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d20 System
I want to add a d20 System category; should this be the parent of Category:Dungeons & Dragons? If there are no objections in a month or so, I will add it as such. ··gracefool |☺ 02:45, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Sub-categories?
This category is beginning to get bloated and will soon need to be organized into sub-categories, most likely by genre. Any thoughts? — RJH19:31, 31 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
As a stopgap, I'm going over things and categorizing more strictly under the existing subcategories. That will help somewhat. GRuban19:59, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What about a new category called "Published role-playing games"? That would separate the game articles from the more general "List of ..." and for example "Collaborative fiction". The published RPGs could then be further divided if needed. I think I'll do that later today if no one stops me. Jonas Karlsson15:14, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
"Published role-playing games" is not a very descriptive name for what the category is being used for. CRPGs and LARPs are both published, although neither of those are included in that category. Furthermore, no unreleased RPGs have WP articles that I know of. A better name for the new subcategory, given its contents, would be Category:Tabletop role-playing games. -Sean Curtin00:46, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, I used "published" to distinguish the articles from the ones on general concepts or role-playing forums and such. I admit I come from a tabletop background and didn't think about CRPGs and LARPs, as they have their own subcategories. The problem with renaming the category that way is that you would have to rename Category:Role-playing game designers to Category:Tabletop role-playing game designers, and so on, to be consistent. I'm all for a discussion, as I want it to be correct. Jonas Karlsson01:01, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think I agree with Sean Curtin - "Published role-playing games" is not a very descriptive name for what the category is being used for. It seems hard to understand what goes where. For example, "role-playing game publishers" go under "role-playing games" but not under "published role-playing games"? And the "concept articles" and "forums" generally discuss ... published role-playing games. I like the idea of categorizing -- including most of the ones that have been made in the last few days - thanks! -- but think this specific category needs re-thinking. GRuban13:53, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've been going through the list a bit (hope I didn't mess it up too much) and realized that some of the games which got their own subcatory (e.g. Lone Wolf) still are listed in the category itself. Others, like the World of Darkness Games are not. I believe we should decide on one way.
As the WP:RPG plans to make the category smaller, it would make sense to delete those double-entries from the main category -- Genesis14:31, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think that games with subcategories should be removed from the article list. It should be apparent from the articles that they relate to RPGs, and if someone follows the subcategory link at the bottom of an article they'll see that the parent category is RPGs. Jonas Karlsson15:14, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think this category should be in Category:Games. Otherwise it gets too hard to find from the Culture portal, considering far less general categories are listed there. --Maggu13:07, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think I agree with Maggu. Someone looking for Category: Role-playing games would probably figure out to look under Category: Games. But looking under Category: Tabletop games might not be obvious. GRuban13:46, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It appears that most gaming products use the spelling "roleplaying". For example, Wizards of the Coast appears to use "roleplaying" on its D&D products, and "City of Heroes Roleplaying Game" is the official game title of that game. The spelling "role-playing" looks to be an informal variant spelling. Submitted for spelling correction to standardize the spelling. There are some exceptions (eg. ICE on its website spells HARP out as "High Adventure Role Playing" with a space and no hyphen), but most of the companies seem to use no space. Dugwiki19:59, 12 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- As discussed in the archived talk above and elsewhere on Wiki, it looks like the preferred spelling of the word has changed over the years. D&D is a great example; originally in AD&D (aka D&D's "second edition"), according to W.S. the core rulebooks used the hyphenated spelling. But since then the spelling in current official D&D products and on the Wizards of the Coast website has changed to "roleplaying". Per Percy, GURPS likewise used to spell the word "role-playing" in earlier editions, but in the current 4th edition spells the word "roleplaying. A third example is Chaosium, who used the spelling "role-playing" in their first edition but in 2003-2004 was using the spelling "roleplaying" in its latest edition of the Basic "roleplaying" system, and Stormbringer (see Amazon's list of current Chaosium products for reference.)
And according to Asatruer, many other current products also use the spelling "roleplaying", including "Steve Jackson Games, White Wolf, Palladium Books, Chaosium, Pagaon Publishing, Arc Dream and Green Ronin" all use Roleplaying not Role-Playing, as well as the City of Heroes Roleplaying Game.
Although most game companies as described above are currently not hyphenating the word, there are some exceptions, such as the Everquest Role-Playing Game from 2002. And it's possible, though I haven't verified one way or another, that the computer gaming industry is using "role-playing" for computer RPG titles, which if true would indicate the tabletop industry and computer gaming industry aren't agreeing on a "standard" spelling.
- Note that while allowing variant spellings aren't a big deal for the most part one way or another, the spelling of product names, etc, should match the actual, official title. For example, the "City of Heroes Roleplaying Game" doesn't use a hyphen on its cover or official titles, so it would be incorrect to insert a hyphen.
Overall this has been a fun topic, because it's a good demonstration of how words change over time. It's interesting to see the changes in spelling from the 1980's to today, particularly in products like D&D which have been around for 30 years. One thing that hasn't been figured out is why the spelling is changing. One person suggested that it might be that publishers are removing the hyphen to save printing space. Another possibility is it might be part of a broader move away from hyphenization of words. I'd certainly be curious to know a little bit about the dynamic of the change. Dugwiki17:47, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Zoos, Aquaria and Avaries as subcategories of role-playing games?!?
I just noticed that somehow Zoos and Aviaries (as in Places where People go to see wild animals, fish and birds) got included as subcategories in this category (via the subcategories Live-action role-playing games -> History reenactment -> Living museums -> Zoos & Aviaries.)
While I think that historical museums (in category living museums) could fit into history reenactment, Zoos, Aquaria and Avaries surely do not belong there. 84.148.118.15700:55, 8 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm currently working on expanding White Wolf's old World of Darkness game line. While I don't want to do it right now, would it be possible to get a subcategory for either the Storyteller system or for White Wolf? WW could then be further divided, eventually, into old and new World of Darkness games. Urbandale (talk) 12:12, 24 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
