Talk:List of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition monsters/Archive 1

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Archive 1 Archive 2

More books

Many 2E AD&D game books have featured monsters over the years, and listed below are only just a few! If you want to add the templates to any of these books and move them to the main list page, feel free!  :) BOZ (talk • contribs) 00:23, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

redirect or list class for this article?

i think you may have been redirected when placing the redirect class on this list, but i may be wrong, CrawDaddy. wouldn't those pages that BOZ is directing here be the redirect class, and this page and other "List of" be list classes? that in mind should a talk page be creatd for the redirected pages just to show they are redirects where no talk page currently exists? shadzar-talk 04:41, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

You're quite right. Feel free to correct me in the future.  :) I have adjusted it accordingly. You are free, of course, to adjust the "importance" rating as well. Thanks for pointing it out. --Craw-daddy | T | 10:09, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
it wasn't to correct you, but to make sure i understood which went where. :) remember i am learning this assesstment stuff by following you around and reading up on your examples. shadzar-talk 18:23, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
Okay.  :) As to your other question "should talk pages be created for redirects where no talk page currently exists?" my answer is "I don't know". I should see if there's some policy somewhere about this. As you might have seen, I have certainly created some talk pages for redirects in these cases. I just think it's useful to have the collection of redirect pages that can be seen under Category:Redirect-Class D&D articles. Others may disagree with me. As I said, I should try to figure out if this is "acceptable" under some policy or another, or is discouraged. --Craw-daddy | T | 19:20, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
that wold be great since al these policies confuse the flumph out of me. shadzar-talk 20:38, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Article cleanup post deletion review

Given the comments on the AfD for this page, this article could stand some cleanup and reformatting. The list itself is valid, as is the cross-referencing between books/modules/accessories, but are the page numbers really necessary in the tables?

Adding this section to start discussion for possible changes and cleanup to this document - in preference to having to go through another deletion review at some point in the future. Any other suggestions for cleanup?Vulcan's Forge (talk) 01:30, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for discussing, and thanks for the interest! I had noted, and appreciate, your vote to keep this page.  :)
The page numbers are not at all necessary, but it is something that those of us who set up the table design agreed would be useful. This included J Milburn, Peregrine Fisher, and Shadzar, with much of the discussion happening in my sandbox. BOZ (talk) 03:30, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
One thing to note with the current table structure; it displays differently under Firefox vs. IE. Under Firefox the empty description rows do not condense; under IE they do. I looked at this on an IE browser today and it looks pretty neat, but under the Firefox browser it looks a little ugly. I noted somewhere in your sandbox that a minor change would put all 4 columns on a single line; given that most of the descriptions are empty, this might be a good way to clean up the table display.Vulcan's Forge (talk) 02:34, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
Care to show an brief example here (or somewhere) how that would work? Also, if you want to add to a page that has gone nearly untouched, I noticed that you might know a thing or two about the Basic D&D monsters.  :) BOZ (talk) 05:55, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
I meddled with the template and set it to 4-column display as opposed to 3; feel free to revert if you don't like this style. I would've tested this in a sandbox somewhere but I don't know enough about templates to create a new one temporarily to do that. I fixed the Mystara Table header to have a 4th column heading as well. One thing I don't know how to do is force the tables generated from the template to always be the same width. I will tag the list page as under construction so that no one complains too much.Vulcan's Forge (talk) 02:52, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
Crivens! Never mind - I reverted the changes; I didn't realize how far reaching a mod to the template would be. If you want to see what it looks like, check the template history and diff my two edits. I think it looks better in 4-column format, but that's just my opinion. I'm not sure how to go about testing a template in a sandbox.Vulcan's Forge (talk) 03:07, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
Ok, have a look here; cloned the creature list template into a workspace and used it renaming your samples.Vulcan's Forge (talk) 03:29, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Template Change

The addition of the Variants field to the template has broken the page again. Is there any easy way to insert the Variants= line item to each table (rather than the hard way)? I'm not complaining about the template change (I never liked the listing of the variants inside the description block anyway), but this is going to be a lot of work on several pages to fix.Vulcan's Forge (talk) 02:09, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

