Wikipedia:Peer review/Brotherhood of the Bolt/archive1

Brotherhood of the Bolt

I've listed this article for peer review because I'm trying to get this article to at least a B-Class rating or higher. I need feedback so I can finish the editing and work on it more.

Thanks, Go-Tsumaroki (chat) 18:35, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Comments by Alexandra

Hello, I only just now became aware of Wikipedia:WikiProject Role-playing games/Article alerts and didn't realize there were any PRs up until now! Let's get this review going!

Infobox

• Switch to {{Infobox game}}
• The image does not have a fair use rationale, which is actually required for any non-free images. There are templates that can be used for this, like {{Non-free use rationale 2}} - see File:Fall of London cover.png for an example where I've implemented it.
• Are Wm. John Wheeler and Peter L. Rice just writers, or the designers/developers of the book? The game infobox has a parameter for designer that you should use in that case.
• Consider using {{Unbulleted list}} to list Wheeler and Rice - Rice is already spilling over into a second row on my monitor at least, so might as well put them on one row each yourself.
• Spell out role-playing game. I like to write "Tabletop role-playing game supplement" in this type of article to make it clear that it is not a game on its own.

Lead

• A good lead in a well-developed article should aim to summarize the key aspects of the rest of the article, and should at least be a full paragraph long; depending on the article's length it may be multiple paragraphs.
• Imagine that a person who has never played a TTRPG reads this article. Aim to make it understandable for that person, and write the lead in such a way that it explains what the subject is. Will they know what "generic horror role-playing game supplement" means? They might think you're talking about "generic horror", whatever that means, rather than a horror-themed tabletop role-playing game supplement intended to be compatible with a wide range of games. This advice applies to the article as a whole, but especially to the lead, as it's the first thing (and sometimes the only thing) people will read in an article.
• Speaking of, be sure to say either "tabletop role-playing game" or "pen-and-paper role-playing game" early on, to make sure readers don't think this is a role-playing video game.

Contents

• Try to write a good first sentence that introduces the topic. Using Fall of London as an example, an article I wrote that passed a Good Article review: Fall of London is an adventure module ("chronicle") for Vampire: The Masquerade, consisting of six chapters, with six endings depending on the players' actions.
• Can you describe the scenarios a little bit? If possible, with information taken from reliable sources like the Dragon review, but it is okay to cite the book itself, too. We don't want to go overboard with descriptions of the fiction, but I would expect at least one full paragraph.

Publication history

• Again, try to write an introductory sentence for the new topic. Using Fall of London as an example again: Fall of London was produced by Modiphius Entertainment, at the time the company in charge of development of Vampire: The Masquerade's fifth edition. Giving context and background information is great, but we want to make it immediately clear how that information relates to Brotherhood of the Bolt, because this section is about that book's production and release, not a short history of The Companions.

Reception

• Focus less on the reviews themselves and more on what the critical consensus is. Basically, don't use a bullet list, and don't go "here's what they said in so-and-so review, and here's what they said in so-and-so".
• You don't need to say in the prose what issue a review was published in, because that information is available in the references. If a review was made long after the book was released, it may be good to mention the year of that review to give the reader context, though. Example from Chicago by Night of appropriate use of year: By 1999, Casus Belli still considered Chicago by Night the most important Vampire: The Masquerade supplement, and recommended new players to begin with it.
• To be clearer about the "focus on critical consensus", here's what I do when I write a reception section:
  1. I create a separate text document and make headings for different aspects that the reviewers are discussing - the writing/scenario, the visual design, the game design, etc.
  2. Then I go through the review and make a note in the text document about the major things they bring up (so if Dragon says "this book is beautifully written", I make a note under my "writing" heading that says "beautifully written -Dragon".
  3. After I've gone through the review and made notes about all the major things they expressed an opinion about, I open up another review and do the same thing.
  4. After I've gone over all the major reviews of the game (or all that I have access to...) and after I've made notes, I look for patterns ("oh, look! Dragon, Arcane and Casus Belli all like the game's writing!")
  5. I then write those things in the reception section, keeping comments thematically grouped, with specific examples and counter-examples (made-up example: Reviewers generally liked the game's writing,[1][2][3] with Arcane praising character dialogue as elegant.[1] On the other hand, White Wolf thought the conceit of the scenario was unbelievable at times.[4])
  6. I also try to limit quotes from the reviews as much as possible, only using them to illustrate reviewer opinion. Paraphrasing is going to give a better flow and better reading experience, and avoid copyright infringement concerns.
  7. You may find Wikipedia:Copyediting reception sections useful for this, it has helped me a lot!
• Also, if reviews have scores attached to them, you may add a review score table with {{Film and game ratings}}

Reviews

• This section is the same as reception and should be merged with that. Listing reviews without context is unhelpful, so if you just know of a review's existence and want to make a note of it, do so on the talk page rather than in the article itself!

References

• The RPG.net and RPGgeek sources are user-edited, which unfortunately makes them unusable as sources on Wikipedia - there's no way around it, they need to be replaced.

I think that's it - feel free to ping me if you have any questions or if you want me to take a second look at the article after you've made changes to it!--Alexandra^IDV 12:45, 15 December 2020 (UTC)