User:BOZ/Monster Sandbox

=BOZ=

Monstrous Manual (1993)
Designer credits here and ISBN info, as well as other pertinent info on the book.


 * How about making these tables sortable? And do you agree with the idea of the image linking? J Milburn (talk) 23:42, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
 * i wonder if sorting is needed? most are listed in the books alphabetically, or at least having them sorted thus in the table would make finding a specific one for referencing easier. how would sorting by alignment help? not that i agree fully alignment should be there, but jsut pondering. and how would sorting via "other appearances" work as they would be sorted alphabetically by the first other that is listed. shadzar-talk 23:46, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
 * How do we make them sortable? :)  I'm intrigued.  I'd have to see how that works before I can really give an opinion. I'm fine with image linking, and I'm ambivalent on including alignment (though that is often one of the more prominent features of D&D monsters). Naturally, we would list the monster's alignment as given in that book, because alignment can differ from book to book. BOZ (talk) 00:26, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
 * class="wikitable sortable" instead of just class="wikitable" is all i know about it like my attempt below as well the one above it. shadzar-talk 00:30, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah! I didn't even notice that previously. I can see your point about the utility of sorting.  Sorting might be useful for alignment and creature name, but probably little else. Maybe sorting by page. BOZ (talk) 00:33, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
 * i made the image column in mine below unsortable so you can see how to prevent sorting of a single column to apply to your model and see how it looks. sorting by page would only be useful within a specific book so the page numebrs would need their own colimn for each book then. would be helpful for books that weren't alphabetically listed, or for sorting via location rather than which comes first. numbers or symbols, and other special non alpha-numeric characters. shadzar-talk 00:44, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Your model is starting to look pretty workable, if we at least put in a spot for the description. :) BOZ (talk) 06:11, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
 * since i am "playing in your sandbox" so to speak, feel free to adjust my model to suit the needs. i have a page like this one under my user name where i test it first before bringing it here so i can review little changes and in case i goof it up it doesn't ruin this page. i placed one here for the purpose of altering to a working one. i am new to these tables, and barely remember how i made my own userbox for AD&D. so whoever you wants can edit the one i made below to make it work. i am just in a mood to get these things rolling while i have the spare time to add monsters to them. shadzar-talk 08:21, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
 * It's my sandbox, but I invited everyone to bring their own toys. ;) I think we're getting pretty close to what we need to get things rolling. BOZ (talk) 12:22, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

=J Milburn= J Milburn would do it like this, with the notes section including relevent links to modules, video games, supplements etc that the monster has appeared in-


 * Updated to factor in other people's ideas. J Milburn (talk) 12:58, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Races of Faerûn (March 2003)
Races of Faerûn is a supplement released March 2003 to provide an overview of races for PCs and NPCs in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. It included statistics for five monsters. 

After reading something Peregrine Fisher said, how about this-

That would definitely work well for the 3E books, saving space by eliminating two columns. We could toss alignment under description (when an editor feels it's worth mentioning?) to eliminate another column. BOZ (talk) 17:37, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah- as you can see, I have already removed the column; I guess we could stick it in when it is particuarly relevent (like to outsiders). J Milburn (talk) 17:41, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * not to nit-pick but for understanding, what purpsoe does Creative Origins serve in being sortable? shadzar-talk 23:28, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * None, really- change it if you like. As the monsters are generally sorted alphabetically by page number anyway, there's not really any need for it to be sortable at all. J Milburn (talk) 23:35, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Sortability is an interesting option, but hardly necessary. It would only be useful for monster name and page #, and as Milburn states most (but hardly all) sources sort the monsters alphabetically by name already. BOZ (talk) 23:37, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * i was just wondering if there was something that might appear there that i was overlooking. since it currently has no data in the table i didn't know what it might be used for. it may be something sortable. i just have no idea what the column is for. origins within the books: Draconians were made from corrupting good dragon egs, inspiration of the creature like Sirine from Siren, or even which book it first appeared in. shadzar-talk 00:00, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * No, it's for creative origins- where the designers got the idea from. For a lot of them, it's obvious, but those in the supplements are less so. A lot of them won't be based on anything, but if it's obvious (they share a name) or we can source it, we may as well include it. J Milburn (talk) 00:05, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah that makes sense then. but may be a bit hard to find refs for the origins lest we delve into original research, or personal dieas of where they came up with the mosnters. of course the hobbit should be pretty obvious with its origins. shadzar-talk 00:09, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah; a lot of monsters are obvious, and it's just for the sake of having a link to the corresponding mythological article. For the others, there are interviews and such where the designers do mention it, so we will be able to add a few. J Milburn (talk) 17:08, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, based on discussion with Peregrine Fisher below, I'm adding bogus text to the Creative Origins section to see how it looks to have three columns with roughly a sentence each woth of text:

