Dragon Age Wiki:Manual of Style/Character guide

This page documents a Dragon Age Wiki guideline. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should follow, though it should be treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply.

When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects consensus. When in doubt, discuss your idea on the talk page.

Shortcut: DA:CHARACTER

This is a guide for character pages, including companions. Note that if a section does not apply to the page, it should be skipped (e.g., if the companion cannot be romanced, the "Romance" section shouldn't be included).

Note: Some of the sections are based off DA:LAYOUT.

Lead

The lead section is anything included before the table of contents and/or the article content. It does not have any headings. Lead sections are made of five parts, all of which are optional except the introductory text, and must follow this order:

Disambiguation links like {{for}} and {{about}}). These are used when there are several articles with the same name, or with similar names that can be easily confused with each other. See DA:DISAMBIG for more information.
Article maintenance tags like {{stub}}, {{pictures wanted}} and {{cleanup}}). All maintenance tags except "stub" can also be included in a section of the article. See Category:Article management templates.
Infobox/transformer template. They are generally wrapped in onlyinclude tags. See Category:Transformer templates.
Short introductory text that explains what the article is about. See DA:LEAD for more information.
Table of contents: generally appears after the lead, provided there are more than four headings. If the article is long but does not have a table of contents you can manually add it using this code: __TOC__.

In addition, a head quote can be added before the infobox/transformer template. Use {{quote}}, but make sure it's not a long quote or too vague/obscure to understand. Ideally, it should be understood without explaining the context.

The introduction should always include the character's name which should be bolded by placing three apostrophes on either side of the word. It should focus on the personality of the character in question as well mentioning what their general role is and what they are doing when they are first encountered, if it is not a spoiler.

Article content

The sections should start at h2 (==), e.g., == Involvement ==. All sections are optional, depending on the situation. Although the following sections should be named as listed below, you may add additional section when appropriate.

If a section is particularly long or should be separated by game, consider breaking it down into sections, e.g., for "Involvement", it can be split to "Dragon Age: Origins", then "Dragon Age II".

Background

This section should relay the character's history prior to their involvement in the story. Any relevant information discovered during the story should be added here.

Use {{Spoiler}} when necessary. Do not use the icon template.

Involvement

This section should list what happens to a character during their involvement with the story, which should be divided by the game's name (e.g., === ''Dragon Age: Origins'' ===). If this section is particularly long, it should be broken up by sub-headings.

Spoilers ({{Spoiler}}): This section will often contain significant spoilers, so use the appropriate spoiler tag to hide them. If the spoiler tag breaks the formatting of the text because of the infobox, add style=short to the template to make a smaller tag:

{{SpoilerDA2|style=short|This character dies after a certain event.}}

The section should be written with a Dragon Age perspective rather than real-world (this should not be a walkthrough). The use of "you" should be avoided, while using the protagonist's name is encouraged. See DA:PROTAGONIST for further information.

In cases where there are multiple narrative paths for a character (for example, whether Anora becomes queen or not), {{CodexConditionalParagraph}} should be used.

If the character is only mentioned by passage and is not involved in the story (or related to the events during the story), it should instead added as a trivia.

Gameplay elements should be avoided. Approval changes should instead be written within its related quest or the approval pages of the companion (generally {{PAGENAME}}/Approval, e.g., Varric Tethras/Approval).

Romance

For romance options, this section should describe romance-specific dialogues and scenes. All other elements of the story should be described in the "Involvement" section. Use {{Spoiler}} and {{Main|Romance}} when necessary.

Friendship and rivalry

For companion characters, this section should contain a short description of how to earn the companion's approval or friendship/rivalry. Detailed information should be presented on a separate page. Use {{Main|Approval}} to provide a link to it.

Strategy

Sometimes, a character will turn hostile towards the player character. If the section is particularly long, move the page to {{PAGENAME}} (strategy)]], e.g., Ser Cauthrien (strategy).

The use of "you" is acceptable.

