User talk:Quincy/Godspawn (5e Background)

I have finished now. Thank you anyone who was patiently waiting.

I'm a bit confused about the feature. Let's say I was created by Bahamut. I can use Master's Assistance to directly ask Bahamut to perform some divine action. From the description, these are on par with powerful cleric spells. If the DM says yes, this is a clear mechanical benefit and less of a roleplaying feature as advised by the DMG. Marasmusine (talk) 01:36, 18 September 2016 (MDT)

Okay, they also have immortality, which is also a mechanical benefit.

They can also have any two skills and any two tool proficiencies, this makes the background vague and lacking in flavour. Marasmusine (talk) 01:39, 18 September 2016 (MDT)

I have now added a warning label and adjusted some aspects. I have no idea what a "preload" is.

Hm. That shouldn't be necessary, or at least, it shouldn't be so improvisational. Marasmusine, do we have a policy regarding authorial intent which would protect a user's desire to have an intentionally malfunctional work on the wiki, without labeling it with permanent improvement templates? Perhaps it should be moved to a user/subpage? I would put a design disclaimer on this, but that isn't intended to justify blatantly dysfunctional work, only gray-areas. Perhaps if it had a design disclaimer stating that this was part of a user's personal campaign setting, and unsuitable for a core rules game?

Have you uploaded any other elements from your personal campaign setting? If you have, you could post a campaign setting page and collect all of your pages there, putting them in its category, and thus protecting them from out-of-context revision. --Kydo (talk) 09:33, 18 September 2016 (MDT)

A preload is a pre-scripted blank page with planned formatting. It standardizes common pages. When you clicked the button to create this background, the page already had a bunch of text, right? That was the preload. One of our standards for quality is sticking to, and keeping up to date with, the preload of a given page group. The only accepted exceptions, are when the page contains unique material which cannot possibly be included in the preload, and is formatted such that it does not interfere with the preload unnecessarily. --Kydo (talk) 09:33, 18 September 2016 (MDT)

I have not uploaded other campaign elements. I created this because my DM wanted to allow Homebrew races. I chose to create a Dullahan Cleric of Life, but couldn't find ANY backgrounds that suited the character I wanted (Besides Monster which is a huge disadvantage). I so created this background, and my DM even approved it fully.

Not to question the judgement of you guys, but how is my feature more dysfunctional than Fourth Wall Breaker, which has NO improvement templates? And the Dragon Ogre race?!?! It's so broken it's ridiculous! And yet it has no improvement templates?

Oh, and I gave it clothes. Can that template be removed at least? And what's wrong with my preload? Do I need to remove the bullets by proficiencies and equipment?

I'm glad your DM approved your creation for use in their game. That kind of validation from a friend/acquaintance is a good feeling, and it indicates you have a confident and accepting DM. Honestly, I'd probably allow it in my games too. (Heck, I wrote Stacking Advantage (5e Variant Rule)!) That said, every DM is different, with different skill levels and different play styles. What may work in one game for one DM may not work for another. Here on the wiki, the preference is to maximize compatibility with the core rules when possible. Deviations from it are absolutely acceptable, but they should be stated and justified by something. See Precedent (DnD Guideline) for more information on that.

You're right. Those are horribly broken! And I'll get to them eventually. In fact, because you mention them, they're next up. But I got to this one first. I'm only one man, and can only do so much. I spend up to 10 hours a day working on this wiki- every single day, and at no pay. I started focusing on backgrounds and races a month ago. Until then, nobody was even actively patrolling in an organized manner for quality policy enforcement. It can take a week or more to resolve quality issues on a single page, so it isn't an easy activity to be engaging in. So, no offense to you, but personally, I think people should be grateful that anyone wants to help make their ideas better for more people in any way whatsoever, because apparently, next to nobody gives a rat's patoot.

Yeah. The damage to the preload is pretty minor here. Also, if an issue in an improvement template is resolved, feel free to edit or remove the template. We're all involved in the improvement process, not just admin. If someone disagrees with you, they'll just revert it and bring it up on the talk page for discussion. Everything can be edited, so anything can be fixed. Things are pretty casual around here in that regard. --Kydo (talk) 14:01, 18 September 2016 (MDT)

I must apologize, I get protective over my creations. I understand you are only one man, and I respect your initiative.

I took another look, and realized that Fourth Wall Breaker is a "joke" background as told by the April Fools sticker. I apologize for throwing them under the bus, as they don't deserve that.