I have found a partly solution with the help of Word: I have pasted the whole text there, and told the program to replace
|OtherAppearances=^?|Description= with
|OtherAppearances=^l|Variants=^l|Description=
and also
! Creature !! Page !! Other Appearances !! Description
with
! Creature !! Page !! Other Appearances !! Variants !! Description
Then I have pasted the result back again. That helps for all cases, where the OtherAppearances-line is empty. I cannot think about something for the others, and of course the descriptions still have to be changed manually.
Maybe if someone else has an idea about how to just insert the Variant line in each case, he or she can just remove my edits and do it then. Daranios (talk) 16:09, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
Nice fix. I've cleaned up the few bits it missed towards the bottom of the list, and tidied up the descriptions (moved them to variants as appropriate) for the same block, but the majority of the tables still need cleanup and cross-indexing. If I have the time over the next few days I'll see if I can write a Perl script or vi regex to parse the tables and clean up any remaining issues; might be faster to do it this way and certainly a lot less painful.Vulcan's Forge (talk) 04:01, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Other Sources

I've added three Forgotten Realms sets containing other monsters; have at least two more to go. I'm going to split this section into FR, ALQ and other subsections, in order of date, since it makes sense to me to keep the campaign settings separate. Hope to tackle this over the next few days. I've also discovered I have MC 3, 8, 10 and 11, so I'll be adding them as time permits.Vulcan's Forge (talk) 04:50, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! :) BOZ (talk) 04:55, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
Is there an accepted convention for D&D product titles yet? I've been using "ALQ1 - Golden Voyages (1992)", but I noticed that Vulcan's Forge (nice handle BTW) has been using "Al-Qadim - Golden Voyages". Since these are book titles, I suspect that the titles should probably be in italics (Golden Voyages). I don't have a strong preference, but I think it would be good to agree on a standard for how to include the product code (ALQ1) and potentially the setting (Al-Qadim). I would like to keep including the date, since that can be useful for lists of Other Appearances, but I can do that irrespective of the rest of the title format. Ant Brooks (talk) 16:59, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
There doesn't seem to be a standard per se, since so many people have edited these. I had not been using the dates for anything other than the Monstrous Compendium (1993), to avoid confusion with all the other Monstrous Compendium possibilities, and using the full titles for everything else. I have been avoiding using the product codes vs. the product names, because the codes seem to vary too much, and because not everyone knows them (I'm not sure they were always assigned to products either). For example, FRX1 is the Myth Drannor set, FRB1 is Menzoberranzan, and there isn't a code at all on the FR Campaign Setting (1993) as far as I can see. Ideally the titles should be in italics, but I'm not sure that's completely necessary for a massive list like this one (it'll certainly make the wikicode a lot messier). That's my two cents, but I have an open mind as long as we can agree on a standard.Vulcan's Forge (talk) 19:09, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
I've been including dates in the "Other Appearances" for two reasons, first because there are four Monster Manuals, three Fiend Folios, three Draconomicons, two Forgotten Realms Campaign Settings, two Monster Manual IIs, etc. and dates are an easy way to distinguish those; and second because I thought it might be useful for people to be able to easily tell which appearances came first. (I wouldn't include dates outside of that column unless I was referencing one of the repeat-name products.) You are dead right about the product codes, FRX1 and FRB1 were internal TSR codes assigned to those products, but never used on the products themselves, and TSR didn't assign codes to everything. I have only included the codes when they were actually printed on the sourcebook, but even that isn't always helpful, RR6 is mislabeled RS1, for example. I'm happy to drop the codes entirely from the cross-referencing, and perhaps only mention them under the main entry for that product.
I'm not sure if we should be including the name of the campaign setting as part of the product. In most cases, the campaign setting wasn't part of the official product title. "Golden Voyages", for example, appears in the 1992 TSR catalog as "ALQ1, Golden Voyages" (heading) and just "Golden Voyages" in the descriptive text, rather than "Al-Qadim - Golden Voyages". Again, however, there are exceptions to this, such as the 1993 "Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting".
Given how frequently the product titles appear in the Other Appearances column, I suspect that the best strategy might be to keep the titles as simple as possible, i.e. just "Golden Voyages" and not "Al-Qadim - Golden Voyages" or "ALQ1 - Golden Voyages", it shouldn't be too hard for someone to do a search for that title, and as the lists of monsters are expanded, those titles can be linked to monster listing for the cross-referenced product.
So, I think my proposal for a standard would be: No product codes, no campaign setting, but the year included at least for the Other Appearances references. I'm ambivalent about the italics, but tending towards worrying about those when links to those product's monster lists are added ;). Ant Brooks (talk) 04:27, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. I think we should remove the product codes from the section titles as well; they can be referenced inside each section if necessary.Vulcan's Forge (talk) 05:03, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
Agreed, I think the titles will look cleaner without the product codes too. I'll fix the formatting for the MCA1 cross references shortly. Ant Brooks (talk) 07:56, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Request for Comment: MC 8

