It's Alive! (The EfU:A Wiki)

[Egon the Monkey]

Hello everyone. After a few days of intermittent tweaking, the Missing Manual project has moved from a forum post onto a wiki at the suggestion of Barehander. What I've collected together so far is far from exhaustive and could do with some expansion, but it does bring together a lot of gameplay changes from all over the forums in one place, as well as features that haven't got round to being documented on the site. Right now it just covers things that aren't on the mechanics pages already, but I hope we can expand it to cover all that too.

The EFU:A wiki is now live at:
http://efua.wikia.com

Enjoy. Expand.

-Egon

[Thomas_Not_very_wise]

Epic work, Egon!

[Mort]

Did you get approval from the dm team/howland, before starting your prima guide entry to efu:a?

[Thomas_Not_very_wise]

Just from a quick glance there's a lot missing but I have to say I definitely endorse a player created "missing manual" that explains a lot of the systems and mechanics changes in one place.

[Mort]

lol? How do you get from this that it's okay to host information on a third website about a module that was created by us?

Endorsement is making the guide so we can edit it and then post it on the website. It makes our job much easier and it's a welcomed collaboration.

Hosting a source of information that is inaccurate and can be edited by anyone just requires us to police YET again another location to make sure the information is accurate, or non-spoilering that we didn't want to police.

Making this website without any sort of approval/go ahead from the makers of the module is odd as that seems to be a logical step.

We dont want a remake of www.battle.net/arreatsummit/ . The information that we were fine to post was:
 - Spell changes.
 - Class changes.
 - Basic Familiar information.
 - Basic Animal Companion information.
 - A few systems.

This helps us. This is good. This is fine.

* * *

Okay, so let's return to the initial motivation to make this.

 - There is an information skew that unbalances the game for new players in opposition to veterans.

The details labelled above contribute a minor effect size of that skew. The real effect size is monster knowledge, quest knowledge, drop knowledge, quest reward/danger knowledge, quest location, shop knowledge, area locations, danger location, and selleable knowledge. These parameters (which we all agreed cannot be put online else it would just spoil it for everyone) are what contributes the MOST (I'd say 95%) to this skew. These what are what make you rich, powerful, high level, die less, and so on.

That's your learning curve.

* * *
Now, to return to the guide and wiki:

We have over 6-7+ plagues, diseases, coded, spread in the gameworld yet this only mentions one that Egon shared his feeling toward multiple times. We dont want these diseases to be known ooc. It is however perfectly fine for a scholar to document them in-character.

We have over 10+ customized throwing (each with their description changed giving an hint of what to expect in-character). We can add some on a whim as part of a quest and they shouldn't be considered a feature of efu.

Our custom potions also have descriptions that provide in-character information. We also may add some rare ones as part of quests or unique ones. Some are fine to be documented like 'discipline', or Caprice, or Radical -- but not Elixir of Improvement, It's good that there is some mystery toward what these highly rare potions can or cannot do. And if we only put information on some... where's to say where is the cut-off?

Custom shapes. We can script special shapes for people who request it. Putting them 'as available' on a wiki seems redundant as technically anything can be available for those who argument toward that. It's also fun to discover their strength and weaknesses on your own as you make a druid, a mage, and so on, just having that knowledge that custom shapes are available through the crafting menu and a few examples to give some interest is enough.

Summoning theme. Reagents. Ingredients. It's fun to have a degree of unknown there.

Animation. Corpses. Ingredients. It's fun again to have a degree of unknown there.

* * *

Being shown something In-character is just so much more fun than being told about it. For example, exploring a new area. Somebody finds an area, he then hurries back to the city, tells people and they make an exploration group and go marvel at its beauty.

The opposite is he finds the area, tell everyone on IRC, they go solo invisible/stealth, explore it alone.

They learned the same thing, but one was much more enjoyable. I can even make an analogy to going to watch a movie with friends vs. reading the synopsis on the internet.

As one of the people who made the movie (or in this case the module), we want people to discover as much as they can through in-character means, that's when it's truly awesome and every little bit of detail counts.

If you want to sabotage this discovery of the world we created through spoiling that in private channels on IRC, we wont be able to monitor it -- but I will do my best where we can monitor it to prevent that.

[Howlando]

The DM team will talk about this and see if we can figure something out that addresses everyone's needs.

[Howlando]

All right, as it stands right now -

- Some of the specifics in the current wikia is stuff we'd rather not release publicly (exact DCs of sewer disease for example)

- This is a bit of a situation where one hand doesn't know what the other is doing, there is actually an effort going on right now to completely spruce up our website and better detail out mechanics changes. Hopefully when that happens we can finally have ONE source of info.

[Barehander]

Well, a few points:

The DM team doesn't really have a right to stop anyone from hosting whatever information they want on an independent site. Certainly we're all eager to get along, but Mort's attitude that suggests we somehow need your "approval" to share information among eachother is rather misguided and condencending. If you have an alternative, you can ask nicely, instead of trying to exert authority where you have none.

