Talk: Unified page layout project/character

Character page layout[]

This is my layout proposal, partly based on the one from The Vault talk:Fallout 3 NPC overhaul project:

Layout
Section headline	required?	Content
		Infobox and games template.
		Short summary that usually looks something like this: "{{PAGENAME}} is one of the inhabitants of Megaton in 2277." In general, it should contain: Name of the character (and alternative names) in bold. short description of the character (inhabitant of town XY, member of organization YZ etc) Time when the character lived/is encountered in one of the Fallout games, (i.e. the starting date of the character's respective game). For characters in FO1 this would be 2161, for FO2 it'd be 2241 and for FO3 2277. Refer to the timeline for the starting time of other games.
Background		Background story/history for the character; "who this character is".
Relationships		Relations to other characters (family, friends, partners, enemies etc) if any
Daily schedule		Daily schedule of the character, i.e. what he/she/it usually does during the day. This section is only needed if the NPC wanders around during the day.
Interactions with the player character		Interaction of this NPC with the player. This includes interactions as part of a quest and effects of player actions on the character or on the player's interaction with the character.
Inventory		Items in possession of the character.
Notes		For interesting things about the character which do not fit into the other categories. Try to keep this section to a minimum.
Quotes		For notable quotes that the character uses. General ones that all NPCs say (such as ones used in combat) should not go here.
Appearances		Which games/add-ons does this character appear in.
Behind the scenes		For out-of-game references and similar stuff.
Bugs		For bugs which are unique to this character. General game bugs and bugs which are related to other things should not be in the character article (they should be in the general bugs or character/quest pages instead).
Gallery		Cluttering the article with too many images should be avoided. Instead, place them in a gallery at the end if applicable.
Navboxes		Navboxes go at the end of the article.

Comments[]

Originally from The Vault talk:Fallout 3 NPC overhaul project

What about page layouts? A lot I see have random headers and then the usual ones. TehK (tok) 14:05, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

That box seems familiar :P Anyway, looks like a decent start. I'm not sure we need to mention the "appears in Fallout 3 bit in the intro sentence; after all, we have an "Appearances" section where that's mentioned and it's also in the infobox (I realize that it is this way currently in the createpage template). I think the intro sentence should include the race and area of residence/location for the character, i.e. something like "XYZ is a human non-player character who lives in ZYX." Alternatively, we could replace the "non-player character" bit with the faction where appropriate ("...human raider...", "...human member of the Brotherhood of Steel..."), leaving the generic NPC text for characters who don't belong to a notable faction.

In addition, I think Background should definitely include who the character is, what he/she does, and relations to other NPCs (family members, relatives, friends - as far as verifiable). It's possible you meant to include that but I think it needs to be made clear.

It's probably better to also have an inventory section in there; their inventory is going to get added by various people anyway so we might as well do it consistently. User:Mirar/Chars includes inventory lists for every NPC from base FO3 so it should be doable for people who play on console as well. All people with a GECK need to double-check is the death inventories as these are not included there and the inventories of add-on characters; that should be manageable. -- Porter21 ^(talk) 15:02, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm not fond of using words like "NPC" or the game they're from in the intro myself - I prefer it if it's from the in-universe perspective, e.g. "Lucas Simms is the sheriff and occasionally the mayor of Megaton, a town built around an undetonated nuclear bomb." instead of "Lucas Simms is an NPC that appears in Fallout 3". Ausir^(talk) 22:47, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

By the way, I think we should decide on a basic layout for character and location (and other) pages common for all games, not just Fallout 3. Maybe we should create "Unified page layout project" to coordinate this? Ausir^(talk) 23:08, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Created. See: The Vault talk:Unified page layout project. I suggest moving the discussion there. Ausir^(talk) 23:54, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Intro section[]

I think it makes sense to have a uniform layout guideline for all games, not separate ones for each game. Ausir^(talk) 23:53, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree. A character is a character, no matter what game. Anyway, I think adding the date to the intro sentence is a good idea - maybe include the race as well? In my opinion it should be stated somewhere in the article and the intro sentence seems the most fitting choice. In your example, that'd be "...is a human inhabitant of Megaton...". Required info in the intro should be:

• race
• date
• where the character lives/can be found
• organizations he/she is part of if any.

-- Porter21 ^(talk) 08:37, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

One point regarding the date: We need a standard way of doing it for background characters. There's often no exact time given when they lived. For pre-war characters you can simply state "before the Great War" but for others who lived after the war but before the time of a certain game, it's a bit more tricky. -- Porter21 ^(talk) 10:58, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't think we need to say "human inhabitant..." - human is the default, let's just mention the race only if the character isn't human. Ausir^(talk) 05:50, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Fine with me. -- Porter21 ^(talk) 08:22, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Relationships/interactions with the player[]

Regarding the following sections, while I agree that relationships and interactions should be required (as far as there are any), I think it should be part of the background section. If we split things up too much, it does not help the article flow/readability in my opinion. -- Porter21 ^(talk) 08:37, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