MC 8 is mostly but not completed reprinted in the Planescape Monstrous Compendium Appendix (1994); because mostly != completely, I intend to do a full section including table for MC 8 sometime in the next few days. Comments, arguments for and against would be appreciated.Vulcan's Forge (talk) 02:53, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Monstrous Compendiums

  • TSR 2104 - MC3 - Monstrous Compendium - Forgotten Realms Appendix (1989)
  • TSR 2105 - MC4 - Monstrous Compendium - Dragonlance Appendix (1990)
  • TSR 2107 - MC5 - Monstrous Compendium - Greyhawk Appendix (1990)
  • TSR 2116 - MC6 - Monstrous Compendium - Kara-Tur Appendix (1990)
  • TSR 2109 - MC7 - Monstrous Compendium - Spelljammer Appendix (1990)
  • TSR 2118 - MC8 - Monstrous Compendium - Outer Planes Appendix (1991)
  • TSR 2119 - MC9 - Monstrous Compendium - Spelljammer Appendix (1991)
  • TSR 2122 - MC10 - Monstrous Compendium - Ravenloft Appendix (1991)
  • TSR 2125 - MC11 - Monstrous Compendium - Forgotten Realms Appendix (1991)
  • TSR 2405 - MC12 - Monstrous Compendium - Dark Sun Appendix: Terrors of the Desert (1992)
  • TSR 2129 - MC13 - Monstrous Compendium - Al-Qadim Appendix (1992)
  • TSR 2129 - MC14 - Monstrous Compendium - Fiend Folio Appendix (1992)
  • TSR 2139 - MC15 - Monstrous Compendium - Ravenloft Appendix II: Children of the Night (1993)
  • TSR 2602 - Planescape Monstrous Compendium Appendix (1994)
  • TSR 2501 - Monstrous Compendium - Mystara Appendix (1994)
  • TSR 2153 - Monstrous Compendium - Ravenloft Appendix III: Creatures of Darkness (1994)
  • TSR 2145 - Monstrous Compendium Annual Volume One (1994)
  • TSR 2433 - Dark Sun Monstrous Compendium Appendix II: Terrors Beyond Tyr (1995)
  • TSR 2613 - Planescape Monstrous Compendium Appendix II (1995)
  • TSR 2158 - Monstrous Compendium Annual Volume Two (1995)
  • TSR 2162 - Ravenloft Monstrous Compendium Appendices I & II (1996)
  • TSR 2166 - Monstrous Compendium Annual Volume Three (1996)
  • TSR 2524 - Savage Coast Monstrous Compendium Appendix (1996) [unpublished]
  • TSR 2635 - Planescape - Monstrous Compendium Appendix III (1998)
  • TSR 2173 - Monstrous Compendium Annual Volume Four (1998)
Yes! BOZ (talk) 02:24, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
Glad someone got the reference...I'll have to Leave It here....Vulcan's Forge (talk) 03:06, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Other Sources II: Disencumbering

It's great that we have all "monster books" now! To disencumber the list a bit I would propose to remove those other sources which entries are completely covered elsewhere in the list, e. g. by Monstrous Compendium Annuals. At the moment these would be TSR1085 - Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting (1993), TSR9431 - Assassin Mountain (1993), TSR9433 - Secrets of the Lamp (1993), TSR9449 - Corsairs of the Great Sea (1994) and TSR9506 - Chronomancer (1995). I will be a bit sorry to remove the stuff that has been partly created by me, but im my opinion emphasis here should be on presenting all monsters, not presenting all sources. The sources can and should still be put down in the Other Appearances sections. What does anyone else think? Daranios (talk) 09:53, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm 'iffy' about this, for no particularly good reason I can think of. As a ground rule I'd kind of been sticking to the idea of putting in creatures from the boxed sets, and any major sourcebooks, but leaving out modules for the AD&D world since any additional creatures in modules tended to show up in the annuals anyway. Is there a wikilist elsewhere of the various sourcebooks/boxed sets/expansions? If there isn't, then this list serves a dual purpose in providing both the creatures and a list of additional sourcebooks.
That said, we have a precedent for Daranios' suggestion, since we didn't duplicate the two Ravenloft MCs which later got reprinted in a single volume. So as long as we leave some kind of section in, indicating the sourcebook publication info and referencing the reader back to the other lists (i.e. the MC annuals or wherever the creatures show up), I'd be happy with that.Vulcan's Forge (talk) 02:48, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Monstrous Manual

