Welcome (by Fenton)
Hi there! Fenton here! Just wanted to welcome you to the site and give you a a little info about this Wiki.
This Wiki was (and still is) intended as a game resource for our games, for players to use and GMs to share info with our players. We generate a lot of characters in our games - both Player Characters (PCs) and Non-Player Characters (NPCs)... especially the latter! In one Star Trek: Prime Directive game I actually made 55 NPCs (yowzer!) as I wanted to "populate" the ship for the players. I didn't want "random faceless NPCs" - I wanted it so if the players needed a specialist for a job they would get the same people. So every branch of Starfleet had several characters in areas I thought would be useful. My Ashford by Night campaign (World of Darkness) currently has about 95 vampires and a dozen werewolves and mages!
The result was that half the time players forgot about many of the characters. That was ok as the characters would pop up as needed (I didn't expect the players to remember all their names (especially as alien names were often hard to pronounce much the less remember!). Sometimes even the GM would forget about the NPCs, or details that may not have been on the character sheet or scribbled down as notes ("what was this guy again?"). So it was regularly having things like that in our games that made us think it would be handy to have online "bios" for characters we could quickly look up. It also allowed us to be able to put down a lot more information and background than we could squeeze onto a character sheet. The bios for characters here are typically double+ the length of the summarised version on the character sheet.
As we used to "sim" and roleplay on forums, we initially started by putting the bios there. That worked at first but it quickly became hard to juggle having bios for multiple characters - and some were not so clear in which "category" (forum) to put them in. So eventually, I created our first Wiki. I thought this'd be really neat, help us categorise and find things, give us more flexibility, and possibly have our stuff read by the outside world. If it entertains anyone or provides other GMs ideas or info they can use - hey, that's great!
History
Wikinatum
Since our website at the time was called Illuminatum.net, we started with a play on the word with Wikinatum. It was my first attempt at using a Wiki system and I learnt a LOT... the hard way... about how to get spammed to hell by spambots! At it's worst, the Wiki had over 10,000 registered "users" (ie spambots) and over 80,000 articles advertising cheap software, medication, and penis enlargement aids! Yikes!
Codex v1
A decision was made to scrap the wiki and make a new one, after which it would be locked so only registered users could post articles; and only administrators could create accounts (so sorry but no, you can't make an account here). I decided to rename it Codex this time, since in many computer games (especially Sci-Fi and Fantasy) they had a database of info about characters, races, etc... and they often called it "The Codex." We put a lot of info about everything on there - character bios and info about the world, settings, etc...
It became one monumental mess! Lack of knowledge (and experience) in using categories made it a nightmare to find anything. Everything was proverbial needles in the haystack (except that readers didn't know what the needle looked like). I quickly realised that it was a nightmare having info on settings taken from other sources because of pain in referencing properly for plagiarism/copyright. Still, a lot of hard work and sweat went into it until...
Codex v2
...Eventually, we got fed up of our hosting service and decided to move to another hosting service. Although our web administrator assured us that we would be able to transfer the stuff, the new hosting service's system was so different (and unhelpful and frankly TOTALLY GOBSHITE) that we couldn't. So a few months of no progress later (wasn't exactly quick work) we moved again... to our current hosting service.
Even though we're really happy with this hosting service, unfortunately, our web admin was not able to transfer the stuff... so we lost EVERYTHING! About 10 different game forums with a lot of info, bios, stories, etc... and, of course, our wiki. *cries*
As our games had slowed down, and often it felt like players had little interest in the Codex anyhow, I debated whether to make this one or not. In the end, I decided that it was a useful resource for me if no-one else. Fortunately Darth Peachy also felt the same way and so I created this current version of the Codex and we both started populating it with bios of NPCs in our games (we leave the bios of PCs up to those PCs to do it) so that players in our games can read up info on characters. As a player in e.g. Darth Peachy's Battlestar Galactica game where my character (Selene was the CAG (and now the XO) I didn't know/remember the names of all the pilots or who was good at what, so I find the entries here helpful as I can e.g. look at "Viper Pilots" and (eventually) see all the (key) viper pilots and their info, so I can make an informed decision e.g. about who to send on a mission (since the GM would likely refuse if I asked to see their stats, lol).
