Wikipedia:WikiProject Dungeons & Dragons/style

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Structure

Introduction

Each Dungeons & Dragons article should begin with either:

"In the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, subject is. . ."

OR

"Subject is . . . in the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game."

History

Each article should strive to include some historical overview of the subject, where appropriate. At some point, it may be necessary for some articles to split off this section into a separate article (such as "History of the Nine Hells").

Creative origins

When known, the real-life inspiration or circumstances leading to the subject's creation should be listed in this section, which should appear before the "See also," "Notes," "References," and "External links" sections. The published source of the information should be listed in References.

Notes

For citing works, a "Notes" section may be necessary. This should be placed before the "References" section. This section should supplement, not replace, the References section, per [1].

Where practical, the new <ref>...</ref> format for notes should be used inline within the article. If the article has only new-style notes, this will look like:

Some text about a module.<ref>{{cite book |
  title=[[Module WP1]] |
  author=[[Jimbo Wales]] and [[Gary Gygax]] |
  year=1977 |
  publisher=[[TSR, Inc.]]}}</ref>

... 
==Notes==
<references/>

Items cited in the article will automatically be inserted into the notes section, and a footnote will point to them. Notes should not go under the "References" header, as those items should be alphabetical by author.

Citation templates

Here are some example citations:

• A module (see above)
• A magazine article (use "cite journal"):

<ref>{{cite journal |
  author=[[Erik Mona]], [[James Jacobs]] & [[Gary Gygax]] |
  title=The Orc and the Pie  |
  journal=[[Dragon (magazine)|Dragon]] |
  issue = #400 |
  publisher=Paizo Publishing, LLC |
  year = 2008 }}</ref>

• A book (see module example, above)

References

Each article should have a section for references at the bottom, before the "External links" section. Most references listed in Greyhawk articles are in the following format, already adopted by Wikipedia:WikiProject Role-playing games:

• Books, modules, supplements, boxed sets, etc: Author or editor. Title of product. Publisher, year published. Available online:URL, if applicable
• Articles in periodicals, or works within an anthology: Author. "Title." Periodical or anthology title issue#. Publisher, year published. Available online:URL, if applicable
• Online sources: Author. "Title." Available online:URL

Please use the following to generate the needed references & footnotes:

{{refs|2}}

See Wikipedia:Citation templates for a complete list of citation templates.
See Wikipedia:Footnotes for an explanation and more information of how to generate footnotes using the <ref> and </ref> tags.

Campaign settings

Articles on individual campaign settings should best be handled by related Wikiprojects, should any exist, as should characters, deities, monsters, places, etc exclusive to those campaign settings.

Deities

The text of deity articles should utilize the following sections, in order, after the introduction. See Heironeous for an example.

• Description
  • Aspects (other forms by which the god is known)
• Relationships
• Dogma
  • Scriptures
• Worshippers
  • Clergy (other subsections, like Paladins or Druids may also exist as subsections of Worshippers)
• Temples (perhaps Temples and rituals, or add a Rituals subsection, if lengthy enough)
• Holy days
• Artifacts
• History
• Myths and legends
• Creative origins
• Notes
• References
• External Links

Monsters

A discussion of the D&D monster articles on Wikipedia is occurring at Wikipedia:WikiProject Dungeons & Dragons/Monsters. Please contribute there if you have any views on the matter.

The text of monster articles should generally follow the layout found in the Monster Manual IV, utilizing the following sections after the introduction:

• Publication history
• Ecology
  • Environment
  • Typical physical characteristics
  • Alignment

• Society

Additional sections may come after, such as:

• History
• Subspecies
• Monster X in campaign setting X
• Monster X in other media

Etc. Note that the "Creative origins," "See also," "Notes," "References," & "External links" sections should come at the end of the article, in that order.

Minor topics

Some articles on what might be termed minor topics, e,g. characters, classes, deities, monsters or places which only appear in a single product are often better placed in a list. Articles can be split off from the list if they grow very large. Some very minor characters are probably not worth writing about, and it would be better placed in the article for the product or product series in which they appear.