PathfinderWiki talk:Spoilers
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Spoilers in a 2E world
Given that the results of most APs are spoiled in the 2E Core Rulebook, the current lodestone of the entire system, what's the plan for dealing with that? Future books haven't helped this any. For example, if I want to make a page on the Stasian Technology, introduced in Guns & Gears, I'm kind of SOL unless I just want to flag the entire page as spoilers forever, regardless of how widespread that technology becomes. CadeHerrig (talk) 19:46, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
Multiverse theory isn't apperied for that?--Laclale (talk) 06:13, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
- At this point, I'm seeing some merit in trying something based on {{Collapsible}} or Extension:Spoilers—a way to mark specific passages as spoilers for specific adventures while leaving the rest of the article safe to read for people who intend to play the adventures in question. With the current system, a single word is sufficient for a whole article to be flagged as spoilers, with no way to distinguish what is spoilers and what is not (and as I've noticed, when a spoiler badge is added, it is there to remain forever), and as more and more adventures get released and subsequently canonised, it's only a matter of time until the only articles that new players can safely read are low-traffic and (relatively) unimportant ones (while the big ones are marked as spoilers for several APs at once). - HTD (talk) 11:12, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
- Likely time to revive this discussion yet again in light of Template talk:Badges and Template talk:Spoiler.
- This is a cyclical discussion going back to the wiki's creation, or at least to the first attempt to revisit it in 2012, and not a new concern (go see the archived discussions linked atop this page for more).
- Rather than dump yet another wall of text here or in the Discord, I'm going to leave it at this:
- GMs are the only arbiters of spoilers at their tables. Spoiler warnings should exist primarily to inform GMs that certain content could spoil an adventure for their players, so they can then curate and distribute the wiki's content to players themselves. No form of redaction or hidden content is going to facilitate that; it'll only impede a GM.
- Many things could and should change about the spoiler policy, but we need to revisit how we define our audience in Project:Scope of the project to ensure that we're clear about whom the policy serves.
- Also: Forgotten Realms Wiki, Wookiepedia, and Memory Alpha/Beta—all inspirations for early PathfinderWiki policies—all also revised their spoiler policies around 2008. Memory Alpha admins now review spoiler banners for removal 2 months after the release of a work, Wookiepedia removes theirs 1 month after a work's release, and Memory Beta and FRW stopped using spoiler banners entirely. Those policies are all still those projects' active policies today. -Oznogon (talk) 20:54, 16 March 2025 (UTC)
- Personally, I think nobody reads an inherently encyclopedic article on something they are concerned to see spoilers for. Movie pages on Wikipedia, for example, don't even mention spoilers because they are assumed by default. Managing spoilers adds extra work for editors with little to no benefit to readers, potentially even serving as an unwanted distraction. I would certainly support the removal of spoilers entirely, or at least setting an expiration date. --Rexert (talk) 22:38, 16 March 2025 (UTC)
- I would also like to mention that I find it discouraging and unappealing to write articles that contain a big warning sign which essentially tells viewers "Don't read this article!". It's unsurprising that adventure paths are relatively poorly documented, and ceasing the use of spoilers would certainly encourage the primary purpose of the PathfinderWiki—accurate and comprehensive documentation of the Pathfinder setting. --Rexert (talk) 23:10, 16 March 2025 (UTC)
- This sounds more like a presentation problem with the spoiler banners. We present them as a deterrent because that was the primary concern a decade ago, but at this point they should just signal that an article documents the ramifications of a canon event that players might experience during an adventure. And an alternative might be to positively feature and indicate when articles are relatively safe resources for players.
- But whether we call them spoilers and treat them like deterrents, or as positive communication tools to guide players to safety, or whatever we rationalize as a solution, players still shouldn't be reading articles that spoil plots and encounters of adventures. I want to run players off from reading articles that will hurt their experience with the game or setting, and I feel way worse when I'm not successful and have to hear about it from all sides than I do when I put a spoiler banner on an article.
- > I think nobody reads an inherently encyclopedic article on something they are concerned to see spoilers for.
- ...
- > It's unsurprising that adventure paths are relatively poorly documented
- This is why I hammer on the Scope of the project's "PFW is for players" bullet point. Accommodating players made sense 15 years ago, even 7 or 8 years ago, but it's proven to be a minefield we can't navigate due to the pace at which Paizo has been pushing canon changes under 2E.
"When I played 1E" wall of text
- I'd argue even since before 2E, with Return of the Runelords canonizing a lot of past adventure events and the core line change at Adventurer's Guide making the RPG line no longer setting-agnostic.
- Through the 1E years, Paizo intentionally avoided resolving the events of Module story arcs or APs. GMs could peel them off and play them in any order, like encapsulated alternate timelines, while Paizo fleshed out and expanded the big picture of Golarion in AP fiction and articles, and in the Campaign Setting and Player Companion lines.
- Only PFS resolved and advanced plots and character developments with regularity, and it still existed mostly in its own canon bubble. Core rulebooks were explicitly setting-agnostic and non-canon. If 1E APs are "relatively poorly documented" it's because for the first 12 or so years of the wiki's existence, the vast majority of their events simply hadn't happened and weren't going to happen in canon.
