User talk:Stu1131181

Welcome!
Well met, Stu1131181, and welcome to the Forgotten Realms Wiki! Thank you for your edit to the 1436 DR page. We hope you like the place and decide to stay and explore the Forgotten Realms with us.

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Again, welcome! Happy scribing!

— BadCatMan (talk) 20:14, December 31, 2018 (UTC)

Welcome
Hi! I made a little reference and edit to the 1436 DR article. While 99% of the wiki is written in the past tense, for individual years we keep the entries written in present tense. Thank you for filling in information btw, the early 1400's is probably one of the periods of time I am not super familiar with. Happy editing and please feel free to ask any questions here, on my talk page or those of any of the wikis admins! Ruf (talk) 01:07, January 1, 2019 (UTC)

Undermountain Project
Hello, and welcome to the Forgotten Realms Wiki. Your project to detail the levels of Undermountain is quite ambitious and certainly needed, but are you aware that the dungeon has been documented in many publications over the years? There is an entire boxed set followed by a sequel, plus adventures, novels, and entire works on Skullport. I'm not asking you to cover all of these sources in your work, but please write your articles as if they are just one slice of history. We have decided to date Waterdeep: Dragon Heist in 1492 DR, so you can use phrases like "around 1493 DR" to give a time frame for your work. Others will eventually add details from those previous publications and it would be convenient if they did not have to rewrite what you have already written.

Note that this wiki has a no crunch policy. We cannot afford to infringe on the copyrights of WotC and therefore must keep the game-mechanical details to a minimum as we try to write in an immersive, in-universe style. For example, please do not use "rounds" as a measurement of time&mdash;use minutes and seconds instead. Do not refer to a character's level by number, except in an infobox about that character, and so on. Please write in past-tense and in your own words. You can quote certain things, like the writing on the wall, but everything else must not be too close to the original source material. Admittedly, this is a judgement call, so others might make changes to your wording if they feel it borders on plagiarism, is too crunchy, or even too specific. Take a look at some other articles, particularly those noted as good articles or featured articles to get ideas and pointers on how things work best.

Above all, have fun, and ask questions on any Talk page or make a Forum post if you want to start a discussion about a topic. &mdash;Moviesign (talk) 17:00, January 1, 2019 (UTC)


 * Moviesign,


 * Good evening. Thank you for correcting me. I realise there are propably plenty of works on Undermountain and Skullport. The reason, however, is not everyone can afford or wants to buy every single DnD sourcebook ever printed. I understand that you are an exception. In my opinion, this wiki is for people who need information they don't have. Correct me if I'm mistaken, but a) you have every sourcebook ever printed (I have read your profile) and b) not all DnD fans can afford or want to buy everything. I am one of the people who would prefer not to buy everything. DnD, after all, is not about having the most sourcebooks or making all the campaigns excactly like what Wizards of the Coast print it but about making immersive and fun worlds. I believe that this wiki is solely to help people do that, for the articles in this wiki can really spark the imagination. I would still greatly appreciate, however, if you could send me via the talk page interesting information or even the link to somewhere I could download the books.


 * With all due respect,


 * Stu1131181 (talk) 17:39, January 1, 2019 (UTC)


 * I have copied your response back to here so we can keep it all together.


 * The advice I gave you was not meant as a correction but more of a course adjustment. This wiki is the result of work by hundreds of enthusiasts just like yourself, and I'm trying to give you a sense of the scope of what you are undertaking as well as an appreciation for those that have proceeded you and those that will follow you. We value your input and want to see it be used for those purposes you so eloquently described, but it has to conform to a few guidelines. First and foremost, it can't infringe on WotC's copyrights. Second, we are a canon wiki, so all additions must come from official, licensed, or blessed by WotC Forgotten Realms sources. Third, in order to save us from rewriting articles when the "present time" becomes the past, we write all articles in past tense (aka narrative tense, like all the FR novels), a policy agreed upon by the community some time ago. There are many more policies and guidelines, but my point is that you can save yourself and other editors lots of unnecessary effort by becoming familiar with them and putting them into practice. In that spirit, here are a couple more:
 * We encourage all editors to use the Source editor. You can choose it in your preferences or from the drop-down menu in the Visual editor. It makes using templates much easier with fewer errors. For example, your Undermountain level pages should be using the Location template with the appropriate fields filled in and the rest left blank. It's easy to copy and paste the blank template from its page into your document using the Source editor. Then just follow the documentation or ask for help. You should never need a  tag in normal editing (I saw a couple in your two pages).
 * Use the Citation templates. At least every paragraph should have a citation of the book and page where it came from. See Help:Citing sources for a quick tutorial. The auto-suggest makes it easy to find the one you are looking for because it makes suggestions as you type (again, in the Source editor).
 * That's all for now. We all do what we can with what we have in the time we can spend on our hobbies. I want to encourage you to maximize your enjoyment by minimizing conflict. &mdash;Moviesign (talk) 21:25, January 1, 2019 (UTC)


 * Hi! No one expects anyone to cover everything, only to take care that one set of work fits neatly with previous work and later work done by others. Hence, dating stuff, using precise citations, and arranging general and specific lore separately.


 * I went over the Arcane Chambers and made a bunch of changes, like adding the Building infobox, converting to past tense, applying an easy standard format, footnoted citations, and categories. Please check the revision history to see what you can take on board for your Dungeon Level and others. In particular, you don't have to detail whole plots in general descriptions, you can save that for history sections and individual character pages. It also spoils current adventure modules for people who just want background. The mystery of the missing key did not seem very relevant to a description of the Arcane Chambers, so I removed those passages. — BadCatMan (talk) 02:59, January 2, 2019 (UTC)

Drow
For information about the drow I would recommend Drizzt Do'Urden's Guide to the Underdark, The Drow of the Underdark, The Dark Elf Trilogy and probably Underdark (sourcebook) and Underdark (4th edition sourcebook). I'm actually not SUPER well-read on the subject, but I have the second book I listed and its helped quite a bit. Ruf (talk) 03:36, January 2, 2019 (UTC)