Review Request Guide
In order to receive reviews for your threads, players must submit something known as a review request. Review requests are organized in such a way as to take the most strain off of the reviewer and for the player to receive the rewards that they want from any given thread. The following is a guide that allows players to better aquatint themselves with how the review process works. Players should remember some of the following.
Post Reminders: Posts in Atharen must meet a minimum of 300 words. This is a literate website. Gross grammatical errors will be prompted to be corrected before any awards are given.
Solo: A solo thread should be approximately 1500 words or more. This is not a strict requirement but a general guideline. You are permitted to choose 6 Skill Lores. Players will receive 5 EXP per Solo. 8 EXP if the thread receives a Mod-Bomb.
Collaboration: A thread involving two or more player-characters interacting with each other. You are permitted to choose up to 8 Skill Lores. 10 Skill Lores if a minimum of 5 posts is reached by a player in a collaboration thread. An additional lore can be granted for every 5 posts beyond that. 8 EXP per Collaboration.
Moderated Collaboration: A thread that is guided and narrated by a member of the staff. You are permitted to choose up to 8 Skill Lores. 10 EXP per Moderated Collaboration. On occasion, Moderators might decide to review these themselves upon the completion of the thread, so please make sure you communicate with your moderator on if you should submit to the review request or not.
Magic Experience vs. Normal Experience: When seeking to gain magic experience points (XP/EXP) you must specifically request said experience points. When awarded experience points for magic, they can only be allocated toward the specific magic for which it has been requested. At which point in time all of the requested experience points must be devoted toward the requested magic XP. Normal experience points can be allocated toward whatever mundane skill the player desires. Players are allowed to request specific amounts depending on the amount of time dedicated to that magic within the confines of the thread.
As a courtesy to the people who will be spending time to review threads submitted, it is requested that threads do not exceed 2 pages. Once the 2 page mark has been reached, it is requested that players and staff create a continuation thread. We understand that sometimes threads can have large amounts of players participating or drag on, but try to be mindful that peer reviewers are donating their own time to review these threads and by splitting the threads in half, players will receive more rewards in the long run. The rest of this guide will address
1. Experience: Magical and Mundane
Any thread that reaches the 1500 word mark and obeys the rules of Atharen should receive the full number of points allocated to the specific thread type being reviewed. Players are encouraged to make sure their posts are grammatically correct and obey the rules of Atharen as a whole. Small spelling errors here and there are fine, however, large spelling errors or blatant disregard for setting and rules can result in the loss of points for players.
Because the power associated with magic on Atharen, magical experience must be specifically requested. Specific amounts can be requested by players depending on the situation. In order to receive full magical experience for that thread, a significant amount of the thread must involve the particular magic the player is requesting for. The magic in question doesn't necessarily have to be used, but there must be a focus by players for learning more about their magic. A perfect example is alchemy. While a player might not actively practice alchemy in their thread, spending the thread studying a book related to alchemical practices and receiving new alchemical lores will entitle them to receive full points. How much is a substantial portion is decided by the reviewer and is a case by case bases that should also take the length of a thread into account.
2. Lores
Lores can essentially be broken down into what your character knows about any given topic. Lores are specific piece of information which players request and are awarded. Each Lore is linked to a specific skill. For a player to request a lore, the lore must obtained within the thread itself, directly. For an example, take the following paragraph:
"Delathee stalked quietly through the undergrowth, carefully passing through the plants as to not disturb any of them. Walking the game trails instead of directly passing over the undergrowth itself. She was on the hunt for an elk that she could bring home for dinner. Her town was hungry, and a recent food shortage meant she'd had to go out farther and farther. She kept her eyes trained to the group, peering at the indents within the earth. There! She recognized the tracks left behind by deer wandering the trials. She continued her careful pursuit, minding her step and keeping her eyes in front of her. A flash of brown caught her attention, a proud stag, none the wiser to her presence. She raised her bow, drawing back the string. With a decisive twang the arrow shot forth."
To receive lore for this piece of writing, the players must decide on specific pieces of lore that they addressed during the course of the thread. Again, lores must be specific. The more specific, the better, as it allows players to monopolize on their lores and receive even more later on by getting into the acute details of whatever skills they're trying to hone. The bolded portions are portions that the player can potential decide to make into skills. The following are examples of what kinds of lores these three portions of the paragraph might become.
