Researching the matter revealed me information that I cannot unsee.
I am going to stop working on renovations for now, in attempt to prevent further spoiling of the game for me, until I do certain things and have pleasure discovering them on my own.
You are more than welcome to keep working meanwhile.
Whispered hint page was renovated. Use it as example.
Will work on pages category after category.
Feel free to pick a category as well and work it.
Categories:
- Goods
- Academic
- Cartography
- Contraband
- Elder
- Infernal
- Influence
- Luminosity
- Mysteries (working on currently)
- Nostalgia
- Rag Trade (Loon)
- Rumour
- Legal
- Wild Words
- Wnes
- Rubbery
In discussion with Failbetter, we've been asked to specifically omit certain content from the wiki. This is the usual Fate locked stuff, but also some things they have coming up. I've started a page and linked it in the header. Wiki-restricted content
Currently, the plan is to give us advance notice when content is coming that they want to remain unspoiled. We will then update this page and treat that stuff the same way we do Fate-locked content now.
If anyone wants more information, or if this is unclear, I'll do my best to clarify.
I like the work on jump bars that teem has been doing. Separating everything into its own page and adding links is close to the setup of the wikia, which makes this site redundant at best.
Wikidot is not a confusing mess of ads, images, random quotes, and menus (wikia, on the other hand…) so even if both wikis had the exact same content, not having to use wikia would make it non-redundant for me! (but that's just my personal bias :P) The wikia one seems to go so far as separate each branch result on to its own page, which does seem like going too far to me (hindering more than helping). But I digress…
I guess the idea to split things into separate pages came from not really ever being certain where I'll find any given card. Uh, an example—
Say I picked a random opportunity card and want to find some information about it. (actually, I'll try that right now for the sake the example.) I got City Vices: Orthographic Infection. Where can I find this? The only prereqs on it is Nightmares 1, so I look through the menu of cards at the top… it doesn't have a coloured border; it doesn't have any D,S,P or W reqs or challenges; Nightmares isn't really a Story quality but it's not on the Story Dependent Cards or Progress Improvement Cards page either… I'm in Ladybones right now so maybe it's somehow related to my location but it's not there either? Eventually I find it under Watchful cards (which makes sense, I guess, since it increases your Watchfulness if you use it, but I wouldn't know to look there before using it.)
Anyway, I'm not sure what the point of that story was other than to say more organization = good, but like Mr teem said above, there's no real good way to succinctly organize all of the many, many stories in Fallen London. Hmm…
(I hope this post didn't sound too much like complaining — I feel bad for only being a member here for a couple weeks and then be all like 'why isn't this better' when there's already obviously a lot of love put into it from volunteers :) Just trying to improve the experience!)
Snippet made! (includes don't work here on forum posts, but a few examples on sandbox or veilgarden a.) I'll write up a better explanation page for it and add to snippets page shortly.
Including pages within a quote box is a little bit tricky, but not so tricky that a random user couldn't figure it out by copying the source from other pages, I think.
Including a eg. Watchful challenge would look something like this:
[[include challengeW ]]
Or if it's not one of the four normal ones, you can specify alternate image+text:
[[include challenge | image= lanternsmall.png | which= Inspired ]]
This defaults to one quote level indent (>), but you can specify others if you need it to match something indented more (eg. >>>):
[[include challengeW | quote=>>> ]]
(perhaps default should be level 2 quote if going with above format.)
I tend to think our time is better spent on improving usability through organization and editorial judgement.
I like the work on jump bars that teem has been doing. Separating everything into its own page and adding links is close to the setup of the wikia, which makes this site redundant at best. The advantage of this wiki is the easy to navigate links and visual groupings. Keeping multiple similar things together is really our standard value proposition. Sometimes, we have to split it up, like with the item dependent cards due to their size, but that's an example of how we should be organizing, in my opinion.
The framed storylet with the indented options (like you have posted) is my preference.
The blue text is a visual cue to other wiki editors. I think that the best thing may be to have both that and
For the challenges, the idea is to have it mirror what we see in game. I'm hoping to eventually have a snippet/macro so we don't have to code it by hand every time, but I quite like the picture in the gray bar. Most of the numbers are relics from before the change to broad difficulty, and are incorrect. The wikia wiki uses something like "Level 60 broad difficulty challenge" but that's fairly dense. Some people want that information. I've never found it worth my time to calculate. I see it as a nice to have, but certainly not necessary.
Hm, after poking around the wiki (and Fallen London) for a couple weeks here, I'm starting to see the scope of keeping things organized here…
I know that I'm not clever enough to have found a better way to succinctly organize all of the many, many stories in Fallen London.
