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Talk:Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure

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Maure Castle

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Surely the third edition update in Dungeon #112 is worth mentioning in this article. I'd do it, but....--Iquander 20:25, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Iquander, I admire your restraint and wish that others who had a vested interest in an article felt the same way. I'll see what I can do about expanding this and getting at least a section in here, if not a separate article for the update, since it is (along with its two sequels) a rather significant work and marks some signficant milestones in Dungeon. -Harmil 04:53, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, no problem. I should point out a couple of suggested changes to the material you added, though. The new material was written not just by Robert J. Kuntz, but also by Erik Mona and James Jacobs, with some advisory material provided by Gary Gygax. Also, in addition to the 1974 Wargames Digest article and the updated adventure the magazine also featured Downer (and possibly Mt. Zogon) as well. Don't mean to nitpick, but in the interest of full disclosure it might make sense to amend the new material slightly. Or not. It's really not that critical and what you've got is pretty close. --Iquander 07:37, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nitpick away; it's all good. -Harmil 23:00, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure

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I note the removal of the notability (books) template from the article together with your edit summary which said "I'm going to contend that being the subject of multiple sequels published decades later is grounds for notability and be bold here. Which are the notable sequels, and what are the reliable sources which you are aware of that demonstrate notability? I admit not being an expert in this subject, but I am not sure what is being said or cited in the article that makes this module notable. If you can provide me with some evidence of notability, that would be useful for my understanding of this topic. --Gavin Collins 15:32, 24 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

First off, I admit to being a bit bold on Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure. I have a bias, here, so I'll make that clear. I spent a lot of time working that article into shape. Here's my thinking as to notability:

  • The original work is one of the seminal sources for much of the World of Greyhawk lore, and is essentially a re-worked version of one of the original (pre-commercial) modules of the Dungeons & Dragons game, which is now the world's most popular roleplaying game.
  • The original work was the first appearance of a writeup for the mage after whom a notable percentage of the spells in the game were named (Mordenkainen), and who was the character played by Dungeons & Dragons' creator Gary Gygax.
  • The module was later revisited decades later as a series of three, separately published sequels in the official adventure publication of the Dungeons & Dragons game, one of those sequels constituting the only case that I'm aware of where a single module consumed the entire issue, and was also the 30th anniversary issue.

Overall, it's difficult for me to be objective, here, but I'm having a hard time believing that you spent a lot of time reviewing the material for this and the slew of other D&D-related articles which you seem to have scatter-shot AfDs and administrative templates all over. It's a burden for those of us who worked long and hard to collect this information over the course of years to now come back with entirely new sets of criteria for notability in place and try to justify our work. It seems to me that the burden should be placed on the editors who wish to call these articles into question to do the research and establish the correlation between new criteria and older articles. -Harmil 15:43, 24 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Response The reason why I put the template on this article is that the notability of the module is not demonstrated by secondary sources. I can take your word that it is, but as you know, WP requires secondary sources to back up you assertion that the module is seminal for the D&D game. I would also expect there to be reviews out there somewhere, but there are none in the article. So I have to disagree with your final points, as evidence of notability is missing.

It is difficult for a non-player (such as myself) to understand why this article is notable per se, and if you are saying that what makes this module interesting is it is one of many sources of D&D itself, then this is not stated. Rather the article says "The publication contains versions of Gygax's characters...". So forgive me if I disagree with your final point because in my view the the article really needs to demonstrate its notability of the module on its own. I have no idea of how many of these modules were sold; if it won any awards or received any critisism, praise or analysis from secondary sources. If D&D had not taken off, I am not sure this module could make any claim to notability at all.

The template is there to stimulate discussions such as these, and I put it to you that it is in your benefit to actually leave it on and see what how other people respond to the issues I have raised. I have actually looked long and hard at this article, (as well as many others) in an attempt to understand what is and is not notable in RPG. I could understand if this module formed part of an article entitled "The origins of D&D" or "The Development of D&D", or some other article like this one[1]. But outside of this context, I can't see what encyclodpedic value this article serves, unless you have something grander in mind that is supported by secondary sources, in which case I could be mistaken.--Gavin Collins 16:35, 24 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I re-added the notability template, as the article doesn't demonstrate the subject's notability. The article should be edited to include references to reliable sources and demonstrate the subject's notability before this tag is removed. Rray 19:31, 24 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is that for decades the foremost "secondary source" when it came to D&D was the pair of magazines published by TSR, Dragon (the most widely read) and Dungeon. Being published by the publisher of the game, however, they're considered by Wikipedia to be primary sources. I don't know of a way to untangle this. I'm going to do what I can with this, but I don't guarantee that anyone's going to agree with my work. Still, I agree that putting such a tag on one article or a small group might stimulate discussion. That's not what Gavin Collins did. He scatter-shot more articles than I have time to even visit, much less edit with administrative templates and in many cases, AfDs. I'm very concerned about what looks like a broad effort to remove a genre from Wikipedia, coincidentally shortly after the lead article for the genre (Dungeons & Dragons) became a FAotD. I feel as if no casual editor such as myself has a chance to salvage much of what he's pushing to delete. -Harmil 12:26, 25 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe it would be worth starting a discussion at the RPG project about whether or not Dungeon and Dragon magazines should be considered secondary sources in these types of cases, although I'm not sure I would support such a proposal. (There are other magazines which cover the genre that aren't owned by the same company that publishes Dungeons & Dragons. There are also websites which could probably be cited as secondary sources to indicate notability, although I haven't searched through any of them for this subject in particular.) Rray 14:12, 25 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It might be the right thing to do. Feel free to copy/paste any of my comments to seed the discussion, though I don't know if I have time to take part directly. My off-the-cuff, not-researched, gut feeling is that Dungeon and Dragon magazines are unparalleled in their industry. Everything else has always appeared to be a flash-in-the-pan industry rag whereas especially Dragon has always maintained a level of quality and semi-objectivity (given that they're genre-locked in the first place). Dragon even did reviews of third-party products while TSR owned them. It was only in the later years and with the Wizards buyout (and eventual Hasbro buyout of Wizards) that Dragon became more of a sounding board for their new products. I'd look very skeptically at anything from Dragon from 1999-2002. However, post-2002 until it ended in 2007, it was actually published by Paizo, not Wizards/Hasbro, so there's a strong, if not absolute claim to being a true secondary source during those years. -Harmil 14:49, 25 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree that Dungeon and Dragon magazines, can indeed be classed as reliable secondary source, because unlike blogs and fansites, they are not a form of self-publication. However, the quality of the citation is always important; for example if the magazine says "Buy Mordenkainen now! Its a really great game!", then it is of no value. However, if it forms a part of a serious article such as "Mordenkainen: Seminal module in the development of D&D" then you have knock out evidence of notability right there; context and analysis are key to establishing this. --Gavin Collins 16:35, 25 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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