Talk:List of Dungeons & Dragons deities

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Contents

[edit] Split

I think the entries should be split up again like they were. Only two are stubs, and all can be expanded; official supplements give pages and pages for each god, and mostly don't even touch on what occurs in the numerous novels in which the gods and their priests take part. There are no "deities of Dungeons & Dragons", so this article should be deleted or redirected to Dungeons and Dragons. There is no way that all the info on Forgotten Realms gods could be placed in one article (like List of Forgotten Realms deities) without going way over 32k, which means multiple articles are needed. The most logical way is one for each god, since they don't group themselves together too naturally (with some exceptions, like the elemental gods and the gods of fury). What is your proposal? Tuf-Kat 05:55, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)

These articles can never have more information that what is in the existing D&D source material. Even if they did, Wikipedia wouldn't be the place for them. Since existing articles were written about some of the "bigger" gods, I'll bet that this page will not grow fast enough to ever need to split off another page. In this case (Deities of Dungeons & Dragons), I would propose that the only encyclopedic information about each would be :
  1. A disambiguation link if the god is named or based off another real world mythology
  2. A short (two paragraph) description of each, including native setting, alignment, followers, appearance, special powers, and "demeanor".
  3. A listing of source books, modules, magazine articles, etc. that feature the deity
Anything more, such as the political relationships or complete history, goes beyond WP. Fiction elements should not be documented with so much detail, unless they have some wider cultural or historical signifigance. Since these are only important to D&D players, this is not the place to vigorously document them. One option, that other fiction groups have created their own wikis dedicated to a specific topic, such as Memory Alpha for Star Trek. -- Netoholic @ 06:39, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
This isn't established policy, AFAIK. I don't quite follow the reasoning behind getting rid of fictional articles. Sure, they may not belong in "Wikipedia 1.0" (the proposed paper version), but that doesn't mean they don't belong in Wikipedia. As far as I can see, current policy says that, so long as an article is not the kind that will always be a stub, and it is written in an encyclopedic manner (ie. the fictional nature of the article is made clear), then it belongs in Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:Check your fiction.
Why, if a town of 1000 people (relevant to, say, 5000 people max.) is a reasonable article for inclusion, is an article about a fictional subject relevant to 15 million D&D players unreasonable?
I'm going to post some kind of summary of this policy dispute at Wikipedia talk:Check your fiction, since many people (including me and you) seem to want a policy change, or at least a clarification. ··gracefool |☺ 06:49, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Check your fiction has been remarkably stable and accepted for quite some time, and there are already equivalent discussions on its Talk page. In part, the document reads - "Do not unnecessarily create small articles about largely irrelevant fictional characters, locations, objects and so on that can be better integrated into larger articles." ... Check your "check your fiction". -- Netoholic @ 07:10, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
In other words, the question is, what is "irrelevant". As I said, why is something that is relevant to 15 million people less relevant than something relevant to 5000 people, just because it's fiction? ··gracefool |☺ 07:48, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
So are you saying that the only people that would look-up a town's page are it's residents? I've read articles on plenty of small towns of which I do not reside. A town's article is a statement of fact, which may be used by a researcher at any time; while these are statements of fiction, which are only interesting to those already involved in D&D. On the rare occasion that someone would be researching D&D deities, a single page would be remarkably more helpful than a collection of stubs. This also gives you the opportunity to write an interesting introduction to the gods at the top of the Deities of Dungeons & Dragons describing the in-game and fictional aspects of deities. Currently, many of the sections are repetitive ("So-and-so is a fictional god from Dungeons & Dragons..."). Community consensus, both from the Check your fiction talk page and the recent Vote for deletion is showing that these stub articles are becoming targets. If you want to keep the information, combine articles. -- Netoholic @ 12:53, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Actually, the D&D articles are also statements of fact, about a very popular fictional universe (over 20 million players). When something is that popular, it affects culture. If 20 million people find D&D articles more interesting than an article on a small town, who are you to argue?
There is no community consensus on this. If you want to make these kinds of widespread changes/clarification to policy on what is allowable on Wikipedia, debate the topic on a page made especially for the debate (Wikipedia:Articles about fiction), rather than one on deleting Bulls strength (which I agreed should be deleted).


