Template talk:NPC Summary

Archives
Archive 1: Mar 2007 - Feb 2009
Archive 2: Oct 2009 - Dec 2011

Skyrim Changes

I wanted to start collecting ideas about changes that need to be made this template (or subtemplates) for Skyrim. Given how overloaded the site is, it seems best to come up with a list of changes, and then try to implement them all at once. So here goes:

• A marry flag for anyone who is marry-able (should also add person to a category).
• hireling for hirelings to differentiate from followers
• Need to change Template:Creature Summary to auto-add image needed tag, and check for any other recent tweaks made to NPC Summary (does Creature Summary have follower tag?)

--Nephele^Talk 18:48, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

blade A code for followers that can be joined into the Blades. Could be of use for Skyrim specific. --Bwross 07:50, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Marry is now an option. I will try to fit in hireling here soon and possibly blade. elliot (talk) 17:08, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

VoiceType

For Skyrim characters "VoiceType" part should be added. SFK363 20:15, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Why??

It doesn't have much of an effect other than how the NPC sounds in-game and occasionally some lines of dialogue. I think in any cases where there is something noteworthy about the voice type, then that information can be added to the NPC notes instead of highlighting it in the NPC summary as important information. The NPC Summary is supposed to be a "Summary", e.g., just the most important facts about the NPC rather than a comprehensive listing of every possible fact about the NPC. There are a ton of details that are being left out of the summary (combat style, spells, inventory and outfit, value of each skill, relationships, etc.), many of which are arguably more useful than voice type. --Nephele^Talk 01:46, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

VoiceType is used fairly often when NPCs are radiantly selected for quests, or at least it's used pretty often in the quests I've looked at. Being able to access the information quickly would be useful.

Just a thought, but rather than displaying this information, how about by defining a voicetype parameter it just adds a category? That way, people looking for a group of NPCs by their voice type could just check the category. I don't know what you had in mind with this parameter, but this is what I thought you were thinking about. • JA^Talk 02:17, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Well I think just a "voicetype" parameter is fine but I don't want categories. I say it's worthy to have one since I know all voice types well and occasionally wonder. — Unsigned comment by SFK363 (talk • contribs) on 18 May 2012

Health/Magicka cells

There is some code to autodetect when to display the Health and Magicka cells in the same row, and to display them in different rows if the Health text is too long. But this doesn't take into account that hover text doesn't add to the displayed length (see Traveler). Is there a good way to check for this without complicating the template too much? --Alfwyn (talk) 16:08, 15 December 2012 (GMT)

The one solution that comes to mind off-hand is to change #local:dohealth to #define:dohealth (and maybe give it a better name) to let the caller override the automatic behaviour. – Robin Hood↝talk 20:41, 15 December 2012 (GMT)

New Proposed changes

I am proposing to change the template ever so slightly so that in the older namespaces where you could repair items, the trail stops linking to the page "Blacksmith". This is because in those games where you could repair, they were never called blacksmiths in game, they were only referred to as "Smith". Currently, every NPC that can repair in Morrowind links to "Blacksmith", which then redirects to "Smith". This is an issue because there are NPCs who aren't smiths, but can still repair, such as Tarhiel, Massarapal, and Lanabi. Currently on those pages, the trail indicates that they are "Blacksmiths", a term created for UESP that does not appear in those games, even though they aren't smiths. This could be confusing because, as explained on the Smith page, blacksmiths do not just repair. They make weapons and armor and shields, and buy and sell those items. While some of those who aren't smiths but repair can buy and sell weapons, this is because they are general traders, and can buy and sell every item. We do not add someone to the Alchemist list because they happen to buy and sell alchemy related items, we add them because they ONLY buy and sell alchemy related items. Currently, the people who aren't smiths are listed on the Smith page, which could lead to confusion over what they buy and sell. I propose changing it to something along the lines of "Repair Services", with a separate list of people who can repair, much like Morrowind:Mage lists people who are mages who sells spells, while Morrowind:Spell Merchants lists everyone who can sell spells, regardless of class. Jeancey (talk) 21:23, 26 February 2013 (GMT)

Well, I think this is primarily a gamespace thing. Currently the service in Morrowind is consistently named Blacksmith, but the page redirects to Smith. I'm not sure why the term "Blacksmith" is a bad one, maybe just renaming Morrowind:Smith back to Morrowind:Blacksmith would be the thing to do, but another name would do too. --Alfwyn (talk) 21:42, 26 February 2013 (GMT)

The issue is, Smith is a term used ingame for merchants who sell Weapons and armor, who also happen to repair. The blurb at the top of Morrowind:Smith makes this very clear. Blacksmith is a term created by TRL in order to link to people who repair, but the terms are normally synonymous when the in game reality ISN'T synonymous. There are no blacksmiths in morrowind, there are Smiths, and then there are people who repair, and the people who repair and aren't smiths cannot be truly described as blacksmiths. It would be somewhat like referring to all people as mammals instead of just saying people... the term technically applies, but it is never used as such. Creating the page "Repair Services" would accurately describe the contents, and use a game accurate term. Jeancey (talk) 21:48, 26 February 2013 (GMT)

