What makes for good lore?

What makes for good lore?

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en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_(negative_space)
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Blatant lies and misdirection.

Passion.

The shotgun method.

People forget or gloss over most of the shit that's bad or that nobody cares about.

You see that mountain over there? You can climb it.

The first person to climb it was Adolpho Gonzalez. Adolpho was born in year 254 of the second era, during the time when the immortal witch queen was bringing the Great Blight upon the city of Astrolith. It was a dark time for all, and the only cure to the Great Blight was on the mountain, tended by a race of intelligent goatmen.

(Just write an overwhelming fuckload, and people will lap that shit up. Give every noun in that last bit its own Lorepedia article. Tell the story of Adolpho, the witch queen and how she got immortal, the symptoms of the great blight, what started the second age, what the cure is, why the goatmen are there, which god created the mountain, etc)

Meme answer: exposition that is excessive in both length and depth

Real answer: nothing, since players don't read or care about your lore, my lore, or any lore at all, because players are monsters.

That's because lore is usually an incredibly lazy excuse to avoid having to tell an actual story.

The problem is that if your lore is better than your story, your players want to know why they aren't playing characters from THAT story.

Having background doesn't mean you don't have a story. You can in fact do both and many people do. It's more that players, in my experience, tend to just not care about whatever isn't directly in front of them and immediately germane to their character and story. If it doesn't directly impact them and matter to them, it can fuck itself in their minds.

>If it doesn't directly impact them and matter to them, it can fuck itself in their minds.
That's a perfectly reasonable attitude. After all, RPGs should be about the player's story, not some random background chucklefuck's. It's why nobody likes a DMPC.

lore that affects the players and that is rewarding to know

Enough detail to create a solid set of themes that define the feel of the setting, but with enough gaps that a GM can create a novel story in it without having nerds contradict him with obscure "canon" details.

There's no good lore except folklore. Consider how many versions there are to stories, how different areas steal each others stories, how not much is ever explains, how what is explained might be contradicted by something else, how the facts don't always support the stories.

Now compare that with lore designed for a modern game. Notice how homogeneous it is, how everything fits in place, how the narrative seems to all come from a unified source. It's essentially comparing the difference with history and fanfiction.

To clarify, making shit up as you go along and contradicting yourself but never bothering to write anything down is the best strategy.

To be fair lore in things like video games or books tend to encourage having something physical you can reference and a community you can discuss lore with. You can stew over a piece of information, do some digging, and find some connection you might have missed all at our own leisure. While you're at the table you're often busy reacting to situations and in most genres trying not to get killed.

Unless you have a nicely put together setting bible plus a wiki it's hard to compete with the lore that's already baked into games.

So kind of like small scale oral tradition?

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_(negative_space)

Relevance

Be it a subtle reference to the backstory in modern times (like Galadriel giving Gimli a few hairs) or the consequences of the elder days still being felt (like a race of monsters having spawned from an ancient evil nobody but the oldest of beings can remember)

Thematic unity and consistency. Interesting conflict. Ability to tell a story.

personal opinion, lore should be comprehensive and reveal itself clearly rather than having to delve into sub-sub-sub articles just climb your way up in any hopes of understanding it. Something overwhelming and deep at a glance, but makes itself clear as you look into it.

Like if you're writing a story, right? You don't want someone saying pic related, with eleven little footnotes on the bottom of the page, each linking to a two page article explaining it, each of THOSE littered with more of the same.

is it right to think of lore as a element to the adventure/story? for example, thousands of years ago, the tree people found the secret of immortality and now your party searches for the secret, combing over clues and ancient ruins of the mighty tree people. having to fight tree orges and rival immortality seekers.

Make the lore have weight and relevance.

You hear about some unstoppable evil? Well why is it unstoppable? Did it kill off some national heroes? Entire Kingdoms? Gods?

Start off by establishing a standard that people can get well acquainted with. Then have something that fucks with it.

For instance- the Skyrim Civil War has a lot of weight because all previous games set up the empire, and Skyrim then shows it falling apart. That feels of consequence rather than meaningless fluff.

>avoid having to tell an actual story
The sessions themselves are the story you dunce, background information on the setting at large (otherwise known as "lore") is usually given at the start or in short bursts through exposition to dodge the "What is/Who is/Where is/How is X" questions that pop up about specifics within the setting that their characters would know since they have more than likely lived their lives in that world to their current years.

Stop being so silly in the head.

>You don't want someone saying pic related, with eleven little footnotes on the bottom of the page
That pic's pretty clear though. Tetra is some kinda corp, Azkeel are their product, and they escaped underground.

Giving the audience only a little bit at a time until they get just enough to piece it together themselves. Then you finally reveal it and the audience gets to feel smug because they were able to figure it out ahead of time. The actual content doesn't matter much.

Yeah, that's pretty much how Epics are told. Out of order, and contradicting.

I was more referring to the game itself, which is a mad scramble of half assed ideas popping up and dropped immediately with no resolution whenever the writer came up with something else he thought was cool and complex he wanted to add.

I like you

or 40k....

This. Ambiguity as to the truth of the setting makes for god-tier lore.

Sounds like it's a good idea to leave blank areas for individual groups to explore and make their own.

Subtlety, general rather than detailed information, and embellishment

Depends, but for me is when lore only enhances the experience of the world and isn't necessary to research to enjoy the world.