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Oblivion talk:People/Archive 1

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This is an archive of past Oblivion talk:People discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page, except for maintenance such as updating links.

Change to Layout

I have altered the Skingrad People section, can I get some feedback. Noone81 05:00, 7 September 2006 (EDT)

Two pages?

It's occurred to me that this page may get somewhat long, especially after I add in the Imperial City. Anyone think that maybe it should be two pages? One for the major cities and another for everyone else? If you think about every inn, small village, all the Daedric shrine worshippers, and then just all the other assorted people you can meet other places, you're looking at easily twice the number of people found in the major cities alone. I've already decided that people with generic names (guards, couriers, bandits, necromancers, vampires, etc.) will not be included here. Half of those are already covered on the Oblivion:Creatures page anyhow. But I'm thinking that it may make sense to seperate the city folk from the country folk, just to maintain a manageable page-size... --TheRealLurlock 23:38, 5 July 2006 (EDT)

I guess what your doing now is dividing the page into parts and transcluding them from places like Oblivion:Bruma People. I recommend moving these pages under the article as sub pages. -Aristeo 14:36, 28 July 2006 (EDT)
Well, Lorenz03tx is the one doing that. But yeah, I assume the point of that is so that this page will always be consistant with the pages on the individual city pages. So, everything here should be replaced with transcludes from the seperated City People pages. --TheRealLurlock 16:13, 28 July 2006 (EDT)

Notes on Who's Included and Locations

I just made these lists by checking each of the major cities' faction usage in the Construction Set. So some names appear in more than one city. Maglir in the Fighters Guild is listed in three cities, and Alval Uvani seems to be in all of them. (I haven't played enough of the game yet to have figured this out, but does anybody know who he is and why he's in every city?) Also, if anyone is a resident of a city and not in that city's faction for some reason, they won't be listed. I know for one that this means that all of the residents of the Dark Brotherhood hideout in Cheydinhal are not listed. Also, I left out certain faction affiliations if they seemed too minor to include. Only other faction I'm not sure about is the Mythic Dawn faction. There seemed to be 1 or 2 in every city, but perhaps by listing them here, it might be too spoiler-ish? --TheRealLurlock 01:16, 6 July 2006 (EDT)

I think Alval Uvani might be the really unfriendly character who pops up in alot of places (I've seen him travelling the main roads as well as in cities), but I'm not completely sure. I'll keep my eyes open for him (although having just become a vampire, my character might not be spending much time in cities in the near future...). Makes sense I suppose that Maglir would pop up in three cities: he does have quest roles in all three places. We could probably get away with just having listed under Skingrad, since that's where you'll first meet him. I'd vote for listing the Mythic Dawns here under the 'other' category: they are normal NPCs until you get far enough in the main quest.--Nephele 00:24, 6 July 2006 (EDT)
Well, all the Mythic Dawn people are in 'other' right now. When I realized they look just like regular people until later on, I decided to leave them alone. As for Maglir, I was considering including him in the Blackwood Company faction in Leyawiin instead of the Fighters Guild, since I know he switches over, but that might be spoilerish too. Might be best just to leave him where he is. (Looking at the Imperial City list, there's a LOT of people listed there that are also in other cities. I don't think it's a real problem for people to be listed in more than one location if they move around during the game.) --TheRealLurlock 01:16, 6 July 2006 (EDT)
Re: Alval Uvani - I just got to the quest he's involved in. If you're curious (and this doesn't spoil the quest), he's a travelling tradesman from Morrowind, who has business in a few of Cyrodiil's cities. He does have a house in Leyawiin, though. -- marbx

Here's how I'm handling duplicates - the final arbiter is what I encounter in-game. So if I see someone has a house in Imperial City, then I'll list them under Imperial City and delete all other references. Like Rochelle and Samuel Bantien, who have in IC Talos Plaza. Now, Rochelle visits people in Cheydinhal, but Samuel I've never seen outside IC. Rochelle has both IC and Cheydinhal in the Construction Set factions, and Samuel has Bravil listed in addition to IC! Since their house is in IC, I put them only under Imperial City. For a few NPCs this may be problematic. For example, the Jermane brothers move about, a couple of times. I think they should be listed only once, under the place they live at the beginning of the game. On someone's individual page all notable information should be included, but the People page should be kept to simpler standards. -- marbx Mon, 17 Jul 2006 11:10 +0400