And secondly: the very fact that this is player-maintained and unofficial means you don't have to police anything. It takes all the responsibility off your hands. I imagine it will be a big glowing disclaimer on the front page of the Wiki once we get further with it. Something that is not official is not your problem, so all the concerns about extra work are unfounded. A player-maintained guide is not the ideal solution, but it has much merit you seem to miss.


I don't disagree much with Mort about the specifics of what is or isn't fun to publish. However, I disagree with the notion that I or you or anyone else should get to make that call for others. If you don't want to reveal this information, don't reveal it. If somebody else wants to, then they're free to do so. The same goes for looking up these spoilers. If you're old enough to play online, you're old enough to control what you read.

That said, I would prefer an official website that was comprehensive and up-to-date. If that's in the making, cool. But I seriously doubt you'll be able to keep it that way for long, whatwith constant changes and dozens of forgotten things coming up again. It's a lot of work, especially if you have to update the website a few times a month, so IMO it's better to use all the resources you have (that is, players).

But in all honesty, I have no interest in hand-wrestling DMs about what information to publish. I think it's fair that you get to be the ones to present this information in whatever shape you prefer, first. But you can't expect players to twiddle their thumbs for months without updates. EfU's players might not be so passive and timid if they were included more actively in building and maintaining the game campaign as a whole. I see more of "DMs will talk in private and see what we want to do" than "Let's talk in public and see what we all want to do" on these forums, which doesn't exactly inspire player activity.

[Howlando]

The DM team doesn't really have a right to stop anyone from hosting whatever information they want on an independent site. Certainly we're all eager to get along, but Mort's attitude that suggests we somehow need your "approval" to share information among eachother is rather misguided and condencending.

There's no need to be antagonistic. We may not have the legal right, but we have every right to ask players to not share certain kinds of information amongst themselves and every right to ban or otherwise crack down when our work isn't respected.

But I have absolutely no doubt that's not necessary, as you said we should all just get along and I have no doubt that Egon is just trying to help with this project. The effort/intent is certainly appreciated, there's just a bit of info we'd like to restrict and maybe it'd be best if the effort went towards the website update that other players are working on with the sanction of the DM team.

[Snoteye]

I am not going to get further into this, but:

Barehander, this is not a democracy. It is a dictatorship. You do not get to vote for your leaders, we pick them for you. What you do get is the right to come and go as you please, provided you adhere to the rules we put down. We do not have legal authority to shut down a project like this whether we want to or not, but we do have the right to tell you when we do not approve of our players' actions, and we do have the right to punish them if they misbehave despite warnings.

Personally I want to wish the people behind the wiki good luck. I think it's a great initiative.

[Paha]

It's all fair and square to ask that, and after someone questioned it, Mort simply put out how things are.

If we go in reality, they have the rights to hold the information, every custom scripted change or content they've made, does belong to them, if we start being picky here. None would have the rights to publicly publish them without permission. No doubt on that, so I suggest we don't start arguing about it.

This is absolutely awesome initiative project, and surely can be used after discussing with the DM staff.

[Egon the Monkey]

[hide="The Long Story"]

Hosting a source of information that is inaccurate and can be edited by anyone just requires us to police YET again another location to make sure the information is accurate, or non-spoilering that we didn't want to police.

It takes all the responsibility off your hands. I imagine it will be a  big glowing disclaimer on the front page of the Wiki once we get further  with it.

It doesn't glow, but it's there. let's make it glow. I like glows.

Incidentally, Mort,  if you thought to ask, I'd have told you that I planned to protect sections of the wiki after a couple of weeks for the purpose of spoiler blocking, and give admin privileges to a mix of EfU DMs and players in order to keep it up to date. I didn't mention that right off the bat as I didn't expect this much worry.

We have over 6-7+ plagues, diseases, coded, spread in the gameworld yet this only mentions one that Egon shared his feeling toward multiple times.

Because it is the only non-standard one I have knowingly encountered in 2 years of playing the server, Mort. :???: If nobody knows about them, nobody can write about them.  I had a thread up for a week or so and nobody suggested other ones. Additionally, the vast majority of PCs who spread it are new players who  have no idea they're infected or it's transmissible as they don't have  the Disease icon up or any idea that's possible. Also, there are no DCs posted.

Summoning theme. Reagents. Ingredients. It's fun to have a degree of unknown there.

Yes, that's why I've not solicited any advice on them nor posted the multiple recipes I know, and nor has anyone else in the original thread.

If you want to sabotage this discovery of the world we created through spoiling that in private channels on IRC, we wont be able to monitor it -- but I will do my best where we can monitor it to prevent that.

No, really, I don't. People are trying to save you guys time here in making a comprehensive index of all the published and non-spoilering changes on EfU. If my original aim WAS to spoil things, I'd have written a how to on every quest, a stat sheet on every summon and monster I know,  posted it about using a pseudonym and done it using a proxy server to dodge a ban. I didn't do that. The aim was to combine the published changes and the sort of Find Out In Gossip stuff everyone knows after a couple months on the server. Not "The Jergali Crypt boss casts Cloud Of Bewilderment, be sure to use Ironguts" (No, he doesn't cast that, it's an example).

