Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Dungeons & Dragons deities


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep.  Sandstein  19:12, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

List of Dungeons & Dragons deities

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WP:GAMEGUIDE material; sourced entirely to primary sources and fails notability criteria for fictional subjects. Wikia cruft that lacks real-world context or relevance. Most of the blue links in this list go to non D&D related articles or are just redirects back to here. ZXCVBNM (TALK) 15:00, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. ZXCVBNM (TALK) 15:00, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science fiction and fantasy-related deletion discussions. ZXCVBNM (TALK) 15:00, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Games-related deletion discussions. ZXCVBNM (TALK) 15:00, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. ZXCVBNM (TALK) 15:00, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the Article Rescue Squadron's list of content for rescue consideration. 7&amp;6=thirteen (☎) 12:29, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the Article Rescue Squadron's list of content for rescue consideration. 7&amp;6=thirteen (☎) 12:29, 6 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep since there are WP:RS to retain, per WP:PRESERVE and WP:ATD. There are in fact several non-primary sources cited (as opposed to "entirely"), namely Dicing with Dragons, Heroic Worlds, and Religions in Play. BOZ (talk) 15:44, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep - GAMEGUIDE does not in any way apply to this material, which is discussed in independent, reliable sources. Overreach by Nom. Newimpartial (talk) 15:52, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
 * There is already Sources and influences on the development of Dungeons & Dragons for what the deities were inspired by, which is the only thing that could be said to be sourced here. By the title, the clear purpose of this list is simply to list deities, which means the purpose is a guide to the game's characters.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 17:08, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
 * If you think Dungeons & Dragons characters consult Wikipedia about their deities, then you have must very interesting and unorthodox ideas about the activities involved in the game. Ahem. As far as I can tell, the list exists to provide an exhaustive account of which deities have been recognized in various versions and publications of the game; secondary sources are not confined to the influences on D & D, but also on D & D's cultural impact and its influence on subsequent fictional creation, and this most certainly includes the impact of the deities and pantheons created for or incorporated into the game. Newimpartial (talk) 19:51, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment - Those few secondary sources are only being used to support very little of the information here, and almost entirely are just on the information on deities in Dungeons and Dragons in general. The vast majority of the actual list component of this "List of" article are not supported by anything aside from primary sources, and are comprised entirely of in-universe WP:PLOT.  If the argument to keep is being based on what's present in reliable, secondary sources, this entire article basically needs to be almost entirely pruned, and probably renamed, to only include the information on the concept of Deities in Dungeons and Dragons in general, with the vast amounts of primary sourced cruft removed.  Basically, those sources could be used to develop an article on the concept of deities in the game in general, but certainly do not support a list of this magnitude.  Rorshacma (talk) 16:44, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment - Also, why are there so many entries here for beings that are specifically not deities on a list for beings that specifically are deities? Regardless of the fate of the article, I assume nobody would disagree that the huge sections on demons/paragons/etc. should be removed, at the very least.  Rorshacma (talk) 16:52, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Demons, etc, are functionally deities in D&D. oknazevad (talk) 13:35, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Light Merge to Sources and influences on the development of Dungeons & Dragons - I apologize for the triple post, but I just saw Zxcvbnm's comment above, and that is the perfect article to merge the actual sourced information from this list to. As I mentioned in my comment above, the secondary sources being cited in the "Keep" arguments do not support this massive list of deities, but instead are primarily on the concept and development of deities in D&D in general.  Using them, and the very few sentences of information they are actually being used to support from this article, to improve the Sources and Influences article would be a far better use for them than this crufty mess.  Rorshacma (talk) 17:21, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep - I think the topic of religion in Dungeons & Dragons is notable, and this list of deities is so far the major way it has been covered on Wikipedia. According to WP:LISTN, the topic of a list has to be notable, not all individual entries. I also think that WP:GAMEGUIDE does not apply, because, while it's true that many entries in this list only exist within D&D, there are also many that come from mythology or literature. They are in themselves noteable and have their own articles, and this list reflects the adaption of these figures in this game. (I don't say that their presentation cannot be improved, but that's no reason for deletion.) The article also gives general information on the topic, if so far only shortly.
 * There are a number of entities covered here, which are in the game variously called quasi-deities or near-deities. So they would not fall into deities in the strictest sense, but are closer to deities than to other characters in the game. They also would fall under the topic of religion, as some are worshiped, other grant powers akin to divine patrons. So I would keep them in the list. But that's a minor point, not directly related to deletion.
