User talk:77stephen

Welcome to PathfinderWiki! We hope you will contribute much and well. You will probably want to read the help pages. Again, welcome and have fun! Fleanetha (talk) 05:28, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Brotherhood of Abadar

Thanks for the article! I added an infobox and tweaked the categories; for some tips on writing articles on organizations, check out help pages. And welcome! —Oznogon (talk) 22:53, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, welcome again from me User:77stephen, and thanks for getting straight in and writing on Abadar and his church. I have also done some tweaking - I hope it is clear what we've done and why (have a look at the page history for instance). If not let us know - you might have been right! In essence we are just making your work fit in with the conventions we have here, which you are certainly not expected to know straight away. --Fleanetha (talk) 12:14, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

Not offended by being edited or corrected at all. I'm sure i'd just be weeping in a corner in a few days on here if i were.

just as insight to my thinking... I had thought the knights of abadar might make a better organization, simply because it isn't detailed enough to be clear it is a clerical order - if it is made of lay worshipers too, single classed fighters and cavaliers, which it could be based on the handful of sentences in knights. i thought it should be moved to the organizations- but I didn't get to it last night - i was looking for any references that might have beefed up that org page but didn't find any- page is better with it back in so no complaints from me

but I'm going to need advice on this community talk stuff because everything else is easy to edit but forum posts seem harder than they should be and I'm assuming I'm missing something --User:77stephen

Excellent. Sorry for diving in so quickly then - I had just feared the deletion was permanent. On fora, you'll note here I just added some colons to indent the text. However, I think you mean the main Forum:Grand Lodge forum, though. If you open a new forum page there is some text pre-populated that shows you how to format a new entry. This is the text:

<!-- Start your edit below this line.  You can use the {{Forum post}} template in the following manner: {{Forum post | PUT YOUR TEXT HERE | ~~~~ }} -->

I just cut and paste the text in curly brackets and start typing. If you want to add to an existing forum topic, scroll up to the top and this help text should be there (it has strangely been deleted from some forum topics though but you now have a copy here). Let us know if that's not where you need help and we'll have another go. --Fleanetha (talk) 13:32, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

ok the colon thing is easy enough now that I know the mechanism - what about user signature? I'm assuming this is automatic since it is time coded - is it a preference setting?

--[[User:Fleanetha|Fleanetha]] ([[User talk:Fleanetha|talk]]) 13:32, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

Signature is something you need to add to all your 'real-world' posts please. The wikimedia system converts 4 tildes into your signature: ~~~~ is converted into a time-stamped signature. You can see it in the Forum post code above actually. Finally, to make it simple, there are useful buttons on the top left of the editor panel; the penultimate one that looks like a written signature embeds --~~~~ into the message. This is what I use.

If you go into your 'Preferences' you can change your signature under 'User Profile' and you can customize your 'Date and Time' settings too. --Fleanetha (talk) 16:58, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the help Fleanetha -I'm starting to get it. 77stephen (talk) 17:03, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

Storasta Article

Thanks for all your work on the Storasta article. As you can see, I've made quite a few changed to what you have written, and just wanted to drop you a quick note here to let you know why I made those edits.

1. You only need to create a link the first time a given term is used on a page. All other mentions should be in plain text.

2. Try to keep "crunch" terms (in-game terms such as classes, etc) to a minimum in the main body of an article.

3. The names of races should generally not be capitalized. Be careful, because the autofill function of the wiki that pops up after you start typing the square brackets will insert the capitalized version by default. If you are using the autofill function, you need to go back and delete the capitalization.

4. We generally try to not create pages that are simply long lists (unless its a specific list page such as List of works or Recreational drugs of Golarion). Since the "inhabitants" content you added does not exist anywhere else on the wiki, it's okay for now, but once each of the individuals mentioned have their own pages, we'll probably have to rewrite this some.

5. Every paragraph needs it's own, separate citation (hence all the "citation needed" links at the end of your lines). If you are citing the same page multiple times, you can use shortcuts (see Help:Citing sources).

I know this is a whole lot all at once, and I hope this does not discourage you from continuing to contribute to our project. Please feel free to leave any questions/comments here or on my Talk Page. --Brandingopportunity (talk) 23:00, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Uploading images

From Help:Copyright on images:

“

If the artwork is presented as a free download on the Paizo Blog, it is legal under the Community Use Policy. Artwork scanned or extracted from the source material is not allowed. Artwork posted by artists as part of their portfolio on their websites or DeviantArt that has not been released by Paizo on their blog cannot be legally uploaded to PathfinderWiki. These images are released to the artists by Paizo under a closed license, and the artists do not have the right to extend that license to us. If these images must be used, they should be directly linked to on their source site and designated as such using the {{External}} template.

”

In other words, we aren't limited to the Community Use Packages. We can upload and use all illustrations posted to the Paizo blog. (Some images, like photographs, aren't covered. The details are in the Community Use Policy.) Images posted to the blog make up a vast majority of our uploaded Pathfinder artwork.