Hey! Not that you guys need MORE to manage, but what if there was a separate area, like the April Fools page, that non rule conforming races, classes, and backgrounds could reside, instead of just marking them as unbalanced? Because, the way it is now, "OP" creations are lumped in with incomplete ones and illogical ones.

That's an interesting concept! You are correct, we do assume that anything which is imbalanced must be incomplete, as it is possible to bring such a page into a balanced state. As a consequence, this wiki is not especially welcoming of material or users that actively disregard these standards in their creative process. We are currently having a discussion about revising how some of these improving templates work on Help talk:Improving, Reviewing, and Removing Templates. Since you've shown an interest in the subject and a capacity to discuss it in a respectable way, why don't you head over there and put in your two cents, before everyone cuts the discussion dead with a bloody vote. Perhaps it is reasonable to make the needsbalance template a disclaimer, rather than ! category? And, since you seem new to wiki discussions, you should glance at the example on Help:Talk Pages, which I just did a big revision on for clarity. There's a thorough guide on how to keep discussions organized, but the visual example should teach you most of what you need to know at a glance. (Not that the way we're conversing here is wrong in any way, it's just highly informal.) --Kydo (talk) 16:14, 18 September 2016 (MDT)

I'll be honest, I saw the amount of admins and got too nervous to even type out a coherent sentence. I'm sorry, but public speaking never was my forte. --SansGenocide

"Admin" on this wiki doesn't actually mean much. It just means the community trusts a person not to abuse full editing capabilities. It just comes with the expectation that the person will also make an effort to resolve social disputes if they are encountered. Anyways, it was just a thought. As for this page: I'm not sure where to go from here. You're using it in an active game, so changing it to suit the community's standards of balance, no matter how loose those are, would be less than useful to the you. Driving people away because we squashed their creativity doesn't benefit the community either. Honestly, I don't think there really is a solution here, and there probably won't be unless this community stops dragging its butt on balance policy. If you don't mind, I'll leave the design disclaimer on the page, and comment out the balance template. It will still be there, in case it's needed in the future, but will not be visible outside of the editor. --Kydo (talk) 05:17, 19 September 2016 (MDT)

The question of wherever to alter the page depends on 1) if it can be used in other people's games without it being unexpectedly disruptive (and "expectedly" doesn't mean using a disclaimer to mask poor design), and 2) if it can better fit the design guidelines without changing the essence of the page.

In my opinion godspawn can be adjusted to better fit the guidelines without changing the concept.

I understand being protective over your creations, I am the same way, but ultimately if you want to present something without the chance of it being edited by others, a wiki isn't the place to put it. I can suggest one alternative, and that is to move this page to SansGenocide's user space, which is the thing to do for material that you want to reference (if you are using it in a game).

As for improving this page, my suggestion is to have a list of typical god domains (without mentioning specific deities; and gender-neutral please, not "Master"), and specific proficiencies for each of those; also a unique item (not "a symbol of your god", which is really a holy symbol). Marasmusine (talk) 05:53, 19 September 2016 (MDT)

I honestly had no idea I could just move it. That makes this a lot easier for both me as well as you guys. I will move this Background to my User Page, and then the issue of universal playability will be resolved. And to be honest, I mainly chose to post it to this wikia because the wikia makes the formatting far easier than some other creation sites.

As for gender neutrality, Master can be used without necessarily indicating a male gender, as Master can be used as merely a show of respect.

I did something wrong, and I don't know how to fix it. The background still appears on the main.

I probably fudged up pretty bad... Crap.

And now you guys probably can't find this..... SansGenocide

LOL, no it's all fine. Marasmusine saw the notifications of what you did before me and sorted it out. Everything can be edited, so anything can be fixed. --Kydo (talk) 10:07, 19 September 2016 (MDT)

Thank both of you so much for the help. You guys truly are my spirit brothers. I can't thank either of you enough. --SansGenocide

Thank-you and don't hesitate to leave a message on mine or Kydo's talk page if you need assistance. Marasmusine (talk) 13:35, 19 September 2016 (MDT)

Just testing my signature here. --SansGenocide (talk) 08:28, 20 September 2016 (MDT)

Deletion

You responded to the deletion real quick, so I'll give you a week or so to backup this page elsewhere before deleting it again. Please respond here when you've done so :)--GamerAim (talk) 18:10, 24 June 2017 (MDT)

Thank you very much. I was in the process of transcribing it to Word when it vanished from my bookmarks. You have helped me greatly. SansGenocide (talk) 23:30, 25 June 2017 (MDT)