Now, considering I had a thread up for a week with the same objective, a wiki was suggested by other players in that thread and the only differences now are:[LIST=1]

• I added some more stuff from the Announcements forums.
• The formatting (arguably) doesn't suck any more.
• DMs can't remove stuff. (Which none of them have done on the original thread anyway, despite it being possible).

I really don't understand the sudden outburst of drama. It's not like nobody saw this coming. Not least as the existence of the mostly unfinished wiki was posted in a thread four days ago.

maybe it'd be best if the effort went towards the website update that  other players are working on

What website update? No, seriously. I didn't hear about this :(. I did originally create the missing manual idea with the aim collating all the info in wan place to facilitate that and save DM time on it though.

Now, the advantage of having a player run wiki is it's faster than the website updating both due to the format being easy to edit, and the number of contributors. Everyone involved has shown this in that there's now a central index of most of the major changes up within about a week. Faster than an update.

The disadvantage, yes, is that someone could go and post MASSIVE SPOILERS. However, there are plenty of ways to post those anyway, and if this wiki turns out to be popular among the players, a good chance of such spoilers being reverted out by other players. A long spoiler's not a quick thing to write either, so there's something of a disincentive to go and write a 3 page quest description that'll get shitcanned by the next user.

If we go in reality, they have the rights to  hold the information, every custom scripted change or content they've  made, does belong to them, if we start being picky here. None would have  the rights to publicly publish them without permission. No doubt on  that, so I suggest we don't start arguing about it.

Nope. If we're being picky here, Mort can say "Don't use my pictures",  and any DM who posted an Announcement can say "don't copy my words  without my permission". However, anything that's an original report on the content of the game? Nope. It's a review or unofficial guide. The ironic thing being that a direct copy of official posts cannot by its nature contain spoilers, but a spoiler would not need any permission or rights to post.[/hide]

tl:dr summary

• Nobody's trying to create the Prima Spoiler Guide, or they'd have done it properly and really pissed in everyone's cornflakes.
• Other PWs , e.g. Arelith have wikis, and this hasn't caused The End of the Game as We Know It.
• The reason the wiki's not got a spoiler policy is nobody's written it yet. *Goes off to do that*. There's now a Do Not Post list.
  
• Sheesh, this is hardly news. I was trying to run this in a forum post since 9 days ago, and several DMs posted in that thread.

[Egon the Monkey]

But indeed, not gaining approval first from the DMs for this kind of  thing seems like an almost hostile thing to do.

Originally Posted by Howland                            
 Just from a quick glance there's a  lot missing but I have to say I definitely endorse a player created  "missing manual" that explains a lot of the systems and mechanics  changes in one place.

For example, I don't see why there should be details of specific items  (ie. Elixir of Improvement, grenade-like weapons) or specific hazards  (Corpse Blight, Drowning) that can be encountered in game.

Because they can wipe out new players without them knowing what's going on, or make them waste valuable items to know what they do. Veteran players will know OOC from their first PC to encounter them. Specifically to an outsider, Flash Powder looks like Choking Dust in the description and definitely doesn't just cause Blind as you may expect.

As for Drowning, it is possibly one of the most frustrating ways to get killed on EFU, and the sort of thing that if it were a default NWN feature would be in a manual. A new player stuck drowning is not going to figure that stuff out, and it doesn't benefit anyone to hide it. In fact it penalises them by being unable to ICly stock up on supplies or work out what's "attacking" them when they drown. Take that line of argument to its conclusion and nobody should ever read a game manual beyond the controls.

Update on this:
Pages are locked at the current level of information that has been out on the forums for days. They won't be updating much further. Found out a bit about the site upgrade Howl mentioned and don't want to waste a lot of player time effectively forking the documentation for EfU.

[Thomas_Not_very_wise]

The irony of this discussion is that new players check the forums last and die first.

And likely are going to find this thread last unless a DM stickies it.

[SkillFocuspwn]

Yes, as thomas says, the guise of "helping brand new players" is a ridiculous one! No kind of new player who would not understand the messages popping up saying "you are going to drown" would look at a server, decide to play it, and then look for the forums and any form of comprehensive guide on how to play the game.

Secondly, explaining which wild forms / polymorphs / items can be used to stop this is, to me, completely inappropriate. EfU is a world full of amazing surprises and things like that look to me to be a way of taking all mystery and stamping it definitively down onto hard print.

That is not information that can be used to not accidentally wander into the water to drown, that is information about ways to explore EfU:A that, while originally achievable by going with friends and finding it out or experimentation, can simply be found OOCly. In my eyes, that benefits nobody at all.

Share pertinent information and share enough information to stimulate curiosity but it really annoys me that something as fun as learning how to explore all the cool underwater places is put on Wiki for anybody to learn OOCly. It takes out a ridiculous amount of the point of EFU!