Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Dungeons & Dragons

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted 21:28, 30 August 2007.

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Dungeons & Dragons

previous FAC

Back for more abuse. :-) In addition to some massaging of the text, the following revisions have been made to address the actionable objections raised during the previous FAC attempt:

• Literary citations have been used in preference to user pages for referencing. (Because of its generalized nature, the suggested Fine book was not found particularly useful in this regard; although it has been cited once.)
• The two images that were deemed objectionable have been replaced.
• Some short paragraphs were merged.
• Mention is made of D&D's Hall of Fame status in the Games magazine. Otherwise, independent critical acclaim has proven hard to come by, alas. (But suggestions would be appreciated.)

Please take a look and see what you think. I'll try to address any specific constructive criticism. Thank you. — RJH (talk) 18:37, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Support I supported it last time, and I continue to do so. It has improved even more. I find no obvious variance with WP:WIAFA Good job! --Jayron32|talk|contribs 01:37, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Support - I'm not a fan of See also sections but concede these are difficult to incorporate without impacting on the overall flow of the article adversely. Being a gamer intermittently since '78 I find it comprehensive; the prose is good enough not to be noticed and crisp anmd clear throughout. congrats. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:45, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Support seems to have scrubbed up well as it were, can't find nothin' wrong with it, well done --Brendan44 00:53, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Comment

• I think there should be a summary of the article in the See Also section in the article

Then make them as Main Article links. Then lose the see also section.

• No mention of of it's reference in Futurama in References in popular culture section.
• Why is there a Notes and a references section? Buc 08:26, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Comment The Notes section is like footnotes, the are directly linked to relevant sections of the text. However, many of the citations are re-used over and over again. Instead of repeating the citatation (which is just wasteful of space and creates redundant entries likely to diverge) or having a single footnote (which means you can't give specific page numbers for specific citations), the footnotes contain Harvard references like "(Johnson et al. 2004:23)" and you go down to the references to get the full entry. It's a bit unusual, but I find it a good compromise and it's acceptable according to the "Citing sources" style guidelines — Alan De Smet | Talk 15:44, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose There is still a lot of room for improvement in the flow of the article. --Hornet35 14:42, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Please could you be more specific about what you find objectionable in the flow? The sectioning seems to have a logical arrangement. Thank you. — RJH (talk) 16:00, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
    • This user has a "suspected sock puppet" warning on their user page and has not responded to a legitimate request for clarification. I'm going to treat this objection as addressed. — RJH (talk) 16:10, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Support I think the article looks good, looks like there's been some hard work on it. I think it's ready. But everything can be improved, and made better. Thanks, Meldshal42 16:53, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

• Support, very well done. I've made a few minor edits. --GRuban 02:56, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Thank you for your beneficial updates. — RJH (talk) 16:08, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Comment Repeating since my pionts seemed to have ignored

Comment

• I think there should be a summary of the article in the See Also section in the article

Then make them as Main Article links. Then lose the see also section.

• No mention of of it's reference in Futurama in References in popular culture section.

  Buc 12:18, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

  • In response:
    • I'm unclear exactly certain what you're asking for in regards to the "See Also" section. Per Wikipedia:Guide_to_layout#See_also, the "See also" section is just a set of links. Do you want a separate summary page of this summary-style article? The current "See also" section appears to be useful as is.
    • It's really difficult to include every bit of trivia in a high-level article of this nature, and still keep the page focused. Otherwise the section could conflict with Wikipedia:Avoid trivia sections. I think the statement that, "Numerous games, films and cultural references based on D&D or D&D-like fantasies, characters, or adventures have been ubiquitous since the end of the 1970s" covers it appropriately.
  • Thanks. — RJH (talk) 16:08, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

• Comment The intro should make it clear that D&D is principally played as a tabletop game. The concept of role-playing games is pretty hazy to a lot of people.--Nydas^(Talk) 12:23, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
  • I added a sentence to the first paragraph of the first section to cover this. The lead is a getting a little on the large size, so I didn't want to add further bloat. (But I'm not sure how to trim it without losing useful summary information.) Thank you. — RJH (talk) 16:33, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
    • You also might consider changing the phrase "a fantasy role-playing game (RPG)" in the first sentence to "a fantasy tabletop role-playing game (RPG)". I think that would address Nydas' concern without significantly lengthening the introduction. Dugwiki 22:50, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
      • Unfortunately that definition would exclude other viable options used for play (such as play-by-post). But it's probably close enough for now. Thanks. — RJH (talk)
        • If it makes you feel better, RJ, think of it like chess. Chess would be called a "board game" even though technically you can play it online or by mail. Similarly, even though you can play D&D on formats other than a physical tabletop, and there are D&D inspired computer games, the core game from which it's all derived is a tabletop game. Dugwiki 16:34, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
          • Yes. Like I said, it's close enough. Thanks. — RJH (talk) 14:37, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
• Support The article seems to meet all the checklist points for featured article status. I disagree with the suggestion above that the Futurama reference specifically needs to be added to the article. Not every individual mention of D&D on television or film needs to be included. You only need to have enough in the article to reasonably verify the claim that D&D has appeared in "numerous" films and television shows, and I think the article accomplishes that goal. In making a pass just now I only had a couple of extremely minor quibbles, and I made only one very minor change. So the article would appear to be reasonably stable, comprehensive and accurate. Good stuff. :) Dugwiki 22:46, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
• Comment I pointed an even more D&D knowledgeable friend of mine at this article and he said:

I was reading the D&D article and had a few possible corrections to offer. I'm not sure how to do that on wikipedia itself, so I am offering them to you directly to do what you will with them.

1) Under Game mechanics, when it describes methods for generating PC ability scores, it describes rolling dice. A new, and, I gather, fairly common mechanic in 3.0 and 3.5 edition, is called point buy. I haven't been in a group that uses it, but I have heard of groups that use it, and gather it is fairly common in D&D tournaments. This method involves using a certain number of points to buy characteristics. Typically PCs get 8s for free in the 6 stats, then pay 1 point for each point of a stat above 8 till 14 (costing 6), 2 points beyond that for a 15 and another for a 16 (costing 10), and 3 points more for a 17 and another 3 for an 18 (costing 16). I think typically people start with 25 points, but it can vary according to what the DM wants.

2) In the same section, hit points aren't really determined by race. Just by class, level, and constitution. There are feats and spells and magic items which can give more hit points, but race doesn't factor into it except insofar as some races get bonuses or penalties on constitution and there are a few classes that only certain races can play which may have higher or lower hit points. Oh, monster race characters (very rare) and various monster NPCs, do often have their hit die type determined by race, but an elven 5th level fighter with a 14 con gets the same rolls and bonuses for hit points as a dwarven 5th level fighter with a 14 con.

3) In the influence section it mentions "...The role-playing movement initiated by D&D would lead to release of the science fiction games Traveller (1977) and RuneQuest (1978)... ". Runequest is more of a medieval then a science fiction setting. Characters uses spells, swords, bows, and armor, not psionics, rayguns, and spaceships.

Ok. Hope that helps. It seems like a very thorough article on the whole, as most of the stuff on Wikipedia seems to me.

So there may be a few things to fix. Good luck. --GRuban 20:43, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Race has minimal impact on HPs: Agreed, "race" deleted from list. RuneQuest is not SciFi: Agreed. Clairified. Should mention point buy attributes: this isn't the default assumption for the game, so it's probably getting too detailed, doubly so since there are multiple different point buy systems. Thanks for the suggestions. — Alan De Smet | Talk 04:51, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.