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I've been pondering how best to add topics that have nothing to do with fanfic, and don't fit into fanfic-esque tropes like zines. A lot of these are gaming-related (tabletop RPG, mostly, but some tabletop wargaming); some are... other.
Candidates for Office: This morning, I was thinking about the buttons that said "Don't blame me; I voted for Bill & Opus." And realized there's a meme/trope of fictional characters running for election. I've seen election materials for Bill & Opus, Kodos vs Kang, Cthulhu For President ("why settle for the lesser evil?"), that-dude-on-West-Wing (shows you how much attention I pay to the show), and so on. I have no idea how to make a Fanlore entry for this... trope? Meme? Fannish activity? What do I call it -- "fictional characters running for office in the real world?" "Weasley is ourpresident king?"
Gaming group homebrews: A lot of (D&D) gaming groups came up with their own spinoff/crossover game systems. Some of them were trying to patch the (many many) holes in the D&D system; others wanted a way to cover activities that D&D didn't allow for. I know--distantly--of several of these. They were common. Almost every group I'd ever heard of had something like this. One of my local D&D groups had "Mutant D&D," mixing high fantasy & something like Marvel Comics. (I never knew details; I was out of the state for most of that.) Other groups had extensive rules for playing vampires & werewolves, long before White Wolf existed. Another group switched D&D to a point-based system where each weapon proficiency had its own skill level, and you earned points every time you made a roll based on it. Others invented races & classes either grabbed from books, or invented entirely. (And then there was the Snits' Revenge/Tunnels & Trolls crossover. Don't ask.)
I don't know (1) what to call these things or (2) how many people involved, or how detailed, a particular set of homebrew rules needed to be, to "deserve" its own entry. Maybe there should just be one for "gaming homebrew?" Except they weren't usually called "homebrew." They were called whatever term the local group came up with. (The D&D point thing? "New System." Which term would be recognized by, oh, a dozen gamers on the planet, I think.) I don't know quite how to categorize them on Fanlore, other than "gaming/RPG" and "fannish activity." And while I know they existed pretty much everywhere, I only know details for groups I directly played with. If I put a single page up for "gaming homebrew," that implies that future gamers who find the site should have their systems placed as footnotes or a paragraph on that page, instead of getting a whole page.
There are *hundreds* of these. Thousands, probably. I don't know if each one should get a page (certainly each fanfic doesn't get a page; this is kinda-sorta the gamer equivalent? maybe?); but they don't run in patterns like fanfic--they don't sort by origin game (I'd guess that 80% or more are D&D based, because that's what EVERYONE used), and very few have a scope beyond a dozen gamers.
Gaming worldbooks: Another fine gaming tradition that I'm lost as to whether/how to put on Fanlore. A lot of gaming groups, a lot of GM's, (Heh! Fanlore needs a "GM" entry! ... I'll think about it.) had their own worlds written up. Maps, descriptions of important characters, regions where There Be Dragons (or worse, 'cos everyone was up for dragons, but the Dungeon Caverns of the Mind Flayers was a lot more scary), retired PC's who joined the NPC binder, and so on. Some few of these were published at the level of fanzine, photocopied & handed around to a gaming club; most were individual, a single copy shared by several players.
On the one hand--too small for Fanlore. My "world" of Seilar (it was an island) was known to maybe 10-15 players, ever (although I gather some of those games are maybe still going on, so maybe it's up to 3 dozen by now); I was the only one who had a map. On the other hand--maybe writeups of a few of the smaller gaming worlds would encourage bigger ones, the handful of college-library groups who had elaborate shared worlds, to put their info on Fanlore too.