Multiple listings is good. If I can walk into that city and see that pearson I'd like to have a link under that city. Think about usablity of the site. Someone playing the game sees the NPC in a city and goes to the page to find out more info. They don't know what city they have a house in. Of course they would probably use the search functionality. But, none the less a listing in every place the NPC is associated with works the best in my mind.. -- Lorenz03Tx 20 Jul 2006
My main counterargument is that some of the NPCs only change cites after you've done quests relating to them: Maglir, for example, will sit in the West Weald Inn in Skingrad forever unless you start the Fighters Guild quests. Reynald Jemane will be a drunk in Chorrol until you start his quest. And presumably once you start in those quests, you won't be needing to look up those characters any more, so does it really make sense to have multiple listings? To some extent, I'm playing devil's advocate here: I don't have a clear preference myself, so I'm just repeating some of the arguments that go around in my head.
On the other hand, I do tend to agree with your point for characters who independent of your actions drift from city to city (I remember a month ago or more, i.e. before this page started to get put together, running into a trainer NPC in Skingrad, and then losing track of him. Turns out he actually lives somewhere like the Talos Plaza district. Correction: using the Skingrad listings I was able to find him again: it was Othrelos who has a house in the Elven Gardens; I never could have ID'd him if he was only listed under Imperial City). Perhaps it makes sense to have a category "citizens" for people who live in whichever city, and then a category "visitors" for people who might pop occasionally pop up there. Going back to devil's advocate mode, the problem is then figuring out (a) where someone lives (b) who the visitors are and (c) who only moves around because of quests. --Nephele 12:34, 20 July 2006 (EDT)
A "Visitors" column might not be a bad idea. Also, presumably at some point each NPC who moves around like that will have their own page, and the details of what makes them move (whether just visiting or moving for quest-related reasons) will be listed there. For the most part, each NPC is listed as initially existing in only one location, and that's what I'm using for now.
There are a couple who exist in multiple locations, as well as some people who are represented by more than one actual NPC entry in the CS. (For example, the Gray Fox is actually not 1 but 3 NPCs as far as the CS is concerned. But as far as the player is concerned, he's only one person. So this is an unusual case.)
Other NPCs have an "alive" and a "dead" version which are seperate NPCs. (Some residents of Bruma, for example.) I'm actually considering removing any NPCs who are already dead the first time you encounter them. There's a bunch of them there in the "Other" category right now. However, it may be important to know where to find them, so I'm not sure that getting rid of them is the best idea. I could put some sort of note to indicate that they're dead, (maybe a skull+crossbones, similar to the service icons) though in some cases that could be considered a spoiler. --TheRealLurlock 13:56, 20 July 2006 (EDT)
On the subject of what is considered a spoiler, there is a complaint at Oblivion Talk:Cheydinhal about being told someone was going to die, so might be best to be cautious with the dead folks. Also, I've initiated a discussion of spoilers at Template:Spoiler if anyone has thoughts on what constitutes a spoiler.--Nephele 22:08, 20 July 2006 (EDT)
That complaint is rather old. You'll notice that it's no longer valid, too, as I fixed the problem weeks ago when I replaced the short list of Cheydinhal residents with the chart from the Oblivion:People page. --TheRealLurlock 22:13, 20 July 2006 (EDT)

Service Icons

I was thinking about instead of just using italics to designate service providers, we could whip up some nice little icons that appear next to the name for each of the services, so you know whether they sell goods, spells, repairs, or training without having to go to their page. Services would include:

  • Merchant - this might not need its own tag
    • Food Ψ (a fork)
    • Ingredients Δ (a pile of some sort of salts)
    • Weapons † (a sword)
    • Armor Θ (a shield)
    • Clothing η (draped cloth)
    • Potions θ (a pill)
    • Books β (beta for book)
    • Miscellaneous π (a table, i.e. tableware)
    • Thieves Fence $ (dollar-sign)
  • Training Ω (a person's head, getting trained?)
  • Spells ő (an eye, like the Mages Guild symbol)
  • Repair φ (an hammer?)
  • Recharging Į (a staff, typical item you might recharge)
  • Innkeep δ (a hanging placard?)
  • House sale/upgrades Π (a door)
  • Horses ħ (a horse looking over its shoulder - also looks like a letter 'h')

