Well, I don't want to let another month pass without a post, and I guess April 1 is as good a day as any to make one, particularly to try to atone for the stupid April Fools post I made in the past. Unfortunately, I don't have any new articles to discuss since my last post—things have still been extraordinarily busy for me lately—but I guess I can write a little about some of my plans for the Wongery's future. Not the distant future; I mean the near future, things I hope to get done before the hard launch. (Hey, it may be April 2 over most of the world at the time I'm writing this, but it's still April 1 in some parts of the world.) Of course, this is a bit pointless, I guess, because nobody's going to be visiting the site or reading this post before the hard launch, so if these are things that I hope to have in place before then, they'll already be there by the time anyone reads this, but... oh well.

Right now the Wongery wiki runs a standard MediaWiki installation, with a few extensions but nothing custom-written for it. That's going to change, because there are some alterations I want to make to the wiki's structure. One is allowing double spaces after periods, because, well, I like double spaces after periods. But, more importantly, I plan to add new tabs to the wiki, corresponding to new namespaces. The Wongery isn't meant to only be a lot of text descriptions of fictional worlds and their contents. I want it also to provide tools for their use in games and other applications.

There are at least four new tabs I want to add, though they won't exist for every page, and will only show up on pages where they apply. One is the "Atlas" tab (titles are still tentative), showing maps of the places described in the Wongery, with the ability to zoom in and out, turn off layers, and even click to other adjacent areas and be taken to the appropriate article. (This one is the one that most likely won't be in place before the hard launch, because it's going to involve some tricky programming.) Another is the "Game" tab, which will show statistics for various creatures, characters, objects, and so forth for role-playing games. There will also be an "Assets" tab, with sprites and 3D models for use in computer games, and a "Build" tab, with instructions for LEGO models of some Wongery creatures and items (okay, that may be a bit silly, but, well, why not).

I won't go into detail about all of these right now, but I guess maybe I'll write a bit about the Game tab, because I've spent quite a bit of time over the last week (more than I really had to spare) making plans about it... in particular, making some tentative decisions about which games to include stats for for each world. When I say the Game tab will include stats for role-playing games, I don't mean just D&D statistics, of course. Dungeons & Dragons may be the most popular role-playing game, but it's not the only one, and I want to have support for others, too. There are some systems, like Basic Roleplaying, EABA, the Iridium System, OpenD6, Powered by the Apocalypse, Savage Worlds, the Wanton Role-Playing System, the Year Zero Engine, and of course GURPS, that are generic enough I could have stats for them for things from pretty much any world. For at least some of the fantasy worlds, I'd also like to have stats for Dominion Rules, Fantasy Craft, Ironsworn, Old School Essentials, Pathfinder, Shadowdark, and maybe more... For super worlds like Gallerra and Ganyak, we can have stats for 4C, FASERIP, and Mutants & Masterminds. For space opera worlds (most notably the Second Konabian Empire, though maybe also Icathiria and perhaps even parts of Piobagh), there's Starfinder; for alternate Earths and other modern settings there's Spycraft...

Then there are other systems that might not apply to all worlds, but could apply to some. GUMSHOE is good for an investigative game, which I guess could take place in any world, but some worlds lend themselves better to such stories than others... I think Interlife Earth, Icathiria, and maybe Ufmarkt have possibilities here. The Resistance System, the engine behind the game Spire, is focused on the struggles of an underclass against an oppressive system they're thriving to overthrow... which wouldn't necessarily fit well with every setting, but could be adapted to, for example, the resistance of Dadauar. The same is largely true of the Forged in the Dark engine behind Blades in the Dark. The Cypher System is mostly generic and adaptable, except for its limiting insistence on the namesake "cyphers", which aren't really something that fits well in most worlds... in fact, I can't really think of any current Wongery world the Cypher System would be a good fit for, though there's certainly the possibility one could arise in the future.

Anyway, the above is not an exhaustive list of all the systems the Wongery could one day include stats for... though it's certainly a decent starting point, and I make no promises that there'll be stats for all those systems at (hard) launch. But I can't just include game statistics for any system I want; there are some limitations. While I don't have the Game namespace coded in yet, I do have the text written that's going to go in the Game tab of the main page when it does exist, and here's part of it:

More systems may be added in the future, especially if we receive numerous requests for them, provided that we are able to legally publish material for that system. This requires at least one of the following to be true:

• The system in question is published under an Open Game or Creative Commons License, or a license with similar terms, or has been explicitly released into the public domain
• A written policy exists (perhaps called a community use policy, or fansite policy, or acceptable use policy) that gives explicit permission for third-party websites to post material based on the system, possibly subject to certain reasonable conditions (e.g. only for noncommercial use—note that the Game pages in the Wongery are and will always remain freely available).
• The owner of the system has expressly given the Wongery permission to include material for the system. (This has not happened for any system, but I include it here because if it did happen, .... [okay, I guess I didn't finish writing this part]

If none of these cases applies for a given system, then we are unable to legally include statistics for that system on the site. (Arguably we might be able to justify doing so under fair use principles, but that's a nebulous area we would prefer to avoid; we'd rather stick to clear-cut cases and not try to see how far we can push.)

Unless there is significant demand, we have no intention of including statistics on the Wongery for older editions of current games, even if they do meet the criteria above. (An example would be Dungeons & Dragons third edition—this was published under an Open Game License (in fact, it was the first game published under an Open Game License), but since it has been superseded by fifth edition we have no plans to include third-edition Dungeons & Dragons statistics here.)

All of the systems I've mentioned here so far meet one of those first two qualifications. So are there any game systems that don't meet these qualifications, but that I'd like to have stats up on the Wongery for if they did? Yes, several. The HERO System used to have an "online and licensing policy", but it disappeared when the company updated its site, and the fact that there used to be such a policy in the past doesn't necessarily imply that the same policy is still in force now. White Wolf Publishing, owner of the Storyteller and Storytelling Systems, has a "Dark Pack" program to support fan activities, but while the webpage about the Dark Pack goes into considerable detail about policies regarding LARPs and podcasts, it has nothing to say about free game supplements, so I'm not completely sure what their stance is there (especially since White Wolf no longer writes and publishes their own tabletop material anyway, licensing the properties out to The Onyx Path and Modiphius. The site of Iron Crown Enterprises, owner of Rolemaster, does have a page addressing community content, but it's a bit vague and self-contradictory. Kenzer & Company as far as I can tell never had any sort of fan use policy at all. I'm not even totally sure who technically owns the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay system at this point; it was originally created by Games Workshop, but the game is currently being published under license by Cubicle 7, and while Games Workshop definitely owns the Warhammer IP, the rules to the latest edition of the game are different enough from earlier editions that I'm not sure Games Workshop has a full claim to them... but in any case I couldn't find any sort of acceptable use policy on either company's site. I could, of course, e-mail all these companies and ask them about their policies and whether it's okay to put up some stat blocks for their games, and at some point I guess I probably will, but in the meantime I'll prioritize those systems I know it's okay to use this way.

So anyway, that's one of my yet-to-be-implemented plans for the Wongery. This probably won't start coming to fruition till at least June—by which I mean I probably won't have a chance to start actually programming the MediaWiki modifications till then—but I do hope it'll be in place before the hard launch. And, of course, I also hope there'll be a lot more articles up in the Wongery by then, so I really have to get cracking...