Canon sources: Should Fanlore have entries for canon that spawned fannish activity that can't quite be described? Rosenberg's Guardians of the Flame books were dear to many gamers, and the city of "Pandathaway" worked its way into many gameworlds, but I'm not sure what to say about it other than "this was important gamer fiction." (Did it directly inspire a type of gaming? No, it validated a gaming trope that was/is near universal: the "write up yourselves as characters" game.) (Which, um. Probably needs a page. If I can figure out what to call it.) Other canon-things with fanac: Rocky Horror Picture Show (it's there; not sure whether/how to place the common-and-rare things about being on a RHPS cast, much less regional variants in audience lines), Magic: The Gathering (I don't even know where to *start*), some albums (Pink Floyd, Moody Blues, Beatles). Dice. Shouldn't Fanlore have an entry about dice? Gamers have lore about dice. (Gamers *threaten* their dice when the rolls aren't good.)
LARPing: LARP has an entry at Fanlore. LARP stands for "Live Action Role-Playing," and is the gaming where people dress up in costumes and enact games. It works something like "host a murder mystery" things. I don't like LARPing. I know vaguely that there's a lot of White Wolf LARPs, and some SCA-ish, D&D-ish LARPs, and, um, other LARPs. There's big clubs, and little ones, and a whole lot of variations in style and scope. I'm about as qualified to write up LARPing as I am to write up podficcing.
Except that there are dozens of podfic-savvy people involved with Fanlore, so that's more-or-less getting covered; there's apparently approximately zero other (tabletop RPG) gamer-people involved with Fanlore, so LARPing is *not* getting covered. Will not get covered, until someone writes up something about it that encourages people who actually *understand* LARPing to say something about it.
Non-Sci-fi/media/convention fanac: Off the top of my head: SCA. RenFaire. Should these have Fanlore entries? If so, they're *huge* sectors of fandom. Should the connections between D&D, renfaires, LARPing, cosplay, and the steampunk movement be explored at Fanlore? If so, how?
... and so on. Fanlore's awfully heavy with fic-fandom, which I understand 'cos that's what was of great current interest to the founders, and because it's easy to attract people on a topic that already has lots of activity. I don't quite think other things are being "neglected" as "haven't caught on yet." But I'd like to see some discussion of how those things can catch on, and what kinds of categories will be useful in dealing with them.
Candidates for Office: This morning, I was thinking about the buttons that said "Don't blame me; I voted for Bill & Opus." And realized there's a meme/trope of fictional characters running for election. I've seen election materials for Bill & Opus, Kodos vs Kang, Cthulhu For President ("why settle for the lesser evil?"), that-dude-on-West-Wing (shows you how much attention I pay to the show), and so on. I have no idea how to make a Fanlore entry for this... trope? Meme? Fannish activity? What do I call it -- "fictional characters running for office in the real world?" "Weasley is our
Gaming group homebrews: A lot of (D&D) gaming groups came up with their own spinoff/crossover game systems. Some of them were trying to patch the (many many) holes in the D&D system; others wanted a way to cover activities that D&D didn't allow for. I know--distantly--of several of these. They were common. Almost every group I'd ever heard of had something like this. One of my local D&D groups had "Mutant D&D," mixing high fantasy & something like Marvel Comics. (I never knew details; I was out of the state for most of that.) Other groups had extensive rules for playing vampires & werewolves, long before White Wolf existed. Another group switched D&D to a point-based system where each weapon proficiency had its own skill level, and you earned points every time you made a roll based on it. Others invented races & classes either grabbed from books, or invented entirely. (And then there was the Snits' Revenge/Tunnels & Trolls crossover. Don't ask.)
I don't know (1) what to call these things or (2) how many people involved, or how detailed, a particular set of homebrew rules needed to be, to "deserve" its own entry. Maybe there should just be one for "gaming homebrew?" Except they weren't usually called "homebrew." They were called whatever term the local group came up with. (The D&D point thing? "New System." Which term would be recognized by, oh, a dozen gamers on the planet, I think.) I don't know quite how to categorize them on Fanlore, other than "gaming/RPG" and "fannish activity." And while I know they existed pretty much everywhere, I only know details for groups I directly played with. If I put a single page up for "gaming homebrew," that implies that future gamers who find the site should have their systems placed as footnotes or a paragraph on that page, instead of getting a whole page.