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't every monster from the first two Monstrous Compendiums included in the Monstrous Manual, as well as a scattering of creatures from a bunch of the other books? I notice large swathes of obvious creatures that I know are in the Manual not listed as such in this article, such as goblins, ogres, and dwarves, to name a few. —Torchiest talkedits 05:00, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Yep, every creature from the first two MCs was included in the Monstrous Manual, as well as a fair selection from the rest of the volumes and other sources. Maybe they were not repeated to avoid redundancy? 108.69.80.49 (talk) 11:53, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
Hmm, I don't think there are gaps. The three you are mentioning are there: Dwarf, page 94-97; goblin, page 163; ogre, page 272-273. Could you please have another look? Daranios (talk) 13:12, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
Sorry, I may not have been clear the first time. What I meant was, in this article, there were monsters listed in the Monstrous Compendium 1 and Monstrous Compendium 2 sections which were not described as appearing in the Monstrous Manual, when I knew that everything from those two books is also in the Monstrous Manual. So, I removed the redundant and inconsistent text saying only some of them were in the Monstrous Manual, and added notes to the top of the Monstrous Compendium 1 and Monstrous Compendium 2 sections stating that all creatures in those two books appeared later in the Monstrous Manual. —Torchiest talkedits 13:31, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
I think that works just fine. An important thing to remember is that, while everything from MC1 and MC2 was included in the book, quite a few entries were trimmed, or significantly abbreviated from the previous printings. BOZ (talk) 13:59, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
Ah, now that I did not know, as I only personally own the MM. —Torchiest talkedits 14:38, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Page is too long; needs to be split into multiple articles

The page is 389 kilobytes/389,898 bytes long. I am demanding this page to be turned into a disambiguation page and split into multiple articles.

  • List of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition monsters in MC1–5 Monstrous Compendiums
  • List of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition monsters in MC6–10 Monstrous Compendiums
  • List of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition monsters in MC11–15 Monstrous Compendiums
  • List of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition monsters in TSR 2140 - Monstrous Manual (1993)
  • List of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition monsters in TSR 2602 - Planescape Monstrous Compendium Appendix (1994)
  • List of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition monsters in TSR 2501 - Monstrous Compendium - Mystara Appendix (1994)
  • List of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition monsters in TSR 2153 - Monstrous Compendium - Ravenloft Appendix III: Creatures of Darkness (1994)
  • List of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition monsters in Monstrous Compendium Annuals
  • List of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition monsters in TSR 2433 - Dark Sun Monstrous Compendium Appendix II: Terrors Beyond Tyr (1995)
  • List of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition monsters in TSR 2613 - Planescape Monstrous Compendium Appendix II (1995)
  • List of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition monsters in TSR 2162 - Ravenloft Monstrous Compendium Appendices I & II (1996)
  • List of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition monsters in TSR 2524 - Savage Coast Monstrous Compendium Appendix (1996)
  • List of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition monsters in TSR 2635 - Planescape Monstrous Compendium Appendix III (1998)
  • List of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition monsters in TSR 3140 - Birthright - Blood Spawn: Creatures of Light and Shadow (2000)
  • List of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition monsters in other sources

In total, that would be 15 articles.