More if I think of them... --TheRealLurlock 23:52, 5 July 2006 (EDT)

Icons would be really useful, although I think trying to get as detailed as which skill is trained or which spell schools are sold would get really tough. Take Calindil, for example, you'd need icons for ingredients, potions, and icons for all six spell schools, which would add up to quite a handful. And there are separate pages that list all the trainers and all the spell merchants, so if someone needs info at that level, they could use those pages. One question on the categories: would ingredients also cover alchemy equipment?--Nephele 00:33, 6 July 2006 (EDT)
Yeah, I guess that extra stuff isn't needed, if the info is on their main page. Might still want a special icon for the master-trainers as opposed to regular trainers, though, just because they're more important. As for alchemy equipment, I don't think a seperate indicator is needed. You'll basically buy that kind of thing once every 5 levels or so, and if you know where the ingredients and potions are, you can probably find it pretty easily. I might consider an icon for Lockpicks, though, as they're very good to have a large supply of, and not too many people sell them. Now the only real problem is - I don't know how to go about implementing an icon system. I can make the graphics easily enough. But uploading the images and making some sort of template to display them next to the names is a bit beyond my wiki-skills at this time. I'm thinking some sort of ASCII art might suffice until then? (Find some Greek letters or mathematical symbols or what-not that look like the appropriate icons needed that will display on standard browsers... Might have to test that.) Anyhow, here's a list of special characters that will display, courtesy of Wikipedia: (I added some suggestions above.)
  • Á á Ć ć É é Í í Ĺ ĺ Ń ń Ó ó Ŕ ŕ Ś ś Ú ú Ý ý Ź ź À à È è Ì ì Ò ò Ù ù  â Ĉ ĉ Ê ê Ĝ ĝ Ĥ ĥ Î î Ĵ ĵ Ô ô Ŝ ŝ Û û Ŵ ŵ Ŷ ŷ Ä ä Ë ë Ï ï Ö ö Ü ü Ÿ ÿ ß Ã ã Ẽ ẽ Ĩ ĩ Ñ ñ Õ õ Ũ ũ Ỹ ỹ Ç ç Ģ ģ Ķ ķ Ļ ļ Ņ ņ Ŗ ŗ Ş ş Ţ ţ Đ đ Ů ů Ǎ ǎ Č č Ď ď Ě ě Ǐ ǐ Ľ ľ Ň ň Ǒ ǒ Ř ř Š š Ť ť Ǔ ǔ Ž ž Ā ā Ē ē Ī ī Ō ō Ū ū Ȳ ȳ Ǣ ǣ ǖ ǘ ǚ ǜ Ă ă Ĕ ĕ Ğ ğ Ĭ ĭ Ŏ ŏ Ŭ ŭ Ċ ċ Ė ė Ġ ġ İ ı Ż ż Ą ą Ę ę Į į Ǫ ǫ Ų ų Ł ł Ő ő Ű ű Ŀ ŀ Ħ ħ Ð ð Þ þ Œ œ Æ æ Ø ø Å å Ə ə
  • Greek: Α α Β β Γ γ Δ δ Ε ε Ζ ζ Η η Θ θ Ι ι Κ κ Λ λ Μ μ Ν ν Ξ ξ Ο ο Π π Ρ ρ Σ σ ς Τ τ Υ υ Φ φ Χ χ Ψ ψ Ω ω •
  • IPA: ʈ ɖ ɟ ɡ ɢ ʡ ʔ ɸ ʃ ʒ ɕ ʑ ʂ ʐ ʝ ɣ ʁ ʕ ʜ ʢ ɦ ɱ ɳ ɲ ŋ ɴ ʋ ɹ ɻ ɰ ʙ ʀ ɾ ɽ ɫ ɬ ɮ ɺ ɭ ʎ ʟ ɥ ʍ ɧ ɓ ɗ ʄ ɠ ʛ ʘ ǀ ǃ ǂ ǁ ɨ ʉ ɯ ɪ ʏ ʊ ɘ ɵ ɤ ɚ ɛ ɜ ɝ ɞ ʌ ɔ ɐ ɶ ɑ ɒ ʰ ʷ ʲ ˠ ˤ ⁿ ˡ ˈ ˌ ː ˑ •
  • Symbols: ~ | ¡ ¿ † ‡ ↔ ↑ ↓ • # ¹ ² ³ ½ ⅓ ⅔ ¼ ¾ ⅛ ⅜ ⅝ ⅞ ‘ “ ’ ” ¢ $ € £ ¥

