View source for D&D Homebrew Wiki:About

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== About D&D Homebrew Wiki ==
The D&D Homebrew Wiki started as a community of users that loved Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder and, in particular, creating and using homebrew. We liked homebrew so much that we decided to build this community to cater to people who want access to high quality, consistent homebrew content for their games and also have an environment where homebrew can be created, constructively criticized, and become the best it can be.

Our wiki has grown a bit since then, and now includes material from multiple editions and related games, articles about the worlds and people that make up official settings, and even lists of publications with OGL material. So what type of place is this?

=== This is a place for user created material ===
Our homebrew section is author centric, built around aggressive quality control, and focused on providing content for many different styles of play (when the game in question supports that). We want to help you find material from our collection that you can use in your campaigns without balance concerns. To that end we list the author of the material on each page and attempt to tag the article with a balance point that indicates what sort of games it would be most appropriate in. Our [[Project:Article Balance|Balance Points]] article contains more information about these tags, and should help you find a starting point based on your own types of games.

While there is a lot of user created material here for you to peruse and use in your games, it's also a space for you to add your own material. Which makes this a space for you. Yes, you! If you're role-playing, we bet you have something to share. It can be anything from house rules that improve your game to homebrew spells and monsters to campaign settings descriptions and adventures. You can also upload images for your work, provided they meet our [[Project:Image Policies|Image Policies]]. We do have some rather strict guidelines to keep things from becoming cluttered up with unplayable and incomplete submissions, however. More information on adding new homebrew material can be found in our [[Project:Content Requirements|Content Requirements]]

As for editing the articles you find on the wiki, we are a very author-centric homebrew community and don't look kindly on people fiddling with the mechanics of other contributors' work. Changes to the wording that help make an article more clear are generally acceptable, though some users prefer that no one edit their homebrew at all and we try to accommodate them. the exact editing restrictions should be found on the article itself. While these editing restrictions aren't normal wiki policies, we have found that it helps keep material stable so that it doesn't change significantly once it's ready to be used. This stability makes it easier to use in a game, since it's unlikely to be radically different the next time you check in on it. More information can be found in our [[Dungeons and Dragons Wiki:Editing Policy|Editing Policy]].

=== This is a place for official information ===
Our [[Canon:Main|Canon]] section is still growing, and we want to collect information about all the races, creatures, spells, settings, and more that have been published over the years. Any [[Wikipedia:|Wikipedia]]-like pages about things related to Dungeons and Dragons or other supported games are welcome here. The Canon section also includes articles on concepts, versions of game mechanics, publishing companies, and even game designers.

This section is everything you'd expect from a traditional wiki, with encyclopaedic articles and citations about the game. Some of the Wikipedia limitations still apply, meaning you should write consistently and try to stay neutral. If you cannot stay neutral and a particular point of view must be maintained, it is allowed as long as no false information is provided. It is also a good idea to give a link to another article which describes the same subject from a different point of view. No direct bashing of basic D&D principles is allowed: if you don't like it, don't contribute.

=== This is a place for finding publications and OGL material ===
We host copies of official material for D&D 5th edition, D&D 4th edition, and the D&D 3.5 edition available under the OGL license. These have been made available for reproduction by Wizards of the Coast. 

* '''5th edition [[SRD5|System Reference Document]]'''
: For 5th edition, SRD includes the a portion of the Player's Handbook, the Dungeon Master's Guide, and the Monster Manual. Certain basic rules such as character creation are missing, as these are not Open Game Content and so could not be included. The content that is included is the equivalent of the Basic Rules distributed with the Starter Set. You don't get the included adventure or minis, but it's all you need to give it a try. 
* '''4th edition [[4e_Index_(4e_Other)|Index]]'''
: For 4th edition, we are largely limited to reproducing the 4th edition [[4e_Index_(4e_Other)|index]]. It will help you look up rules and references, but not much else.
* '''3.5 edition [[SRD:System Reference Document|System Reference Document]]'''
: For 3.5 edition, the SRD includes the vast majorities of the Player's Handbook, the Dungeon Master's Guide, and the Monster Manual. The SRD also includes a large portion of the [[Publication:Unearthed Arcana|Unearthed Arcana]] rulebook, which has been placed with the other publications instead of rolled into the SRD. As with the 5th edition SRD, the 3.5 edition SRD excludes certain parts of the basic rules of the game such as experience tables, character wealth, and a few monsters. These parts are not Open Game Content, so we can't include them.

Beyond this core material, the [[Publication:Main|Publication]] section aims to provide a complete list of all the material published for the games we support - from its inception up through today. Where reprinting is allowed by the license, the publication section may also contain Open Game License material for you to incorporate into your games. All users are welcome to contribute to this section by adding publication articles or adding open game, or similarly licensed, content to the publication's subpages.

Hosting allowed content like this allows you a chance to play with some of the material in these books even if you don't own them. We recommend that you purchase them if you really enjoy the material of course, since that's how the creators are able to afford to make more, but we understand that sometimes it's nice just to be able to see material from out of print or difficult to acquire books.

=== This is a place for your game-specific information ===
You can also use the wiki as a note taking space. If an article is neither homebrew nor encyclopedic, like a campaign log or a character sheet, you are welcome to place it in the user space as a subpage of your user page, no matter how small the topic. Those who do not need your article will simply not read it or link to it, but they will also not delete it unless it violates the [[Project:General disclaimer|Terms of Use]]. They may take some of your ideas and incorporate it into their own games or work however.
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=== What's next ===
Now that you know what we're about, you may want to know [[Project:Getting Started#Where do I start?|"Where do I start?"]].

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