Guidelines for this wiki

After working on this wiki as administrator for a while I've decided some guidelines were needed.

• This has been addended by Cherrio01 regarding article layout, book mentions, article mentions, and skill mentions.

Be Bold

One need not ask permission to add new material (even if you are the author). AFAIK Discussions doesn't give alerts that new material has been added and so can get "lost" and sit there unanswered.

Article Titles and Links

• Anything with a unique name, such as Horror: The Madness Dossier can stand on its own as a title. If it's generic, such as Fantasy, you may use the complete title, i.e. GURPS Fantasy.
  • If the work is part of its own series the "GURPS" can be left off as well. Examples include Action, Dungeon Fantasy, Low-Tech, and a handful of others. This is the GURPS Wiki -- it's assumed that other books already have GURPS in their title.
  • The first book or descriptor page generally becomes a Hub page with the category serving as the reference.
    • Addendum: Hub pages can be very useful for navigation, and should be used any time there are multiple books in a series. This is especially useful to users who are unaware of how many books or articles are in a series. Did you know Dungeon Fantasy has over twenty books? Or that Action has over nine?
• Use the actual name of a classic work ie ''[[Classic: Blood Types]]'' rather then ''[[Classic: Blood Types|GURPS Blood Types]]''. This allows a reader to know if the link goes to current 4e material or still in print Classic Material.
  • The only exception to this is "CTHS" for "Classic Transhuman Space" and GURPS WWII which for some strange reason is not consistent on how it uses the "Classic" prefix. Some series and settings span from Classic to 4e (For instance, Transhuman Space and Reign of Steel). In this case, use a page as an overview for the setting and link to the books and articles that setting contains.

Citations

Whenever possible, use:

• Titles of books should be in bold italics, such as GURPS: Tactical Shooting. This is how books reference each other in the GURPS books themselves.
• Articles in Pyramid should be in italic, such as Pyramid 3/4 Magic on the Battlefield.
  • Titles within works are "quotes" and capitalized. For instance, "Magic and Naval Warfare".
• If writing an adventure, remember to boldface applicable skill rolls and italicize attributes, just as they appear in the books. For instance, "Roll a Per-based Traps skill".
• Remember to link articles and books! Highlighting and using Ctrl+K or CMD+K!
  • Use INTERNAL LINKS -- You can directly link to another page on the wiki without copy-pasting the entire URL.
    • Likewise, you can even link to a specific heading, if you'd like, by copy-pasting only the portion after the article name, like this!
  • Be precise -- link to the correct article! Generic terms like horror and fantasy will typically link to a genre page -- you need to specify GURPS Horror and GURPS Fantasy to link to those books' proper pages.

Provide Reasonable Amounts of Information

Provide more information than 'appears in (blank) on page (whatever)'. About 90% of this wiki used to be just that, and it was useless. There is still a lot of articles in Category:Info Needed but it's down to something sane.

Sometimes it is impractical to put everything on one page. If a topic is particularly huge, feel free to link multiple pages together -- for instance, Beneath Castle Everglory, World of Kung Fu, GURPS Banestorm. It's better to have pages that keep a single and focused concept than to have one huge page that tries to contain the entirety of a whole setting or adventure!

Unify Material

Convert Classic material to 4e

As explained on the GURPS Classic page not all classic material is compatible with itself, never mind 4e. For this reason--and to help make the greater amount of Classic material useful to 4e players--Classic material must be converted to 4e. Characters using Classic values will be updated to 4e. A clear indicator that one is using Classic rules is skill cost not following the 1, 2, 4, 4+ pattern.

Be sure to include the {{Classic-Conversion}} template on such pages. GURPS Update will help though in places it gives incorrect conversions. The GURPS Character Sheet Program will help makes sure the point totals are correct.

Expanded Rules

If a rule is expanded or clarified in a book--for instance, Feinting in Basic Set being updated in Martial Arts--add those rules on their respective page and add citations.

Keep Dead Links to a Minimum

Links that go to non existent pages are to be expected to some degree but the over 1,000 the wiki has on 2020 June 16 is beyond insane. To keep it blunt, if you can't be bothered to create the page and follow the Provide guideline above then odds are it isn't worth including.

• Also consider if the material actually warrants a separate page. If you can't get at least two paragraphs for the new page odds are there simply isn't enough there to warrant an actual page.
• For example, Crushing Attack collects what have easily been one note blurbs on to one page. Remember that subheads can be linked such as Kinetic Energy (Crushing Attack) (done as [[Crushing_Attack#Kinetic_Energy|Kinetic Energy (Crushing Attack)]]
  • So Mana Pool can be referenced as [[Powerstone#Special_.22Quirks.22|Mana Pool]] rather then creating a separate page for what amounts to two sentences.
• Finally, use the search option that is the top of the wiki to see if the information already exists buried in an already existing page. If it comes off as a little too obscure create a #redirect page to it. Body of Fire is an example of how this should work.