Lamp301 (talk) 04:02, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

15 seems like an awful lot. 24.148.0.83 (talk) 11:38, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
The page is very long, true, but with it's compressed form it does not seem unmanagable to me. From all problems mentioned in Wikipedia:Article size, only the technical issues with old browers might possibly apply. If it should be split at all, which I am against, is should probably be into:
  • MC series (containen MC1 through MC15, possibly including Monstrous Manual)
  • campaign setting specific Monstrous Compendiums
  • Monsters from other sources
(I cannot think of good article titles yet.) In my opinion, splitting makes navigation and overview more difficult in this case, and the more single articles, the more difficult it will be. Daranios (talk) 12:53, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
I agree with Daranois; if it were to be split at all, that is how I would do it. BOZ (talk) 15:03, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
I haven't been around here in a while, but I would argue against splitting the article at all. Yes, it's huge, but then so is the subject matter. I concur with Daranios that splitting the page would make navigation more difficult, not less. The page as it stands now is the culmination of several years' work by a number of different editors to condense the material down into a simpler, single reference (as opposed to a huge list of articles about fictional creatures which were already subject to bulk deletion). In any case - and no offence intended to Lamp301 - I don't think demand is the right word to use here. If someone feels strongly enough that the page should be split, it should be proposed as a request for comment and a consensus sought to split the page (and into what) or to keep it as is.Vulcan's Forge (talk) 02:55, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Update: since it's been well over a year since the possibility of splitting the page due to length has been discussed, and the consensus from above seems to be that splitting the page is not advisable, I am being bold and removing the split/length tags.Vulcan's Forge (talk) 01:41, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Just asking.....

is this the longest wikipedia article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.199.81.9 (talk) 17:21, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Mabye! 129.33.19.254 (talk) 17:30, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
Not at the moment - by a good margin. Want to know the longest ones? Daranios (talk) 20:04, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Page Length Template removal

Per WP:BOLD I removed the page length template on this article again, since this had already been discussed 3-4 years ago (see previous discussion, above) and the tag itself had been applied more than two years ago. As noted immediately above, this is not the longest Wikipedia page.Vulcan's Forge (talk) 03:24, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Remove forced-collapse content boxing

It's against MOS:DONTHIDE and MOS:ACCESS to force the auto-collapsing of any of an article's main (we only permit it in adjunct material like infoboxes, rarely, and navboxes) because they have no impact on WP:REUSE.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:52, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

There's a very real functionality problem as well: you can't just ctrl-f search in your browser for a monster's name. I would have thought that would be potentially one of the most valuable uses that this article could be put to.
Additionally, I can't be certain about Google, but trying to Google search for some of the unlinked names doesn't find this article, while searching for linked names returns their own Wikipedia article high on the Google results, but again not this article. That would seem to suggest that Google isn't noticing our content that is auto-collapsed. --RexxS (talk) 17:34, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
The page was originally compressed due to page length issues, as that was a compromise solution. Likely not the best solution though, but those complaints did end after it was compressed. 2600:1700:E820:1BA0:1D46:D19E:3317:46B2 (talk) 19:23, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
The page is currently 294,550 bytes. That'ss ridiculous, and unnecessary. It should be split up, and uncollapsed. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:09, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Is this list a copyright violation?

I do not think this list can exist on wikipedia without being a copyright violation of the source material which is a list as well. How does this list actually differentiate itself from the source material? It's too closely related to the copyrighted material.4meter4 (talk) 14:20, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

This list can in no way replace the source material, which are the monster descriptions and their game mechanics (totalling many hundred pages). This only lists the creature names, and in part gives very short summaries. The individual sections are somewhat close to a table of content, but are further commented. Many of these books do not have a table of contents as such anyway. Knowing little of legalities: Would putting up a table of contents here be a copyright infringement? Daranios (talk) 20:22, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
Daranios, if its a copy or close paraphrase of the table of contents then yes it would be a copyright violation.4meter4 (talk) 20:40, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
Lists are difficult to copyright, and there needs to be a value judgement or creativty in the ordering of the list or the inclusion criteria. A list of monsters isn't normally copyrightable; a "top 10 D&D monsters" or "best D&D monsters ever" is likely to be due to the use of value judgements to order the list. - Bilby (talk) 20:56, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
@Bilby: I disagree in this case. The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition monsters is essentially a book listing the monsters in the game (and of course describing them in much more detail than here), and this list is essentially recreated here. In other words, it's a recreation of the work by providing an identical/closely paraphrased index of the original and entirely based on the primary source. It isn't an original list but merely a recreation of a copyrighted collection of material with less detail.4meter4 (talk) 21:07, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
There is no creativity involved in listing the contents of a book, so the list itself is not copyrightable. There is copyright involved in the description of each of the monsters, and there might be creativity involved in forming a list in a specific order, but the raw list should be fine. See [1], which includes "mere listings of ingredients or contents" as not having copyright. - Bilby (talk) 00:15, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
Bilby, again I disagree. The book itself is a unique list of fictional monsters that don't exist outside of the book themselves. So the list is all original material and therefore copyrightable. This isn't like a list of NBA players that exist in the real world that are compiled in a book(s), this is a creation of monsters made specifically for this book(s) as a resource for the game. This is the only place they exist. Therefore, this is a unique and copyrightable protected list.4meter4 (talk) 00:46, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
The US copyright office says that a list of contents is not copyrightable. - Bilby (talk) 01:07, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
That's assuming the monster's aren't trademarked. This is clearly a derivative work and not a list of contents. If the descriptions of the monsters were removed then maybe it would be a table of contents. 4meter4 (talk) 01:21, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Disagree with the assertion made by the OP Lightburst (talk) 01:56, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

