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

[GobHag]

Okay but like...how on earth does player character vibe desire not trump someone elses desire for fantasy hegemony?

I genuinely dont understand the mindset where person A wants a given vharacter vibe and person B doesnt love that vibe and somehow person B's preference isnt given less preferance compared to person A.

It seems unavoidably and objectively obvious to me that person A's character concept is more important than person B's dislike of furries.

It's because Person B is implicitly the GM, which has more power than A

 

[doctorbadwolf]

It's because Person B is implicitly the GM, which has more power than A

That is nonsensical. Why would that give person B's largely irrelevant preference more weight? And why is person B implicitly the DM in the first place?

How is that a answer to my question at all?

 

[GobHag]

That or anything like would be a terrible thing for rules to say, and I would not only happily ignore said rules, I likely would never play such a game.

That is basically the compromise between me and you, if the lore says that Tabaxi's act like this(inhuman) but so many players play them like that(human) even with rules that support or even force to act like this(inhuman) then one of the ways to reconcile is to make the lore and rules to act like that(human)

 

[Micah Sweet]

That is basically the compromise between me and you, if the lore says that Tabaxi's act like this(inhuman) but so many players play them like that(human) even with rules that support or even force to act like this(inhuman) then one of the ways to reconcile is to make the lore and rules to act like that(human)

Well given your avowed hatred of simulationism, I find it unlikely we could ever be happy at the same table. I see your point though.

 

[Umbran]

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.

Pretty much this, yes.

If setting lore doesn't impact play, a person playing is not likely to give that lore priority in their mind.

 

[zakael19]

I was watching a GDC talk by one of the designers of Magic, and he was tossing out a number of lessons he’d learned over his 20 years doing that job. One which I thought was interesting for this discussion was “give the players a sense of ownership.” Their specific example was the community landing on a joke creature, making it a meme/reference/mascot, and then WOTC in turn building on that by incorporating it in art and products in turn.

When I designed my setting frame for my in-person Daggerheart game, I typed out a quick paragraph for each ancestry talking about the ground truth of how they fit in the world - but with lots of “blank space.” I then included a pair of specific questions for each, one that helped define how they interacted with other ancestries; and one that added depth to the commonality behind the ancestry. I’ve got a new player joining, and he was super excited about the Firbolg blurb I wrote and to add his bits to those questions. Ownership and investment.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If the lore and rules say that Tabaxi act like humans, would that also be an issue?

I wasn't as clear as I could have been. For some people its the issue that they look like catpeople at all (I realized after the fact this might be getting conflated with the "nonhumans who act like humans in a funny suit" complaint which is not the same thing).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Okay but like...how on earth does player character vibe desire not trump someone elses desire for fantasy hegemony?

Because they're running the game and aren't forced to?

I mean, honestly, its the same reason GM choices tend to dominate the game in the first place.

I genuinely dont understand the mindset where person A wants a given vharacter vibe and person B doesnt love that vibe and somehow person B's preference isnt given less preferance compared to person A.

It seems unavoidably and objectively obvious to me that person A's character concept is more important than person B's dislike of furries.

Like I said, you can't make a GM run a game the way they don't want to. Not even the ones paid for it unless there's a contract.

You can argue the ethics of it until the cows come home, but the practical reality is that GM choices win here in most cases.

 

[GobHag]

Because they're running the game and aren't forced to?

I mean, honestly, its the same reason GM choices tend to dominate the game in the first place.



Like I said, you can't make a GM run a game the way they don't want to. Not even the ones paid for it unless there's a contract.

You can argue the ethics of it until the cows come home, but the practical reality is that GM choices win here in most cases.

The cultural progression of RPG is all about the slow erosion of GMing power after all.

 

[innerdude]

That is nonsensical. Why would that give person B's largely irrelevant preference more weight? And why is person B implicitly the DM in the first place?

How is that a answer to my question at all?

That is basically the compromise between me and you, if the lore says that Tabaxi's act like this(inhuman) but so many players play them like that(human) even with rules that support or even force to act like this(inhuman) then one of the ways to reconcile is to make the lore and rules to act like that(human)

I wasn't as clear as I could have been. For some people its the issue that they look like catpeople at all (I realized after the fact this might be getting conflated with the "nonhumans who act like humans in a funny suit" complaint which is not the same thing).

So yes, I'm "Person B" in this equation, and for purposes of this thought exercise, assumption is that I'm the GM.

I was responding to RenleyRenfield 's assertion that for him, he's sick and tired of fantasy settings because "the lore and boundaries around lore" are useless/meaningless. For him, fantasy has turned into an uninteresting and off-putting useless grab-bag of "vaguely magical medieval-ish castle-place thingies."

And in a lot of ways, I agree with his assessment, and one of my personal "boundaries" that I'm sick of having to cross as a GM is pretending that races matter as a character-building or lore-building phenomenon.

As a GM, I personally (emphasis on "personally" here, as in "personal preference") am sick to death of "everyone's a human in a cat suit / dog suit / bird suit / lizard suit / frog suit."

Like, just give everyone their damn stat bonuses / tradeoffs or whatever, and just make them humans. It's ridiculous (to me) that we get so caught up in "OMG my setting has so many unique races, you can play as whatever you want!" when ultimately the lore and setting background provide absolutely nothing compelling about playing one race over another other than "fancier/furrier hats!"

I agree with Renley --- Races/heritages without backing from the setting / lore / background to give those heritages/cultures real weight, with real stakes in the setting, are (for me) frankly a cause for deep eye-rolling.

So it became part of the question --- what makes lore actually matter from a play perspective? Because races are without question "lore" for a setting. But if they don't actually matter in play other than stat bonuses and "cool outfit, bro!", (IMHO) they're a waste.