Would it be appropriate to have a mod subpage of some sort, or to give the game mods and patches their own page, or what? I've already got all the known variants listed on the Game Mod Index but I also want to make a section somewhere for notable patches (i.e. those that are generally popular and/or were integrated into other variants). How to approach all of this?
CC: @Looney Toons @Robkelk @GethN7 @Goo Monster @HeneryVII
Not sure. I see no reason why it couldn't be on the main page, where Tropes pertaining to things like DLC content or Old Save Bonus would go.
The thing is, they're much closer to fan-made content (if not outright such) than anything else, and some were significant enough to end up in the main game or one of its variants - I just wanna be precise about how I note that.
Definitely fanmade content. If large enough to be considered notable for their own stories that can be troped, then give them their own page for a work, though you can tag one of the categories as the game it is intended for only with the Game Mod category.
The thing with that is I've already got that in mind for all the "full variants" of NetHack. Here, I'm taking more about "smaller" patches to the existing game to add something neat and new - in this case, such as the Wizard Patch for SLASH'EM that gelled so well with the base game that it was merged into a future vanilla release. There's also the Convict Patch and Pirate Patch, which were popular enough to have the roles included right out of the box in certain variants such as DNetHack and EvilHack.
Would that warrant a sort of Ascended Fanon thing or? Because that's the least I could do for it, but I feel like that entry would be incredibly long and I'm wondering if there's other ways of approaching it.
Coming back to this query: Would it be wise to place notable patches in the Analysis subpage, then move the discussions of alignment and roles to a Setting subpage (to merge in the discussion on "characters" and the like in this game)?
Bringing the topic over from the EvilHack talk page: I questioned a few more people in IRC about it and they said that anything mentioned in the Guidebook shouldn't require spoiler tags. Good an idea though that is, I'm puzzled over just how far past that I should extend, especially considering there's an in-game lookup - "anything that would spoil the enjoyment of the game" is a pretty ambiguous boundary considering I heavily enjoy NetHack despite having been spoiled to hell and back before my first ascension earlier today.
So I'm soliciting input from anyone and everyone interested to figure out just how to handle it - as such, comments are appreciated.
Some works are simply more susceptible to spoiling than others -- and of course it also varies from person to person, but given that's the part we can't control, taking your experience as representative could set sort of an opposite approach: for a given detail, would spoiling it be more annoying than it's worth? Then if it either is a spoiler (therefore worth it) or is contestable but cheap to err on the 'safe' side, it gets hidden, otherwise, it is expected that most people would want it visible click-free.
"taking your experience as representative could set sort of an opposite approach"
Yeah, that's why I brought it up. I don't want my experience to be representative, and I know you guys encourage other perspectives, so that's why I'm doing all this. I'm going with the "safe" approach but I'm concerned I might be overdoing it somehow (or in some cases not doing it enough).
The player character roles would be valid to have character descriptions, right? I'm gonna start a characters page regardless for this and EvilHack but I want to be clear before I begin.
What you call "roles" I would think of more like character classes than characters. In the past we've disallowed the use of Characters pages to outline classes available in a game -- they're for specific people who appear in a work. Itzhak and the Wizard would qualify; the options available to the player character would not.
Understood, thank you. Would there be an appropriate way of detailing character classes besides just listing them among the tropes?
That's a good question. It's not a feature of a work we've had much call for outlining in detail. Outside of simply laying them out in the main text, maybe you could use the Analysis subpage for that. I'm going to CC in the other mods in case someone has a better idea.
CC: @Labster, @Robkelk, @QuestionableSanity, @Derivative, @SelfCloak, @GethN7
Yeah, character class analysis is a valid option given how very tropey they all are. I'll stick with Analysis for now, but I'd love to see and possibly even take part in a discussion regarding any other ideas for this in the future.
For now, let's put them on the Analysis page.
I seem to recall this coming up in relation to another game, although I don't recall which. (WoW, possibly?) Perhaps somebody who knows what should be in the proposal could start a thread in the Forums about this - Wiki Talk seems to me to be the best place for the discussion.
EDIT: This vwould also apply to tabletop games with classes, such as D&D or Munchkin.
In the meantime, I think the most I'll do is start a character tab on "You" (as in you, the player character), since there's a lot of things that remain constant about the PC no matter what role/race/alignment/etc. is chosen. How's that sound?
I propose this page be moved to NetHack, since that's the officially used and current spelling of the game's title.
CC: @Robkelk, @Looney Toons, @SelfCloak