  • @Lightburst: I don't understand what you mean by OP. Please explain.4meter4 (talk) 02:07, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
We are wasting bytes and time OP Lightburst (talk) 02:21, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
Then maybe you shouldn't use potentially confusing acronyms.4meter4 (talk) 02:31, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
It sure as heck seems like a copyvio. It literally says things like "this appendix is designed for use with..." as though it were copied wholesale from a game book. Wikipedia should not be a replacement for actually buying the book in question, and this seems to be an attempt to copy over the table of contents of a number of monster books. Sourced entirely to the books, of course.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 02:37, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
Creating the list is not a copyright violation, which was the original question. Summaries of creative works are also not copyright violations, as otherwise we would be unable to write plot and character summaries. In this case the summaries are very short (generally no more than a sentence when present) and do not simply copy the words of the source material, and so would not be a copyright concern as written. Equally, there is not sufficient information provided for these summaries to replace the books concerned. - Bilby (talk) 02:49, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Not a copyright violation. Bilby explained it well. Dream Focus 03:35, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
US Supreme Court stated in that incident with the Magic the Gathering "Tap" mechanic, that "game rules cannot be copyrighted only their presentation", though parts of the game can be trademarked. Thus why "Tap" is not trademarked to WotC. mentioning a monster from D&D is not a trademark violation for the few that are trademarked otherwise people would never be able to speak of Walmart, McDonald's, etc because you can't say trademarked words. shadzar-talk 05:12, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
  • No, a list like this is in no way copyright infringement, whether it uses primary sources or not. As Bilby says, if it were then all our plot and character summaries, and much of the rest of Wikipedia, would also be copyright violations. -- Necrothesp (talk) 08:59, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
    • And therefore, if this is the straw people are grasping at to delete this article without needing consensus at AFD, that makes this "copyvio" question something much wider than one list article on D&D, but rather affecting probably tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of articles across WP, and an therefore an issue well outside the scope of this discussion or the AFD that spawned it. BOZ (talk) 11:47, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
I disagree with that false analogy. Chraracter descriptions and plot summaries are not the same as the recreation of a set compendium of material that is a close construct of the original.4meter4 (talk) 12:17, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
I don't see how a list of D&D monsters is any different from a list of characters in a work of fiction. -- GreenC 18:55, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
Because these guides aren't a continuous narrative like a novel or a play or a film or an opera or musical; nor are they a collection of short stories. They are a character guide for monster characters, so this list is basically performing the exact same function as the guide itself. It's too closely paraphrased and constructed.4meter4 (talk) 19:01, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
The guides give you descriptions of the monsters and stats for their use in game. A list giving only the name and one sentence summarizing the description cannot at all perform the same function. Noone can use the monsters in the game based on this list. Or in quantitative terms: A name and one sentence cannot perform the same function as one page of text. Can the non-free tag be removed now? Daranios (talk) 19:51, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
  • In a single word answer: NO. It is not a WP:COPYVIO. If that's not sufficiently clear, please see [[2]], and Feist v. Rural which it references. (I find it deliciously ironic that I had to dig into the talk page history of a recently deleted monster list article to find that.)Vulcan's Forge (talk) 23:49, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
  • @4meter4: I'm sorry, but while you no doubt have a much greater understanding of our copyright policy and other policies than many (most?) of the people who are arguing with you (several of whom have a history of being blocked, warned, or having their edits revdelled, due to copyright violations), you are unfortunately wrong on the substance in this case. A simple list of the contents of a book, unless it involves creativity in its ordering or inclusion criteria, is not a creative work in itself and so cannot be copyrighted.
If, as User:Zxcvbnm speculates, some of the text of this article has been copied verbatim from the book(s) in question, that may be a judgement call based on whether the said text could is long enough that it could have been paraphrased or whether it belongs here to begin with (Japanese copyright law at least requires that "quoted" text not only be subordinate but also relevant to the context; I know less about US copyright law). But that is a different matter from what the OP repeatedly claimed above.
Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:07, 25 October 2019 (UTC)
Um... how can an original list of original monsters created for these books (they do not exist outside of these lists) specifically not be considered an original work. It is an original creative work in and of itself because it's not listing things externally but is intirely original material unique to just this publication. It is creating a compendium for use in the game. It's entirely original and therefore entirely copyrightable.4meter4 (talk) 04:15, 25 October 2019 (UTC)
If the content of the list that we mirror directly from the copyrighted source is just the table of contents, without any of the actual content of the entries being copied, that is not a creative work separate from the actual content, and therefore not copyrightable. The fact that the entries in the book contain descriptions of fictional monsters is irrelevant (or, rather, would be irrelevant if it were even true for all of the entries, but the Banshee comes from Gaelic mythology, and Bears are 100% real). If TSR/Wizards had prepared a comprehensive list of "canon" monsters, but they had left out some monsters from their own previously published sources for new and creative reasons, and that "canon" corresponded to the entirety of our present article, that would be a separate issue, but the fact that you are not claiming that but rather claiming that the fact that some of these monsters are fictional means listing their names constitutes a copyright violation strongly suggests to me that you don't even believe that to be the case. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:39, 25 October 2019 (UTC)
BTDub, you are aware that in reality the official published sources do not contain the exact list we do, since we have mushed a whole bunch (all?) of the 2E publications' lists together, right? You speak of it in the singular, but as far as I am aware the only ones who use this list are players of the game and Wikipedians.
I might recognize an issue with the fact that we don't seem to include a whole lot of original text, summary, paraphrased content or the like but rather just list the tables of contents of a whole bunch of books. But that should be addressed by adding content (or deleting/redirecting the whole page for some reason other than copyvio), not removing content that you believe is copyrightable and therefore copyvio for us to list.
Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:44, 25 October 2019 (UTC)
Actually, I would be less concerned if the monsters names were organized differently then exactly mirroring the organization as they are found in the books. At least there would be something original about this article and list then.4meter4 (talk) 04:49, 25 October 2019 (UTC)
How would you favour organizing them? TSR/Wizards don't own the copyright on simple alphabetical listing, but if you can think of a more encyclopedia way to do so I'd be glad to hear you out. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:18, 25 October 2019 (UTC)
You could organize them in a single column navigational tool (all of the books together not separated out) like at List of operas by George Frideric Handel. The tool could let you divide by book or alphabetize by the entire collection. This at least would give a unique useful tool to wikipedia that isn't simply a complete regurgitation the primary sources exact structure/format.4meter4 (talk) 10:18, 25 October 2019 (UTC)
Has anyone here told you not to do that? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 14:24, 25 October 2019 (UTC)
I would rather delete the article entirely to solve the copyright violation problem then entirely restructure an article with copyright issues that I have no interest in editing.4meter4 (talk) 16:18, 25 October 2019 (UTC)
Thankfully it was acertained that there are no copyright issues, so that's no reason to stop anyone. Daranios (talk) 19:38, 25 October 2019 (UTC)
There are no copyright violation problems to be solved. User:4meter4, you appear to be conflating "fictional" with "creative effort which is copyrightable". Consider: Apple Computers. There was clearly creative effort which went into the naming of Apple; however, the presence of Apple Computers in the Yellow Pages directory for Southern California, or a list of computer manufacturers, is inherently not copyrightable. This is the entire argument behind Feist v. Rural. The list composed by this article is not a verbatim copy of anything produced by TSR/Wizards; it does not represent one book, but more than a dozen. It does not directly quote from any of the books in question anywhere without attribution (or at least, no one has indicated a verifiable copyright violation, outside of vague speculation based on "it sounds like it came from a book"). To put this another way, under your theory of list copyright we would be required to remove from Wikipedia the filmography of every actor/television personality with a Wikipedia entry containing such information, since the lists of titles in and of themselves (all fictional) would be subject to your definition of copyright violation. You are fully entitled to maintain your opinion that the list is a copyright violation; however, the consensus of this discussion is that no one agrees with you.Vulcan's Forge (talk) 21:44, 25 October 2019 (UTC)
Ehhh... Feist dealt specifically with facts. What we have here aren't facts per se, but rather a full list of commercially created content. I'd have to do more detailed research here, and it's probably not a copyvio, but it's less clear cut than it seems. SportingFlyer T·C 08:02, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

