Writing the Wiki

These last days, I've been happily plowing through page after page on the Authentic Wiki.  It is still smaller than the old wiki, and there remain a great many dead links, but I feel that the material is better than it was.  I'm rewriting old descriptions, tagging content for correction and addition later, adding many more links to the material to allow for more referencing and slowly adding images to pages to enhance the experience.

A search tells me there are 745 content pages that are active.  As I make a link to anything that sounds like it could be added as a page later, just like wikipedia, I have identified 1,561 pages that are wanted -- monsters, spells, sage abilities, places, features and so on.  I'm adding more all the time.  Naturally, the very idea of this is overwhelming ... and can be disheartening.

The difference between my present management, however, and what was always true about my desire to "get my game in order," is that now I can factually measure the depth of what needs to be done.  These were things I was always going to do, as far back as those first heady days when a map was a dozen kingdoms and fifty cities.  Because I was never going to be satisfied with the simplistic rules provided by basic D&D, I was always going to address writing details about food, freight costs and planes of existence.  It is better that the field of things needing attention is getting straightened out; that now there are reminders that I've never written a detailed description of a dungeon door or the macuahuitl.   Where once, these would have slipped my mind, to be forgotten as projects for years at a time, now steadily there's a knowledge that yes, I will get to everything, eventually.  There's comfort in that.

If we scratch the surface of those wishing for simple games, without rules and with plenty of DM fiat, we'll find a DM that doesn't care that much about anything.  I think most of us have been stuck with such a DM, if only for brief periods.  It falls into the same category as teachers who don't care about education, or babysitters who don't care about children, or cops that don't care about public service.  These people exist in every profession -- and they always have pat answers that explain away their apathy and why they continue in those jobs.  It's the money or the power, or the relative status.  There are plenty of doctors around trading on the prestige of being a doctor, leaving a wake of bodies behind them who did not get the proper treatment or who were treated prestigiously right into the grave.

It probably seems gauche to compare DMing with the responsibilities of doctoring; nothing I do is life-threatening, and there's an argument to be made that I'm just a big ol' man-boy who hasn't grown up yet at 56 (in three weeks).  That argument could be reasonably made about any entertainer who continues to perform, from professional clowns to stage hands, who don't want to give up the theatre even though their most responsible job is to pull the scenery cords on cue.  That doesn't sound very important; but when you're in the seats watching the play, it's annoying as all hell if some hand doesn't responsibly perform that piddly service at the right moment.  A life may not hang in the balance -- but as a culture we abhor people who can't or won't do their jobs well.  It just takes one shitty barista working at a Starbucks to consistently ruin your morning for weeks at a time.
So, though I have taken a step back to evaluate, and question my role, and my writing here, and what this does for my soul and where I mean to go, I do want the reader to understand that I am deeply conscious of the absence of material appearing here, on this blog.  I take this blog as seriously as my campaign; and in my mind, as seriously as you'd like your barista to be in getting your coffee made right ... and even as seriously as a doctor being sure not to mix up your medications.

To my mind, the most valuable service I can provide is to candidly set out rules for things that no one ever considered might be necessary or inspiring; and to set in stone details that have always been fuzzy at best.  It can be tedious.  I am at my best when I put down every other distraction and just write rules.  The wiki can be surprisingly satisfying, though it takes time to build a wave of changes that begins to make what feels like a difference.  I may have 1,500+ pages to write; but I have also written 700+ good ones.  I began codifying my stuff on a wiki only five years ago; and twice in that time I've had to endure an upheaval, putting real organization out of my reach.  My two former platforms were "meh" and "simply awful," these being my options at the time.  Now I finally have an excellent platform, with no memory or use limits whatsoever.  I feel confident and encouraged that whatever work I do, it will last and build over time.  That matters, because the system is as responsible as I feel.

Please continue to put up with me.  Please feel free to offer direction, so long as it's positive and it reflects this same responsibility I've been describing.  I want to continue to provide good, solid material for my readership.  I simply don't want to shout at the wind.  It is the feeling that this is what I've been doing that brought about this present reassessment.

Very well.  I'm good for now.