--TheRealLurlock 01:11, 6 July 2006 (EDT)

Using characters seems like a workable interim solution. Unfortunately IE doesn't seem to want to display a bunch of those characters; they just come out as empty squares. The missing ones include almost all the IPA characters (exceptions: ŋ ⁿ), and the following ones: Ȳ ȳ Ǣ ǣ Ǫ ǫ. My IE is pretty up-to-date, so I think to make these icons useful for a good number of readers, those characters have to be avoided. And that includes a few you've proposed (books, spells, repair, recharging, innkeep, horses).--Nephele 02:11, 6 July 2006 (EDT)
Alright, I changed the ones you mentionned. How's this?--TheRealLurlock 07:50, 6 July 2006 (EDT)

Seeing the icons in action makes them seem a bit overwhelming. I was wondering if there are some ways to simplify things a bit.

  • Should there be a symbol that means miscellaneous goods? My impression is that there are alot of merchants who sell a bit of just about anything, so introducing a single symbol that can be used instead of "†ΘηΨΔθβπ" on all those merchants might enhance readability. Maybe euro € for "everything"?
Yeah, I was thinking there were a lot of "everything" merchants. I guess the € works for that. (Also less US-centric, since I chose the $ as the Thieves Guild fence symbol.)
  • Does every one who sells ingredients also sell food? Is then necessary to always list ingredients+food? Couldn't just Δ be used for those merchants, with the food part being implicit?
Makes sense. Problem is it's actually kind of hard from the Construction set to tell who sells ingredients and who sells just food. (Any merchant who sells food will still buy any kinds of ingredients, food or otherwise.) Also difficult to figure out are those that make dialogue-based sales, such as the people that sell you horses, houses, and rooms at inns.
  • Are there many merchants who sell only one of weapons/armor? There may be a few (i.e., Maro Rufus and Varnado) but those details can always be provided on their specific NPC pages. So could a single symbol be used to mean weapons and/or armor?

Since these symbols aren't the only way of conveying information, they don't necessarily have to be precise: details can always be given on the individual NPC's page.--Nephele 22:08, 6 July 2006 (EDT)

There are definitely people who sell weapons and not armor, and vice versa. This is another complication, however, as I'm pretty sure that in most cases, even if a merchant only sells weapons, they will still buy armor, and thus both are checked in their settings in the Construction Set. However, I think using that Euro-symbol might make things a bit less cluttered.
Now, one other thing I wonder - is it possible in wiki to make text that will cause a tooltip to appear under the cursor when you roll the mouse over it? It would definitely be nice if when rolling over a symbol, a little tip appeared telling you what it meant. (Of course I'll be adding a key later, but this would still help.) Alternatively, if they were images, the image can have an alternate-text that appears automatically. But I'll still have to figure out how to get images in there. (Probably spend some time this weekend doing that maybe.) Anyhow, I'll make these changes and see how it looks. --TheRealLurlock 22:21, 6 July 2006 (EDT)

Agh. These icons are a frikkin' pain. Since my keyboard isn't equipped to type them, I have to copy/paste from Word every single little symbol, one by one. (Can't even use Notepad, because they just show up as ???.) I've done Anvil and Bravil, but I think I'm going to give it a rest until we get those graphic icons implemented, this is just too much tediousness, even for me. --TheRealLurlock 00:07, 7 July 2006 (EDT)

If you're contemplating tackling this again, you could try typing the names of all the symbols, i.e. Ω, Θ, π, φ, Δ, δ, €, Ψ, Π. It takes a few keystrokes, but might be less irritating than cutting and pasting.--Nephele 00:43, 7 July 2006 (EDT)
OK, how to get the text to appear instead of being converted to symbols is beyond me at the moment, but if you look at this section in the editor, you can easily what the text is.--Nephele 00:46, 7 July 2006 (EDT)

I don't find the greek characters readable at all - especially without a legend on the same page! Plus, some of them look very similar to one another: capital psi Ψ and lowercase phi φ may be confused. I'd suggest using plain old latin letters and very generalized categories - M for merchant, S for spells, T for trainer, R for repair, C for (re)charging, H for horses, and F for fence. Maybe also I for innkeep, B for buy a house, and Q for quests (as in, you can get a new quest from this person, not just that they're involved in one).

