Template:Cite book/doc

This template is for use when citing Forgotten Realms or Dungeons & Dragons books. It is based on the Wikipedia cite book template. Use this template when you want to cite an article. It has many sub-templates which can be used to easily cite certain existing Forgotten Realms or Dungeons & Dragons books. If no sub-template exists for the book that you wish to cite, you can still use this template manually.

Usage
Below are examples and instructions for using this template.

When a sub-template exists
If there is already a sub-template for the book you want to cite, it will be under this template, separated by a forward slash character. For example, the sub-template for Elves of Evermeet is accessed using:

Note the capitalization of the words in the template name. Putting this template on the page will automatically include all the citation details you need for this book. You can also cite certain pages from a book as follows:

Use the first where you only want to cite a single page. Use the second where you need to cite several pages at once.

When no sub-template exists
The best option here is to create the sub-template. Just copy an existing sub-template, such as Template:Cite book/Elves of Evermeet and change the details. A great place to gain the details for any Forgotten Realms or Dungeons & Dragons book is on the Wizards of the Coast site, where you can usually just search for the book's title.

If you cannot create the sub-template for any reason, or it would not be worthwhile (usually because your book is unlikely to be cited again), you can use this template directly as follows:

The "series," "pages," and "year" parameters are optional. All other parameters are required and cannot be left out. You can include wiki links in the "author," "title," "series," and "publisher" parameters where appropriate.

Unknown page numbers
If you cannot provide a page number for your citation, but there is likely to be one, use the question mark (?) character as your page number. This will place your article into a category for articles that need more specific page number. On the other hand, if it will never be possible to provide a page number, because the source does not have page numbers for example, then leave the page number out of your citation altogether.

When citing a source multiple times
Put the actual reference where you want the [1] to appear on the page, like this (in my example I'm citing page 54):

Then, if you want to cite page 55 later in the article, again, put this where you want the [2] to appear (note the different page number):

Then finally, at the end of the article, create a notes section that will automatically generate your references, like this: