way to include that content, because it's valuable and improves the Great Library of Greyhawk wiki. Perhaps the lore in those tables might be used to discuss it in articles to which it applies. Like, on the Elf page, talking about how they can be from most anywhere but are often born in the Duchy of Ulek and Vesve Forest (or wherever their high numbers are, and they not often born in the Principality or Pomarj (or wherever they have 0%). Or there's all manner of ways we could invent to put the material into the wiki, like summarizing the data in another way.—--Abra Saghast (talk) 11:10, 31 August 2025 (EDT)

Thank you for your answer! You provided the General Writing Guidelines that I just overlooked. The are literally on the front page *facepalm*

Since I would also like to encorporate the encounter tables in some useable format when preparing a session I would we blasted if we can come up with a legal format. I would love to have the information in one place and placing them into the different articles of the Races would also be very nice.

A similar thing I started with Random encounter tables; where i first extracted all the tables and wanted to write a program that lets me put in the Edition I Play in, The party Level and the region and then proviedes me with the Monsters that are there. It seemed only natural for me to provide the information to the community. Currently I just started to collect the different types of tables found in what sources but I wanted to provide the structured Data in some way.

Do you think it would be feasable to rephrase the content into bullet lists giving each Species a percentage to occure in a certain place? (those subchapters could directly be included into the relevant articles.) something like this: Birthplaces for Characters

No problem, Nyssara Vexhallow!!

Glad to have helped, at all! 😊

So, it's going to be difficult to just striahgt include tables as a page, because there's no context in which they are being used. They need to be somehow used in relation to a topic of an article, rather than essentially being the topic itself.

I have been tinkering behind the scenes with the formatting of the Random encounter tables page since you made it, to try to reframe/rephrase it so it's a little more readable, since that table has massive big open areas that expand it waaaaaay too large. I'll add something to the discussion page there.

Just a sidenote: I created an example "Sandbox" page for you using the Birthplace page. It's a subspace where you can test out formatting, usage, or even put whatever content you like (as long as you're not violating copyrights or other rules of the wiki) and work out things kind of in your own space. The "Sandbox" isn't an "official" part of the wiki and doesn't come up in searches or anything like that, and you can work and change all you want.—Abra Saghast (talk) 13:31, 31 August 2025 (EDT)