Talk:A beginner's guide to playing a ranger

Hi, everyone.

I'd like to start a discussion about a cooperative ranger guide directed at inexperienced players.

First, I'd like to compile a list of quality material already in existence, and while there is a lot of good information out there, it seems to be pretty vastly spread out. There also seems to be a lack of existing ranger guides (I imagine a lot were lost as player owned websites discontinued hosting services), and those that can be found are old/too technical/too specific for a newbie guide. Perhaps some of you have some of the older ones tucked away in your long-lived GS directories, so please post them somewhere and give us a link in this discussion. Below is a small list of items I found with a quick cursory Google search.

Ransom's GSIII Ranger Guide:
http://www.tamcon.com/GS3/ranger1.html
Nuadjha's "The Art of the Bow":
http://forum.gsplayers.com/showthread.php?49785-quot-The-Art-of-the-Bow-quot-GSIV-Archery-Guide

Second, I'd like to talk about the organization of the guide. I'm not entirely sure how I envision the whole thing laid out, but we can (and will, I'm sure) make alterations to the general layout as the guide progresses. Some basic modules that comes to mind are:

-a conceptualized description of what a ranger is and how they can be reasonably expected to function

Started on this last night, forgot to make a note here. Anyone who wants to fiddle with it and make it sound nicer is free to go ahead. SARAH3 (talk) 04:43, 13 February 2015 (CST)

-a guide that follows the character creation process (e.g. choosing your race, stats, skills)
-a basic hunting guide using the skills a typical ranger may be expected to have (we should probably avoid suggestions like "fletch till you 15, then go hunt" or "use this script to level to X" as this should remain a guide showing newbies how to roll up and play a ranger.
-helpful links (preferably within the gswiki) to more specific guides and other useful information
-notes on roleplaying and character development
-basic information about societies and choosing a society

I'm not sure if we should get overly technical about specific training options (such as crit/DF tables, etc), though we can certainly provide links to such things while stressing that a complete understanding of these topics is not necessary for success. We should stress a basic concept of what a ranger is while also focusing on character customization by suggesting that there are a wide range of options available for a ranger where training/playing styles are concerned. Players need not follow an ideal perfectly to have a viable character.

I can take care of that, I've had many requests for a ranger guide... Now that I'm putting down my newbie guide to you all, I can handle the advanced numerical outlook on rangers, if you guys want to stick to the basics. I may bug you in game for information and fact checking though! -Whirlin HJELTE (talk) 11:11, 11 February 2015 (CST)

Feel free to hit me up if you need any specific help. You know where to find Sepher. Regarding a more advanced mechanical outlook, such a guide like that would very much compliment one such as this, as there are always players that like to get deeply involved with the mechanical side of the game. I look forward to it. -Sepher --PENNINGTONB1 (talk) 18:42, 12 February 2015 (CST)

So, before getting into the meat of the guide, what suggestions or ideas would you like to see in such a guide? If you're a new player or a new ranger, what sorts of questions do/did you have about playing a ranger? Let us know.

~Brian, Sepher's player

I'm relatively new to GS overall, so I'm not sure about mechanics and general advice for being a ranger part since I've only played one ranger. I can provide text edits and add all of the links to other parts of GS wiki for people who just want to write text and not worry about that though.

Oh, and I have a buff spells guide in the works so I'll try to figure out a way to get some sort of floating page so the relevant information can be presented here so new rangers have a good sense for which spells they should be liberally applying to themselves. -Astru SARAH3 (talk) 11:10, 12 February 2015 (CST)

I am happy to leave the linking and general "Wikifying" part of editing to someone who knows what they're doing. It would just be a trial and error process for me and not something I'm interested in putting forth the effort into at the moment.