One (unadvisedly ambitious?) solution might be to make a new page for each storylet, and then they could be arbitrarily linked to from multiple pages.
Of the 1800 or so storylets on the wiki, there would be surprisingly few page-name conflicts (~30 I'd guess), but those are easy enough to disambiguate and most are related anyway.
Ladybones:
| Storylet | Reqs | Stories |
|---|---|---|
| Study the secrets of Fallen London | ||
| Go mudlarking | ||
| Tea with the Vicar | Advising the Loquacious Vicar storyline | |
| More Tea with the Vicar | Watchful 6 | Advising the Loquacious Vicar storyline |
| Study the hidden language of tattoos | Watchful 9 | |
| Set a watch on the rear entrance of Clathermont's Tattoo Parlour | Watchful 11 | |
| Learn Clathermont the Tattooist's language of hints | Watchful 14 | |
| Babysit a troublesome aristocratic miss | Watchful 21 | a Finder of Heiresses storyline |
And then story pages could be cross linked—
Advising the Vicar:
| Storylet | Reqs | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Tea with the Vicar | Ladybones Road | |
| More Tea with the Vicar | Watchful 6 | Ladybones Road |
| Even More Tea | Watchful 9 | Opportunity Card |
From there, it would also be easy to make lists of gold/bronze cards, etc.
It would take a while to make, but I suppose it wouldn't particularly interfere with anything other than spamming the recent updates page in the meantime…
(Another post here for clarity, I'd go for something like this—)
Study the secrets of Fallen London.
Fallen London is a city of secrets. If you're here to find them, Ladybones Road is the place to start.
Decipher graffiti
Visitors from Hell come through here. Some of the scrawlings are bizarre, terrifying or very, very funny. Some hold valuable secrets.
[Watchful challenge; Straightforward at 2]Listen to gossip at Hangman's Arch
Old women sell sugared mushrooms between executions at Hangman's Arch. They know a surprising amount about what goes on in the city.
Requires 10 Fate
Fate-locked content must not be placed on the wiki, per the developers.The Last Constable?
You keep hearing stories of a Constable who isn't like the others… a woman who works alone. What secrets does she know? Perhaps you could set up a meeting.
[Unlocked with Shadowy 24]
EDIT: Oh, yeah, also some pages have the simple:
(Persuasive challenge; low-risk at 16)
while some have the fancier-but-less-informative:
_
challenge
I've been changing these to
(Persuasive challenge; 0-10 range)
when I can figure it out (ie. 0% chance at 0 Persuasive, 100% chance at 10 persuasive, and it seems to be a linear range between, but sometimes rounding throws things for a bit of a loop.)
I've been trying to go through and clean up wiki pages, but I'm a little bit stymied by inconsistencies in formatting. (Doesn't help that I keep changing my mind about what looks best…) I'm wondering if a discussion here would help and then we can push all pages towards one 'standard'.
Looking at Ladybones for example, there's both single-quoted and double-quoted storylets. (I kind of like the double >> indent more but it looks like there's more of the single > indent on random pages I look at.)
Also- some pages have blue text to indicate missing choices, some have "Reward Spoiler (unknown)". (Personally, blue text was confusing to me for the first week looking at stuff here — I think it's only mentioned explicitly on Code Snippets — I was assuming it had something to do with fate-locked stuff since a lot of the fate-locked pages were blue. Just putting "unknown" is cleaner from my perspective.)
Lastly - spoiler policy. (Incidentally, that page is so much clearer now, thanks to Mr. Teem. Good work there.) One question though - is posting the text that you get after choosing a branch okay to post, as long as you keep it under 250 chars? I've been working under the assumption that it is NOT allowed/encouraged, and been editing that out as I go (though most pages do have it, which is why I'm uncertain how far to go. Just legacy left over from a less restrictive time?). (See New Newgate Actions spoiler boxes for an example of what I'm talking about here.)
(If/Once a standard is agreed on, I'm planning to wrangle the How To Edit Pages into something more useful/specific to this particular wiki, and probably add another intro page or two.) Thanks!
Thanks for the detailed reply!
I've known about Fallon London for a long long time, and check in every year or two, play for a week or two and put it aside as something I'd like to spend more time on eventually. So, yeah, more or less coming in as a new player with some murky memory of how the game works. Anyway, I've started some general explanatory pages for the top menu (Items, Places, etc.), but might be making some wrong assumptions about some stuff there - if I overstep, feel free to revert edits or shout at me or something… :)
Hurm. And, yes, looking under "Places", New Newgate Prison isn't listed in any . A horrible omission on my part as I reorganized that menu back in the day, well, a few years ago or so.
