Template talk:BG NPCs

New title
"Companions of Abdel Adrian"?? And the ones who weren't are "non-canonical companions of Abdel Adrian"? This makes no sense, is confusing and drags the name of the games in the mud along with Athans's travesties. Abdel Adrian has nothing to do with the games and certainly shouldn't be invoked to define anything therein. Ville V. Kokko 05:28, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I understand the novels are a sore subject (I've not read them, nor played the games substantially so I know this through my connections to the community rather than directly). However, it seems to me (and granted - this is just my opinion so if there's a massive upset about this I'm willing to change it to be "in-offensive") but the fact remains - Abdel Adrian is the canonical version of Gorion's Ward - and the NPCs he travels with are his companions. Likewise, the NPCs from the games he doesn't travel with are non-canon (at least in regards to their traveling with him).
 * I'm basically trying to remove metagame-thinking from the wiki, which I think is in the spirit of the no-crunch rule. This is why, among other reasons, I revised the NPC template. Again, if this is as offensive as you seem to find it, I will not object to revising it. But I think the way it stands now is thoroughly more encyclopediac as well as looking more professional. View, for instance, what I've done for NWN henchmen, NWN2 companions, or what Wookieepdia uses for the companions of Revan or the Jedi Exile (two similarly player-customized characters to Gorion's Ward in some of BioWare's later games).
 * I'm sorry if I've offended you. Niirfa-sa 05:50, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Let me put this more neutrally. The point remains that I and many others would hate to associate the games and novels, and there's partly a reason to avoid it in that they contradict. It's also effectively been something of a policy in writing the articles to assume them separate. I admit it's basically been my personal policy, but that does mean it has been widely applied. But besides of all this, there are two problems with the title. Firstly, it's confusing because it doesn't look like it's referring to the games. Secondly, it's illogical. "Non-canonical companions of Adbel Adrian" is in a way a contradiction. Since the books, alas, are supposed to overwrite in canonicity, everyone who was a companion of Abdel Adrian was canonically so. The rest just weren't. They were potential companions to someone who was non-canonical because (s)he wasn't Adrian.
 * Revan's a lot easier to write about. He has a known name of sorts, as well as race, general class, canonical gender and selection of ending... He also has a fixed selection of companions. Also, these aren't from some contradictory novel version that shows him merely being that which, in the game, he kicks; they're all answers to questions left open in the game. Wookieepedia has a long, good article about him, whereas I never thought an article for "Gorion's Ward" would even be worth trying to write since everything is a question mark. This template issue exemplifies the difference; it doesn't work the same way. Ville V. Kokko 15:48, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, I'll grant you have some points about the extreme differences between the novels and the games, as well as the difference in ease of translation between BG and BioWare's (and Obsidian's) later games. Here's a possible compromise. Instead of having two separate templates for the games (1 for BG and 1 for BG2), why not have two separate templates - one for the canonical character of Abdel Adrian and one for the non-canonical Gorion's Ward? Thereby, you get much the same result - but at least without the metagame nonsense. Seem sensible? Niirfa-sa 19:40, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * All right, let's see how that works out. I can't think of any objections straight away, although it may still not be so simple to find satisfactory ways of referring to everything involved without using any metagame terms. Ville V. Kokko 05:43, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Rename
So, coming back to this 11 years later. I would like to change the name of this template to its original of "Companions of Abdel Adrian" (sorry Ville V. Kokko!). If that isn't quite right I would like to change it to better reflect a distinction from the companions as they appeared in the novels. I started another discussion on the other template's talk page. Ruf (talk) 22:17, July 23, 2020 (UTC)