If an image falls outside of the above guidelines, we should always note the license and conditions on the image's File page. Do you have an example of an image that appears to fall outside of the above guidelines which doesn't include licensing information? If so, let me know and I can correct that or remove the image. Thanks. -Oznogon (talk) 03:27, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Also, the Community Use Policy allows us to use product cover images from covered items on the Paizo Store, but we try to avoid using those outside of product articles. -Oznogon (talk) 03:28, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

I think there are some images that we do not host (if you click on them it doesn't bring you to a wiki page for that image) that are outside of the CUP, but handled by the poster's license/contract. Most of these are the artists paizo uses posting their work on deviant art or other similar websites and giving us permission to link to them. I think Mark was the one talking to may of the artists to get that permission...? -- Cpt kirstov (talk) 13:30, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

That's also covered in that paragraph I posted from Help:Copyright on images at the top of this thread.

As noted there, those {{External}} images are the least-preferable option—they require permission from the artist (which can be revoked), they take visitors away from the site, and they rely on third-party hosts that can go down or prevent us from using those images without warning—and should be removed as soon as there's CUP art we can host here. -Oznogon (talk) 02:50, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Help with Categories

Hello 77stephen and thanks for all your recent edits. I saw you struggling with the categories and asking for help to which Brandingopportunity answered with some good advice. Here is a help page that you'll find useful I think: Help:Creating category pages. I am also aware that the way we handle categories on the wiki has changed over the years, and you might have been carefully following suit but using an old page; that must be very frustrating and we'll apologize and add you to the long list of others that have had similar experiences. If you can point me at any page or help page that you used I can take a look and modernize it. Thanks again. --Fleanetha (talk) 17:57, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Fleanetha. I did struggle and made few missteps for categories on the weekend - no specific help page led me astray - probably my first mistake was not trying to find one for guidance and just assuming i had a good idea and blundering ahead...I guess I was thinking, categories, as long as they aren't incorrect, are sort of a *more the merrier* type of thing - I know I read somewhere I some guidance - something to the effect that multiple links are what makes the site valuable. But I guess I can understand that, if you start adding all technically true categories it could get a bit ridiculous if a line isn't drawn, city district, city, region, nation, continent, planet, plane layer, plane- but I'm not sure I'd have set the policy that using only the smallest, true, area, is best. I'd probably go no more than 2 size categories up on that list subject to some case by case situations, but I'm pretty new here so I don't expect to set guidelines. 77stephen (talk) 03:35, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Level changes on modules

It looks like you're systematically going through every Pathfinder Module and changing or expanding the level range. What's the source for those changes? -Oznogon (talk) 07:18, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

I got it into my head that I'd like to tackle the idea of putting all published adventure material into a single list, by location and level. I have pdf copies of all of the modules (from D0 to we be 5uper goblins) - everything except the soon to be released cradle of night. I started the list in excel by pulling in the text from the wiki, then I opened and reviewed every one of the 66 module pdfs I had to find any references to location and level. it turns out, up until 9516 (pact stone) most older modules included a reference on the credits page that addresses the same sort of thing that appears more obviously in recent modules

for example in pact stone the text reads:

Publisher: Erik Mona
Special Thanks: The Paizo Customer Service and Warehouse Teams
J4: The Pact Stone Pyramid is a Pathfinder Module designed for four 8th-level characters. By the end of this module, characters should reach
9th or 10th level. This module is designed for play in the Pathfinder Chronicles campaign setting, but can easily be adapted for use with any
world. This module is compliant with the Open Game License (OGL) and is suitable for use with the 3.5 edition of the world’s most popular
fantasy roleplaying game.
The OGL can be found on page 31 of this product.

All but Crown of the Kobold King, Clash of the Kingslayers, Blood of Dragonscar, and Beyond the Vault of Souls in these early Gamemastery modules has similar text. basically all of the 2007-2008 modules contain such text then, from 2009 to mid 2013, the text only refers to the opening level. Beginning with Dragon's demand in July of 2013 they start including the "advancement track" which is much more detailed. (except on free rpg day or special event modules)

Note that in the Price of immortality series there is clearly the intent to run them as a trilogy, implying the "Crypt" should advance you to 3rd and that "Masks" should get you to 5th but the text had such imprecise language I avoided an edit in this case....{from Masks of a living god page 5}:

Lake Encounters
This adventure assumes that the PCs are 3rd level at the start, but that might not be the case. If not, feel free to add additional random encounters on the lake to give them enough XP to reach 3rd. If the group contains 6 or more players, this is not strictly necessary, so long as all of the PCs are 2nd level and on their way to 3rd.

it will take a long time but I intend to do the same with the AP modules and the PFS scenarios too, I'm doing it for myself and if it has any implication to the wiki I planned on making the small changes needed. ..... I'm a completist to the point that it might be a disability :-)--77stephen (talk) 15:55, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Nice! Thanks for the explanation, and for the contributions. "Completionist" is a good thing on a wiki. :D

For PFS scenarios, just keep in mind that the autogenerated tier categories are built from the level range in {{Adventure overview}}, which should match the tier published on the scenario. If that causes a conflict, let me know on my Talk page or on the scenario's Talk page and I'll see what we can do to work around it. -Oznogon (talk) 20:00, 17 November 2018 (UTC)