How you can contribute to the wiki
Character, Country, and Organization Pages
How can you contribute to the wiki? Many ways, the foremost being your character page; a character page is the page where the details of yourself (your character) are stored, so when someone is interested/curious/plotting revenge, they can review the information publicly known about you. Country pages are also important: if you want to help develop your country's history, and the details surrounding it, get together with your country leader, check the details out, and collaborate: Proffit!
Land Action Events
Another way you can help is by providing details about cool events that occur during the bi-weekly land action days, that happen outside of adventures. This IC (in-character) aspect is often overlooked, but many interesting, funny, or heroic events occur during such days. A log has been kept for much of this year (3 DY) but more information is always helpful. ~ It should be noted that the log is not intended to be a itemized list of events occurring each event, but instead "war correspondent" meets "encylopedia" entries of small but interesting or noteworthy events that should be part of Dargarth's history. ("'What happened in 2013," one may ask, or "how did Sanctuary gain that big island," or Mardur that pyramid?' Hey, here's a link answering that question!")
Character Race Pages
Finally, there are pages describing most of the races of Dargarth. However pages such as "Orc" are about NPC (non-player character) orcs, and probably shouldn't be heavily modified without checking with the Land and Lore marshals first.
- (This doesn't mean they can't be, however, but noteworthy events should probably be recorded on the appropriate adventure or yearly log page. BUT if something occurs over and over again, it could become a consistent enough trait/aspect that it can be added to the main NPC page. Food for thought about what to keep an ear/eye out for.)
However what is fair game for players to edit is what I like to call the "Category:Race" pages. For example, take Category:Humans. This is a page which lists player characters which identify as humans (as opposed to, for example, player character orcs). This is a great place to develop and store details about the race your character portrays.
- (It should be noted that because of the vagaries of wiki auto-linking, some pages such as Category:Gypsys aren't spelled correctly; the wiki simply adds an "S" to the end of the race category to make it plural.)
Important notes to keep in mind
Also, to reiterate: "Please don't make up events that can't be reconciled with game history or existing lore. For example: its great to write a fictional history of your country before its in game founding. Its not so great to write about your country's invasions of another country, unless those invasions have happened in game. Another: its great to write about your character's opinion of Count Andor. It's not so great to write about how your character is his long lost brother, unless that's been established with him. Remember, this setting is shared by many people, and Dargarth is world where stories are made collaboratively. Don't create things in your own fiction that can't be reconciled with game events."
When we need to explain or account for a meta-game/out-of-character event in-game, it's up to us as storytellers to come up with a believable explanation while not contradicting in-character events. For example:
- The Isles of Langerhausen goes defunct. It's been suggested in-character that they are nobles from far-away-land (because they are a cross-gaming group that couldn't often be at events). This was not disputed by Langerhausen, so an explanation that Langerhausen likely abandoned their colonies and returned home is plausible.
- However, perhaps the dragon egg (adventure hook for an old adventure) hatched and wiped out Langer. This is also plausible. The cool part is that we'll likely never know, and that's ok; in real life mysterious circumstances often remain unexplained. (However it's also possible that an Adventure Planner or the Land Marshal might establish new facts in the future; it's part of the fun of group world building!)
- However, perhaps the dragon egg (adventure hook for an old adventure) hatched and wiped out Langer. This is also plausible. The cool part is that we'll likely never know, and that's ok; in real life mysterious circumstances often remain unexplained. (However it's also possible that an Adventure Planner or the Land Marshal might establish new facts in the future; it's part of the fun of group world building!)
However sometimes no in-character facts are available about an event: for example, the defuncting of Alliance. In such cases it's probably not unreasonable for allies, friends, or geographical neighbors to take the lead. (But we're all working together, so if you have a cool idea, suggest/share it!)
But in the end it all boils down to consentual world building. Try and find an explanation that doesn't ignore existing "facts" (in-character lore), is hopefully acceptable to all the parties that care, and as the front page says: "Don't be a dick."