Progression

Character Progression

Progression Details

When characters are created within Atharen, players are provided experience points that can be allocated toward skills. These skills, in turn, dictate what a character is able to do and how good they are at doing it. To progress further after character creation, players will need to earn experience points (XP) and Lore from writing in threads, and then allocate those XP to the skill or skills in which they wish to progress.

For a character to progress within Atharen, the player performs activities for which they will be rewarded XP, Lore, and/or DF. The primary means by which players receive character progression awards will be writing, though there may be other avenues to attain awards. The requirements for and rewards of activities are enumerated below:

• Solo. A solo thread is a single post written by a single character totaling at least 1500 words. No other posts or player characters are added to this post, though interactions with NPCs is allowable. It is by definition self-contained. Upon completion, it is self-reviewed or submitted to the review queue as applicable. Solos are worth 5 XP and 6 Lore. Partial rewards for solos are not allowed; players must hit word count.
• Collaboration, or Collab. A collab consists of multiple posts between two or more characters. This can be a tightly plotted and choreographed plot or something more loose and improvisational. It can allow other characters to drop in (an open thread) or be pre-determined for specific characters (a closed thread). Unless otherwise noted in the thread title, it should be assumed that all threads in Atharen are closed. If you wish to join a thread, please DM the players involved. To receive full rewards, each player must write 1500 words across at least 5 posts, with no post being fewer than 250 words. Full rewards for each player are 8 XP and 10 lore. For a submitted post where one or more players fall short of the required post count or word count, the rewards are proportionately reduced. For every post after their 5th, players may add one additional Lore.
• Moderated Thread or Modded Thread: A modded thread consists of a thread or threads where one person is writing as an NPC or NPCs for the purposes of ushering a character or characters through an approved plot request. A moderated thread or threads may be run by a Player with Staff approval, or run by Staff. Plot requests are submitted in the Support Forum, and should use the Plot Request form in the stickied thread. As the player(s) in a modded thread are generally undergoing enhanced challenges, they receive 10 XP and 10 lore provided that they reach the same requirements enumerated above for a Collaboration thread (i.e. 1500ie 1500 words across at least 5 posts). As a reward for plot creation, NPC creation, creating an experience for other players, and a compensation for not being able to receive lore, the mod of a moderated thread receives 12 XP. If a moderated thread does not involve a significant challenge to a player or players, the players involved receive the normal amount for a collab, and the moderator receives 10 XP instead of 12. For the moderator, the XP may be allocated to any approved, active character.
• Mod Bomb: Atharen is a living and chaotic world. To reinforce that last point, a member of Staff in Atharen may, at their discretion, crash any thread, even a closed thread, and alter its course. If they do this, the staff member receives +2 XP that can be used for any active, approved character, and the player or players so affected receive up to +5 XP for handling the mod bomb. The member of staff decides how much XP the mod bomb is worth, and scales up the XP based on the challenge provided. Before tossing a mod bomb, members of staff must ensure the players in the thread are open to mod bombs, and they must ensure the bomb is appropriate for the characters’ levels and skill sets. Players retain the right to appeal mod bombs they feel are uncalled for or unfair in the Support Forum. Please see the article on mod bombs for more information.
• Major Event (Player): A Major Event is a bit like a Mod Bomb, with a few additional caveats, the first and most significant being that the culmination of the event be of significant impact to Atharen or a region with Atharen. A major event must be Staff run; players cannot be in charge of them. Not every thread provides the Major Event bonus; only the culmination of it. Major Events require Architect approval.

Additionally, characters can be awarded XP, lore, and/or df for one-off events, such as a bonus for character sheet approval, a spiff for participating in a world event, or a gift for being present during events important to Atharen. These bonuses are awarded at Staff discretion.

Summary Table:

Thread Type	Expected word count	Partial rewards?	Minimum word count	XP Give	Lore Given	Additional Lore?
Solo	1500	No	n/a	5	6	N
Collaborative	1500	Yes	250/post, 1500 total	8	~10	Y
Moderated (Player)	1500	Yes	250/post, 1500 total	10	~10	Y
Mod Bomb (Staff)	250	No	n/a	2	0	N
Mod Bomb (Player)	See thread type	See thread type	See thread type	Up to 5	Up to 5	N
Major Event (Staff)	250	No	n/a	4	0	N
Major Event (Player)	See thread type	See thread type	See thread type	Up to 15	Up to 10	N

Money:

The primary way characters accrue money is through threads. Once per season, players may write a wage thread. The requirements for a wage thread are: a solo thread or a collaborative thread that focuses on a character performing their job duties. It shares all requirements with a Solo thread, and afterward, may be submitted to the wage thread review queue for grading and receipt of seasonal wages.