There is no discussion at Check Your Fiction or VfD about these gods. Spells have nowhere's near as much possible content as any of the deities. If you do not like having separate articles, please make a proposal that separates the gods by setting and will not grow so large that the individual gods need to be separated back out again. Tuf-Kat 15:24, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Quite simply...

I put a lot of work into those article. They mean something to me and are just as valid as any article about separate fictional characters. If we do this to these, we should do it to X-Men, Buffy - anything with fictional characters. I regard what was done as vandalism, hence their restoration. -Erolos 16:04, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Pointing out other fiction stubs is not addressing the concern - those too should be looked at and combined. I find it incredibly bad editing to simply revert the changes rather than discuss your disagreement. Please take a look at this VfD page which shows the community does not want these kinds of article stubs. I will give you a chance to respond, but if you still disagree, I will post every one of them - gods, magical items, creatures - on VfD so the community can again voice their dislike of them. I guarantee, either they will be combined into topical "X of Dungeons & Dragons" articles, or deleted. -- Netoholic @ 16:29, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Actually, deleting them in the first place without proper VfD is "bad editing". A VfD dedicated to Bulls strength does not make policy for every D&D article on Wikipedia. It's misrepresentative. ··gracefool |☺ 22:57, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The god articles are not mentioned on the VfD page. There are no such thing as "deities of Dungeons and Dragons", so this is not an acceptable article. Others are apparently willing to work on articles for each god -- please propose an alternative if you do not like that. Also, please refrain from referring to these articles as stubs, as most (such as Shar and Cyric) are not, and those that are could easily be expanded. Tuf-Kat 17:04, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] New Generic Powers?

Can all the new D&D deities from the newer generic sourcebooks be added to the list? I'm thinking of adding them, but I'm not sure wether or not it violates any form of copyright. —Preceding unsigned comment added by DocDragon (talk • contribs) 08:23, 21 January 2006

Listing the names of characters in a work of fiction is deeply within the parameters of fair use (there would be no fiction on Wikipedia if this were not so). That said, you need to be careful about what sources you pull from. This article is about the core gods. If you look at my Greyhawk cosmology article on my own site, you will see that I've called out the "core deities" (i.e. those in the PHB) and the "semi-core deities" (i.e. those in other 3.5 non-capaign setting specific books). There are some on this page that I disagree with:
  • Pholtus
  • Zagyg
  • All of the dwarven powers
  • All of the elvish powers
  • All of the gnomish powers
  • All of the halfling powers
  • All of the Major Generic Monster Powers except for Blibdoolpoolp, Gruumsh and the demon lords (circa FC1:HotA)
  • All of the Minor Generic Monster Powers
None of these appear in any current core books that I am aware of (but I'm certainly willing to believe that I just haven't read the right books). Can anyone think of a reason that these belong on this page, as opposed to the List of Greyhawk deities? Remember that sources such as Dragon and Dungeon are not considered canon... -Harmil 21:06, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure, but are Pholtus &/or Zagyg in Complete Divine? If not, I'm down with removing them. As for the non-human deities, I think we should keep those mentioned in the Player's Handbook, DM's Guide, Monster Manual (many monster entries also mention the deity worshipped), & Deities & Demigods.--Robbstrd 23:02, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
Ok, so the thing to do is to individually <ref>...</ref> every one of these deities. By process of elimination, we should then be able to remove the ones that are not in either the "core" books or any of the other official core setting publications. To do that, I'll need to define some terms. I'll make a new section for that. -Harmil 15:04, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
I am a bit confused about the demipower "Selene" who was listed by an anonymous user. I don't find her in Races of Destiny (on p. 27 or anywhere else in the book), nor any other source that I can find for D&D deities.Caliban 21:07, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Definitions of terms

I propose that we start using these terms so that a complete citation of all of this material can be given.

core setting 
The setting that is loosely described by all 3.5 edition material plus any 3.0 material which does not have a direct equivalent (yet) in 3.5 (such as Monster Manual 2).
core gods (or deities) 
The deities listed in the Player's Handbook 3.5.
semi-core gods (or deities) 
This is the term I invented for my Greyhawk cosmology page, but if someone has a better term, we can use that instead. It refers to all of the deities and powers in the core setting which are not in the Player's Handbook. One example of this would be Kyuss who appears in the MM2 entry for the Spawn of Kyuss.