- It was thus way more possible to achieve a compromise of documenting the current state of canon in ways that kept players spoiler-free, because outside of PFS the setting was relatively static. Curse of the Crimson Throne was the first big canon-changing event that the wiki had to reckon with, and even if freaking out over Eodred Arabasti II dying seems quaint now, the current spoiler policy evolved out of the fallout from it.
- But with nearly 20 years of connective tissue now built up, and edition and revision changes that performed setting-wide canon advancements, and a recently accelerated serialization of APs, adventures, sourcebooks, corebooks, and PFS seasons that all advance each other and the setting with established outcomes for adventures published sometimes within weeks or months of each other, we have to either keep flagging content until almost all of it is covered by warnings, or we give up trying to protect players from spoilers and acknowledge that we're not a spoiler-free player's guide (Paizo gives those away), we're not a resource for lore-friendly PC builds (AoN gives that away), and that it's the GM's job—not ours—to manage their players and arbitrate the setting and spoilers at their table.
- Players shouldn't be reading most of PathfinderWiki any more than they should be reading the adventures that their GM's prepping. The prerequisite to fixing the spoiler policy is clarifying that the resource we provide to players is not to them, but their GMs. If GMs are our primary audience, the only spoilers we have to worry about are pre-/early-release content; the policy questions answer themselves. -Oznogon (talk) 02:08, 17 March 2025 (UTC)
- > acknowledge that we're not a spoiler-free player's guide (Paizo gives those away), we're not a resource for lore-friendly PC builds (AoN gives that away) and that it's the GM's job—not ours—to manage their players and arbitrate the setting and spoilers at their table.
- I think this leaves out some major player-facing uses that AoN, Player's Guides, and the GM cannot adequately substitute. Character backstories, especially at the brainstorming phase, are greatly aided by having a comprehensive and navigable resource on setting lore. As just a single example loosely based on witnessed reality, someone playing Strength of Thousands as a character hailing from Taldor might want to see what their journey to Nantambu would look like by viewing the map, looking at intermediate destinations such as Bloodcove or Solku depending on their route, and then looking for things that they might be interested in integrating into their character's experience. This kind of backstory creation is easier and more rewarding when it involves cooperation between players and GMs, and both the players and GMs have resources to browse. Yet, the player and GM would still likely appreciate if there were warnings when an article describes a major event that occurs during the Strength of Thousands campaign. There is, of course, always going to be a risk that something gets spoiled. But I think, for many tables, this is a risk well worth taking if it means more investment in the campaign setting. Not everyone in the audience can be expected to fall into either the "doesn't care about spoilers" or "will avoid the risk of spoilers at all costs" camps—I believe most users fall somewhere in between—and the wiki should fit this expectation.
- I agree that it may be useful to make clear that the wiki is NOT guaranteed to be spoiler free, and encourage GMs to guide player usage if they are worried about spoilers. I recognize the concerns brought up in your essay and I am sympathetic to the frustration of decades of unresolved ambiguity, but I do not think doing away with player-facing spoiler warnings entirely is the answer here. I think going forward, we should still provide spoilers warnings where reasonable even while emphasizing that we cannot be comprehensive with these warnings. -Ravenstone (talk) 16:12, 17 March 2025 (UTC)
- In my opinion, the interconnected nature of PathfinderWiki articles has only one possible outcome—every single page sooner or later becoming flagged as a spoiler.
- The article on stone spoils various cities and creatures made of stone, which players should only discover through their GM. The article on elves spoils the history of the ancestry and the events of Earthfall, which players should only discover through their GM. The article on wolves spoils geographical locations and magic items named after or made of wolf parts, which players should only discover through their GM. Your example of a player "viewing the map" would spoil every major and minor settlement and landmark tagged on the map between Taldor and Nantambu.
- As I tried to convey in my previous response, I think it's important to understand that spoilers are not an "all or nothing" thing, and I would appreciate on some elaboration on why you consider these the only valid options in the dilemma. The things you have mentioned are what I would personally classify as minor to very minor spoilers; things that typically will not greatly impact someone's enjoyment of a campaign, even if you technically do learn something that your character should not have. Major twists that occur during campaigns, such as NPC betrayals or the answers to campaign relevant mysteries, are significantly more disruptive to someone's enjoyment of a campaign. We could focus on only labeling major spoilers. Yes, this will leave a lot of grey area, but that's an inseparable part of maintaining a wiki, and we should not compromise the utility of the wiki just because rules are not as elegantly defined as we would like them to be. -Ravenstone (talk) 17:43, 17 March 2025 (UTC)
- As Oznogon mentioned, whether a spoiler is minor or major is completely subjective. Not just based on the editors' opinions, but even the sources themselves. Personally, I do think spoilers should be "all or nothing", simply because of the way articles are linked together and expanded upon with new information. Any given article that currently contains little to no spoilers will eventually contain major spoilers given enough time, assuming editors continue to document details in a comprehensive manner. The only way to avoid this is to intentionally exclude information, which would defeat the purpose of the PathfinderWiki.
