This article is a work in progress.

“I can’t speak for others, but to me, my tales are much more personal. An SCP is built according to a preexisting format, and you can usually only go so far with one. A tale, on the other hand, is pure creative potential. I’m defensive about my tales because they feel more like a part of me than my SCPs.”^[1]https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/forum/t-555526#post-1550819 — SCP Wiki author Dmatix

In containment fiction, Tales are free-form stories that exit the stricter, clinical format and language of an article format, and that utilize more traditional prose approaches to tell a story. Tales are commonly based off of existing works of containment fiction, but are not necessarily. They are often used to expand/develop lore and/or characters. Tales are generally more diverse, personal, and subjective examples of prose in the containment fiction space. They can come in many forms, such as traditional narratives, timelines, documents and many other formats. Tales exist in nearly all containment and liminal fiction projects.^[2]https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/foundation-tales^[3]https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-series-1-tales-edition^[4]http://rpcauthority.wikidot.com/authority-tales^[5]https://backrooms.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Tales^[6]http://liminal-archives.wikidot.com/tales^[7]http://wayward.wikidot.com/tales-hub

The term “Tale” refers to a prose-based or otherwise non-formatted story taking place on or within the framework of a containment fiction community. Creepypasta, for example, would be considered a “tale” in the containment fiction space. The term was originally used on the SCP Wiki.

Trivia

• Tales have existed since containment fiction, when a USAF supplemental document was created alongside SCP-173 on 4chan’s /x/.
• The distinction between SCPs and tales have been blurred on the SCP Wiki in the last several years by the inclusion of tales in SCPs, and even tales posted as SCPs.