 * I was not aware of the Sources and influences on the development of Dungeons & Dragons, so thanks for alerting me to that. If this topic should be merged - which I am against, but would obviously prefer to deletion - that sounds like a reasonable place for part of the information here. Despite the mere mention of mythology as an inspiration, there is nothing there about the many deities and religions actually used, so there would definitely be something to merge. Daranios (talk) 19:46, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep - D&D is very notable and this is a significant part of it --Jtle515 (talk) 21:44, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
 * D&D is definitely notable, I don't dispute that. I also don't dispute that this is a significant part of it. Is it significant enough to be standalone notable on its own? No. See WP:NOTINHERITED.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 21:56, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep There are references, this showing how an obviously notable series got made, its influences for this notable aspect of itself. Not sure how many of the blue links are redirects back to this page, maybe all of them, but doesn't matter, since its a valid article on its own right even if it didn't have the "list of" in its name.   D r e a m Focus  23:37, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep as above. There is enough content out there on D&D deities as a whole and individual deities to justify a central list like this. Josh Milburn (talk) 20:22, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep per WP:ARTN. There are several independent sources used in the article — Ian Livingstone's Dicing with Dragons, Philippe Bornet's Religions in play: games, rituals and virtual worlds, and Lawrence Schick's Heroic Worlds: A History and Guide to Role-Playing Games — that are not acknowledged in the nomination. Some of the Keep voters above have not made specific reference to policy or sources, but I think they help to establish the common-sense judgment that the use of gods and demigods in Dungeons & Dragons is a worthwhile subject for analysis and study.That being said, I can see the nominator's point that this article is overwhelmingly a list of names and titles, and doesn't have enough human-readable content. But one reason why the article is so spare is because a lot of content about the various deities has been nominated for deletion in the last six months, and ended with a bare redirect to this article. (For example, Yondalla and Gruumsh, among many, many others.) I think that the pattern of "redirect all the individual pages to a list, then nominate the list for deletion" does not give me confidence in other potential redirects and merges suggested in this discussion. If we merge this with Sources and influences on the development of Dungeons & Dragons, then Zxcvbnm can nominate that article, and so on. WP:ARTN says that the current state of an article does not diminish the notability of the topic, and it's clear that the use of deities in D&D is a notable topic. We should halt the bulldozer here. — Toughpigs (talk) 20:49, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment: There are definitly more secondary sources about the subject and individual entries in this list: Several sources specific to Lolth came up in this discussion; Dungeons and Dragons and Philosophy has more on the general than the small part I have already added, and short mentions of a few specific deities; Of Dice and Men has something on the way deities were treated at their first introduction into the game (including example deities) on p. 109-110, and more. Daranios (talk) 20:11, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep Religion, cosmology, etc. in Dungeons & Dragons are now covered in many, many sources. So clearly, WP:NEXIST and WP:ARTN. AugusteBlanqui (talk) 20:26, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep I second Toughpigs's concern with the "pattern of redirect all the individual pages to a list, then nominate the list for deletion". I think parts of the article are well sourced (enough for the article as a whole to meet notability) and other sections need a bit of clean up to make it a more readable article (and additional sources could be added to make it stronger). In terms of a clean up example, a specific concern of ZXCVBNM's is that "most of the blue links in this list go to non D&D related articles or are just redirects back to here" so dead links from articles that were AfD & closed with merge to this article should be removed. The article should be tagged for clean up and not deleted. Sariel Xilo (talk) 19:09, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I have overlooked that on first reading: There seems to be a contradiction in the nomination, which both critizises that the article lacks real-world context, and also critizises that it contains many non-D&D related = real-world related links. Or did I misunderstand something? Daranios (talk) 21:27, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Context =/= a pure link to something from mythology. Saying that a cockatrice in the game is the same as a mythlogical cockatrice, for example, does not provide context into why that is actually notable and necessary to say there.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 21:40, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Also, I never really vouched for any of these list entries to be redirected. I have always opposed redirecting to locations that are non-notable on their face.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 21:42, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
 * But why are links to non D&D related articles a bad thing/an argument for deletion? Which ones are you referring to? Daranios (talk) 22:00, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment I mostly highlighted the example from the nomination because the nominator could have tagged the article for clean up & started a conversation in the article's talk page about which sections need clean up if they didn't have the time to do the clean up themselves. AfD shouldn't be used to highlight cleanup issues. Sariel Xilo (talk) 20:53, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete as not enough of it is reliably sourced in secondary sources. Bermicourt (talk) 19:40, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep. There's plenty of secondary sources and I see no reason to question the notability. There is no reason to delete it just because it's about a game. Iamnotabunny (talk) 12:08, 12 May 2020 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it.</b> Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.