- For example, the death of Gorum event discusses the death of a major deity. This has cascading effects throughout hundreds of relevant articles that already existed prior to the event, like Gorum, 4724 AR, Achaekek, First Blade and the entire Universe. It will also effect hundreds of relevant articles of future subjects yet to be documented or released by Paizo, all of which hinge on the aftermath of this event. The only way to protect players from finding out these major spoilers is to either tag every single page as a spoiler, or intentionally avoid expanding relevant pages with information regarding this event. Then pray they don't accidentally notice "Death of Gorum" as one of the options in the search bar if they search for "death", but do notice the spoiler warning on any given article before reading it.
- To me, this seems unrealistic and unreasonable. As I mentioned earlier, I would support temporary spoilers on recently released products with a set expiration date. But I would prefer removing spoilers from all PathfinderWiki articles entirely, and perhaps clarify in the perpetually visible left sidebar that every page contains spoilers. --Rexert (talk) 19:29, 17 March 2025 (UTC)
- > There is, of course, always going to be a risk that something gets spoiled. But I think, for many tables, this is a risk well worth taking if it means more investment in the campaign setting.
- I want to make it clear that I haven't proposed removing all spoiler banners, or any spoiler banners, or actually proposed anything yet for this policy. I've even specifically called out that some form of notice that an article contains details about or dependent on the outcome of another adventure's events is still valuable.
- What I'm leaning very strongly toward is not removing all such notices, but revisiting the policy from a lens that is concerned primarily with helping GMs build campaigns and help their players, instead of trying to thread an already small and perpetually shrinking needle of protecting all permutations of players from all potential spoilers.
- > We could focus on only labeling major spoilers. Yes, this will leave a lot of grey area, but that's an inseparable part of maintaining a wiki, and we should not compromise the utility of the wiki just because rules are not as elegantly defined as we would like them to be.
- "Major" or "minor" to whom? The rules are fundamentally undefinable; aside from the fact that they aren't ours to define, "minor" and "major" spoiler depends entirely on the adventure being played.
- A table running Rise of the Runelords, a table running Curse of the Crimson Throne, a table running Shattered Star, a table running Return of the Runelords, a 2E table running Rusthenge or Shadows at Sundown or Seven Dooms for Sandpoint, a 1E table running The Godsmouth Heresy or The Waking Rune, and a home campaign running Varisia but not using a published adventure, are all going to have different definitions of what constitutes "major spoilers" with regard to Sorshen, Belimarius, Karzoug, Krune, Alaznist, runewells, sin magic, the Peacock Spirit, Lissala, New Thassilon, Crystilan, etc.
- Basic facts about the state of the Inner Sea region in World Guide onward spoil major events in each of those 1E adventures, and that book's intended to be read by players. Acknowledging that still doesn't change the fact that the only person who can accurately define player spoilers for any given adventure is that table's GM.
- We can help GMs with wiki content that signals when it depicts details from or the resolution of an adventure they might be running, but blaring alarms sufficiently loud enough to run players off every time they might be spoiled doesn't do that either. It just puts players and GMs alike off of using or recommending the wiki.
- Even if it was possible for the wiki to consistently define what a player spoiler might constitute a decade ago, when the setting itself was much more modular and compartmentalized, we are fully incapable of it now without diverting work away from or compromising the more useful task of fully, clearly, and accurately documenting the setting's current state. -Oznogon (talk) 18:25, 17 March 2025 (UTC)
- Separately regarding this example:
- > As just a single example loosely based on witnessed reality, someone playing Strength of Thousands as a character hailing from Taldor might want to see what their journey to Nantambu would look like by viewing the map, looking at intermediate destinations such as Bloodcove or Solku depending on their route, and then looking for things that they might be interested in integrating into their character's experience.
- The player should ask the GM for information, and the GM should give the player the relevant information. Period. Doesn't matter if the source is an official sourcebook, a published adventure, the GM's own campaign notes, a YouTube video, a random table, AoN, or PathfinderWiki. The GM is the only arbiter of this information; what's published, which is what the wiki reflects, might not even be relevant to their interpretation or version of Golarion, or the past events of their campaign.
- The wiki should notify GMs of details that might spoil part of a published adventure if shared with players, so they can decide whether to use it and present it to players, and I think we agree on this. My argument is that the wiki should not also bend over backwards to deter players from specific sections or articles that might do so; Paizo doesn't do this in published adventures because it's clear those are for the GM to interpret for players. If PathfinderWiki's mission is to document the entirety of the setting, it should be the same kind of resource as a published adventure, not a spoiler-avoidant player's guide.
- Noting that even Project:Point of view states that PathfinderWiki's point of view is the same as that of a GM, not a player. Emphasis mine:
- > In some cases, information appears in Pathfinder products which is made clear to be highly esoteric, or entirely unknown due to the passage of time. While in theory these things are not known to anyone within the Pathfinder universe, PathfinderWiki's POV is all-knowing, just like a Game Master or reader of Pathfinder fiction.