Quests

[Kaden]

Quests

Quests are writing prompts constructed by Staff and stored as a Sticky in the RPG Discussion sub-forum (insert-link-here).

The standard Quest description is as follows:

Name: (Name of Quest)
Difficulty: (Difficulty of Quest, either Easy, Moderate, Hard, or Epic; this indicates how much effort is expected. There is no minimum length required for each of the Difficulties, but if it is determined by the Quest graders that your posts were not sufficient for the corresponding Difficulty, then your reward will suffer. As a rough guideline, expect to write about 2500 words for an Easy quest, 5000 words for a Moderate quest, 10000 words for a Hard quest, and much more for an Epic quest.)
Requirements: (Requirements for accepting and attempting the Quest; usually a minimum (combined) CA, but may involve other restrictions)
Description: (The IC scenario)

Some quests are Unique; this will be indicated following their name by the inclusion of the string ‘[Unique].’ Unique Quests can only be completed once, and they must be claimed before they are attempted. If a Unique Quest is currently claimed by someone, and that person has not defaulted on their posting requirements, then that Quest is considered closed. If a Unique Quest is completed, it is also considered closed (and will be removed from the Quest list).

To claim a Quest, make a topic in the Quest forum, declaring that you claim the Quest (quote the entirety of the Quest information in your topic, at the top of your claiming post); this thread will also be used for any updates to the Quest and the subsequent grading of it. Staff will then confirm it, as long as the Quest has not already been claimed, and as long as your character is on the planet the Quest is based upon. From the moment of your claim’s confirmation of the Quest, you have two days (48 hours) to write your first post. If you do not write your first post in those two days, then your Quest will be considered unclaimed, and if someone else wishes to claim it, then your rights on the Quest will be considered void. Following the first post, you must maintain activity to keep the Quest claimed. The following chart indicates how often you must roleplay in the Quest topic to keep the Quest:

Easy - Every three days
Moderate - Every three days
Hard - Every five days
Epic - Every week

If a Quest has more than one participant, then the post of any participant is sufficient to renew the rights of all participants in the quest.

Example 1: Person A claims a unique Quest of Hard difficulty on January 1. On January 2 at noon, she writes her first post. Noon on January 7th comes by, and she has yet to write a new post, with no explanation for inactivity. Person B wishes to do the Quest, and makes a topic in the RPG Discussion claiming the Quest. Person B now has the rights to the Quest, regardless of the amount of effort expended by Person A into that Quest.

Example 2: Person C and Person D claim a unique Quest of Hard difficulty on February 1. On February 3, at noon, Person C writes his first post. Person D writes her first post on February 9. Person C writes his next post on February 14. Even though eleven days have passed between Person C’s two posts, his rights on the Quest have not lapsed, as Person D’s post renews his rights.

If a member has been working at a Quest for a very long time, such that that member’s contributions to the site are significant and monumental, then there will be some forgiveness for a missed roleplay deadline. All removals of a member’s rights to a Quest are up to Staff discretion. Conferring of rights to a Quest is also up to Staff discretion.

All Quests must be posted in a dedicated thread, and may not be spliced into an already exist topic. The title of the thread must be of the following form:

[Q] (Name of Quest)

Thus, the thread title for the Quest ‘Village Defense’ would be:

[Q] Village Defense

Some Quests have a CA requirement. That CA requirement can either be met by one person, or by the combined CA of multiple persons. For example, if a CA requirement is 10000, that can be met either by one individual with a CA of 10000 or greater, or it can be met by more than one person, whose combined CA totals to 10000 or greater.

All Quests will be graded by the community, under Staff supervision.

Quests can not be turned in for grading if you also want to do them as a job. If someone decides to submit a Quest as a Job instead, then the Quest will be opened back up for someone else to claim (in the event of a Unique Quest) and no community grading will happen.

[Kaden]

Grading

All quests will be graded by the community. Grading is fairly straight-forward. Once a quest is completed, the member who started the Quest will state as much in that Quest's thread on the Quest forum. At that point it will be up to the members to read and reward the Quest.

At this point in time there are no set guidelines for rewards, as we encourage the community to decide, on their own, what they think appropriate rewards are for a given amount of work. Some things make more apparent guidelines, such as the difficulty of the quest or the number of posts or the average length of posts or the quality. Each person is free to use whatever guidelines that they feel are appropriate for grading.

Once three different grades have been given, there will be a 24-hour "last call" period before the final reward is decided. Final rewards will be, roughly, an average of the community proposed rewards. If three people say that the Questers should get 10 XP and 500 Zeni, you can expect the final reward to be very close to that.

Along with a proposed reward, each grader is expected to provide some sort of feedback. You don't have to write pages and pages of insightful critique, but you should put something. Even a couple of sentences pointing out scenes or characters or dialogue that you dis/liked is fine. This is to both help prove you actually read the thread you're grading and to help the community as a whole. We're all writers, even small comments can go a long way to helping each other out.

Having said the above, it should be made clear to anyone doing a Quest that there will be some feedback and it may not all be positive. You know this going into it so getting upset or lashing out against people will not be tolerated. You are certainly free to explain why you chose to do a certain thing or ask a grader to expand upon a comment, but do so with tact and respect. Same to the people grading. Not all feedback has to be positive, but it does have to be respectful and constructive.

Some things to keep in mind when proposing rewards:

• Players have already received XP for their posts.
  
• There is no set XP-to-Zeni ratio for rewards, so don't feel like you have be locked into thinking that is someone has to get 50 Zeni for each XP they're rewarded.
  
• The proposed reward is per person that was involved in the quest. Rewards are not split. If you say the reward should be 1,000 Zeni, that means you think each person should be rewarded 1,000 Zeni.
  
• Staff are moderating all the rewards and have the final say.
  
• Though graders do no have to justify or explain their proposed rewards, anything that deviates drastically from what's already been proposed will be suspect. If a staff member asks you to explain your grade and it is not done within 48 hours, that grade will be considered invalid.
  

A final note about giving and receiving grades: this is a system designed to get the community to help itself. If everyone sits around asking for grading without doing any themselves, nothing will happen. We expect people to give at least as many grades as they expect to get. Obviously this may not always line up (if only two people are doing Quests, then they can't really give as many grades as they get), but we still expect people to try. If someone is doing nothing but asking for grades, Staff reserve the right to close a Quest for grading until the person/people involved have provided feedback and grading to their peers.