Quests

For major characters, quests in which the character is directly involved should be listed. For companions this generally means that the character is locked in the party for a part of the quest, or the entire quest is a conversation with this character.

Use {{Quest name|style=iconmini}} when appropriate. You are encouraged to add a small note, but its length should not exceed one line.

Gifts

For companion characters, a list of gifts should be included.

Use {{Gifts|style=iconmini}} when appropriate.

Initial statistics

For companion characters, this section should describe initial class, specializations, talents and abilities.

Gear

For companion characters, a list of initial and character-specific gear, gear upgrades and visually different standard outfits should be provided.

Use {{Item|style=iconmini}} when appropriate.

Quotes

Quotes and dialogue exchanges should be listed. In rare cases when the characters have their own dialogue pages (generally companions), provide a link by using {{Main|Dialogue}}.

If a character appears in more than one game, there should be separate subheadings for each game under the Quotes section. The name of the game can be used as the subheading.
The maximum number of quotes allowed for an NPC character is 4 (this number includes quotes, exchanges and header quotes). However an additional 2 quotes are permitted for each installment they appear in. Temporary companions are considered to be NPCs.
The maximum number of quotes allowed for a Companion character is 8 (this number includes quotes, exchanges and header quotes). However an additional 2 quotes are permitted for each installment they appear in. If a character is available as a companion in subsequent appearances the number of additional quotes remains 2.
If there are exchanges included within the Quotes section, the maximum number of exchanges allowed is 1.
One exchange will count as one quote and all exchanges must be placed under a "Dialogue" subheading.
If a particular character appears in more than one game, the number of quotes dedicated to each game should be based on the role that character plays in each game. If the role in one game is more important than another, more quotes should be dedicated to that game (within the limit given above).
Quotes and exchanges exceeding the stated limits should be moved to the corresponding "Character/Dialogue" page (e.g., Alistair/Dialogue).
Quotes that result from developing a relationship with the protagonist (such as romance, friendship or rivalry) should not be included as quotes or exchanges within the main "character page". They belong on the corresponding "Character/Dialogue" page.
Each quote should demonstrate something notable about the character's personality or beliefs.
Each quote should demonstrate something unique which the other quotes do not.
If a character only has one notable quote, that quote should be put in as a header quote.
Header quotes are counted amongst the total number of quotes on a page.
Header quotes should not be repeated in the quotation section of the same article.
Quotes should generally be no longer than one or two sentences long.
Dialogue exchanges are included amongst the number of quotations.
Keep spoilers out of quotations. Quotes are not intended to reflect plot twists.

Notes

Notes should be listed using *. Anything that is not trivia or a bug can be listed here. For example, lore discrepancies or continuity errors should be listed here.

Trivia

Trivia should be listed using *. Make sure you have read the trivia guidelines before adding anything.

Bugs

Bugs should be listed using *. Use the template {{platforms}} when appropriate (generally at the beginning of the sentence). To avoid clogging this section consider removing those bugs that have already been fixed. Try to keep the descriptions concise.

You can include one link to a fan-made bug fix per bug. This link should be removed if the bug is patched.

Gallery

For most pages, use <gallery widths="180" spacing="small" position="center" captionalign="center" orientation="portrait"> to display pictures in a table.

For location pages, use <gallery widths="250" spacing="small" position="center" captionalign="center" orientation="landscape"> to display pictures in a table.

Read the general guidelines for pictures on the wiki. See Help:Galleries and slideshows/wikitext for more information.

References

Add a references section when at least one reference (<ref></ref>) has been used in the article. The code (<references/>) makes the wiki list the references automatically.

For more information on how to format references see the help page on Wikipedia.

External links

Links should be listed using *. There are no strict guidelines on what kind of links can be included in this section, as long as they are related to the article and they are not spam. Their inclusion (and removal) depends on the situation.

Navboxes

See the current navigational boxes.

Interlanguage links

If a version of the article in another language exists you are welcome to add a link to it.