As you can see, the table starts to strech downward. It's not awful, since we reduced the number of columns, but it's not great either. Anything longer than a sentence will make it a bit hard to read. I can work with it, if this is commonly thought to be the best model. BOZ (talk) 14:44, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm not just saying this because it is 'my' idea, but I think that looks very good. J Milburn (talk) 17:08, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

=shadzars partial idea=

Monster Manual II (1983)
Monster Manual II, 1983, ISBN 0-88038-031-4

of course this may not be correct info on fitst appearance, but i think it would help identify notable product in the monster list. but i think some of this info might have some useable format in the proposed tables.


 * Perhaps it would be best to format the book info with the book citing template? J Milburn (talk) 16:50, 13 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Are you referring specifically to the part between the header and the table, or to the books listed in the "other appearances" section? BOZ (talk) 17:40, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
 * maybe that should be part of the books article or infobox. since we are talking about tables primarily for listing the monsters and cross referencing them some books might be rather large to have a list of all the authors that may be for them....and i don't understand that cite thing so somebody else might need to inject it into practice on this model for an example. shadzar-talk 22:53, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I'll mess around with this further tomorrow and over the weekend. I think I'm heading for an early bedtime tonight. :) BOZ (talk) 01:42, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I have added a book cited in the template to my modified idea. As we are citing them as sources, I think we need to include all relevent information about them. J Milburn (talk) 13:01, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

=Peregrine Fisher idea=


 * That looks good when there's only one monster, but won't look so good when listing many, I would imagine. Also, I think an OGL stats link is a bad idea compared to an image link for three reasons- firstly, far fewer monsters will have OGL stats than an image on the WotC website, and secondly, the image is accessible- a lot of people would like to see an image, but not so many people would be interested in seeing the stats. Finally, an image is that little bit more encyclopedic. J Milburn (talk) 18:18, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Just realised you also include an image link. As I say, that table looks fantastic for a single monster, but wouldn't be nearly as good for several. J Milburn (talk) 18:20, 16 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Not sure what you don't like about it, but I added a larger description to one of the monsters in your table to illustrate what a larger description will do in case putting it on its own line is what you don't like. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 21:17, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Larger descriptions should be reverted on sight as they are just plain too crufty. Two sentences is too many- nevermind a paragraph. I don't like the idea of a single entry in a table taking up several rows- it becomes very convoluted. J Milburn (talk) 21:40, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Even one sentence descriptions won't work well with your above table. That kind only works if all the fields are the same size.  If the Other appearances takes several lines it will do it to.  Take a look at List of My Name Is Earl episodes for an example. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 21:46, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
 * One's monitor resolution will also make tables with column spanning fields problematic as well. What fits in the box at a high resolution will take several lines at low resolution. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 21:50, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I still don't like those many-rowed entries, but I hadn't considered resolution... J Milburn (talk) 22:06, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Good points Peregrine - what say you Mr. Milburn? BOZ (talk) 22:26, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
 * As far as having a separate line for notes/creative origins, I'm less sure about that. Many will be blank, and that's taking up space for no good reason.  I've seen infobox lines that are omitted when blank; could we do the same for those? BOZ (talk) 22:28, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I think that would make it even more confusing. J Milburn (talk) 22:42, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
 * definately for wiki-novices multi-rowed rows in tables can be confusing. maybe a single column with small information would be all is needed, rather than reproduce large amounts of description from the SRD/OGL. how much description would each monster really need? what it looks like is all i can think of. the rest should be found in the product that contians it IMHO. shadzar-talk 23:01, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I think what we really need at this point is a more effective mock-up to show the advantages/disadvanteges of the various formats. I'll try to get that together tomorrow morning/early afternoon, using some of the oldest books from the mid-70s pre-1E days, which contain some of the most classic monsters which have been repeated throughout the editions. BOZ (talk) 03:03, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

=1974= OK, I decided to make some mock-ups of some of the oldest books (I say some of the oldest, because I was let's say a little too young to be playing D&D in '74 and therefore don't have a full grasp of its early history). I have some of these oldest books on PDF, not in actual book form, so undoubtedly some of my information is lacking. I borrowed Shadzar's template for this one, and removed the image box. Descriptive text is as given in this book, not as in any other book. Many do not even have alignment listed, but I noted when they do.