Df may also be provided as a reward for threads, as and where it makes sense. Significant monetary reward of 100 df or more requires review; receipt of a lesser amount may be submitted to self-review. Larger one-time payments may be included as part of planned rewards in plot requests.

Skills:

Skill Categories:

Generally, all categories are foundational and build towards an overall familiarity to skills within their respective trees. There is no concrete reward for accruing experience points in a given skill family or tree beyond progressing a given skill. For example, a character with a rank of Master in Running and Swimming would have 200 points in Strength, but this does not in turn provide an overall strength multiplier, reduce base fatigue accrual, or produce any other mechanistic advantage. In other words, it is not inherently advantageous for a character to maximize skills within the same skill tree. Skill categories provide a sense of who the character is, how they prioritize their time, and what they think is important.

[make skill category descriptions in-line and a bulleted list]

Skill Tiers

All skills can be assigned a numerical value from 0 to 100, with 0 being knowing no more than an average person about the topic, to 100 being mastery of the skill. Note that the baseline level of knowledge for a given skill may vary: someone may have a skill of 0 in Writing and still be literate, for instance, as many people in Atharen can read and write to some extent, but someone with a skill of 0 in clockwork probably knows very little about that subject, as most people in Atharen have almost no exposure to or familiarity with industrial era machinery. Despite the example above, exceptions can always be found. Consider your character’s experience, background, and history when deciding what a baseline of 0 in a given skill may mean for them. By that same token, attaining a skill level of 100 in any given skill provides a character with the rank of Master in that skill, but it does not mean they know all there is to know about it. In Atharen, as in real life, true mastery of any skill is a lifelong endeavor. While a character cannot attain numerical values higher than 100 in any skill, they can accrue additional lore if the player wishes to do so. To improve a skill by one point, a player spends one XP. The numerical system is as follows: Tiers

• Novice: 0-24
• Apprentice: 25-49
• Journeyman: 50-74
• Expert: 75-99
• Master: 100

Lore Requirements

In addition to expending XP to the proper level to increase a skill’s tier (for instance, attaining a skill level of between 50 and 74 to be a Journeyman in that skill), all skills have lore requirements. All skills have the same number of lore required for a given skill tier: Novice: 0 lore Apprentice: 10 lore Journeyman: 25 lore Expert: 50 lore Master: 75 lore

There are different types of Lore: Generic and Specific. For an in-depth discussion on this, see lore types. For non-magical skills, up to 25 lore can be generic. In other words, using generic lore, one can attain up to the rank of Journeyman. For World Magic, up to 10 lore can be generic, attaining a rank of Apprentice. For Raw Magic, generic lore is not allowed.

Lore

Lore is the summation of the knowledge a character has acquired within a given skill. Lore can be facts, trivia, techniques, best practices, principles, pitfalls, mistakes, and anything else relevant to their knowledge of the skill at hand. Lore is acquired as thread rewards. How much is acquired is enumerated in Character Progression.

Lore Types

There are two types of Lore: Specific Lore: Specific Lore is Lore derived from what a character has learned, observed, read about, been told about, or tried during the course of a thread. Specific lore is required to progress beyond a certain point of mastery in every skill. Most lore that a character will acquire or be awarded will likely be Specific Lore. In order to gain Specific Lore, there must be a logical reason for a character to acquire it during the course of a thread. For instance, a character must practice swinging a sword, or observe people sword fighting, or face off against a foe wielding a sword, or be in conversation with people talking about sword fighting, or read a book about swords to acquire specific lore in Blades. The most obvious way for a character to receive Specific Lore is generally to have a thread that centers around a character using a skill directly but as enumerated above, there are other ways to attain Specific Lore. Generic Lore: Generic Lore is Lore that a player wishes to award a character as part of a thread where they did not engage with the skill itself during the course of the thread. If it’s enumerated, it’s typically denoted by the skill name and a number e.g. Blades 1, Blades 2, etc. Generic Lore can be taken as a thread reward at any time, and can be considered general knowledge and background on the subject. The downside of generic lore is that it’s of limited use: it can only be used to attain a rank of Journeyman in non-magical skills. For all World Magics, it can only be used to attain a rank of Apprentice. For raw magics, Generic Lore is not allowed at all.