Skyrim parameter: Friendship quest

A lot of NPCs in Skyrim have quests that you can do in order to make them your friends. It would be useful to have an optional parameter so that the infobox would show which quest you need to do to make someone your friend (e.g. Glory of the Dead for the Companions, Tending the Flames for Viarmo, et cetera). --Morrolan (talk) 21:11, 27 February 2013 (GMT)

A reply would be nice. Anyone? --Morrolan (talk) 14:37, 10 March 2013 (GMT)

That would be possible, but a very specific change that is easily determined by other things on the page. The main issue is cluttering up the infobox. We don't want to make the infobox so huge that you can't find what you need, and it can already get way too big! Also, many NPCs don't have a single quest to make them your friend, they have several things that you can do. I'm not sure it is really worth it. Jeancey (talk) 17:48, 10 March 2013 (GMT)

Most NPCs have only one specific friendship quest. You could go overboard with things like the Companions Rescue radiant quest (which makes the person rescued a friend, but can be applied to any NPC in the game) but there really are only a few who have more than one particular quests for friendship (the smith at Shor's Stone springs to mind as an example; he can become a friend if you either deliver his ore sample to the Riften alchemist or help clear out the spiders from his mine). Still, I do understand the point about clutter. --Morrolan (talk) 18:35, 10 March 2013 (GMT)

NPC Summary on a User Profile (again)

I was patrolling this edit and noticed the message box about the page needing an image. I did a search and found this discussion in the archives, and suggested that the user adds |image=none to their NPC Summary code as mentioned in the Archive discussion. However, it looks to me, from the same Archive discussion, that this issue had been resolved by elliot back in December 2011. Has this problem returned again since then? – Daric↝talk 10:22, 20 March 2013 (GMT)

Yeah, that got unfixed when I fixed the Faction listings and had them default to being in Skyrim space (meaning that other subtemplates like NeedsImage now see it as being in Skyrim space instead of User space as well). I'm wondering if we should maybe change that plan, as it's really kludgey and introduces as many issues as it solves. If we stop this from defaulting to Skyrim in user space, we'll probably nave to add |ns_base=Skyrim|image=none to a bunch of users' pages, though. – Robin Hood  ^(talk) 20:53, 20 March 2013 (GMT)

I did an Inbound Links check and there are about 250 instances of {{NPC Summary}} in Userspace. Not all of them will be for the purpose of displaying on a user's profile, as some may be sandboxed articles under construction which wouldn't need changing. Of the remainder, some may already have the necessary code in place on their profile, because they have run into this problem themselves before or after the elliot fix. So, it is a percentage of a percentage of 250 pages that would need updating. I guess it comes down to whether we want to inconvenience that percentage of a percentage by asking them to make the change, or inconvenience future users of the template by not making the change, or, third option, inconvenience ourselves by making courtesy edits for that percentage of a percentage. Fourth option, of course, is to make it amply clear in the Summary section of the template itself that you need to add |image=none if you are using this template in userspace, and leave it at that. Of course, not everyone who implements an NPC Summary on their profile page will visit the NPC Summary template and see such a message, as many profiles get built by copying/pasting other profiles. – Daric↝talk 00:11, 21 March 2013 (GMT)

Lore?

How difficult would it be to add parameters to make this template functional for the lore section? Or, alternatively, to make a separate "Lore People Summary" template? I imagine, besides the person's name as the title, it would only need parameters for a person's birth date, death date, race, game appearances, image, and an image caption, though it could have more (kingdom, period of rule, etc.). Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 19:07, 17 April 2013 (GMT)

I have done something similar for my fan fiction characters, here. I haven't documented it, but if you open it in edit view, you'll see what I've done. — Daric✐ 21:09, 17 April 2013 (GMT)

I think we could do it fairly easily, though I would suggest a new template rather than modifying this one. Perhaps something similar to wikipedia:Template:Infobox person? We could have a separate parameter for Rank maybe? And then if it is a ruler, length of reign and place of rule? Jeancey (talk) 21:21, 17 April 2013 (GMT)

(edit conflict) I'd say it's probably better to go with a completely different template. The NPC Summary is one of the more complicated ones on the site, since it has to be compatible with at least 3 games, possible more in the future. Trying to shoehorn Lore functionality into it as well might be more trouble than it's worth, since the majority of the game-specific stuff wouldn't be needed, leaving very little overlap between what's needed for gamespaces vs. what's needed for Lore. That said, we can easily use it as a model for a Lore Person template (mainly just for appearances), but of course greatly simplified. — TheRealLurlock (talk) 21:23, 17 April 2013 (GMT)

Yes, there are so many underlying templates under NPC Summary, that in the end I decided it was easier to start again from scratch and make my own, rather than trying to copy everything under it to a new template. — Daric✐ 23:07, 17 April 2013 (GMT)

Yes, please don't complicate the NPC Summary any further! :Þ In point of fact, I'm thinking that when I have some time, I'm going to move the Skyrim code from this and Creature Summary into an Actor Summary template, since they're functionally the same thing in Skyrim (and presumably will continue that way in future games), and doing that will avoid making duplicate changes and having differing behaviour between them. What you're suggesting wouldn't fit well with either the existing templates or the changed one, so it should definitely be a new template. But that's a really great idea! – Robin Hood  ^(talk) 23:54, 17 April 2013 (GMT)