There are *hundreds* of these. Thousands, probably. I don't know if each one should get a page (certainly each fanfic doesn't get a page; this is kinda-sorta the gamer equivalent? maybe?); but they don't run in patterns like fanfic--they don't sort by origin game (I'd guess that 80% or more are D&D based, because that's what EVERYONE used), and very few have a scope beyond a dozen gamers.
Gaming worldbooks: Another fine gaming tradition that I'm lost as to whether/how to put on Fanlore. A lot of gaming groups, a lot of GM's, (Heh! Fanlore needs a "GM" entry! ... I'll think about it.) had their own worlds written up. Maps, descriptions of important characters, regions where There Be Dragons (or worse, 'cos everyone was up for dragons, but the Dungeon Caverns of the Mind Flayers was a lot more scary), retired PC's who joined the NPC binder, and so on. Some few of these were published at the level of fanzine, photocopied & handed around to a gaming club; most were individual, a single copy shared by several players.
On the one hand--too small for Fanlore. My "world" of Seilar (it was an island) was known to maybe 10-15 players, ever (although I gather some of those games are maybe still going on, so maybe it's up to 3 dozen by now); I was the only one who had a map. On the other hand--maybe writeups of a few of the smaller gaming worlds would encourage bigger ones, the handful of college-library groups who had elaborate shared worlds, to put their info on Fanlore too.
Canon sources: Should Fanlore have entries for canon that spawned fannish activity that can't quite be described? Rosenberg's Guardians of the Flame books were dear to many gamers, and the city of "Pandathaway" worked its way into many gameworlds, but I'm not sure what to say about it other than "this was important gamer fiction." (Did it directly inspire a type of gaming? No, it validated a gaming trope that was/is near universal: the "write up yourselves as characters" game.) (Which, um. Probably needs a page. If I can figure out what to call it.) Other canon-things with fanac: Rocky Horror Picture Show (it's there; not sure whether/how to place the common-and-rare things about being on a RHPS cast, much less regional variants in audience lines), Magic: The Gathering (I don't even know where to *start*), some albums (Pink Floyd, Moody Blues, Beatles). Dice. Shouldn't Fanlore have an entry about dice? Gamers have lore about dice. (Gamers *threaten* their dice when the rolls aren't good.)
LARPing: LARP has an entry at Fanlore. LARP stands for "Live Action Role-Playing," and is the gaming where people dress up in costumes and enact games. It works something like "host a murder mystery" things. I don't like LARPing. I know vaguely that there's a lot of White Wolf LARPs, and some SCA-ish, D&D-ish LARPs, and, um, other LARPs. There's big clubs, and little ones, and a whole lot of variations in style and scope. I'm about as qualified to write up LARPing as I am to write up podficcing.
Except that there are dozens of podfic-savvy people involved with Fanlore, so that's more-or-less getting covered; there's apparently approximately zero other (tabletop RPG) gamer-people involved with Fanlore, so LARPing is *not* getting covered. Will not get covered, until someone writes up something about it that encourages people who actually *understand* LARPing to say something about it.
Non-Sci-fi/media/convention fanac: Off the top of my head: SCA. RenFaire. Should these have Fanlore entries? If so, they're *huge* sectors of fandom. Should the connections between D&D, renfaires, LARPing, cosplay, and the steampunk movement be explored at Fanlore? If so, how?
... and so on. Fanlore's awfully heavy with fic-fandom, which I understand 'cos that's what was of great current interest to the founders, and because it's easy to attract people on a topic that already has lots of activity. I don't quite think other things are being "neglected" as "haven't caught on yet." But I'd like to see some discussion of how those things can catch on, and what kinds of categories will be useful in dealing with them.
no subject
And, too, with homebrews - why limit it to D&D? There's plenty of homebrewin' and creative work in the fandoms of other games, too, and always has been. (I vaguely remember an attempt by my group to port D&D to the Shadowrun system; that ended in tears, as I recall.)