If we're good with these, then I will start trolling through the books, probably in this order:

  1. Player's Handbook
  2. Dungeon Master's Guide
  3. Monster Manual
  4. Deities and Demigods
  5. Libris Mortis
  6. Draconomicon
  7. Complete ...
  8. Races of ...

That should keep me busy for a while ;-) -Harmil 15:04, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, as you can see, I'm well on my way. I've done PHB, DMG, Deities and Demigods, Races of Destiny, Frostburn and Libris Mortis. Next up are the Monster Manuals 1-2, Fiendish Codex I and Draconomicon. -Harmil 19:55, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
All that really remains at this point is to finish going through the various monster manuals. The problem with those is that there's no clear "deity section", so I have to plow through them more or less linearly, which takes a lot of time. I'll get through it, though, and then we can start pruning out the non core setting deities. -Harmil 03:01, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Celestial Paragons of the Upper Planes

These beings are not deities, and as far as I know, there's no one that actually worships them as if they were (unlike the demon lords, for example). Thus, I don't see any reason for them to be listed here. They could potentially get their own page, or perhaps Upper plane should be turned into a full-fledged article instead of a redirect, and this info should be added there. -Harmil 15:13, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Related AFD

According to the reasoning in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/RuneScape gods (second nomination) a page like this as well as all of the individual deities should presumably be deleted. Kappa 09:42, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I think that DnD has a much more prominent place in Pop Culture than RuneScape. I wouldn't compare the two really, just based on that.mordicai. 14:37, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Page move and overhaul

I'm proposing that we overhaul the handling of deities from D&D as follows:

  • Rename this article, List of Dungeons & Dragons Core Setting deities
  • Create a new article, Dungeons & Dragons deities, which gives an overview of the timeline for various introductions of pantheons to D&D's various settings, and acts as a disambiguation between the various cosmology and list of deity articles.
  • Create a Dungeons & Dragons X cosmology article for each setting X (e.g. Dungeons & Dragons Core Setting cosmology, Dungeons & Dragons Forgotten Realms cosmology, etc.) which each have a "Deities" section, whose "main article" link goes to the appropriate List of Dungeons & Dragons X deities. These would also include the planar layout; overview of the theology; and any ongoing, inter-planar organizations/wars/etc.
  • Make List of Dungeons & Dragons deities (the redirect left when this article is moved) a pure disambiguation page, listing the various setting-specific articles.

This resolves the long-standing problems that we've had with this page slowly creeping toward being either a Greyhawk list or having tons of links to articles for other settings to disambiguate. I think it's also a much saner article landscape for the casual reader, who will more quickly find what they're looking for. -Harmil 19:09, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Quick amendment: Dungeons & Dragons Core Setting cosmology sounds right, but Dungeons & Dragons Forgotten Realms cosmology should really just be Forgotten Realms cosmology, as should the other settings. -Harmil 19:19, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
And here's a mockup of the new overview article: User:Harmil/Dungeons & Dragons deities. -Harmil 19:29, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
Great idea. You have my support, Harmil.--Robbstrd 18:33, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
I've included my thoughts over at your proposal's talk page. As a general notion I think it has a great deal of merit. --mordicai. 18:53, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

um... look at the description for Annam under the GIant gods secteion —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.28.163.181 (talk) 21:08, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Numerous entries have been vandalised. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.154.84.2 (talk) 20:33, 19 October 2007 (UTC)