Then you could have a simple, alphabetically ordered list, and don't have to worry about whether someone's weird browser will draw actual greek letters, or some off-the-wall character, or a box with numbers in it, or what have you. Suggest that people click through to the NPC's individual page for more detail: i.e. such and such person sells only food and beverages, so you can only sell to them in "potions" and "ingredients" categories. This would also be more readable because there's less information to assimilate in a single gulp - the max length here would be three or four characters, as opposed to having eight or ten chars after a name!

P.S. Nephele: &amp; is the code for ampersand, so you want to type "&amp;Omega;" in the editor to get "&Omega;" on the web page. -- marbx 10:30, 16 Jul 2006 GMT
Yeah, those symbols were an experiment, and as far as I'm concerned, a failed one. (Which is why I didn't implement it for more than the first two cities.) I don't know that your method would be much better, however. You'd get people confused over whether H meant houses or horses, R for repair or recharge, etc. More and more, I'm convinced that graphic-based icons are the way to go. Easily recognizable, and they'd have the advantage that by rolling the mouse over them, you'd get a tooltip saying what it meant, so you almost wouldn't need a key. (There'd still be one, of course.) I'm going to look into what's involved in uploading some small images for the purpose. --TheRealLurlock 11:09, 16 July 2006 (EDT)

Images for services

OK, I've uploaded some icons:                   I've redone Anvil's list, removing the italics since they should no longer be necessary. What do y'all think? The only one I don't quite like is the fence icon - the red hand looks better in the game than on a bright white background, I think. -- marbx 5:15, 16 Jul 2006 PDT

Those are great! I have one suggestion. Why not change the alt-text to give more information? So you could have   to indicate that this person trains Alchemy,   to indicate that this person sells ingredients, so you can quickly roll over the icons and get the info without having to go to their page? (Also would be nice if we could somehow sneak in a template to make the formatting easier to input, but this may be fine.) Oh, one more we need would be for horses. I think the horseshoe icon would be perfect for that. --TheRealLurlock 21:04, 16 July 2006 (EDT)
I think using the game's icons is definitely the easiest way to present this info, since everyone will immediately recognize what is meant by the icon. I agree that the red hand stands out, especially since the other icons are all brown, but I think it does make sense as the "fencing" icon. I just experimented with adding to the tooltip text: so instead of just saying "Train", I filled in exactly what type of training each person offers. The same could be done with merchants, so that the icons can actually provide a fair bit of additional info. But I wonder if having the icons all right-aligned would look neater?--Nephele 21:16, 16 July 2006 (EDT)
Great minds think alike: at the same time that you were adding your comment, I was doing it: the trainers' tooltip text has already been expanded!--Nephele 21:18, 16 July 2006 (EDT)
Great minds edit alike too. While you were doing that, I was working on doing the same for Bravil... (Glad I chose to go for the second one on that, still had to do the merge afterwards. I'm thinking one at a time is better here...) --TheRealLurlock 21:29, 16 July 2006 (EDT)
Yes, I totally forgot horses when doing these. Well, now a horseshoe icon has been added:   -- marbx
Great. Now just to enter these in for the rest of them... One more thing. Do we want to have icons for people who start or are involved in quests? Not sure what you'd use for that. Maybe a picture of an open book, like what you see when you're looking at a book? Or maybe the cup icon like they use for inns - that'd be good because a cup is used for quests on your quest menu. Only problem is people might misinterpret it to think they're an innkeeper, though I think the Sleep icon is obvious enough that there wouldn't be a problem. Maybe even use both - the book for quest starters and the cup for people involved in quests. The tooltip would give the name of the quest. Even better if we could make it so clicking on the icon takes you right to the quest page, though I'm not sure if that's possible. Anyhow, just a few thoughts I had. --TheRealLurlock 00:58, 17 July 2006 (EDT)
I think that's reaching too far - keeping track of who lives where, and who sells what is probably enough info for this page. Isn't it big enough as is?  :) Plus, revealing who's involved in which quests definitely goes into spoiler territory. Spoilers should not be on as general a page as "people." BTW, I've been checking some of these people out in-game, and some of the names in italics do not appear to actually sell or train anything. I know some trainers need to be "unlocked" (but I don't think any sellers do, save fences), so is there a better way to verify that these people are actually merchants of some sort? -- marbx 12:27 17 Jul 2006 CDT
When I originally made this chart, I basically checked each NPC's Services tab in the Construction Set, and if ANY of the boxes was checked, I italicized them. Later, somebody, I think Nephele, created pages for all the merchants, based on the Merchants page, and linked them. Odds are, if a name is in italics and they don't have their own page, they're probably a trainer. If you can't get services from them now, it's likely they're either locked, or there's something else funky going on. (See Trevaia. We still can't figure out what's going on with her.) With the addition of these icons (and noticing that I missed a few in Anvil), I'm thinking of moving those back into the Other column, leaving the Merchants column for just people that have a commercial establishment - a shop, an inn, a tavern, etc. Was even considering adding the name of the shop somehow, which would make them easier to find in many cases. --TheRealLurlock 09:12, 17 July 2006 (EDT)
Try {{Clickpic}}. {{clickpic|Oblivion:Escape From Prison|http://www.uesp.net/w/images/Dooricon_small.png}} turns into {{clickpic|Oblivion:Escape From Prison|http://www.uesp.net/w/images/Dooricon_small.png}}. The URL alt text could probably be overruled via a simple CSS tweak. Because of server configuration I wasn't able to make it as simple as Dooricon_small.png. GarrettTalk 01:36, 17 July 2006 (EDT)
Well, if you figure out how to simplify this, and make the alt-text work, we may implement it, but then I do see marbx's point about how quest linking might be spoiler-ish. Not to mention a lot of work. Heh. I think we can just do with what we have for now. Maybe that can be added later if enough people want it. --TheRealLurlock 09:12, 17 July 2006 (EDT)