Stealth: Being mindful to not disturb the undergrowth to not alert prey
Hunting: Deer track identification
Ranged Combat: Long bow: Drawing the bow string
Now, the first line is interesting in that the player would decide to make it a stealth or a hunting skill depending on what they were looking to receive. The sentence in the paragraph due to the paragraph itself could apply to either. Players cannot, however, use the same lore in a single thread. For example, the following isn't allowed on a review request:
Stealth: Being mindful to not disturb the undergrowth to not alert prey
Hunting: Being mindful to not disturb the undergrowth to not alert prey
Similarly, the same lore can't be awarded to a single a second time. If the player already has this or something similar as a hunting or stealth skill, they can't request this skill. That's part of why it's so important that players are specific with the lores they're requesting. That being said, if a player has already requested this as a stealth skill for one thread, they can request it as a hunting skill in a different thread. For both to be valid, however, they must be in different threads. A review request of a single thread with doubled up lores will have the grade temporarily postponed by the reviewer until adequate changes have been made.
Players should preface any lore they're requesting with the skill they're requesting it for, so that the reviewer knows that the player is asking for.
3. Getting Injuries
Due to the nature of our site, most characters will become injured at some point in their existence. This can range between illness, wounds, or overstepping (magical related injury). It si on the player to declare any injuries they might have received and act accordingly. Certain injuries, if left untended, can fester and get worse, specifically illnesses or particularly bad wounds. The player doesn't need to declare every single scrap or bruise they get from something relatively minor, but medium to major injuries should be declared and players should reflect the fact they are injured in future threads until they've recovered.
If the player doesn't declare their injury, then the peer reviewer is still allowed to assign injuries which are bad enough to be deserving of attention.
4. Loot and Extra Goodies
For most players, their largest source of income will be job threads. That being said, if players do extra work outside of job threads it's entirely within their right to receive compensation for their time and effort. Players, if dedicated enough, can even earn substantial sums from their work outside of their normal job. That being said, job threads are a way to speed up this process. A player looking to make a good amount of money will need to put hours upon hours into their threads. While players should be compensated for their work, there should be evidence of substantial amounts of work. You're not going to be paid as much in a single thread as you would working a single day of a normal job, so to make a similar amount of money you'd need to be putting a lot of effort into your threads.
Players can also receive material goods, either through buying them, making them, finding them, or any other number of things. Again, this should be reasonable. While a player is fully welcome to haggle a discount, they shouldn't be dropping the price by 10% with novice level persuasion. Peer Reviewers are watching to make sure players do that. Players decide and declare the rewards they think they're deserving to receive from a thread, and it's the job of the Peer Reviewers to decide if they really are.
Material losses should also be noted under this section of the review request, such as paying money to buy an item or losing an item because it broke.
5. Things That Can Prevent Reviews
Players should have an accurate and up to date character sheet. Their skill charters and wealth charters should both be up to date. If a player buys something, while it won't stop the thread from being reviewed it's generally expected that they'll already have subtracted the funds from their wealth charter and have added the item to their inventory. Gross amounts of power play or disobedience to the ToU and setting rules of Atharen can result in a thread's review being paused and the review switching hands to a moderator depending on the severity of the offense and the unwillingness on the part of the player to correct it. That being said, Peer Reviewers should reach out to the player first before going to a moderator in most situations.
Larger grammatical errors (things which greatly disrupt the flow of a thread) can result in the thread's review being paused until the person who wrote the thread takes the time to properly edit it. This doesn't count small things like accidentally mixing up or misspelling a word, this addresses threads that are borderline unreadable due to spelling mistakes.
Characters who aren't approved, while they can still write, cannot apply for reviews.
If the thread being graded is a collaborative threads and only one person is found to be in violation of these standards, then the second person will receive their review as promised and the first with the infraction will have their review suspended until the infraction is fixed. Those who've done nothing wrong shouldn't be punished for the errors of the player they're writing with.
Threads that are in a private room are ineligible for review.
6. Abandoned Threads
Occasionally a thread falls through and one player or both players isn't able to finish it or has no desire to finish it for one reason or another. These are called Abandoned Threads. Abandoned Threads can still be posted for review, finished or not, as long as they meet the word count criteria. Partially finished threads which don't meet the word count can receive a partial grade, however, it's encouraged players add a final post to meet the word count and receive the full grade.
