How important is a setting's lore?
Personally, I'm kind of a minimalist. I enjoy tidbits of lore which add flavor to the overall setting, but don't distract from the campaign/narrative with volumes of unnecessary information. Not that I don't appreciate well-constructed lore, but I much prefer having things left to the imagination rather than having an explanation for everything.
Other urls found in this thread:
Loremaster here, not the GM. I try to make it concise, with images and full of plothooks. Also believable with the ocasional "wait, what?" to make sure the players don't get too used to it. Also got it into a blog that everyone can read when and if interested.
I have explanations for almost everything but don't always put them there. Me and the GM also get make reunions where we integrate however we can, the stuff players did, past PCs becoming NPCs etc. The best character I played once became emperor! Players like to interact with their past characters.
Honestly? I've found that, in 90% of cases, I have much more fun reading through an exploring a setting's lore than I do playing whatever game is set in it. I haven't enjoyed actually playing in years.
I tend to be pretty lore-light in my games as well. I might have ideas for how certain things work but those will be extra things for the players to find if they go looking, rather than things I shove in their faces.
In established settings, it's odd. I like having enough lore to strongly convey the themes of the setting, giving me examples and ideas I can improvise off of, without filling in all the blank spaces and giving me nowhere to work.
In particularly lore heavy settings I'll often just straight up tell my players I will freely remix everything outside of a few specific core concepts, as it's just kinda dull for me otherwise.
If you give yourself more lore and more of an idea of what your setting is, improv is not only easier, but feels more cohesive during the game. It allows you to pull from other more mysterious elements more often, and there will always be these background things going on that the players don't really know about, but occasionally get a taste of that makes the world feel more life like. Of course, if your party is a bunch of murderhobos who live only to "be adventurers" then of course there's not much of a need for a taste of the setting, but the benefits of having a deeper setting outweigh the cons (and I don't think there really are any cons to having a deeper setting).
Yes very important, I prefer to play in quality written, professionally published, established settings that convey the sense above and beyond generic adventure location as opposed to some home brew garbage the dm pulled out his ass thinking it's some cool shit when in reality general consensus shows it's god awful doggerel.
man aren't you straight out of the last century, i bet you'd like to gobble up the nepotistic cocks of the nearest publishing company right now eh?
I'm a bit of both worlds.
I have really extensive lore but my players only start with the barebones of what they need to get the tone and basics of the setting. Players who's characters tend to know more about certain subjects are personally told so they can do explanations or expositions when it comes up. Makes the world feel more natural when they can explain parts of it to each other.
I expose them to stuff as they experience it and get interested. I don't want them to get swamped, so I hold the information back and reveal it at a pace I think they can handle.
Depending on the setting or game they get more or less interested over time.
Lore is for setting tone, and getting people on the same page about what's going on. To that end, lore should include enough detail to give an impression the GM or designer wants to portray, without being so long that it becomes homework.
Which setting has the best lore?
Which setting has the deepest (most detailed) lore?
My personal feeling is that every setting should have a big stack of lore - that the players don't need to read.
At the start of the game they should only need a paragraph or two on the setting, and a paragraph or two on their character's race and its history in the setting. Oh, and a map - a really simple map with things like 'mountains - dwarves live here', 'savannah - cat people live here', 'crystal plains - sentient slime-mold lives here', and 'capital city - campaign starts here'. That way players can tell at a glance roughly what things are and where they come from without having to bother leafing through pages of notes.
The rest of the lore is for the DM. When the players ask him something, he shouldn't have to make something up on the spot, it should already be there. And so the lore only comes into play when the players actually ask for it.
A setting's lore is barely important. If people are having a good time they'll come up with their own shit
For me it's pretty important. I love a fleshed-out world to use as a base to build upon. I might not use much of it at times but it's always there in the background, helping me form the adventure into something that's internally consistent.
There can never be too much lore, you take what you want and tweak what you want.
Bionicle
It is important that the GM knows the world's lore, and that it both exists and is plentiful. But playerwise, it's only as important as they want it to be.
To me there's useful lore and autistic lore.
