How you can contribute to the wiki
What is the wiki? The Dargarth wiki is a lot of things. It is a place for publicly or commonly known lore to be archived for reference and future players. It is also a place to store information that is important, but isn't really appropriate to include in the rulebook (such as countries, monsters, relics, etc) and might be a pain to find in the "In Character" forum on Dargath.org/forums. And it's also a second place (in addition to the aforementioned forum) to participate in group storytelling and world-building.
Character, Country, and Organization Pages
How can you contribute to the wiki? The best way is making your character page. A character page is where the details of 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 details, get together with your country leader, compare notes, and collaborate. Profit!
Also of note are Organizations. Organizations are purely in-character groups that are not restricted along country lines. The best part is they don't come with any of the bookkeeping or other out-of-character issues that can be involved with being a Country leader. They can be a great, IC way to be involved and contribute to Dargarth.
Land Action Events
Another way you can help is by providing details about cool events that transpire. Either the bi-weekly land action days, adventures, or otherwise. 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. ("'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. Keep in mind that some pages, such as "Orc", are about NPC (non-player character) orcs as present in land actions, and not the race in general.
Along that line good pages to edit include the "Category:Race" pages, which are used for player-character racial information. 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. Racial lore is flexible, so feel free to play with it, since that's how lore gets established in Dargarth.
- (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 consensual 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."
P.S.
Editing in a wiki is not always intuitive. In the above section two links were included to help with editing. However some things are still tricky (such as adding pictures). If you are having problems, or just don't want to deal with figuring out wiki formatting, feel free to contact Rasheab on FB or the forums. OR, just type what you want onto the page, and include a note asking for formatting help (use the bold quick-link at the top of the page so the note is easy to see) and one of the mods will help you out when they notice it.