You've probably noticed that I added color-coded icons for Basic/Advanced/Master Trainers. I've left the original yellow icon in there for special cases where the trainer does not fit one of those three categories. Right now there are only two, Trayvond the Redguard, and Hauls-Ropes-Faster, both of whom seem to offer training, but so far nobody has figured out how. (Probably a bug in both cases.) I'm also considering using this icon for people who train your skills in other ways, such as a one-time quest reward, or from watching them sparring like those two in the Arena and the Cloud Ruler Temple. Maybe even people who give you a skill book as a quest reward. Sound like a plan? --TheRealLurlock 12:26, 23 July 2006 (EDT)

I'm not sure about lumping in some of the rewards with training, especially with the icons where there's so little info. It's just that the rewards are slightly different from regular training (you can only get it once, it doesn't count to your five/level limit, etc) and I'm worried about misleading/confusing people who are scanning through this list.--Nephele 13:17, 23 July 2006 (EDT)
Yes, but if you consider that the yellow icons now NEVER refer to regular training, since I've changed all the regular trainers to green, blue, or red, these would still be easily distinguishable. Plus I can just put a little "(see note)" on the alt-text to explain it further. --TheRealLurlock 14:45, 23 July 2006 (EDT)

Content of NPC pages

As more and more pages for individual NPCs get filled in, I think it may be useful to establish what the content/style should be of those pages. Just like with the place pages and quest pages, establish what info should be on the pages, and some sort of layout so people can easily find that info.

What I've been drifting towards is:

  • Crumb trail!
  • Intro section: gender, race, where the person lives, what guild they are in, any relatives, whether they are killable (quest-critical)
  • If they move around, details as available on where they pop up and when (I know some NPCs have a travel schedule, specific days of the month/week where they go to specific places)
  • ==Services== section (only required for NPCs who provide any services)
    • The times during which they provide services, and location(s) that they need to be in.
    • If they are a merchant: mercantile skill, gold, goods they buy/sell, any unique items, beds, horses, etc.
    • If they are a spell merchant: provide table at bottom of page with spells
    • If they are a trainer: what skill they train, and at what level (and follow Lurlock's attempts to standardize the terms: basic, advanced, master)
    • List any other services (repair, recharging)
  • ==Quests== section (only required for NPCs who appear in any quests)
    • specify quests for which they are quest-providers
    • specify quests in which they play a role (and I've been erring on the generous side there, i.e. Oblivion:Carahil who just gets mentioned in a journal in one quest)

Definitely these are ideas in progress. I've tried to implement them on Oblivion:Maglir's and Oblivion:Carahil's pages. Any other thoughts?