"Interactions with the player character" shouldn't be part of the background section, since it's actually gameplay information - a more general replacement of "Related quests" (which can be a subsection). Ausir^(talk) 14:52, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Could you maybe give an example of what you mean? Currently I'm not sure what kind of interactions with the player NPCs might have which are not part of a quest or part of what the NPC actually is (i.e. a merchant etc). -- Porter21 ^(talk) 08:27, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Look at Carol. 09:25, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

I think I see what you mean although I'm not sure whether "interactions with the player character" is a good name for the section then. Quite a bit of stuff is not the result of player interaction with this character but other characters (Greta, Gob) which then has consequences on the interaction with Carol. -- Porter21 ^(talk) 10:38, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

If it does not result from player interaction with this character but has a result on interaction with this character, it still falls under "interaction with player character", doesn't it? I think a lot of stuff from the "Notes" section (like the "Carol cannot be mezzed" remark I just moved there) would be best covered by this kind of section encompassing character interactions. Ausir^(talk) 10:46, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

You have a point. I just think it's not intuitive from the section headline but that might just be me/might take getting used to. -- Porter21 ^(talk) 10:58, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

I also see you've moved the appearances section - maybe we should settle this issue generally and then apply it to all page types equally. I think it's not necessary to have it one way for locations and another for characters, the sections this discussion centers on are pretty universal. -- Porter21 ^(talk) 10:58, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Daily activities[]

Another point which is not really covered by any of the existing sections are daily activities of a character. I don't know how it is for the older games but in FO3, some characters e.g. wander around quite a bit. For example, Lucy West sleeps in her house at night and during the day she is at Moriarty's or wandering around town. Flak is in his/Shrapnel's room at night, in the morning he has breakfast at Gary's Gallery before he proceeds to his shop. I think stuff like this should be mentioned; the question is where the character being a merchant would go since it'd fit both into the "interactions" and "daily activities" sections. -- Porter21 ^(talk) 11:48, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure where daily activities could fit. It might be too detailed for something in the Intro section and it seems out of place as a sub-section of the Interaction section even though that's where an NPC's merchant location/status would be found. I know that you're trying to keep the note's section limited, but maybe it could fit there? I agree that it's definitely worth noting what a NPC's routine is since it can be such a pain to track down people some times in FO3. To the best of my recollection, the majority of NPC's in Fallout and Fallout 2 are fixed to a certain location, so I don't think it's as much of an issue. There are a few special quest oriented exceptions (i.e. the Dunton brothers and Jonny) where characters appear in different maps, but I could be wrong since it's been a while since I've really gotten into these games. Mr. Sully ^(T·C) 04:04, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

New proposal[]

How about the following:

• Intro
• History
• Occupation and activities (what the character does as a profession and other daily activities)
• Interactions with player character (could also be a subsection of "Occupation and activities")
• Relationships
• Inventory
• Notes
• Quotes
• Appearances
• Trivia
• Bugs
• Gallery
• Navboxes

I realize Appearances is a point of contention; we really need to get that settled. See The Vault talk:Unified page layout project/location for my reasoning. Let's leave that aside here and focus on the first sections. Section contents are supposed to be identical with the proposal at the top unless noted otherwise. -- Porter21 ^(talk) 11:20, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I think "Background" instead of history, with "Relationship" as a subsection was better. Other than that, I think "Occupation and activities" sounds good. Ausir^(talk) 13:45, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Fine by me; if it's called "background" stuff like a description of the character's personality can also go in there. The reason why I'm trying to avoid having relationship as a h3 headline by default is the following: for characters which appear in multiple games, you'll likely want to divide this section with subheadings for each game. This means we get into h4 headings which should generally be avoided in my opinion - they're rather hard to tell apart from h3 ones in the text. Now, there are currently not that many characters who appear in multiple games but I have a feeling that might well change in the future. -- Porter21 ^(talk) 14:03, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

OK. Oh, and I'd also add a "Behind the scenes" section, for confirmed behind the scenes information. I also think maybe we should just get rid of "Notes" - most of that shoud either go under behind the scenes, trivia or interactions. Or get rid of trivia. I don't see much point in both sections existing, though. Ausir^(talk) 15:51, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Well, personally I think it'll be confusing to have two different headlines for out-of-game references depending on whether they're confirmed or not. 80% of the editors will never get the difference. Regarding "Notes" I'd generally agree with you but I think people will add these sections anyway; hence it might be better to have them in a standardized place at least. -- Porter21 ^(talk) 18:52, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Rename "Trivia" in "Behind the scenes" then? I think the latter is better to use because the difference to "Notes" is clearer. We'd have to apply this to all standard layouts though. -- Porter21 ^(talk) 18:54, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Ausir^(talk) 02:44, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

I've updated the table at the top. We still need to change some section descriptions to have a list of stuff that goes in there instead of examples but otherwise I think we're set. -- Porter21 ^(talk) 08:21, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

I'd move Relationships just after Background. Ausir^(talk) 08:36, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Ok, done. We still need to rewrite what's supposed to be in the intro section. -- Porter21 ^(talk) 08:47, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Done. Anything else or can we consider this layout tied up? -- Porter21 ^(talk) 10:16, 21 August 2009 (UTC)