What makes setting lore "actually matter" to the players?

[Distracted DM]

In my experience, lore only matters for players, if it becomes relevant to their decision making during playing the game. Anything else is fluff that rarely becomes of any relevant meaning to the players.

Yeah, I basically just wanted to link the Matt Colville video about the topic, which pretty much advises this ^^^

I will say that some players do jive with lore... But theyre the exception.

 

[Retros_x]

I will say that some players do jive with lore... But theyre the exception.

Jeah, definitely there are sometimes the exceptions. I had one player who absorbed my lore and always wanted more - which became a bit of a problem, because he knew the lore better than me and noticed my contradictions that came up during play, because honestly I don't care too much about the correctness of it all and often retrofit and retcon. Normally it flies over the players head, but this guy always noticed it.

"I thought the evil cult emerged from X not Y" "uhm, yea, but not also Y, uhm because wait a minut... goddamit"

 

[zarionofarabel]

Jeah, definitely there are sometimes the exceptions. I had one player who absorbed my lore and always wanted more - which became a bit of a problem, because he knew the lore better than me and noticed my contradictions that came up during play, because honestly I don't care too much about the correctness of it all and often retrofit and retcon. Normally it flies over the players head, but this guy always noticed it.

"I thought the evil cult emerged from X not Y" "uhm, yea, but not also Y, uhm because wait a minut... goddamit"

I've had that happen a couple of times when I ran games for people that were fastidious with notes. I take a lot of notes too but I don't always remember all the little details and hate disrupting narrative flow to read stuff. I don't bother hiding my embarrassment anymore, I just thank them for their attentiveness and continue on.