--Nephele 13:03, 20 July 2006 (EDT)

A thought I had was to add categories for each of the 10 (11 if you count Dremora) races in the game. So at the bottom of each NPC page would be a category listing, and if you wanted to find a list of all Argonians in the game, it would be on its own page. Helpful when somebody is trying to remember which Orc it was they saw somewhere, having forgotten his name... (I can never remember Orc names. Khajiits are kind of tough too.) --TheRealLurlock 12:14, 23 July 2006 (EDT)

I'm new to this and I edited Oblivion:Daenlin before I found this section, while what I did is very amaturish, can people say if it points in the "right" direction. I have an opinion we need a "Oblivion:People" template. It should look like a Wikipedia bio. that is box on right side of screen with stanardized information in it. Noone81 01:24, 7 September 2006 (EDT)

Yes, I could see having some type of standard infobox for the NPC pages. I'd guess it would probably be larger than the Wikipedia bio boxes (mainly because some NPCs wouldn't have too much on their page other than what's in the infobox). It would be very possible to incorporate the merchant table into such an infobox, and have it only show up on merchant pages. I'd say it's probably easiest to proceed by continuing what you've been doing: pick a couple NPC pages, and experiment with how to layout the information. I don't have any more concrete suggestions at the moment (in part because I'm getting sleepy), but I'll think about it some more overnight. --Nephele 03:13, 7 September 2006 (EDT)

Other People

Well, I tore apart the "Other" section, and put every location with more than 1 named NPC in it into the "Other Locations" section. Not sure if I should go ahead and do that for the rest of them. Currently, every NPC still listed in the big "Other" list is the only named NPC in their location. I was thinking of treating these differently, creating a list of these people, alphabetically by name, with their location immediately after, e.g.:

etc.

Maybe in 2 or 3 columns to save space.

Arguably, that could be spoilerish, but then, a lot of what's on this page could be. It'd be more informative than the info-dump list that's there right now. Any thoughts? --TheRealLurlock 12:06, 23 July 2006 (EDT)

I was amazed to see how much you've whittled down that list. I think a list like you're talking about would work; it would make the list seem a bit less like the leftovers. I'm not sure if one or two more names could be stuffed in elsewhere. I moved Corrick Northwode up to small towns (Harm's Folly seems as much a small town as Drakelowe... both one house with one person). Also, I'm pretty sure Fithragaer is part of the Skingrad Mage's Guild. The only hitch is that he starts the game stuck in a cave outside of Skingrad (there's a quest to rescue him and return him to the guild). In a case like that, should he just get added to Skingrad instead of the miscellaneous list? Raven Camoran lives in the Imperial City, except he's under it (Sunken Sewers)... perhaps stick him in the others there?
But there's definitely a bunch that will never have any other good places to go (poor dead Agnar, his body rotting on a mountainside). --Nephele 13:12, 23 July 2006 (EDT)
You're thinking of Erthor, not Fithragaer. Erthor is already listed in Skingrad, even though that's not where you find him. I considered not putting him in there, since after the quest where you rescure him, he just goes back to the cave again later. But he is still a member of the guild there, and I think having him seperated into some obscure cave away from everyone else isn't quite fair. Good catch on Harm's Folly, I missed that one. As for Raven Camoran, I was being a little bit careful with those, since I know they're major Main Quest characters, but I haven't played enough of the Main Quest to be able to say much about them. (I was iffy about putting Mankar and Ruma Camoran as well, but since they appeared all in one cell, along with Harrow, I opted to include them.) --TheRealLurlock 14:42, 23 July 2006 (EDT)

Martin

He is listed here in Kavatch where he first apears. But he is listed as "Brother Martin". And the page of course also is dead link to Oblivion:Borther Martin. I don't think this is quite right. It seems ok to list him at Kavatch, but he certainly isn't a "Brother" anymore after the kvatch quests, and that happens pretty early on in the game. Linking to his name on the final quest It would seem weird to link to "Brother Martin". I mean in the first quest for the mian sotry you find out his true identity I don't think it really counts as a spoiler. --Lorenz03Tx

In cases where a character's name or location changes, I've generally been using the first name and location that you encounter. (Another reason I'm considering getting rid of the Corvus Umbranox page.) True, this one's not nearly as much of a spoiler, his name in the game appears as "Brother Martin" in the CS, and thus in the game. I don't think there is an NPC in the game called just "Martin". (At work, can't check here.) --TheRealLurlock 15:04, 25 July 2006 (EDT)
There isn't. Let's just call him "Martin", and have "Brother Martin" and "Martin Septim" direct to him. --Aristeo 15:49, 25 July 2006 (EDT)