Make it Readable

Remember, somebody else has be able to read what you put here. Use complete sentences and bullet points with notes, references, and hyperlinks. Mousing over a reference should bring up the text as the MediaWiki:ImportJS page with required dev:ReferencePopups/code.js has been added to this wiki.

In this vein, for do not use abbreviations for references -- e.g. use Classic: Blood Types, p. 12 rather then BT12. That made sense on the forums where space was a premium. It makes no sense here. Also note that, with the exceptions of the Basic Set and Dragons, these abbreviations are for Classic books.

Ordering your Articles

If you're unsure order to use for headings in an article, you can use this guide for most skills, advantages, etc:

1. Introduction and Details
   • May begin with a quote
   • Overview of Article
   • Details
2. (Special Situations)
3. Changes from GURPS Classic (if applicable)
4. Examples (if it helps)
5. Trivia and Errata (if applicable)
6. See Also (always second-last)
   • GURPS Wiki articles go first
   • Further Reading (if useful for inspiration/theme)
7. References (always last) {{Reflist}}
   • This usually appears automatically at the bottom of the page.

If a particular Rule, Advantage, Maneuver, Skill, Etc, has a more detailed or specific usage, you may put it in the overview if it is short -- such as a sentence or single mention. If it takes a paragraph to explain a special use, put the details under their own heading, a la Special Situations.

Strive to Use Existing Categories

A category is for organizing information on the wiki. A category that is too vague (as Category:Infinite Worlds worlds was; it had become a catch all category) or too small (one entry) is useless. If you are unsure as to where to put an article click on "Categories" at the bottom on the left hand side. Odds are something in the list that comes up will fit. If there truly isn't a Category then try to find at least one other article (preferably two) that also fits that category. Follow up on creating the category and give a little something about what the category is for.

Related to this is GURPS Wiki: Templates which makes creating certain pages far easier.

Endeavor to Complete Pages

There are a lot of pages with Category:Article stubs, Category:Incomplete, Category:Working and Category:Info Needed. When possible try to finish them first.

Give Fanworks Their Headers

There are several headers for fanworks

• {{Classic-Conversion}} - unofficial conversion of classic material. Can include expansion on canonal material
• {{Conversion}}: unofficial conversion of another RPG to GURPS; ex: D&D to GURPS
• {{Adaptation}}: An unofficial adaption of another property to GURPS; ex: GURPS Thundarr, GURPS Star Wars
• {{SJG-forum-realities}}: topnote for realities that appeared on the GURPS part of Steve Jackson Games forums
• {{SJG-forum-fansetting}}: - Material that originally appeared on the Steve Jackson Games forums.
• {{Non-Canon}}: - generic non canon header.

Comply with Baker v. Selden and Copyright

This wiki is not intended as a replacement of the books so do not quote huge hunks of text from them.

That said "In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work."

Or to put it simply, "Copyright does not protect the idea for a game, its name or title, or the method or methods for playing it. Nor does copyright protect any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in developing, merchandising, or playing a game. Once a game has been made public, nothing in the copyright law prevents others from developing another game based on similar principles. Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author’s expression in literary, artistic, or musical form."

"Game mechanics and rules are not entitled to copyright protection, but expressive elements may be copyrightable, including game labels, design of game boards, playing cards, and graphical works, as well as elements of the characters – if they are sufficiently developed. Copyright does not protect “stock” characters." (summation of DaVinci Editrice S.r.l. v. Ziko Games, LLC et al, No. 4:2013cv03415 - Document 44 (S.D. Tex. 2014) on Lexology.com) Zachary Strebeck, (an actual attorney at law) explains this case and its implications in "Court rules in favor of cloned tabletop game – No protection under US copyright law"

Comment

This means the "Copyrighted text (like game rules and vignette text)..." for SJ Games Online Policy is making a claim regarding copyright that according to the American Bar Association was never true ("Games rules have never been copyrightable, and the idea of a game is just one uncopyrightable aspect of a work.") and this was reaffirmed in DaVinci Editrice S.r.l. v. Ziko Games, LLC. whose jurisdiction covers Austin, Texas where Steve Jackson Games' main HQ is located.

Based on the American Bar Association's Not Playing Around: Board Games and Intellectual Property Law as well as all the above (including DaVinci Editrice) as long as you can reasonably restructure existing rules into your own words things should be good.

That said images are another issue. While New Copyright Strikes on SCP Content goes over the three main points of Creative Commons: show attribution, link back to the original work, and work based on that material is also under Creative Commons there is one snag in that with regards to images.

As pointed out in Matpat's Addressing Game Theory's Biggest Problem an image may not be CC-BY-SA even if Google says it is. This is why an image's source should be fully identified if possible.