Template talk:Infobox RPG

Alternative layout

proposed by Angelbo, moved here by Percy Snoodle

{{{Title}}}
{{{Image}}} {{{Caption}}}
Date of release:	{{{Date}}}
Publisher	{{{Publisher}}}
Chief designer	{{{Designer}}}
System	{{{System}}}
Genre	{{{Genre}}}

I like your table format - how about this: I've corrected some typos, and added the footnotes section (it's sometimes useful) and also changed "release date" (a CVG way of putting things) to "publication date" Percy Snoodle 14:53, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

{{{Title}}}
{{{Image}}} {{{Caption}}}
Chief designer	{{{Designer}}}
Publisher	{{{Publisher}}}
Publication date:	{{{Date}}}
System	{{{System}}}
Genre	{{{Genre}}}
{{{Footnotes}}}

In fact, I like your table layout so much I've put it in. Percy Snoodle 15:13, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks it is just base on the game infobox however I did not change the colour on it, so mached the rest of the RPG infoboxes. Thanks for the good work and great Ideas, keep em coming. Angelbo 17:03, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Extra Note Perhaps there should be a notice at the bottom of the infobox with a small font and the caption: "This infobox is maintained by WP:RPG
Angelbo 17:18, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Good idea. I've added a notice in the noinclude section, but another one in the infobox sounds like a good plan. Percy Snoodle 09:50, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Measurable as short-term goal

Moved to WikiProject RPGs/Goals. Jonas Karlsson 22:14, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Supplements

Would it be useful to add optional lines for supplements, like the role-playing game(s) it is used for? That way, we could add infoboxes to a articles about sourcebooks and supplements, too.

No, it was decided that either a sourcebook and supplement is notable enough for its own page, or not worth putting into the infobox. Percy Snoodle 11:44, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Multiple editions

How shall we handle games with multiple editions. So far I use the data of the first release (like release date and publishers), but on the other hand, the images are of newer editions, most of the time. Should we list various release dates? (Something like "1986 (1st edition)<br>1990 (2nd edition)<br>1997 (3rd edition)")

At Bunnies and Burrows I added two infoboxes, because I felt this were two very different releases. Such a thing would not be practical for normal situations. -- Genesis 11:52, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't think "Publication date" is the best field label, since it's usually a year and not an actual date. I would like to change the label to "Edition(s)", but that would screw up all previous entries as it would now be "Edition(s): 1999", and that's not good. On the other hand, you can see what pages uses the infobox but looking at what links to the template, right? I could go through the current articles if we want "Edition(s)" instead. If we use "Edition(s)", it's more clear that you should specify what edition you're talking about.

Perhaps your way of doing it is better, keep the label and just add edition information. I think it's very relevant information to know if "1999" means first or third edition, so we should get it in there somehow.

The two infoboxes look good on that page since, as you say, it's two very different releases. I added some info to them. Jonas Karlsson 18:56, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Suggestions on usage

I want to add some guidelines to the infobox front page, but I first want to check with you people if you think it's ok. First of all, I think it would be best to remove the right-hand descriptions, as it shouldn't be very hard to figure out how to fill out the box anyway. Right now it's a pain to have to remove descriptions from fields you're not filling out and stuff. My proposed notes on usage:

1. If there's some field you don't have information for, leave it blank but don't remove the field label. For example, if you don't know the publisher, keep the publisher line for someone else to fill out.
2. Please link to pages on designers, publishers and systems, but don't link the publication year as it's very rarerly relevant.
3. Some good places to look for information on games are RPGnet reviews, Pen-Paper.net Database and Amazon.com. There you can often find who designed a particular game and what year it was published.

What do you think? Is tips & tricks ok to have in the usage section? Are RPGnet and Amazon trustworthy enough (I would say they're trustworthy enough, though not infallible of course)? Should we add something to the list?

