Welcome to the LotR-TCG Wiki! If you're on this page, you no doubt want to help out and you've come here for a primer in how to edit. Lucky you!

First off, be aware that to edit this wiki you need to be a semi-active member of the Last Homely House forums, your login info for this wiki is the same as your login info for the forums. You need to have made at least 10 posts before you can edit here, so introduce yourself and look around!

Second, there is a section of the forums dedicated to Wiki questions located here. There are several questions already answered in that board, but if you just can't find an answer, don't be afraid to start a new thread and ask your question.

Editing is not difficult; the vast majority of work that needs to be done is in writing the articles themselves, but once they're done formatting them is a cinch. This wiki uses DokuWiki with a handful of plugins; information on how to use DokuWiki syntax can be found here. It is highly advised that you read through that article before continuing; that will give you a feel for what is possible and how to do it.

All finished? Good. Now we'll go over some style decisions that have been made concerning content on the wiki in general.

Tables are used throughout the wiki as a means of tying groups of like information together. For instance, if you reference the Main Index, you can see that there are tables for articles on Card Layout, Formats, Keywords, etc. These tables are not often used within articles themselves; rather, they are placed at the bottom of articles to show related pages that a reader can reference quickly and easily. For instance, refer to the Game Text article and see how at the bottom is the table for Card Layout, indicating that that article is one of a series meant to educate the reader on the different parts of a card.

Tables used in this manner are located on their own page; for instance, the Card Layout table is located at card_layout_table. If you hit “edit this page” on that page, you'll see how ugly the table syntax is, which is why they are relegated to their own pages, to keep articles nice and clean. Also notice that the table itself is kept within <div> tags that ensure it stretches to fill the whole horizontal space available.

To put one of these tables at the end of your article, simply put {{page>:table_page}} at the bottom, where “table_page” is the name of the table you wish to reference. For convenience, a list of all article group tables is located at code_snippets, so you can just copy-paste the table reference from there as needed.

If you make a new article group table like this, don't forget to add it to the code_snippets page! If you're having trouble making your own tables, download the calc2dokuwiki extension for OpenOffice/LibreOffice Calc (a spreadsheet program like Excel), which lets you build a table in Calc and export the syntax ready-to-go.

In general, when writing articles, they should be in your own words. The official rulebook is great for a concise explanation, but it smacks too much of lawyerspeak at times and was built in such a way that it could be used to settle disputes; this wiki should focus on explaining and exploring different aspects of the game, and so shouldn't be limited to one- or two-line summaries.

That said, it's always a good idea to quote the Comprehensive Rules (or the Current Rulings Document, as the case may be) occasionally just to show the world that we're not completely out in left field as far as our explanations are concerned. This is usually done by including a snippet of the relevant section of the Rules at the end of the article. See Game Text for an example (a template for the section can also be found in code_snippets).

Don't feel like you need to include every part of the Comprehensive Rules in the article, nor feel like you shouldn't explore sections that the Rules is silent on. If you absolutely must link to the Rules, link to the wiki article located at comprehensive_rules_4-0; this is a word-for-word transcription of the *.pdf Rules formatted for the wiki, which allows you to link directly to a particular section.

The Autolinker is a very helpful tool; the vast majority of the links on this wiki are automatically generated, which helps a lot. Sometimes, though, it links to the wrong page, or you don't want the same link showing up fifty times in your article.

If you don't want a link to show up, simply put a ! in front of the offending word to squelch any autolink attempts. For instance, if I don't want The One Ring to link to that page, I can type !The One Ring; but then the Ring article is autolinked, so it's probably better to type The One !Ring. In general, though, it's probably best to leave the autolink in place unless it's linking to the wrong card/article or is distracting (such as the word Set autolinking, which can be problematic).

Most established article names will autolink, as well as card titles and common fan abbreviations (such as LttG or PATHS). Also keep in mind that if a card was reprinted in multiple sets, the autolinker prioritizes the most recent reprint over older versions, so you may need to modify (for instance) autolinks to the Shadows The Prancing Pony in a discussion about Fellowship block strategies.

There are two main parts of this wiki: the articles, and the cards. Articles are in-depth and serve to explain the mechanics and history of the game; they can also be about strategies or metas or any aspect of the game not easily crammed onto a single card's page.

To edit or write articles, simply go to the Main Index and pick a red link, or find a page that looks like it could use some love, and have at it! Most of the game concepts have already been linked on that page, but if you find something that needs addressed not listed there, bring it up on the Wiki section of the forums.

There is also a special Pages to Add page that shows all the articles that have been referenced but do not yet exist (“red links”). This page can take a long time to generate (as it crawls through the entire wiki to find which links are red), but it shows each article that doesn't yet exist, as well as references to which pages link to it.

The cards themselves also have their own individual pages, which include a transcription, errata, and a strategy section. This is (or should be) the backbone of the wiki, offering instant information on individual cards and their history, errata, use, and strategy.

Editing cards is a bit less intuitive than editing articles, though, due to the way that the card articles were generated. If you go to a page, such as The One Ring, Isildur's Bane, and hit “edit this page”, you'll see that this shows the page layout including the card image, transcription, but the strategy info is on it's own page, which is referenced by the line {{page>:lotr01001wiki}} at the bottom. If you try to navigate to the page at lotr01001wiki, though, you'll find yourself automatically redirected back to the card's page!

This is annoying and not intuitive at all. Unfortunately, until Kralik wakes from his slumber it's all we've got. All that can be done is to add ?redirect=no to the end of the card's wiki page to edit that part of the strategy. Thus, for editing Isildur's Bane, we navigate to lotrtcgwiki.com/wiki/lotr01001wiki?redirect=no and edit that page there. Thus, an easy way to get to the right page is to copy-paste wiki?redirect=no to the end of a card's URL.

For a list of all cards that have not yet had any strategy info added, see the Cards to Edit page. This page is not automatically generated, so if you edit a card, remember to visit this page and remove the card you edited!