Sub pages

It seems we are also including these tables in the pages for the cities. We might consider making a sub page Oblivion:Anvil_People that we simply include here and in the Oblivion:Anvil page. That way we don't have two versions of the table to keep in sync. If no one objects I might start doing this tomorrow.--Lorenz03Tx 27 July

I'm pretty much always in favour of consolidating any identical, repeated information to a single place and then transcluding it everywhere it's needed. As you say, there's less work whenever a change needs to be made. --Nephele 13:06, 27 July 2006 (EDT)
The problem with doing that is if you need to make a change to something that's inbetween what the template covers, you can't without modifing the template and the pages that the template uses. Also, templates in overdose scare away newcomers. All I ask is to use moderation. Don't put everything in one big template, maybe divide off the templates. Take the bread crumb trails out of the template. Let there be room for simple modification. --Aristeo 18:31, 27 July 2006 (EDT)
I did Bravil and Anvil. All I did was move them to their own page and translude them. I didn't create a template or anything. Anyway I noticed that both the Bravil and Anvil city pages had out of date NPC tables so I think this going to be better overall. Let me know what you think, or how to do it better --Lorenz03Tx 28 July 2006
Finished the magor towns, as it is quick work. I'll leave it as is, to give time for comments and objections. Then I'll do the small towns and the Imperial City Districts. --Lorenz03Tx 28 July 2006

Ugal wont go away!

I was changing all the links to Ugal Belette to Eugal Belette, but on the People page, I can't seem to change it. When I edit the Chorrol section, it shows it linking to Eugal Belette, but on the page itself, it goes to Ugal Belette.

Fixed. One problem with transclude pages is that any page they're included on is not refreshed until you make a change in the main page itself. Ran into this quite a lot on the Skill Books section. --TheRealLurlock 22:31, 28 July 2006 (EDT)
You can fix it without having to edit the page by clicking on this link: [1]. --Aristeo 02:42, 29 July 2006 (EDT)
Thanks - Is there an easier way to make that happen on other pages without typing everyhing in? This is a feature I can anticipate much need for, but I don't see any link anywhere that will do it... --TheRealLurlock 10:28, 29 July 2006 (EDT)
Click on "edit" on the page you want to purge, then replace "action=edit" with "action=purge". I usually make this change by double-clicking to the right of the URL, which will highlight the word "edit". --Aristeo 10:33, 29 July 2006 (EDT)
Cool. Didn't work where I wanted it to, unfortunately. (The Oblivion-NPCs category.) I guess it doesn't work on categories, but... Nope. Doesn't work if you purge members in the category either. Was thinking that'd be easier than having to arbitrarily edit each one to get them out of the 'O' category. But no such luck. I'm sure this will be useful somewhere, but not in this case. --TheRealLurlock 12:28, 29 July 2006 (EDT)
That "O" glitch is wierd, and purge doesn't seem to fix those pages. Purge simply refreshes a page's catch. --Aristeo 12:44, 29 July 2006 (EDT)

It seems to me like purge doesn't work with any of the "special" (automatically generated) pages; they only respond to real edits. There are two other examples that have been bugging me lately.

I'm basically in a holding pattern on these, partly hoping that if Daveh upgrades the wiki sometime in the not-too-distant future, maybe an upgrade will fix this problem. Unless anyone has any suggestions in the meantime...--Nephele 13:14, 29 July 2006 (EDT)

Do Test NPCs need their own articles?

As the Test NPCs don't appear in-game at all, ever, and therefore aren't very interesting, I move that we keep the list of names here for interest but remove the links to non-existent pages. I will do so for now and if the consensus goes against me, we can revert it. --Actreal 03:22, 15 October 2006 (EDT)

I agree--Hoggwild5 09:17, 15 October 2006 (EDT)

Hauls-Ropes-Faster Fixed in Patch

Just checked, and it appears Hauls-Ropes-Faster is able to train after the patch. I successfully found him willing to train in the Foc's'l, but only while he's downstairs. I'm about to update the page to reflect this. I'll also look on the Trainer page to see if that needs updating.

StarliteLemming 00:21, 18 November 2006 (EST)

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