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Eruvian Contributor Guide
Hey, thanks for dropping by Eruvian's Contributor Guide - guess it means you're interested in contributing something. Awesome. The guide below should get you started. If you have any questions, just drop a line to content@eruvian.com.
Your First Submission
Creating Content
Character Data
Item Data
Locale Data
The Submission Process
Owning Locales
Maturity Rating Guide
Your First Submission
Submitting content to Eruvian.com is pretty easy. To start with, there are two general ways of contributing: to the Repository and to a particular campaign setting. Contributing to the Repository means you're uploading a character or some other piece of content without any context. The character might have a history within a particular campaign setting, perhaps the one from your local gaming group, but none of that is represented in the Repository. Instead, a character in the Respository is essentially a set of stats, equipment, and possibly a portrait, ready for inclusion into any campaign by a needy GM.Submitting content to a campaign setting requires you to be signed up as a GM for that setting. If you're not a GM, and you don't want to spoil the fun of being a player by seeing GM-only content, you should pick another campaign setting to submit your content to or submit it to the Repository.
Once you've found a campaign setting to submit content to, simply browse to a particular locale within that setting and click the "Submit ..." button. For example, if you have a character that you think would be a good fit for a particular locale within the Pelagos setting, say a knight living in the town of Middleton, you would simply go to Middleton and hit "Submit Character".
Again, only GMs can submit content, so if you're signed up as a player you won't see the "Submit Character" link. Players don't have access to all the GM-only info about a given campaign setting, and really shouldn't know the exact stats of any characters within the setting. If you really want to submit the character you can ask your GM to do so on your behalf. Or, if you're not a player in the setting and want to GM it, you can decide to become a GM yourself. To do so go to your Registration Settings and sign up as a GM for that setting.
Creating Content
Each type of content has its own creation and editing page. In general, these pages consist of a form with a number of required and optional fields for you to fill in. In some cases there are fields that upload files, such as character sheets, maps, and so on. The content that you enter in certain fields is not visible to players, containing information for GMs and owners of the content. There are even some fields visible only to owners, useful for relaying design-related information to other owners in cases where a single locale has a design team with more than one owner.Once the form has been filled in, hit the Submit button to upload the contents of that form to the Eruvian content management system. Due to limitations in the current web frontend, don't wait too long, no more than a few hours, before submitting your content or else your session might time out and your data may be lost. In cases where you anticipate writing a lot you may want to create the content within a local document and save it on your harddrive before uploading it.
Character Data
Eruvian.com uses PCGen, an open source character generation tool, to handle most character data. PCGen stores character data in .PCG files, which can be uploaded to Eruvian.com using the Create Character page. Eruvian.com parses these files and stores key data in its database, allowing Eruvian.com to have a character search engine that can filter on such attributes as class, level, and alignment. Another benefit of using PCGen is that GMs can download a character in a single file that is easily modified for individual campaign needs. It should be noted that only GMs have access to the .PCG files for characters within a given campaign setting.In addition to the .PCG file, the Character Creation page contains the following fields:
- Known to the Outside World: Checking this box means that the character is known and visible to those signed up as players within a given
campaign setting. Keeping it unchecked means that only GMs and those players that have had the IsKnown flag set by a GM in their gaming group can see
the character. GMs can set the IsKnown flag for characters and locales for one or more of their players within the Gaming Group page.
- Reputation: This field contains a description of what is popularly believed to be true about the character. It is visible to players
that can access the character page and to GMs as well. It should be noted that the information it contains may not necessarily be true.
- Designer Notes: The Designer Notes field is visible only to owners of the character, including owners of the locale in which it is
contained. It is useful for capturing notes related to the design of the character and any future modifications that are planned.
- Is Published: Check this field when you are ready for the character to be published within the campaign setting, and thus visible to
the Eruvian community. While left unchecked, only owners of the character can see it.
- Genre: This dropdown box denotes the genre of the character.
- Tone: This dropdown box denotes the tone of the character.