TSR 2002 - Dungeons & Dragons "white box" (1974)
This early boxed set by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson was printed in 1974, and is often known as the "white box." It contained two booklets, one of which—"Monsters & Treasure"—contained some of the first descriptions of the game's most iconic monsters. This booklet contained an index on pages 3-4 featuring stats only for how many creatures of each type appeared per encounter, armor class, how many inches the creature could move on its turn, hit dice, % in lair, and treasure. Pages 5-20 followed with descriptions of each of the monsters, typically consisting of one or more paragraphs. Most of the monsters on this book did not feature an illustration. Also features were descriptions of humans (bandits, brigands, berserkers, dervishes, nomads, buccaneers, cavemen, and mermen), horses, insects, and other small and large animals.

1974, ISBN XXX

Peregrine Fisher's format:


 * i prefer the top version of these two. but i don't think the creatures names need to be plural. Goblin will work just as well as Goblins and save a few kb as more monsters are added. shadzar-talk 23:37, 17 March 2008 (UTC)


 * The reason I used plurals is because that is how it is written in the source. I think staying as true to the source as possible with minimum interpretation is the best idea... but your mileage may vary on that. :) BOZ (talk) 03:36, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

If we comma seperate the Other appearances section, even less room will be used. The table will auto adjust so the least amount of room is used. I think this way will scale the best, since some creatures will have info for the various fields than others. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 01:51, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Comments
Ooh! Now, I like that one quite a bit. :) BOZ (talk) 03:36, 18 March 2008 (UTC) Still, with a format like that we'd have to do without the sorting - try it and you'll see the problem. BOZ (talk) 03:37, 18 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Implementing your change into my tables above... As you can see, such a minor edit made a huge difference in both cases! Clearly, either way can work now that we have fewer columns, and I'm now fine with either presentation. BOZ (talk) 14:33, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * The only problem is the "Creative Origins" column. Clearly, two columns with potentially long text fields can work (as demonstrated above), but if we have three such columns (creative origins, other appearances, description), I don't think I will work so well.  I strongly believe that, to have all three, one must be a row instead of a column, and that should be the one most likely to need the most room.BOZ (talk) 14:36, 18 March 2008 (UTC)


 * We need a place for referenced information too. Other appearances and description are going to be the two longest so one of those should probably get its own row.  If we create a template, one small change to it can instantly change the tables.  I'm going to work on Template:D&D creature list and see if I can figure it out. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 18:42, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Multiple rows for a single item will not work
so before reaidng through anything and hope too much work hasnt been put into it... each of the above tables that has a seperate line for description and such to make it more easily readable there is a flaw in. when sorting the table those rows get sorted as well. sorting by page number makes it so the lines without that column fail to be sorted with their respective mosnters. it seems it must be a single linge per monster for any sorting to work. shadzar-talk 03:22, 19 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Yeah, we had to abandon that idea. Check the below section for the latest thing we're working with. BOZ (talk) 03:33, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Template now works, try it out
I got the template to work. Right now description gets its own row, but if you revert my last edit Other Appearances will get its own row. A very minor change to it and all the cells will be on one row if we want. We can add optional cells or rows if we want too, although it's a little more difficult. I think the best thing to do now is actually create one of these monster pages using the template, then try a number of versions of the template and see which one makes the page look the best. Here's a little sample to show you how it works.

I don't really see the difference? It looks the same in the final product... are you thinking that this template will be easier to edit because everything's on separate lines rather than the tables we've been working with?

And I think it would be a fair compromise to have "other appearances" on a separate line (and can we omit that for any one-off creatures or 3E with no other appearances?), and I think that would settle J Milburn's concerns, because Other appearances can't get too crufty, nor grow much beyond what we input (only when people locate books we missed, or when new books get released). This would allow for a reasonable amount of space for the "creative origins" and Description lines. BOZ (talk) 19:31, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Right now, 'other appearances' looks better as part of the first line- otherwise it won't be obvious what exactly it is; the description can stay without a title, as it is pretty obvious what it is. I assume creative origins now falls under description? "Alignment whatever based on the whatever of whatever legend"? Could we also add parameters to the table so that links to OGL stats and images could be formatted as I did on my more recent table? Last tiny little point- the titles of the columns should be in sentence case- see MOS. I will have a fiddle with this later, write out the monsters from a book (Libris Mortis and Races of Faerun are near by...) but I have an essay to write first. J Milburn (talk) 20:09, 18 March 2008 (UTC)