What kind of gaming info are you looking to cover, in Fanlore? I'm not entirely sure that Fanlore's scope is intended to be that broad (although I'm happy to be convinced otherwise) but I'll help out where possible; I've been gaming for 20 years, and used to work as a writer in the industry.
For that matter, _is_ Fanlore's ambit that large? Does it - do we - aim to cover every fannish activity ever? Because if so, there's sports fandom, for instance, in all its huge multi-tentacled glory. Music fandom, likewise. These things are certainly fandoms, but I'm not sure that Fanlore's interests are served by spreading the energy of its contributors that much wider in trying to cover the huge world of fandom outside of its existing scope. I am not sure I see the value in it, unless we have people with the knowledge to do more than the most cursory of jobs.
(Also, tiny niggle: please don't just render down the entire hobby gaming industry and fandom to "D&D".)
(Also, threatening dice with the microwave works particularly nicely, I have found.)
no subject
Sorting out how Fanlore can deal with D&D would cover a lot of ground for other games and gaming activities. (When the dice aren't reacting to the microwave threats, we put a blender on the table.)
_is_ Fanlore's ambit that large?
I've been told that Fanlore definitely intends to cover "gaming," which is a nebulous concept but I can at least go with that as a premise. I'm not sure if that's limited to "RPGs, wargames with a fantastic element of some sort, and maybe other fantasy-ish games" (I have serious dread about trying to write the StarFleet Battles page) or if it also includes historical wargames. Or if it includes other games that have active fandoms. (Trivial pursuit clubs? Twister parties?)
I have no idea how large Fanlore's scope is, and how far from fic-related-fandom it's intended to get. That's part of what I'd like to see addressed.
no subject
Well, the Fanlore page says it's "a multi-authored site for, about and by fans and fan communities that create and consume fanworks" and that "The mission of the Fanlore wiki is to engage fans from a wide variety of communities that create and enjoy fanworks, to provide them with a platform to record and share their histories, experiences and traditions, for both themselves and others."
no subject
For the most part, we know what's "fannish." Sort of. But are steampunk parties fannish, and the SCA not fannish? The "twists" to history allowed by the SCA are smaller and more subtle, but still present. If the SCA is fannish, are Civil War reenactments fannish?
I'm not pressing for hard and fast answers; I know it's very much a case of "PUT UR FAN INFO HERE; later we'll sort out how to deal with it." Whether Fanlore does, or does not, want to cover those parts of mainstream music fandom that might relate to Bandom, and whether that extends to other bits of music fandom, is rather irrelevant at the moment... Fanlore doesn't have 5000 teenagers putting in info on their favorite rock stars. If Elvis RPF gets a page and then Elvis impersonators get a page... shrug. Even if it's not directly within the focus of Fanlore, it's not going to hurt anything to be there. (Are Elvis impersonators a form of LARP RPF?) (Have they been slashed with the Captain Jack Sparrow impersonators, and if not, why not?)
We don't need lines as much as a sense of which areas are "fringe" vs "we don't have people to cover that yet."
Is fannish gaming -- RPGs, wargaming, MMORPGs, video games, etc. -- a "fringe" area that Fanlore would like touched on, or is it like fanfic, something Fanlore would like covered extensively & in detail, but doesn't have those editors yet?
Not asking you, specifically. Rhetorical question; am pondering.
no subject
I don't think "mainstream" music or sports fandom (the non-RPF aspects, I assume?) are within the scope of Fanlore, but I'm not familiar with them. The question to ask is: are they producing creative works? I gather there's some zine publishing happening in punk, but a "subculture" isn't necessarily the same as a "fandom." Hard to say where the line is.
Civil War reinactments are probably not within the scope of Fanlore either--reenactors don't think of themselves as fans, do they?
