Talk:Goblin dog

Environment Categories

The environment categories used here and elsewhere are somewhat vague; in some cases it's easy to tell what the category title is referring to, but some, such as [[Category:Underground creatures]] could potentially refer to different aspects of a creature's physiology or personality. In addition, as there are actually no official environment categories in this game, I wonder if such categorizations are even needed in this project; it makes it seem we're trying to define a rules aspect of the game that doesn't actually exist, a slippery slope for any project that focuses on an established IP. And we focus on two. ;D -- Heaven's Agent 00:35, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree, I was just trying to follow the rules from the Creature template page, which are unclear. --brandingopportunity 03:04, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps we should revisit whether or not the Creature template should include this information. I agree that it's not a hard-and-fast game rule, but that makes it actually closer to what we are going for. It's reasonable to assume that characters in the world would know what environments a creature lived in, just as we know that gorillas live in the jungle and rats live in the sewers. The question seems to be how we standardize these entries and what we do with them in terms of categories. -- Yoda8myhead 15:06, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

For the reasons you mention, I feel it's important and valid information to include in the template. In order to minimize crunch we're not left with much to populate the infobox, and as this is in essence fluff information it's perfect to include in such a capacity. At the same time, as it is fluff, I don't think we should create categories based on such information. Just as we would not create categories for creatures that like to let their kills rot before eating them, or that have matriarchal societies, there's no real defined basis for such action. -- Heaven's Agent 16:18, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I can see both sides of the coin here, one being as Heaven's Agent mentioned above, the other being that it is some thing that DMs might look for: "The Pcs were chased off the established adventure by the Sandpoint Devil, and are currently in the swamps... I wonder what swamp creatures they may encounter that are new to Golorian...?" This is similar to the Fauna:cinterlands category that we have. -- Cpt_kirstov 13 January 2009 12:07 (EST)

I do feel that there needs to be some form of standardization in the categories, if we are going to keep them as categories. If we just keep them an plain, un-wikilinked text, then they can be whatever the writer wants them to be. --brandingopportunity 22:59, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, technically they should be what ever the creature's creator defined them as, but in any event we should probably leave them as plain text. Establishing and "official" system for an element that has no such definition within the game would bring into question the accuracy of the entire project in the eyes of many. That said, some form of listing of such creatures would be helpful. Don't we have a list of creatures somewhere in the wiki? If it isn't already, we could adapt that into a sortable table with a few cells for environment. -- Heaven's Agent 23:30, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Heaven's Agent, the Monster index is current up through the early December beasties and is currently sortable by name, CR, type, subtype (sorta) and source. Agree though, that we should avoid wikilinking the environment. Adding it to the table will be grueling, but putting it there would probably be good, as would alignment. Perhaps everything in the infobox should also be on the table? Also, how many colons is customary to add before posting in a thread like this before it becomes ridiculous?-- Yoda8myhead 05:56, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

(Resetting Indent) Generally one keeps adding colons until someone decides to reset the indent.

Unfortunately, an environment column would be as limited in its usefulness as the subtype column. Alternativly, we could create a single article listing of creatures by environment, and utilize the ToC to organize it and provide navigation, acting as a form of index. Such articles tend to be lengthy, but if used as nothing more than a list they can do the job. And as authors put out new environments (which they seem to enjoy doing), we just add additional sections to the list. -- Heaven's Agent 06:46, 14 January 2009 (UTC)