- Maturity Rating: This dropdown box denotes the maturity rating of the character. In general characters meant for a particular campaign
setting should keep to the corresponding maturity rating of that campaign setting, or at least the locale in which they are located. For a detailed
explanation of the ratings, please read the Eruvian Maturity Rating Guide.
- Character Portrait:This field allows you to upload a character portrait for display on the site.
- Character Portrait Artist: This field is used to credit the artist of the character portrait. Like most fields in Eruvian, this field
supports HTML and so the artist's name can be wrapped in an HREF tag so that it can be a link to the artist's website. Under no circumstances should
images be used without the permission of their copyright holder.
Item Data
Items in Eruvian can represent both unique individual items and classes of items that are custom to the campaign. For example, a campaign setting that has the Norse gods might have a unique item called Thor's Hammer that is presumably owned and wielded by the god himself. That same setting might also have a class of items called a seax, a single-edged knife commonly used by vikings, that has its own statistics that vary slightly from the more common dagger.In both of these cases the creator of the item can include the data required to generate a PCGen LST file. Eruvian uses this data to create LST files for all the items within a given setting and output them for use by the GMs. These LST files can be downloaded and imported into PCGen such that all items unique to the setting, whether unique items or item classes, are available within PCGen's inventory tab for inclusion in the character. PCGen LST data is never required, but it is appreciated by those that use PCGen.
The Create Item page has the following fields:
- Name: This is the name of the item and should be unique within the campaign setting to avoid confusion. Mentions of this name within the
campaign setting will automatically be turned into hyperlinks pointing to the item page.
- Item Type: This required field defines the type of item and is important both for classification of the item within Eruvian as well as
for use of the item within PCGen.
- Locale: The Locale field defines where this item resides or is otherwise restricted to. In the case of unique items, this is the locale
where the item currently resides. In the case of classes of items, this is the locale where the item is most frequently seen. Eruvian will someday
allow for dynamic generation of PCGen LST files based on locale (e.g. all the items available within a given continent, realm, or island) and this
field is designed to support this future functionality.
- Is Known: As with other objects, this field determines whether or not players within the setting can view its information on Eruvian.com.
GMs can allow individual PCs within their gaming group to have knowledge of a given item that isn't generally known, at which point the player will
receive a message within Eruvian notifying them of this and giving them a link to the new information. This might be appropriate, for example, if
a given player takes possession of a unique magic item and learns its abilities. In this way, that player can become entirely familiar with the item
- its history, powers, and so on - without other players even being aware that the item is in anyway special.
- Is Global: This field only effects the generation of PCGen LST data. If you're not adding this data, this field can be ignored. In some cases
an Eruvian item is actually a modification to the statistics of an existing item. For example, in the Pelagos setting
iron is rare on the island of Hydanham and thus steel items cost more there than they do elsewhere. To represent this
within PCGen, an item called Iron and Steel was created with PCGen LST data that increases the cost and value of all
steel items within the PCGen interface. This helps GMs creating characters for Hydanham, including PCs, by properly representing the additional cost of
steel items during the character creation process. However, this change to the value of iron is not global - it won't effect locales outside of Hydanham
- and so the IsGlobal flag is set to false for this particular item. If you're unsure how to use this flag, just leave the box checked - this will be the
case 99% of the time anyway.
- Player Description: The player description is the description of the item that is visible to players assuming, of course, that the item
itself is known. It shouldn't contain any GM-only information such as specific bonuses, secret command words, or the like.
- GM Description: This description should add any information that the GM needs to know about the item in order to use it in a game.
- Player History: As with the Player Description, this field contains information about the item that the player should know, in this case
about its history. If secret details of an item's past exist, they should not be entered in this field.
- GM History: Here's where all the good stuff goes, the GM-only information about the deep, dark history of a particular item.
- PCGen LST Line: This field is where the PCGen LST data should go, usually a single line of data for inclusion in a PCGen LST file. If
you're unfamiliar with how LST files work, the friendly folks at PCGen will be glad to help.
The rest of the fields work the same as described in the Character Data section of this guide.