Ah, wait, there it is. Under "Places of Menace". But, you wouldn't know that just coming in. (And what is "Menace" to a newcomer?) There are two separate pages for newcomers and recidivists but someone new to Fallen London probably wouldn't be able to find the page discussion what to do when they first wake up. The first item under "Places" is "Your Lodgings" but that is not the first place you are in when you start a new character.
(By the way, the "Misc" menu has several links to general gameplay pages. I won't argue that they're a little too hidden.)
I do have to create another alt at some point.
Hi, welcome! And have at!
Things are a bit dusty in this wiki although there are a few of us that try to keep their favorite chambers fresh and tidy. There always was a goal in creating top-level summaries and general playing guides for new players but a) the few that exist become outdated as the game changes and b) once you start down one path you are dropped deeper and deeper into Fallen London and, what was it in New Newgate that was so interesting—no matter, there's an interesting performance in Veilgarden tonight.
At the bottom of the left-hand menu, you'll see "Page tags" that lead to some more general pages on this wiki. Certainly there could be more and more pages of the wiki tagged for new users. (The "Tags" link is the penultimate line on each page of this wiki.) And better organization is always difficult. The wiki can be more twisty and difficult to follow than London, fallen or present-day.
The "Stories" menu started out promising but, soon, FB gave us far more stories than could reasonably fit into a menu. The last item in that menu is "Other Stories" and its a running battle to keep it updated. Every now and then I'm playing and I see something that looks reasonably new and say "Hey, is Finding the Blue Bananna" in the wiki yet? No?" and then find myself creating a new page linked off of the "Storylets" page and anywhere else that looks appropriate. I know that I'm not clever enough to have found a better way to succinctly organize all of the many, many stories in Fallen London.
By all means, have at. But, be sure to search around first and see what has been done already. You mentioned Preparing for a Daring Escape. You'll find (at least what was there in 2011) in Things to do at New Newgate Prison which no doubt have retired storylets and options. I've been working on updating things which I edited a few years back in the second-tier locations (like The Forgotten Quarter) and wanted to, in my copious spare time, start a new alt and run him through the prison sequences again.
There are special pages to edit the top and side menus, too. If you can't find them and wish to try there, reply here and I can point them out.
Heya
New to the wiki here (though not altogether inexperienced with wikiing lovecraftian text-based online rpgs). :)
I'm wondering if there's an overview list of all "Qualities", or if it would be useful to create such a page? I see the menu at the top which lists major things like Shadowy, but there's a lot of story-related stuff that would be neat to wiki (can we post story-related qualities like Preparing for a Daring Escape?).
(I'm surprised there isn't an overview page "Qualities" itself. That might make it less confusing for newcomers perhaps.)
Thanks!
EDIT: Hm, I now see that maybe I was looking for the Minor Qualities page or Storylets? Though a lot of these are missing. Is there a rhyme or reason why some of these are their own page and some are links to areas? (And if, say, I were to start cataloging those more thoroughly, would there be any objections?)
Got it. I'll update them as I run across them, then.
Thanks. I was away from Fallen London for too long. There's all kinds of interesting things there now. :)
I've spent some time uploading the new card border artwork that Failbetter is using now and I changed the "three card" decoration snippet documentation, creating a macro in the process that is much simpler. I'm going through and cleaning them up as I find them but if you come across an oddly-formatted card decoration, that's what has happened.
I forget whether links work in the forum but, if they do, this should lead to the snippet documentation page.
Sidebars are actually okay. They're being considered fair use for now. This is likely because their purpose is to get people interested in the setting and writing.
By the way, I appreciate all the work you've been putting in around here lately.
Hurm. I was going to add some new-to-me sidebars but I believe that is part of the special narrative text of Fallen London as well that falls within what they would prefer us not to quote in its entirety. This suggests that the entire page should be removed, yes?
Failbetter has decided on a new agreement with this wiki and the wikia wiki. I have updated the front page and added a Rules page, that is now included in every footer.
The basics are: no more bulk quoting text. For real. That's about it. We should clean up existing content over time, but this is an absolute from here on out.
Failbetter has decided on a new agreement with this wiki and the wikia wiki. I have updated the front page and added a Rules page, that is now included in every footer.
The basics are: no more bulk quoting text. For real. That's about it. We should clean up existing content over time, but this is an absolute from here on out.
A living story will begin soon. [
Gain: 2 x 