Also, we should specify if genres should be just the categories, or if it's ok to freeform and write anything that comes to mind. I would say the latter, as it can add more information than the rather blunt categories can. Jonas Karlsson 18:44, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

You are right about the years wikilinks, they don't make that much sense. And I also agree that one should not delete empty fields. (I did both, sorry ^^) The problem about blank fields is that fields that have preset entries (like "Publisher(s) unknown") are left blank. One could of course enter unknown by hand, but that wouldn't make that much sense, would it? How to solve this problem? Maybe use <!--- |publisher= <publisher(s)> ---> ? Ah well, that doesn't work at templates anyway. -- Genesis 23:35, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

My thought is that if someone comes around and spots a blank field and knows what to put there, they're more likely to do it than if they don't see any information missing from the infobox. unknown is a bit misleading, as you say, as one might think that it isn't known to anyone, when it's just the author that doesn't know. It'll probably just be a field or two that's empty anyway, and I don't think that looks to bad anyway. Jonas Karlsson 00:31, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

How about this: We just delete those fields that have a preset and leave the others. People either will see that a certain info is missing when looking at the page ("Publisher(s) unknown") or when editing it ("|Image="), so no info will be left out. -- Genesis 10:03, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't get it. From where should we delete it? Do you mean the descriptors from the template (changing "publisher=<publisher(s)>" to "publisher= "), or do you mean when we're filling out the infobox? And if we delete "<publisher(s)>", it won't say "publisher(s) unknown", will it? What am I missing? I wan't it to look like Delta Green does for the moment, how about you? Jonas Karlsson 14:53, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't want it to be like Delta Green, as it contains empty entries for Designer(s) and Publication date. The unknown entries are there for a reason, as it otherwise would look as if there were no designers. If you want the "|designer=" to stay, write "|designer= ''unknown''" instead.

But I think it does not need to stay, because if someone sees the infobox and the "Designer(s) unknown", he will think "Hey, I know who the designer was", click edit, see that there is no designer entry, look at the Template page and then include it. -- Genesis 15:24, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Ah, so if you remove the whole field, label and all, you still get "publisher(s) unknown"? Ok, then I think the middle ground is keeping the fields, but manually writing unknown (even if I personally feel it communicates that it isn't known to anyone). Having to go back to the template to know what fields are supposed to be there is exactly the extra work I want to spare other editors and myself. I move the guidelines to the front page now, please tell me if you still donät agree. Jonas Karlsson 10:59, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

No, that's fine with me. (PS: That's the first time I see someone on Wikipedia, type an Umlaut by mistake. Long live localised keyboards ;-) ) -- Genesis 12:32, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I've removed the blank lines but added a comment about the template's usage so a user will know what to fill in. Hopefully that's the best of both worlds. Percy Snoodle 11:50, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Added Pen-Paper.net Database to the examples of good sites. That page even mentions what the jobs of the editors were. By using that one we also could decide which people to list as designers. -- Genesis 11:33, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Good! I forgot about that one, and it's even better and more relevant than the other two. Jonas Karlsson 14:53, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

What about this? I guess it should be reformulated.

4. Only enter the designers of the first edition.

5. For more than one edition, write YEAR ''(1<small>st</small> edition)''<br>YEAR ''(2<small>nd</small> edition)'' etc. to produce

YEAR (1st edition)

YEAR (2nd edition)

etc.

Also I guess we could enter an example. -- Genesis 16:46, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject text

The WikiProject notice was removed on 2nd April by User:Paxomen, with the motivation that it's useful to editors and not readers. I want it back, as I think it's good to make people notice the project and maybe become editors if they're not already. I'll wait a couple of days and then put it back if no one objects. Jonas Karlsson 14:46, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Or not. I think I'll just add the RPGproject note to the articles' talk page instead. Jonas Karlsson 11:06, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Conversions field?

I would suggest adding an optional 'conversions' field, for RPG systems that started out in one system, but have been officially converted into several others. This would include such notable games as Deadlands (which has been converted officially into d20, GURPS, White Wolf's Storyteller, and Savage Worlds), and Traveller (GURPS and d20) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Primalchaos (talk • contribs) 01:38, 22 January 2007 (UTC).

Such games should have muliple entries listed using the {{{system}}} parameter. Percy Snoodle 07:45, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Reorganisation

In my quest to make infoboxen look consistent and pretty I'm planning on re-working this one. The most important change is that unknown attributes won't be shown at all: they won't have "unknown" in them. This is consistent with other infoboxes. Is this acceptable? Chris Cunningham 13:21, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I've just gone ahead and done this. Chris Cunningham 13:34, 3 October 2007 (UTC)