Locale Data
Locale data consists of all the information required to fully describe a given location within a campaign setting. As with characters, this includes both information that is visible only to GMs and that which is visible to players. Information that is visible to players includes "Player Overview", "Player History", and so on. GM-only information includes "GM Overview", "GM History", and the like. Some data for locales is identical to that of characters, such as genre, tone, and maturity rating, while other pieces of data are specific to locales.- Name: This is the most common name of the locale. Mentions of this locale within the campaign setting will automatically be turned into
hyperlinks pointing to the locale page.
- Title: In some cases a locale might have a title, some phrase, often a description, that is commonly associated with it.
- Locale Type: This dropdown contains a list of possible locale types. The locale search function can filter based on locale type.
- Is Known: Checking this box means that the locale is known and visible to those signed up as players within a given campaign setting.
Keeping it unchecked means that only GMs and those players that have had the IsKnown flag set by a GM in their gaming group can see the character.
GMs can set the IsKnown flag for characters and locales for one or more of their players within the Gaming Group page.
- Player Overview: The Player Overview field is one of the few fields that are required. Its contents are visible to players and it should
be used to provide players with a clear mental image of the locale and its most obvious features.
- GM Overview: The GM Overview should contain an overview of the locale for the GM. It may contain secret information, including the DCs
of various skill checks associated with the locale.
- Header Image: Locales can have special header images associated with them. These images provide a special "feel" for that locale and are
visible at the top of the page to players and GMs alike.
- Player Map: This is the field used to upload an image of the map that is visible to players.
- GM Map: This is the field used to upload an image of the map that is only meant for GMs.
- Allows Submissions: Unchecking this box means that GMs won't see the "Submit ..." link that allows them to submit content to the locale.
In essence, unchecking it means that no additional development of the locale or its contents will take place outside of the existing owners.
The Submission Process
Once you've got your content looking the way you want it to within the edit form, click the Submit button. This saves your content in a state where only you and the owners of the locale the content is in can see it. A message is automatically generated to all of the locale owners informing them that a new piece of content has been submitted for their review. The owners review the content and make sure it fits into their locale (in the case of the Repository, the Repository Owners check that it isn't offensive and doesn't include any obvious copyright infringements).If an owner accepts your content, you will receive a message from them informing you of their acceptance. Your content is immediately visible to the world (assuming the IsPublished flag has been set) and Eruvian users can begin rating and reviewing it. Owners of the locale may have made slight tweaks to the content, so it is a good idea to check it out. Doing so can help you understand exactly what it is that the owners of that locale are looking for, which can help you with future submissions. In some cases, an owner might choose to invite you to become an owner of a locale within the setting yourself.
In some cases an owner may reject your content. When this occurs you'll receive a message informing you of the rejection. In some cases that message may contain requests for modifications to the content. Should this occur, simply make the requested changes and submit the content again. Once you submit the content, it will again be reviewed by the owners.
Owning Locales
Locales work slightly differently than other pieces of content within Eruvian in that they form the skeleton of a campaign setting. Outside of the Repository all other pieces of content are associated with a given locale. An owner of a locale becomes an owner of all content associated with that locale, including any characters, items, and sublocales within that locale. Thus, the owner of a kingdom locale also owns any barony locales within it, any city locales within those barony locales, and all characters and items within the kingdom and its sublocales.It is because of this that if you submit a locale and it is accepted, you become an owner of that locale. Owners of parent locales also own your locale with you and can make changes to it, for example to help it better fit into the overall campaign setting. Additionally, you can now have content submitted to your locale, in which case you will be sent a message asking you to review it and either accept it or reject it. In this way, campaign settings within Eruvian can grow organically based on contributions from the overall GM community. The only thing that is required for this to happen is for the Allows Submissions flag to be set for a given locale. If this flag isn't set, then no submissions are possible. You can also create specific content requests if you'd like to ask the GM community at large to help out by submitting a particular piece of content that the locale needs.
If you create content within a locale that you own, that content immediately goes live - there is no review process. If you're in the midst of building content and you don't want it visible to the outside world, simply leave the IsPublished flag set to off. This means only owners of that locale can see the content. This makes it useful if you want feedback on the content from other owners before making it visible to the overall Eruvian community.