I know Fanlore would be happy to have more information about gaming in general, but I don't know enough about it to advise you on specifics. There are already some media fandom livejournal RPGs documented on Fanlore, but they can be read by non-players like fanfiction. Come to think of it, I'd like to read a page that compares Livejournal RPGs with other types....
If this helps, the What_Fanlore_is_not page says that Fanlore is an encyclopedia of fannish culture, as opposed to an encyclopedia of pop culture.
no subject
In music... letterzines, club meetings, cosplay (KISS makeup, that single-white-glove), poetry, posters, fictional album covers, dolls in dioramas, meta-essays, collages, gingerbread men cookies in band costumes... plenty of creative works.
The good news: No, they don't, for the most part, consider themselves "our kind" of fans, and vice-versa, and except for the spots where Bandom or American Idol fandom makes them converge, there's not much crossing of the streams. Yay.
Civil War reenactments are probably not Fanlore-ish. Except that there's plentiful crossover between them & Renfaire & SCA, which crosses over to a lot of convention-based cosplay; the "historical reenactor" thing gets blurry.
I'm mostly musing. I'm not so much interested in "should Fanlore have a Civil War reenactor page?" (which, um, maybe, if someone cares about it & knows some details), but "how *much* gaming stuff should I throw at Fanlore, and if I find anyone to cover LARPing, should that extend to SCA & Renfaire?"
I'm looking past the boundaries of what I know is wanted, trying to figure out what the borderline, "meh, we could have a bit of that, I suppose" areas are, as opposed to, "why don't we have info about this? We should totally have a page on that!"
I've got some vague thoughts that it'd be easier to get content for the gaps if the boundaries were stretched farther. But they really are vague, unfinished thoughts.
no subject
Music fans also produce, um, music, which I'm certain qualifies as a creative work!
no subject
Augh. I have thoughts, but I need to ponder more before I'm coherent about them.
(Also, nice icon. :D)
re:homebrews
Re: homebrews
And it feels really weird to try to describe it, 'cos I'm one person, with experience with a small number of gaming groups. I suppose that's where I just try to have faith that the PPOV will eventually kick in and other people will fill in any big gaps and make corrections as necessary. Maybe I can poke through old issues of Dragon, Dungeon & The Space Gamer and see if I've forgotten some nice simple terminology.
I'll see what I can put together? At some point, anyway. When I'm not staring at fic-fest deadlines.
Re: homebrews
Re: homebrews
"House rules" were "we use the Arduin charts for critical hits" or "dice that fall off the table are always re-rolled" or "this game makes magic too easy; all spell costs are doubled."
A binder with rules for taking your D&D characters into WWII (with the premise that the Nazi occult experiments opened a rift between the worlds), or detailed writeups of settings & characters from a particular series of books, or a D&D-superheroes crossover game, are more elaborate than most gamers' (of the kind I played with) concepts of "house rules." Some of those eventually turned into complete games; a lot never got fleshed out beyond the core rules, so players who were there for the process understood the game, but there was no description that could be handed off to new people.
Re: homebrews
Re: homebrews
It's possible that individual gameworlds also compare to fanfic; I'm considering how to mention those at fanlore. ("Gameworld" can mean either the official published version or the gamer-created setting. Or a mix, which was very common.) Everyone had them but very few got any use outside of a particular group of gamers. Some evolved into published settings; gaming doesn't have the same hassles of fanfic when trying to "go pro." (It's got some; they have to file off the trademarks. But they can get a lot of mileage out of "no infringement intended; this is not an official product of [company].")
Some of the "homebrews" became games-that-got-sold; the late 90s' access to desktop publishing programs and printing tech made a swarm of tiny gaming companies spring up out of nowhere. And mostly flop miserably, because "all our gamers loved it, and so did the four guys I ran it for at GenCon" doesn't actually translate to public interest.
*flails*
Is nifty complex topics and I'd love to see more of it at Fanlore and feel all weird being the only person (at least that's what it feels like) adding content to these topics! Eep!