Section Links

As the article is long and the sections usually compressed, I find it most useful for the reader if links appeared in each section, instead of just once in the whole article as would be the norm on Wikipedia. Are there objections? Daranios (talk) 21:08, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable to me. BOZ (talk) 21:43, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

Removed "Manual" tag

I have boldly removed the "Manual" tag placed on this article in May 2020. Reason: The "Manual" tag links to the WP:NOTMANUAL element of "What Wikipedia is not". This list does not contain enough information for any reader to successfully play the game in the absence of any other material; therefore, it cannot be, by definition, a manual or guide on how to play the game.Vulcan's Forge (talk) 18:19, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

"Minimal (Dungeons & Dragons)" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Minimal (Dungeons & Dragons). The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 January 7#Minimal (Dungeons & Dragons) until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Cnilep (talk) 04:53, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Linking to common creature names?

Some time ago, Tony1 together with some other corrections, has removed links to common creatures like bear, based on MOS:LINK and the argument, that these topics are not very relevant to understanding the topic of Dungeons & Dragons. (@Tony1: Is it correct like that?)

I agree that those links may only rarely be used for navigation. On the other hand in my opinion they do not make reading more difficult due to the structured nature of the list, and there seems to be no consensus if MOS:OVERLINK should be applied to lists or not. But here the links do provide a service: They show at a glance which of the subjects the list treats are notable as real-world-subjects (or notable as part of (A)D&D), as opposed to those which are original creations that did not achieve fame. In effect, this gives a summary of a great number of "In popular culture" sections of real-world subjects. I don't see the benefit of taking that away in this case. What does anyone else think? Daranios (talk) 10:43, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Daranios appears to agree that it's a service to readers to point them to the items that might garner a click (one in 20,000 views, probably)—by not linking everything in a list. Tony (talk) 11:48, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
Sorry, I did not quite understand what I appear to agree to. In my opinion, the best solution would be to link every "monster" that has a Wikipedia article, even commonly known ones, for the reasons given above. I agree not to link everything in this list in so far as I do not want to create red links (except in very specific cases). You have also convinced me that your removal of links based of MOS:LINK made sense within the descriptive text. Daranios (talk) 15:10, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Spider eaters

For a long time there used to be a whole article about spider eaters [3], but now the title Spider eater (Dungeons & Dragons) is a redirect and it points right here. The problem is, this article doesn't seem to make any mention of spider eaters. Should one be added? If not, then I'll have the redirect go up for deletion. – Uanfala (talk) 12:59, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

@Uanfala: Good point! To my knowledge, spider eaters first appeared in 3rd edition D&D, therefore we should not add them here. I have changed the redirect to Monsters in Dungeons & Dragons, which I think is both an appropriate place to include information about the spider eater, and where some content about it was acutally just added. For that content to remain unchallenged, however, it would be great if there were any comments from secondary sources around which could be added there. You wouldn't happen to know any? Daranios (talk) 13:56, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
Interesting that an IP would add that section just now. Yeah, that's obviously a good target now. Secondary sources? I'm afraid I don't know the literature, I only came here trying to tidy up after seeing the strange hatnote at Insectivore. – Uanfala (talk) 14:13, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Include sources on redirected articles

If the Planescape review contains more on bariaur and tiefling, which are already covered on this list by other sources, I suggest adding them to the respective articles even if they are currently redirected, as I have done in many cases, and as I saw here yesterday on Githyanki. :) Tiefling still exists so far, but Bariaur was redirected from from this version - we may be dreaming on most creatures being brought back to life, but when we find the sources I think we need to make note of them for the future! :) BOZ (talk) 13:24, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

I've done the tiefling - good to know there's an article left, which now has a bit of secondary sourceing - and bariaur cases. I'll keep that in mind, but am not sure I'll have the energy to do that in every case. I'll continue to add the secondary sources here over time, so that we have a basis and reference point here. :-) Daranios (talk) 15:03, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
Whenever and wherever you can, meanwhile doing what you do on this article is great. :) BOZ (talk) 16:12, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

"Animal skeleton" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Animal skeleton and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 November 23#Animal skeleton until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Adumbrativus (talk) 12:11, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

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