I'm not super awesome at all things wiki, but after playing around a bit, I'm at least pretty good at linking stuff. I'll try to go through at the end and cut out excessive links at the end. Everything is supposed to be linked once per page when it's first mentioned, but who knows how things end up getting organized when we're done. SARAH3 (talk) 04:43, 13 February 2015 (CST)

Regarding the buff guide: I don't know what a floating page is, so I wouldn't know if I necessarily want it on this particular page, but at the very least a link in the hunting module of the guide may be inserted. Ideally, I want to keep things as tight as possible. -Sepher --PENNINGTONB1 (talk) 18:42, 12 February 2015 (CST)

Well, in principle, when DAID and I get the floating pages working, they should be easy to add and remove from different pages, so if nobody likes it on this page and we just want to run with a link, it can be removed without losing the work. SCRIBES is actually the one who suggested adding a buff spell section to the beginner profession pages when I asked on the officials, but we can certainly see how it works here. :) -Astru SARAH3 (talk) 04:43, 13 February 2015 (CST)

I am going to undo the recent changed to the Race section because I feel some of the purpose and organization was lost in the edit. There are also POV issues, among other grammar problems with the edit. I will borrow some of the language to reedit the section. Too much was changed to warrant minor editing repairs, thus the reversion. Also, please leave the article highlights as they are, because I want readers to go to them. These articles are filled with so many links that people can become numb to them. -Sepher --PENNINGTONB1 (talk) 20:57, 13 February 2015 (CST)

My edits repaired some of the awkward sentence constructions in the original and attempted to make the prose smoother. In addition, I made an organizational change (moving the final paragraph to the second paragraph) that highlighted an issue many people mentioned on the forums. I felt that this merited more than an "and also" tacked on to the end of the section. Additionally, I moved some of the links so that they became part of the text instead of "see also: this page" as in the original and reversion, which is unnecessary since we can add links in the text itself. Also, this is a wiki, you're supposed to link to other pages on the wiki. I was not multiply linking the same article, so the way I did it definitely falls within the style guidelines. I won't undo the reversion because other work has been done on the page since, but I'm likely to tackle the whole section again in the future.SARAH3 (talk) 07:25, 14 February 2015 (CST)

I'm not saying not to link things to other pages. I'm saying leave the highlighted articles (e.g. Main Article: blah blah, and "please see the following article: blah blah" as they are, because they're stressed for a reason. If you have other editing suggestions, please place them here and I'll author in alterations to the text as I see fit. Thank you. -Sepher --PENNINGTONB1 (talk) 12:56, 15 February 2015 (CST)

Unfortunately, I can't see that the "please see article: blah blah" is very sensible or a good use of space when it is not a template/transclusion. If the section is "Race" and one wants readers to see the main article on Race, one merely need to make the section title a wiki link, which is a standard convention on gswiki and formerly KP. Imagine if everyone used this approach how cluttered this section might look with a "see main page" under every heading! Also, anyone with editing ideas is free to implement their edits themselves as they see fit. In the case where others merely have basic suggestions but would rather not make the edits themselves, I'm sure the offer to author the changes is welcome. I'm not sure if it is intentional, but the last statement sounds like a claim of authorship to the page, which ought to be disregarded. DAID (talk) 09:41, 16 February 2015 (CST)

It's not just about wanting them to read the highlighted article; it's also about WHEN I want them to read the article. Highlighting it in this way serves that function. I want to direct the reader's attention. Concerning your incessant and ridiculous assertions that everybody should feel free to crap all over an article -- you're still wrong. Absolutely no good can come from multiple people attempting to author the same article. The last statement I made above was intentional, and I am claiming authorship of the page. If everyone thinks they're free to alter what I've written, and I feel free to alter what they've written, everybody loses. When people work together to see an article form to an idea (you seem to be more concerned with owning the territory than with creating valuable content), things tend to be more successful. The thread on the forums about this article is over 100 posts long, most of which are people contributing to the idea (to which you have contributed nothing, btw). Now I'd like to stop repeating myself, so you may consider the discussion closed. -Sepher --PENNINGTONB1 (talk) 10:34, 16 February 2015 (CST)