Talk:CODA System

Notability
I notice this page has accrued a notability template. It would be worth discussing this.

As a first point, this article is not covered by Notability (books). The CODA System is not a single or serial publication, it is a gaming system, elements of which can be found in several books printed covering at least two separate games. If this were an article on a single RPG manual printed for any of these games, then they would absolutely not be considered notable, but even then Notability (books) would likely not cover a gaming manual, as Notability (books) does not cover "reference works such as dictionaries, thesauri, encyclopedias, atlases and almanacs ... and instruction manuals and exam prep books." Gaming manuals would be expected to fall within this set of exceptions. Regardless, the CODA System is not a single manual, but a gaming system. It should be judged on the more general Notability guidelines.

With this in mind, it's not clear at this point that this system would satisfy notability. The article in its present state lacks sources. The majority of sources I can find referencing this system are reviews of the individual manuals; simple reviews probably don't constitute significant coverage as per the guideline.

However, the CODA System is the basis of two important games: Star Trek Role-playing Game and Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Game. Although these games never achieves major market success, the subjects of both these games are massive in pop-culture; additionally, there is no other major Star Trek RPG on the market, though there is another, more-successful LotR RPG avaialble (Middle Earth RPG).

Given that the vast majority of RPG systems are never known outside of the RPG community, I don't know what level of notability would be required to justify the system, if we rule out reviews of the system and fan sites, which would be the majority of sources for all but the largest RPG systems. However looking purely at the general Notability requirements, the subject of this article probably doesn't meet them and we should consider if it should be merged somewhere. If it is merged, both Star Trek and LotR have significant "related products" lists - the individual games using this system could be listed there.

Any thoughts? I'll change the template to the general notability template if I can figure out how; if you read this talk page and the template is yet to be changed, please change it yourself. CastorQuinn (talk) 05:55, 10 February 2008 (UTC)


 * There are provisional guidelines for RPGs at WP:RPG/N and discussion on that article's talk page; perhaps you would share your thoughts there? Percy Snoodle (talk) 11:22, 11 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the reference Percy. What I'll suggest is that decisions on the notability of this article be delayed until the proposed Notability:RPG guideline has been either implemented or dismissed.  CastorQuinn (talk) 04:08, 12 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Sure - no-one's AFD'ed the article, so there's no rush. Percy Snoodle (talk) 11:30, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

General Discussion
Although I edited this article a little, I am not extreamly familiar with this specific system. I did notice some problems I would like to point out that maybe somone could help clarify more.

First of all it would help if the author clarified wich Lord of the rings RPG they were refering to, I have only found one entry for an offical game so I linked to it (this one here), but maybe there is another one? (which could help clarify the next point)

Secondly the author seems to imply that this system is specifically designed for Wizards of the Coast games, and yet at the end of the article they mention that it is used for the Lord of the rings RPG. This beomces a problem because as far as I can tell wizards of the coast have not published a LOTR RPG and the one I did find is published by Decipher, Inc.

Also if anyone has more knowledge to specifics of the systems such as atributes, the health point system and advances it would help to expand what is already exisiting. If we want this article to be this detailed it needs to explain these terms in a little more depth (in my opinion)

Obviously other things need to be cleared up that I havn't mentioned, this is hopefully a good place to start? --Jake 04:53, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

"First of all it would help if the author clarified wich Lord of the rings RPG they were refering to"

The one published by Decipher, which is named "The Lord of the Rings RPG", is the one refered to.

Iron Crown Industries used to publish the Middle Earth Role Playing Game (MERP). It did not use the Coda system (which did not exist then), but a simplified version of ICE's Rolemaster system.

"Secondly the author seems to imply that this system is specifically designed for Wizards of the Coast games, and yet at the end of the article they mention that it is used for the Lord of the rings RPG."

No, the Coda system is compared to the WotC d20 system. This does not imply that Coda is designed for WotC games.

The Coda system, as stated in the article, is used for the LotR & Star Trek role playing games published by Decipher.

-- (Sorry, not registered.)

Also, the structuring of this article as a comparison to the d20 system seems rather odd. I plan to try to rewrite it. --Malirath 22:12, 8 March 2006 (UTC) (Registered now.)

Significant rewrite
I've left the basic information intact, just organised and worded it a bit better, reduced the focus on comparison to d20 (CODA is a system in its own right, so it seemed unusual to define it in terms of d20) and removed some of the less relevent details (such as the actual formula for generating the HP and health levels in-game, or the description of the objectives of the LOTR RPG). I've also noted that the CODA system as used in LOTR is slightly different to the CODA system from Trek.

I am unaware of any other Decipher publications, or any other published games, which use this system; if anyone knows of any, a section at the base of this page enumerating them and their publication dates would be very useful. Specifics of the mechanics beyond what we already have seem uneccesary here - they are not generally detailed on the entries for other game systems, and as CODA is not an open source gaming system including a detailed run down of the mechanics may be a breach of copyright.

I don't play CODA myself, so if I've introduced any slight errors in terms here, corrections would be wonderful. CastorQuinn 07:03, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Also, the official spelling seems to be CODA, not Coda. This may be worth a page rename; I'm not sure how to initiate one of those. CastorQuinn 07:05, 4 August 2006 (UTC)