Arcane Lore

Jürgen Hubert and the Arcana Wiki

By Kurt Wilcken

I first came across Jürgen Hubert as a fellow poster on the Steve Jackson Games forums. A few months ago, he proposed creating a Wiki database for weird factoids and adventure seeds for gaming use. Since then, The Arcana Wiki has grown by leaps and bounds and is shaping up to becoming an interesting gaming resource. (And yes, I’ve contributed a number of entries to his Wiki myself, so I will admit to being somewhat biased). So I asked Jürgen if he would talk a little about his project.

First, tell me, please, a little about yourself.

My name is Jürgen Hubert, and if you are active on any RPG-related online forums you've probably seen my user avatar at least once (it seems to be highly recognizable for some reason):

I grew up in the city of Erlangen in Germany, north of Nuremberg, where I also studied physics with a minor in bio-medical engineering. After finishing my diploma (roughly equivalent to an American MSC), I was drafted into the German military. After finishing Basic Infantry Training (where I learned to shoot with pistols, assault rifles, machine guns, and panzerfausts), I worked as a military bartender at the Federal Armed Forces University in Munich, which was probably one of the strangest experiences in my life.

Currently, I live in Aachen, the westernmost city in Germany, where I am currently trying to get my PhD in Computational Materials Science. I also recently finished a two-month scientific exchange in Columbus, Ohio, where I discovered first-hand just how strange the United States are from a German perspective.

In my sadly limited free time, when I'm not gaming, swimming, or going on extended walks, I read books. Lots and lots of books, about any conceivable topic - history, myth and legends, science fiction and fantasy novels, economics, and much, much more. I even bought an Amazon Kindle while I was in the United States (they aren't sold in Europe yet), and have made heavy use of it.

I've also developed a strong interest in online social networking as of late - a friend and I are working on a new system for online social networking which, unlike most such systems, will be fairly website-independent (i.e., it can be easily added to existing websites and blogs).

I also maintain a LiveJournal.

How did you first get into role-playing games?

My old circle of friends introduced me to it. My first-ever game was Shadowrun, first edition (yes, I am that old). My first character was a decker (=hacker), at a time when nobody of us understood the computer rules for the game (which were a truly horrible mess, anyway). I don't remember much about the character, other than that he started running around with a light machine gun mounted on a gyroscopic mount starting with the third session.

Yes, we were teenagers back then.

What are some of your favorite RPG systems and genres?

Hmmm... a difficult question, actually.

Systems: I like GURPS for its versatility and excellent supplements - I own most books of the fourth and third edition. Sadly, I hardly get to play it these days, as my current group does not share my enthusiasm. D&D 4E is also shaping up as another favorite - while it has little of the flexibility of GURPS, it does what it set out to do extremely well, and is much easier to prepare for than any of its predecessors. Other systems I like include WFRP, for its grim and gritty feel and Mutants & Masterminds as a good compromise "universal system". Currently, I am running an Exalted campaign, but after far too many rules arguments I am no longer as enchanted with the system as I once was - but it's too late to change the system in mid-campaign.

Generally, I prefer systems which, while not needlessly complex, are nonetheless solid - in my opinion, they should provide all the basic rules to hang adventures and campaigns on and be internally consistent and balanced. I dislike making too many GM judgment calls about rules - I'd rather put my energies and limited free time into developing plots and adventures.
In generally, I'm most comfortable with the fantasy genre. I like many science fiction settings well enough - I wrote some material for Transhuman Space, and Blue Planet, Fading Suns, and Shadowrun are long-time favorites - but fantasy seems to be easier to run in my experience. I'm currently also writing on a fantasy setting for D&D - Urbis - A World of Cities - which I hope to publish professionally one day. It takes the typical elements of "typical" D&D settings, and then moves the setting forward to a stage of development similar to the Age of Industrialization in Western Europe.

What inspired you to create the Arcana Wiki?

Well, part of it was my own interest in online social networking and community projects. I've previously created a number of RPG-related wikis, the most successful of which is the d20 NPCs Wiki, which was born out of my frustration how much time it took me to create high-level NPCs for D&D Third Edition. So I've had ample experience with what wikis can and cannot do for gamers - all it needed was the right inspiration.

And when inspiration finally hit, it came from several sources. One was the Wikipedia, which contains a vast range of story ideas, if used correctly. Another one was the TV Tropes Wiki, an extremely addictive and often funny analysis of every kind of fiction, movie, television series, and more - and another huge source of adventure ideas. The third was the Delta Green Mailing List, one of the best sources of ideas of the horror and conspiracy genres I know - and which frequently discusses some of the most bizarre news items imaginable.

These three sources of inspiration - Wikipedia entries, tropes, and bizarre news items - form the foundation of the Arcana Wiki. And the nice thing about the wiki is that you can connect them all with each other - news items can refer to "normal" entries for further information, said entries can in turn use tropes to build new adventure ideas, and the tropes can use other entries as examples for how they work in practice.

Another source of inspiration was Kenneth Hite's "Suppressed Transmission" column at Pyramid Online. In his column, he creates adventures and campaign ideas from material taken from the strangest sources - exactly what I want the Arcana Wiki to be.

How do you see people using the Wiki?

To quote Lovecraft, by "piecing together dissociated knowledge". As any conspiracy theorist can tell you, anything can be connected to anything else, if you try hard enough - and from this will flow adventure ideas. Both the Wikipedia and news items like to each other only by threads of facts, but the "Game and Story Ideas" sections of the Arcana Wiki have no such constraints.

Of course, I want gamers not just to read the material in the wiki, but also contribute new material to it. I recommend starting with your home town - does it have any cool local legends or unique sites which would be interesting in an adventure? After that, expand on what you already know. Do you have experiences with specific countries and cultures, or periods of history, technologies, mythology, and so forth? Write some appropriate entries. And if you have run out of ideas, go to this thread for some useful starting points for your own research.

What have you found most rewarding or exciting about this project?

Being given the Illuminated Site of the Week award by Steve Jackson Games was certainly the high point so far.

The enthusiastic response to this project has also been overwhelming. As of the time of this writing, the Arcana Wiki has 42 registered members - not bad for a project barely two months old...

What are some other projects you've worked on?

Apart from those I've mentioned above, I'm also the admin for the Fairfield Project (the Delta Green Wiki), the Art Tutorials Wiki (a huge list of art-related tutorial resources in wiki form), and the RPG Graveyard (a memorial to all those PCs who didn't make it out of an adventure alive).

What are your plans for Arcana Wiki and how would you like to see it grow?

Eventually, I hope that the Arcana Wiki will be as addictive and have as much material as the TV Tropes Wiki. Ideally, users will follow the adventure ideas from link to link, and have been exposed to a vast range of cool adventure ideas within a few minutes.

I also envision having a new section for rules-free adventure seeds which make full use of the material of the Arcana Wiki - sort of like the Tales of Terror, only in Wiki format. But this will have to wait for later - until the "core" of the wiki has grown to sufficient size. Right now, I'm trying to keep the momentum going until the Arcana Wiki has sufficient active contributors to equal or surpass my own active work on it - then I will know that I have done a good job of laying the foundation for future generations of gamers to come.

The Arcana Wiki is looking for new contributors, and as always, I am looking for feedback. If you have any questions or comments, whether arcane, mundane or just plain, click one of the links at the bottom of this article and lay it on me. I live for feedback.

Nil Desparandum!

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