Earning Lore

As discussed in Section 1, different threads provide different numbers of Lore rewards. To take a Specific Lore as a thread reward, something that occurs in thread must be referenced. If a player prefers to accrue lore in a skill that has nothing to do with the thread in hand, only Generic Lore can be taken. To see examples of how to put together Specific Lore, check character sheets of established characters, or ask Staff for assistance.

Lore Review

Time gate:

• Novice to Journeyman: 1 season
• Journeyman to Expert: 1 season
• Expert to Master: 1 season

Skill gate:

• Players must apply for skill Mastery. Can be done on Discord.
• Post progression by season
• Link(s) to lore in that skill

Experience

Experience, usually denoted as Experience Points or XP, is a progression reward attained for player actions in Atharen, usually but not always related to completing threads and having them reviewed or self-reviewed. Experience points attained can be cashed in or spent on any skill other than raw magics. 1 XP provides 1 level up in a skill.

Experience points are primarily attained via writing. Generally speaking, the writing must be focused on the player character attaining the experience, unless playing as an NPC during a moderated plot. While Atharen allows for some narrative storytelling outside of the player character’s perspective, generally speaking, to count as XP for a character, the writing must be centered on that character. Producing a 1500 word solo on the history of a castle that a character lives in, for example, would not really qualify unless the character themself is centered in this exercise. If they are exploring the castle, researching it, thinking about its history and how it intertwines with their own: all fine.

In the case of all Raw Magics, the thread must be reviewed by a member of Staff, who will allow the player to take up to a number of XP in a given Raw Magic depending on how much it was used in-thread. The player may take up to that amount in the Raw Magic, or may remand some or all of the amount so awarded to general XP and use it for another skill instead.

All players who wish to level Raw Magic should familiarize themselves with the Mage Blight system. Players who level up

Character Retirement

When a player formally wishes to no longer play as a character, they may put in a Support Forum request to retire a character. When a character is retired, they are moved to the Character Archive and their Character Sheet is locked.

Unapproved characters that have not been updated for more than one calendar year and Approved characters that have not been used for more than two calendar years may be moved by Staff to the Character Archive in the interest of keeping the relevant forums tidy.

Characters may be brought out from retirement at any time. Just contact Staff and put in a Support Forum request. The one exception to this is if a character is used during the course of Character Creation in Skill Transfer. This decision is irreversible.

Skill Transfer

The XP of a player’s retired character or characters may be used during the creation of a new character by that same player. This works similarly to the skill debt mechanic except the XP does not need to be paid off.

There are several caveats with regards to Skill Transfer:

• First and foremost, the only XP transferred is any XP earned above the initial value granted during character creation, less any unpaid skill debt and less any bonuses provided to the player for anything other than completing threads or moderating threads. For example, if a player creates a character named John Smith who attains a total of 200 XP, that player may transfer that 200 XP minus the 125 XP given to John as a character, minus the bonus of 10 XP given to him for character approval, and minus a 5 XP bonus given to him for being on Atharen for its first anniversary. This leaves him with 60 XP (200 - 125 - 10 - 5 = 60 XP) that is eligible for transfer.
• Eligible XP may only be transferred once. To use an example, if a player creates a character named Alice who attains 111 XP that is eligible for transfer per the rule above, that 111 XP is transferred to their new character Bob. After playing Bob for a few seasons during which he attains a total of 72 XP, the player wishes to transfer Bob’s XP to a new character, Christina, and retires Bob. The 111 XP transferred from Alice to Bob is not eligible to transfer. It is bound to Bob and stays with him. Christina can only receive the 72 XP that Bob attained, not any XP that was transferred to him.
• Multiple retired characters’ XP may be transferred to a single character.
• A retired character’s XP may not be split or distributed across multiple players without Architect permission.
• Characters may not receive more than 100 XP from skill transfer without Mod-level approval, and may not receive 200 XP without Architect-level approval.
• Characters who benefit from Character transfer are subject to increased scrutiny during the character approval process, similar to a character who takes on Skill Debt.