 * BOZ: As far as looks go, it should look just like our mock ups.  The benefit is that it's easier to edit, and much easier to change.  Imagine adding/removing a cell with the hand coded tables, it's going to be a ton of work and it will have to be done for every D&D creature list page.  With the template you just make one change to its page and it automatically updates every creature page.
 * Milburn: Yeah, we can add Image and OGLStats fields to the template and it can automagically format them the way you did above. It will be a little bit trickier, but not too bad.  If I have time today I'll add that. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 20:44, 18 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Milburn, if it helps you appreciate the separate row more, we can include the Creative Origins as part of the non-labelled Description line, such as with the quote at Rust monster. :) So if we format "Other Appearances" to instead say "Other appearances", and add the OGL and image to the name-column, are we then good to go with this most recent template? :) BOZ (talk) 22:08, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * This seems to be pretty good, and we could certainly get some decent tables out of it. My second sandbox contains code that I think will change the template to include the image and OGL stats, but I would rather someone who actually understands them checks it first so I don't break it. Also, could we possibly get a documentation up, even if it is just the fields of the template ready for a copy-paste? J Milburn (talk) 22:31, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh, and once the template has been updated to include those things, I'll get cracking on the 3.0 Monster Manual. J Milburn (talk) 22:34, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) The test template at User:J Milburn/Sandbox2 seems good. I did a very small test of it and didnt' get it to work, but it's definitely on the right track for what we need. Do you think we should create a field "Notes" or something for comments like the Rust Monster would need? It wouldn't have to go into a new cell or row. If the field is used it could put in a new line followed by whatever text was entered. Then if we decide to move stuff around it will only have to be done on the main template. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 00:50, 19 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I can't figure out how to do the external links in the template. I'll look at it tomorrow. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 01:48, 19 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Check out the above table now. I think it will now use the available space in the best way.  The only thing that might end up looking better is a seperate row for "Other appearances" and "Description."  The only way we'll now is to make an actual article using the template, then we can take screenshots of the page with the various types of formatting at several common resolutions and decide which is best. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 05:24, 19 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Looks good to me. :) BOZ (talk)

Check out the documentation I have added to the template page, tell me what you think. J Milburn (talk) 17:42, 19 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Looks good as well. :) BOZ (talk) 17:51, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Ok, last thing I want to discuss before I get cracking on the 3.0 Monster Manual- how do we format the 'other appearances'? I think we should just list the book (linking to its article if it has one) and say what was included there, along with the edition. So, it would look something like this- "Whatever, (v. # statistics listed) Whatever, (v. # statistics listed) Whatever, (v. # statistics listed) Whatever (supplement detailing [monster]s in more detail)". Thoughts? J Milburn (talk) 18:00, 19 March 2008 (UTC)


 * That would be fine. We could also place a key at the top and then do MM V2 or MM V3 p.27 or something. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 18:24, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Ok, excellent. Anyway, I'll get started on the 3.0MM now. J Milburn (talk) 18:27, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I made a page for you to start on (If you didn't have one already): User:BOZ/3.0 Monsters. You can start building the article there, and when we're ready to go live we'll just cut and paste. BOZ (talk) 18:31, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I also started the index page at User:BOZ/List of Dungeons & Dragons monsters - there we can finalize the way the initial list pages will be set up, and write whatever text is needed to explain the individual lists (see Pokemon list or something for examples on how we can do that). BOZ (talk) 18:59, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I have started to write up the 3.0 MM in one of my own sandboxes, but I will copy the text across once I have finished it. J Milburn (talk) 19:08, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * That works. I set up all the pages as a sort of centralized location for whomever to work on them until we're ready to post. I'll try to solicit some support when we're a little bit further along. BOZ (talk) 19:10, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * This will be quite a bit of work. One way we could get help is to start the page with just enough of it done that people can see how to procede.  People love working on D&D, and if they see a page that they can easily contribute to, I think they'll jump in.  Start the three to five most important ones and I bet in a week people start working on them.  It's kind of like fishing for editors. ;-) - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 23:30, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * As far as I could tell, that was the plan. :)  We'll try to get at least one major book per edition, and then create the stubs and let others go wild. BOZ (talk) 06:04, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Also, what was the result of the Spring cleanup? Are you still AfDing a bunch of them each week?  If not, you could start redirecting them to the stub lists, and people who have them on their watchlists might start doing it for us too. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 23:32, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, as soon as the stubs are created, redirecting most of the creature articles is the next step. I suspect that will happen over the weekend, and/or early next week. BOZ (talk) 06:04, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Let's use this talk page for discussion. BOZ (talk) 03:31, 22 March 2008 (UTC)