Codex v3 (this one)
Codex v2 was a great success but, unfortunately, it needed the help of our hosting service to transfer from the old hosting service. Whilst it worked great, it was not able to be auto-updated and had now reached a point where the version of MediaWiki we used was no longer compatible with the latest versions of PHP. I was forced to manually keep Codex v2 running on an older version of PHP - but this was stalling for time. Eventually, the hosting service would no longer support this old version, and not upgrading would potentially be security risks. So I decided to set up v3 using the Softaculous installer on our current hosting, which should auto-update, and also be compatible with current and foreseeable-future versions of PHP. Transferring the articles was fairly easy thanks to the MediaWiki file export facility - but unfortunately there's no similar facility for batch-transferring all the images... and there are about 280 of them in use. This took longer to fully transfer! But I think the transfer is complete. If you see any article with faulty images, it's probably something I missed - so please give me a heads-up so I can fix it! :)
Trying to Keep to a System
We take pride in our Wiki entries, and so to try to be helpful to readers (both yourselves and ourselves) we are making a concerted effort to keep Biographic entries to the same general format, using some basic pre-made copy-paste layout templates. Non-bios don't stick to any particular layout and are done as appropriate. Whilst some games like Scion or DC Adventures may have added sections for superpowers or other things, most Bio entries generally approximate the following layout...
Vital Stats
This is the beginning section of every bio. Here key information about the character is located, such as real names, places of birth, races, occupation, etc...
Appearance
We normally use pics of celebrities/models or artworks obtained online for our character sheets ('cos we all suck at drawing) to help illustrate what the character (generally) looks like to each other (and being mostly male players we probably tend to use more glamorous pics than we really should - often using pictures of models for characters meant to be relatively plain-looking, lol).
Disclaimer: these images are not copyrighted to us, and we are using them for recreational and non-commercial reasons. Please do not take, distribute or use without the copyright holder's permission (whoever that may be). If you are the copyright holder and have an issue with us using any image(s), please contact us and we will be happy to remove them.
In addition to the image, this section will also have information about the character's general appearance - such as build, clothing/fashion style, etc... This is usually how the character is described by the GM/Player to others on first meeting.
Biography
Or something similarly-named. This section is fairly obvious - the character's background. Depending on the game this may be further broken into subsections. For Vampire: The Masquerade characters it will usually contain information about their Prelude (life before they became vampires, and how they changed) or main activities since then. Please bear in mind that games are fluid, so bios can often go out of date as in-game events occur and the settings progress - but at least serves as a background to what has happened so far.
Personality
Similar to the appearance section (and may sometimes be removed if the appearance section already touches on this) but focusing on what the character is like rather than how they look. Kinda like a character reference, but for a non-real character. lol.
Other Notes
The catch-all category for any other interesting thing we want to add that doesn't fit in anywhere. Will often have subsections as appropriate.
Combat Style
Most RPGs involve combat at some point to some degree. As such this section details how the character typically reacts in a fight. This might simply be "run away screaming like a little girl" like one of my (male) vampire characters regularly used to do.
Social Style
This is aimed as a helpful hint from the GM/Player to others to know how best to deal with characters. I've been known to have players react harshly to NPCs who seem to have become socially hostile or react negatively for no real reason. My character Selene for example dislikes glory hounds and any player who acts cocky and arrogant around her won't get treated well by her - and annoying a superior officer is never a good thing! In Shadowrun my character Swan (Kimberly Phillips) tends to be stubborn and uncooperative, often blunt or rude, and whenever any player attempts to exert authority her usual reaction is derision or simply refusal to cooperate and walk away. However, she is very loyal to her friends (even if she may not be very "friendly") and will usually sigh and say "you're all going to get killed without me!" and go anyhow. Sections like this are intended to help players know how the character reacts socially and the best way to try to get in their good books.
Signature Equipment
All characters have gear (aka "stuff"). This section lists what the character typically has on them most of the time. Sure, my character Braxton Donahoe is a billionaire and has dozens of exotic cars and an arsenal of weapons (he owns his own mercenary unit private security company), and can easily get an assault rifle if he needs it - but most of the time he's likely to be seen in an expensive custom-made suit with a pistol (and his sword "EJ" if he can conceal it).
In the case of Superhero characters that rely on technology-based powers/devices (e.g. like Iron Man or Green Lantern) there will usually be a "Super Powers & Devices" or similar section preceding this area which will include them. Characters with magical/spiritual weapons (e.g. Pathfinder, Ravenloft, D&D or Werewolf: the Apocalypse) they'll be listed in this section.
Signature Quotes
Often when we play we come up with memorable quips, statements or the likes. Sometimes it may be a quick witty remark that made us all laugh in real life during a session. Other times it may be a really heartfelt or oscar-winning statement or expression. These get put here. PC bios will tend to have more of these than NPCs. The NPCs will usually have a signature quote (or more) that helps to display a little of their personality.
Gallery
Most of the images used inline during the article (and perhaps more) will be shown here in small thumbnails. They are normally linked to larger versions of the image (recommendation: open in a new tab).
Finale
And that's it! Our overview of the Codex and the bio entries is done.
I hope you have found this helpful/interesting and that our Codex entries help out other GMs and Players worldwide with ideas for character concepts, game sessions, etc...
I wish you a fond Farewell! Au Revoir! Ciao! Adieu! Sayonara! Auf Wiedersehen!
Fenton