Useful lore helps flesh out a game's tone, shows what kinds of things you can expect in the game, and has a strong hook that can draw people into the setting. Stuff like pic related and the other images in the series are what I consider a slam dunk for this sorts of lore. Each one helps define the mechanics of a world and helps the user's imagination bring it to life even if they never learn the name of the setting.
Then you have autistic lore, which is information that sits behind the scenes manipulating things but probably won't come up in the game and mostly exists because it's fun to make. There's nothing wrong with this sort of lore, but I often notice anons getting caught up in autistic lore which can become dangerous.
I also believe that these aren't permanent categories and it's possible to shift lore between the two poles depending on how you handle it. I'd argue the Force from Star Wars was useful lore until the EU went full retard and dragged it kicking and screaming into autistic territory. Likewise you can take some autistic lore bits and bring them to the forefront of a game and have them be interesting and engaging by presenting them in the right manner.
I think what matters is that "good lore" has more to do with how the lore is presented than what the lore actually is. Exposition dumps are fucking boring, and no amount of thought or attention to detail is going to change that. Meanwhile, a big part of Bastion's success was that it presented its pants on head retarded world in a compelling way.
I think the best way to do lore is to come up with more than you're ever going to use, use that to inform how the world is presented, and only directly bring things up when they're necessary or immediately relevant to what the players are doing.
> Also got it into a blog
Could you post the link? I absolutely love reading lore.
It's in portuguese.
Forgot to add that some small details ground things in ways that players enjoy. One of the most used bits of lore are curse words.
bump
Consistancy is important to make a setting believable and engaging.
You don't need to start with rich lore, in fact the best lore is made up on the spot, as long as you're able to maintain consistancy and avoid retcons/plotholes/misunderstandings as much as possible, unless you're specifically going for a multiple account scenario to your storytelling.
I like pretty fleshed out worlds but as anyone will know it is impossible to write about every facet of a fiction world so as long as they have some kind of theme or they're going for an aesthetic I usually find it easier to fill in the gaps.
I think some people would be surprised to know how much Tolkien left unwritten about Middle-Earth but he did enough so that anyone can pick up the reigns and fill out something he didn't talk about.
I like to do some rudimentary lore-building. Every town, every race, every actually-important person or thing gets a quick little paragraph summing up the highlights.
Everything else, I improvise, and take notes so that future improvisations don't contradict previous ones.
thing should have a small paragraph.
I tried to put enough that its malleable for when players want to add their own stuff, but it seems real if they were to look into it. A lot of it doesn't get used, or doesn't really come up because the players don't bother to pay attention. I feel like maybe it's because its bad, but I don't know how to make it any better because they struggle to give me feedback. No ones fault I guess. I just wish I knew what they wanted so I can engage them. I've asked and their answer is just exactly what I have, but they don't seem interested in engaging the world.
For me, it's very important both as dm and player.
There's nothing worse than trying to dig a little bit into a setting a realizing there's nothing.
>How important is a setting's lore
I only care about it in as much as it helps writing adventures.
Anything beyond (like for example the in-game coins denominations) is cool but not really important.
I do agree with this
Also it depends on the setting and the system used. Obviously, if it focusses on players making the game up as they go with the GM, a lore framework is good, but too much details can cause the GM to force his ideas on the players.
Soooo... 'depends' I guess, but I am a sucker for lore
Same. It's real fucking easy to get lost down the rabbit hole of writing lore and building your world, but we're supposed to be running games, and the quality of the game is going to be what your players will notice and judge you on. A richly detailed history of a hitherto undiscovered continent is wasted prep time if it's never going to come up during play.
>In writing, you must kill all your darlings.
For me personally, I go full sperg filling out the details and backgrounds and the whys and the wherefores. It's just fun for me.
For my players I would always use a less is more approach during character creation and plot, and let them dig into my magical realm of sociopolitical cause and effect and interplay of faith and economics at their own discretion.
I honestly believe the less a GM talks the better the game.
