Contributor Guide

Contributor Guide

This page explains how to contribute to Duela.

Duela is a shared fantasy world. Contributors may write stories, create characters, develop regions, expand cultures, invent monsters, build branches, and improve reference pages. Most of the world is open territory. A small number of foundations should not be casually contradicted. Everything else is yours to work with.

Start here

New contributors should read these pages before posting:

• What is Duela? — what the world is and what it is for
• Writing in Duela — the rules, what is fixed, what is open, how to handle the unexplainable
• Canon Structure — how stories relate to shared continuity
• Story Status — what General Collection, Living Canon, and Branch mean
• Branching Guide — how to grow a story from an existing one
• Community Rules — what is and is not welcome here
• License and Attribution — how the CC-BY-SA license works and what it means for your work

Reading all of these before posting is not required. Reading Writing in Duela before posting is.

What you can create

Contributors may create:

• Stories of any length, tone, or scale
• Characters, from village healers to near-divine artifact wielders
• Nations, cities, villages, and regions
• Gods, especially local, conceptual, or recently ascended ones
• Cultures, magical traditions, and religious practices
• Monsters and creatures
• Factions and organizations
• Branches from existing stories

Most of Duela is open territory. For what exists already and what is flagged as undeveloped, see Writing in Duela and the relevant setting pages.

What to be careful with

Do not casually rewrite the cosmological foundations:

• The Essence
• The System
• Old God
• Bubble Theory
• The basic structure of Gods

Do not casually rewrite the established load-bearing figures and nations: Hauru, King Midas IV, Emperor Sumeragi, the Holy Order, and others described in detail on the wiki. Other writers' stories depend on these being as they are.

Do not edit another contributor's story pages without their knowledge.

For everything else: smaller details, minor gods, unnamed characters, customs of individual towns, undeveloped regions, these can be handled differently by different stories without contradiction. See Writing in Duela for the full picture of what is open and what is not.

Posting a story

A story page should include the following:

= Story Title =

''One sentence description of the story.''

== Status ==

General Collection

(or: Branch from [[Source Story Title]])

== Story ==

[Story text.]

== Branches from this story ==

* [[Branch Title]] by [author] — one line description

(Leave this section empty when first posting. Update it as branches are written.)

== See also ==

* [[Stories]]
* [[Story Status]]

[[Category:Stories]]
[[Category:General Collection]]
(add further relevant categories)

Canon eligibility

Stories are not automatically considered for Living Canon. If you want your story to be eligible, indicate this when posting. Authors who prefer to keep full control over their work, or who do not want branches, should not opt in.

If your story is closed to branches, add the following to your status section:

Closed to branches.

Stories closed to branches cannot become Living Canon.

Branching from a story

Before branching, check whether the source story is marked as closed to branches. If it is, contact the author before proceeding.

If the story is open, you do not need permission. Credit the source, link to it, and make clear your story is a branch.

For full conventions, including branching from multiple sources and what branching from Living Canon means, see Branching Guide.

Editing wiki pages

Contributors may improve reference pages on the wiki: fixing errors, adding links, expanding underdeveloped sections.

A few guidelines:

• Do not edit another contributor's story pages without their knowledge.
• Do not rewrite cosmology or setting pages in ways that contradict established material. If you think something is wrong, raise it in the discussion tab first.
• Small fixes, such as broken links, formatting errors, and missing categories, can be made without discussion.
• Larger additions to lore pages, such as expanding a nation or developing an undeveloped race, are welcome but should be clearly written as one possible interpretation rather than the definitive account.

Categories

Add relevant categories when posting. Common ones:

[[Category:Stories]]
[[Category:General Collection]]
[[Category:Branches]]
[[Category:Characters]]
[[Category:Nations]]
[[Category:Gods]]
[[Category:Magic]]
[[Category:Vampire Foundation]]

Principle

Write your part of the world clearly enough that others can build from it.

Duela was built to be written in. Whatever you add, you are adding to something larger than any one story.