Forum:Adventurers League Citations

Forums: Helping Hand > Adventurers League Citations

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Have we decided how to handle citation templates from the Adventurer's League Expeditions?

~ Lhynard (talk) 15:06, November 25, 2015 (UTC)

How canon is that? Allowable? Are these web-based PDFs or what? Many questions.

—Moviesign (talk) 16:22, November 25, 2015 (UTC)

Many questions here also. From what I can tell, they are pdf-only documents available only to DMs who are a part of the League. User:Unknown user 11 has been using them as sources lately.

~ Lhynard (talk) 16:42, November 25, 2015 (UTC)

The adventures are a series of hour long adventure sessions... sort of like if you took Hoard of the Dragon Queen and made each chapter into one adventure... they have numbers like DDEX03-01 Harried in Hillsfar... you have to have a password to play them and they are all pdfs... these are official Wizards of the Coast games played at conventions: http://dndadventurersleague.org/storyline-seasons/rage-of-demons/rage-of-demons-adventures/... hope this helps :)

- Darkwynters (talk) 16:47, November 25, 2015 (UTC)

How do we go about citing them though?

~ Lhynard (talk) 17:00, November 25, 2015 (UTC)

Is the material canon to FR? I presume it is, but it would be nice to know for sure. I can whip up a citation template if you give me the fields to include. Would {{Cite web}} work if I added a field for the "DDEX03-01"? What would you call it? Can we get a URL that is meaningful for folks without a password?

—Moviesign (talk) 17:30, November 25, 2015 (UTC)

Technically, I believe only specific users can view these pdfs (a la passwords)... http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/events/adventurers-league-resources... It IS canon... Robert Adducci is the AL Manager at Wizards of the Coast...

- Darkwynters (talk) 19:25, November 25, 2015 (UTC)

I've been adding a few of the pdf so far and made an earlier forum post about using the {{Cite digital book}} template as compromise. I think more pdf materials will emerge over time and it would be good to have way of referencing them properly (especially when we are getting 30-60 page adventures).

--Eli the Tanner (talk) 09:46, November 26, 2015 (UTC)

I have passwords for all of the seasons so far. The adventures are canon, though even if you can't get hold of them the Adventurer's League website releases the official results of the campaign, showing which variables in the modules actually occurred, after a certain amount of time has passed. So far, they've only done Season One though.

-hash^talk 12:49, November 26, 2015 (UTC)

How about this:

{{Cite DDAL
| url         = http://media.wizards.com/2015/downloads/dnd/ALPGv3.pdf
| title       = Adventurers League Player's Guide
| version     = 3.0
| storyline   = Rage of Demons
| date        = 2015-07-23
| author      = Greg Bilsland, Chris Lindsay, Shelly Mazzanoble, Chris Tulach
| accessdate  = 2016-11-26
| format      = PDF
| publisher   = [[Wizards of the Coast]]
| pages       = {{{1|1-24}}}
}}

which would render something like

• Greg Bilsland, Chris Lindsay, Shelly Mazzanoble, Chris Tulach (2015-07-23). Adventurers League Player's Guide v3.0, pp. 1–24 (PDF). Rage of Demons, Wizards of the Coast. Retrieved on 2016-11-26.

—Moviesign (talk) 14:05, November 26, 2015 (UTC)

Ok by me. It looks like someone has already turned some of these into book citations though. See Laal, for example.

Also, if hash is correct, should we be citing these at all until the "certain amount of time has passed" and the information is officially released?

~ Lhynard (talk) 03:31, November 27, 2015 (UTC)

Lhyn, that thought crossed my mind as well, but User 11 is a creating fiend and I was just trying to keep up with all the edits... most of these pdfs are password protected... let's see what Movie and BadCat think.

- Darkwynters (talk) 05:47, November 27, 2015 (UTC)

Just want to know other editors' thoughts :)

- Darkwynters (talk) 04:07, November 30, 2015 (UTC)

If information gets added to the wiki that is unconfirmed about its canon status, we could just mark it as {{Speculation}} until the "official" results are published.

—Moviesign (talk) 14:39, November 30, 2015 (UTC)

I like that idea, but the {{Speculation}} tag is inline; we'd need one for tagging a whole article.

~ Lhynard (talk) 18:51, November 30, 2015 (UTC)

I don't think the speculation tag applies to these adventures anymore than it does to other adventures. The events of the adventures and characters involved are still canon the only thing the post-season summary does is give an overview of the consequences of the those events. I think the {{speculation}} is a good policing tool for embellished wordings but not for an entire article. If the entire article is made up then that's what the {{Unreferenced}} tag is for after all.

--Eli the Tanner (talk) 22:40, December 1, 2015 (UTC)

I think my bigger concern is not so much whether such articles are canon; it is whether such articles have confirmable sources. If the sources aren't open to the regular public, then any such sources are hearsay.

But as far as canon goes, how are other adventures handled. If an NPC is a PC encounter, we cannot say such things as "Throg the orc was killed by a party of adventurers," can we? Because some players may well have captured or bribed or whatever him instead. Something like that deserves a {{Speculation}} tag of some sort, yes?

~ Lhynard (talk) 05:43, December 2, 2015 (UTC)

Since they are password protected... legal issues?

- Darkwynters (talk) 05:59, December 2, 2015 (UTC)

The adventures would presumably fall under the same copyright and fair use rules we use for everything else. All articles should avoid speculation where possible (or even called out in the notes section like we do with our Al-Qadim articles) but like everything the information is only confirmable by those who have the original sources: whether they have a hard copy, pdf, or a distributed pack. The same should apply in this instance, as long as there is a reference, folk with access to the material can check it, those who don't, can't.

--Eli the Tanner (talk) 20:36, December 3, 2015 (UTC)

Just thought I should let people know that Adventurer's Guild modules are now on sale as part of the DM's Guild. Also, once Season 4 begins in a few months, all new Adventurer's Guild content is slated to be free to download for everyone.

-hash^talk 15:43, January 29, 2016 (UTC)

Hash: Did you mean "all old Adventurers League content? Did this happen? The only free content I see on the Dungeon Masters Guild site are Player Packs and reference sheets—all the modules still require payment to download. Correct me if I'm wrong.

—Moviesign (talk) 15:41, November 20, 2016 (UTC)

I have cobbled together a new citation template for Adventurers League publications. Here is an example citation:

{{Cite adventurers league
| url = http://www.dmsguild.com/product/177570/DDEX0315-Szith-Morcane-Unbound-5e%7Clink
| title = Szith Morcane Unbound
| code = DDEX3-15
| designer = [[Robert Adducci]]
| released = 2016-03-01
| accessdate = 2016-11-20
| storyline = Rage of Demons
| pages = 1-25 ← Just a guess at how many pages are in this PDF
}}

which would be called like so:

See the References list below for how this will look.

Is this a good format? Should the templates be organized alphabetically by title, or by the Adventurers League code? Should the citation templates be subpages under the code (similar to the way we have organized Dragon citation templates) or perhaps the storyline? I doubt making subpages is necessary because we can have the template sorted by code if that is desirable, but it's a choice we need to make.

For those interested in what's under the hood, this is the template so far.

—Moviesign (talk) 17:15, November 20, 2016 (UTC)

Either it was a miscommunication or they changed their minds. Some of them are cheap, but none are free.

--hash^talk 16:15, December 5, 2016 (UTC)