Talk:David A. Hargrave

Arduin

This is really a question about all the Arduin stuff generally (see also Category:Arduin modules). While certainly of historical interest to fans of D&D... none of it is canonical in the slightest. I advise this article and all the other Arduin stuff be deleted. JEB1981 (talk) 02:05, August 10, 2020 (UTC)

I want to retain the Arduin content for its historical relevance as the earliest third-party D&D content. BeardWizard (talk) 18:53, August 10, 2020 (UTC)

Actually, I believe Judges Guild beats out Arduin, or was at least contemporary (both released their first products in 1977). Plus, Judges Guild had the advantage of being officially licensed (hence my including the Wilderlands of High Fantasy in the Template:Settings navbox). Even earlier were the Wee Warriors products from 1976, which were TSR distributed (and certainly deserve at least an article). And there were even earlier fanzines (one was the origin of the thief class, I believe).

My point being, Arduin is certainly interesting, but it's only one of many unofficial products from the era. And as previously discussed with the d20 System material, I really think this wiki should stick to official (or authorized) content; it's going to be tough enough to fill in canon material, without also having to worry about stuff from Arduin or Role Aids or Freeport or Pathfinder or the like getting mixed in by well-intentioned users.

Now, I do see that you ported over the Dungeons & Dragons controversies article, which mentions Arduin. I can see that being an appropriate place to discuss Arduin, since it's in the context of how he butted heads with TSR. I also see Erol Otus did art for Arduin, so mentioning it there would also make sense. But beyond that? Hargrave never worked on anything official, and Arduin was decidedly not official. I really don't think it should be included here.

Suggestion - maybe you should start a separate wiki for third-party D&D material? I bet you could get some support from the OSR crowd... JEB1981 (talk) 19:36, August 10, 2020 (UTC)

A wiki for third-party D&D products would be useful, and perhaps a better eventual home for certain articles currently on this wiki. However, I have no plans to start such a wiki myself, as the D&D Lore Wiki is already a massive undertaking. As I've mentioned, I feel that there is room on this wiki for articles on certain noteworthy real-world topics which have an important connection to D&D. These include articles on major D&D YouTube channels, major third-party publishers, and certain particularly noteworthy third-party products.

The critical distinction is that articles on fictional concepts (e.g. monsters, spells, NPCs) cannot draw on non-canon sources. Any encyclopedic wiki on a fictional topic has to define a certain set of works as canonical, so that editors can concur on the same definition of "truth" or "facts". For example, an NPC who only appears in a third-party work cannot by definition have an article, as they have no valid citable sources in the canon.

However, for real-world topics (people, companies, books), the articles' basis is real-world facts, so the constraining factor is its noteworthiness or relevance to the wiki's topic of official D&D lore and history. Hence for example Matt Colville has an article, because his position as a D&D YouTuber with over 100,000 subscribers makes him relevant to the topic (he was also a Wizards of the Coast employee, but this is a coincidence). BeardWizard (talk) 00:11, August 11, 2020 (UTC)