Talk:Unearthed Arcana

Send Money?
Anybody have the first edition handy? I remember a great half page piece of art in the UA that had cryptic, or "greek" wording on the pages of a book. If you bothered to "read" the text of the pages shown, the words "Send Money" or "Send Me Money" could be found, among several other messages.

Who was the artist?

What pages was it on? Page 83.

Many thanks, "a grognard," Javafueled

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Javafueled (talk • contribs) 20:12, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

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BetacommandBot (talk) 02:27, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

GAN?
Hey there. As I've mentioned in other places, I think this one is barely good enough for a GAN attempt. So let's give it a go! :) One thing I would think of to make it look better (and less, "hey, the more recent 3E book is more important!" would be to have one infobox for each book, like at Player's Handbook. Also, I know Drilnoth is revising the D&D Books template, which should make it more useful than the "uber-3e" books template we currently have. :)

Another thing we should probably explore is which material was taken from Dragon. I think that, otherwise, the 1E book portion is well-sourced, even if we are talking mostly primary sources. The 3E book portion, if possible, needs to be expanded using whatever sources are available. BOZ (talk) 01:58, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Regarding the infoboxes, I actually think that the general consensus is to describe the first edition only (something which I hadn't known when I added them to Player's Handbook). Otherwise, it sounds good. I'm going to put some more work into this once I have the aforementioned template done. -Drilnoth (talk) 02:59, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I think in this case, "first edition" means the first printing of a book. Since 1E UA and 3E UA are totally different books, that concept doesn't apply here. But I'm ambivalent whether we have two infoboxes or one, just that I think the 1E book shouldn't get short shrift. :) BOZ (talk) 03:16, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Good point; I'll agree with that. -Drilnoth (talk) 03:27, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

3rd edition book
Since the review is over, I'm posting this here. The 3rd edition book has the same name largely the same role. In addition much of the criticism (beyond the errors from the 1st edition version) lies on the same faults; too unbalancing and largely uninteresting. However, I admit, the phrase "update" might not be appropriated, however something like "ramake" "rewrite" might be since those elements it modifies and the role it plays is the same in both. じん    ない   16:28, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

impact on "core" rules
There is some discussion on how the first book affected rules for 2nd edition (or lack thereof), but nothing about the impact of 3rd edition one on the rules, including, that many of the ideas were taken and adopted into what WotC would later reclassify as their broader class of "core" books. じん    ない   00:30, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Negativity
The fact that the only comment in the "Reception" section for the later book is a profoundly negative (and subjective) one makes it seem as though the book is not well-respected. This seems unlikely, as some of its contents were incorporated into Wotco's official System Resource document (www.d20srd.org). Can someone find something good to say about the book? (For the original edition, I'm not expecting there to be much good worth saying.) 174.46.172.13 (talk) 10:49, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
 * It just takes some looking around, I bet. 67.175.176.178 (talk) 11:32, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Official rules?
I looked up Dragon #88 to see what else the editorial said about how TSR felt the material needed to be printed in book form - and was disappointed to find that the source said nothing of the sort, and was only talking about trademarking issues related to the names of works and such. I think the below statements, which I have removed from the article, would be worthy of inclusion if we can find a source that actually supports them. BOZ (talk) 07:06, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

TSR (and the RPGA) considered publication in a rulebook format necessary before the material could be used in tournament standard play. Unearthed Arcana, therefore, is the publication that made this material an official part of the AD&D game system.

Additional reading
These items were in the "additional reading" section, and I have removed them here after reading them myself. Just because I have judged them unworthy doesn't mean someone else may not see a reason to use them! :)


 * "The transition starts now", Dragon #99 - this is just a breif editorial about UA material was going to begin to be incorporated into Dragon mag articles. BOZ (talk) 18:38, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * "What Are the Odds?", Dragon #117 - this is a probablity chart for rolling on the new "Method 5" for character creation. BOZ (talk) 20:08, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Development history
In this section, the first five sentences all contain "Gygax" (yikes). However, I am a little stumped how to reduce. I am tired and about to hit the sack here and nothing is jumping out at me, but some alternative is needed. Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:48, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
 * How'zat? BOZ (talk) 16:13, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Better. Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:12, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Additional reading / review

 * Review: The V.I.P. of Gaming Magazine #3 (1986) -- Taken from the article. Hekerui (talk) 09:21, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * If anyone ever somehow finds a copy of this obscure magazine, please see what you can do to get some info from the review posted into the article. :) BOZ (talk) 11:45, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

It was also reviewed in Different Worlds #42. 204.153.84.10 (talk) 23:31, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Online content
Thanks for moving the information here from the rulebooks list. It does look very unbalanced on this page, do you have an objection to collapsing the text? This is a Good Article and I would hate to see it delisted over something like that. 207.229.139.154 (talk) 06:36, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The article probably needs to be reassessed since it was listed in 2010 and I'm not entirely sure it would pass that given the heavy use of primary sources in the AD&D & 3E sections. I don't think that the 5E content negatively impacts the article's Good Article status; it could be improved by adding secondary sources (which most of the later UA have). But this isn't an improvement project I have time for; if you want to tackle this the Guild of Copy Editors or a peer review might be a good place to start. In terms of collapsing, MOS:COLLAPSE states: Collapsible templates should not conceal article content by default upon page loading. This includes reference lists, tables and lists of article content. You can add the option to have it be collapsible but it needs to also meet accessibility standards. Sariel Xilo (talk) 17:58, 27 February 2023 (UTC)