>quality written, professionally published, established settings
that is really where role-playing is at is finest. i mean the vampires, shadowruns, dark suns, rifts or twilight 2000s out there. settings that are neither completely generic nor any licensed IP.
As long as it's good lore I enjoy large quantities and high detail. Of course what is good is subject to taste, but there are certain groups of lore that I view as predominantly bad.
>"scripted sequences"
The 20 exhaustive steps of world creation, 18 of which can't be felt in the setting.
Gods and legendary heroes dicking around in the god realm, having interpersonal drama.
>copied entries
This mountain range too is steep rocky spires and home to raiding Orcs.
In this forest there are Woodelves, who kill any would be logger.
In this forest there are Druids, who kill any would be logger.
In this forest there are Dryads, who kill any would be logger.
In this forest there are Woodelves, Druids and Dryads, who kill any would be logger.
>Aaaadventurers! *wink wink nudge nudge*
Blurps that inform the reader that yes, you can indeed adventurer here and in fact there are many adventurers in the area and the king has invited adventurers from all the lands to help do the quests.
I make a short list of shit going down in other regions/countries so if my players go into a tavern and ask about news, sometimes they'll hear (in two sentences) about a refuge crisis going down in a neighboring kingdom because another neighboring kingdom got overrun with orcs or whatever. Just little things to add flavor to the world, and a sense that things are going on outside their bubble.
One time I had them journey to a vampire castle only the twist was the vampires were long dead, taken care of by local heroes. There was still stuff to do though, like cleaning up stray cursed items and such.
Very, but GMs mistakenly believe this means "I have to bash my players over the head with it".
Very, the lore is as, if not more, important then the rule set. Lore establishes the boundaries of the game and setting, creates the relm or posibility that rule sets can then exist in. Best example is you need the lore to explain why it would be feasible for an orc to join a party of humans or elves for any reason other then lol I like their class buffs. Without lore you can have the best game system in the world, but as a whole it will fall short because it's going to be a hollow and empty game
Enough to understand and set the mood
You can add shitload of background lore that is meaningless but still interesting to read
Lore should be evocative, not explanatory.
A setting's lore is like a skirt on a woman: long enough to cover everthing important, but short enough to keep thigs interesting
...is what I would've said if I was a slut enabler. Which I'm not!
This is a neat thread.
here
How about people post examples of their lore?
>Kavajan reeds
The aerodynamical spiraling lines mirror its natural eolic magic which manipulates the air around them. Great reed beds are protected by a non-circular hurricane barrier which protects against herbivores and floods. Locals use it as natural palisades, long-reaching javelins and to minimize the weight of vehicles such as boats and wagons.
>Black-cactus
Native of the Spotted Mountains. It absorbs more sunlight than green plants so it can emit heat that both counteratcs the cold and melts some of the snow. Groves are hot enough to melt the surrounding ice into a whole lake which effectively works as an oasis in this hostile environment. Mountain dwarfs use stone mounds and moats to enhance this microclimate effect into a basic crop.
>Goblinoid cheese
Similar to cottage cheese, it's made from the crop milk of dinosaurs. After sun-dried, it becomes the basis of the hobgoblin nomad diet. Each variety comes from the species that names it: stegosaurus, triceratops etc.
>Javelin-fish
Found in the warm waters of the tropical archipelago the umók sail from. They fear it more than any other animal. Entire shoals answer to threats by using themselves as living projectiles, creating wounds full of beak splinters. And while someone might escape a shark by going back to the boat, javelin-fishes - which reach a length of one meter or more - jump out of the water at sixty kilometers per hour, impaling themselves so deep that their beaks pierce one's heart.
I make lore for fun. I don't bore my players for it, but I tell them a bit about it, even more if they want to know or roll Histroy, Arcana, or Religion.
Occasionally it will come up in gameplay mechanics, like how the strongest armor in-game is a porcelain armor made by African Pygmy/Abramic Dwarves.
I've got lots of little things, like instead of common beasts of burden from where they're from that wouldn't do well in the environment, the local missionary groups trying to bring religion and civilization to the local tribes have instead begun domesticating the megafauna that populate the continent like our good friend here.