Talk:Splatbook

Hmm. I'd always thought the name "Splatbooks" came from the sound made when you drop one of the (thin softcover) books on the table.

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I did a fairly serious overhaul. I believe the definition I give is more correct: the name is derived from the similarity of titles within a given series (Clanbook: *) not for the similarity of multiple series (*book).

The earliest Usenet reference I can find is 1996/07/05.

The term was certainly not limited to online. Somewhere during the 1990s (I'm guessing around 1996) I attended a talk by Erick Wujcik (designer of Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game) at Gen Con on game publishing. He used the term "splatbooks". Specifically he suggested that any new RPG should have groupings suitable for expanding in marketable splatbooks. At the time this was not new terminology to me, but I was reading Usenet at the time and may have first seen it there.

Alan De Smet | Talk 22:47, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)

The alternative derivation I've heard refers to the extremely 'hit or miss' nature of such books. More than most sourcebooks, they tend to divide the target audience into those who love the book and those who hate it. The analogy was something along the lines of tossing the books at a very small target. A few would hit, the rest would just go *splat*... Having said that, the White Wolf thing sounds much more likely.

As far as I can tell, this is a phrase definition. If anywhere this belongs on Wiktionary. JoshuaRodman (talk) 04:34, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Why is no-one asking the obvious?

Who are these people who say "splat" to mean "asterisk?" Literally every person who I have ever heard refer to an asterisk in my entire life calls it a "star" (if not actually "an asterisk"). As in "star dot star" for the wildcard filename. Perhaps there is an alternate "splat period splat" wildcard? 71.229.72.185 (talk) 05:39, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

This isn't that rare: see for example http://www.hacker-dictionary.com/terms/splat JoshuaRodman (talk) 04:33, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Merge proposal

I propose merging (part of) Sourcebook into Splatbook. Sourcebook is kind of an embarrassing article as it's basically just three unrelated dictionary definitions. It would probably be better to just have the gaming type of sourcebook get explained on this page. I think I would go so far as to say that sourcebook and splatbook are synonymous so the lede could say "A splatbook, also known as a sourcebook," — let me know if you disagree with that. Dingolover6969 (talk) 08:27, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

Done. Dingolover6969 (talk) 11:32, 16 February 2026 (UTC)