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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
Augh. I have thoughts, but I need to ponder more before I'm coherent about them.
(Also, nice icon. :D)