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

[Aldarc]

Well.... let's keep going with this line of thought, because it has some points that can be discussed.

Starting with "aesthetics" which you seem to agree, "just amounts to humans doing cosplay.".... "I agree that these things aren't necessarily "lore,"

So... let's dig into why someone might balk or become frustrated with "aesthetics as lore". =
When a person buys an rpg book to learn it and play it, or even joins an rpg game = and someone says "this is the lore of the world" , and it just is "aesthetics" of different ears and skins. Then that person could be very let down. because that stuff isn't lore.

Let's take Vulcans of Star Trek. This show goes out of their way to say these Races have Lore that far far far surpasses their superficial looks. In fact, the Majority of all interactions with Vulcans is in regards to the Lore = not their looks!

This is a good example of a setting having 'lore' and then from that lore there was built physiology, and that physiology backs up evolutionary and technological and cultural divergence from humanity. Then from there we can have a few scenes of 'Vulcan ears' which give that fun of being non-human. (that let's be honest, tech or magic could also provide, and a good show like Star Trek acknowledges this - Forgotten Realms/Golarion/etc etc = do not. )

Tell me WHY the troll has ascetic monk martial arts. What about their physiology, history, and evolution and magic made that ever a thing at all... the humans had monks but they make wine and pen books...they don't do martial arts. So let's get into why the Trolls did, they have magic, they have tools... or do they? What was their evolutionary history 40,000 years before they invented martial arts? We don't need the whole timeline, but there should be Some lore that points back at something that isn't just skin-swapped humans...

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final note: yes its ok for folks to not care. its ok for folks to be happy with just bunny ears on humans. This is not a qualitative demand, its a discussion to help folks find better terms and sources for what they do like and how to politely avoid things they dont.

It seems that I have walked into a heated wall of text. I think that I'll just politely see myself out then.

 

[innerdude]

Here is where the thread first unravels for me (and I think @innerdude ) as well. That's not lore. What you just described is a kind of anthropomorphisation just in reverse. You are asking how the human behaves kinda catty... not lore. not purposeful. just a windowdressing on a human.

......

These are things that drive folks like me away from "races" and other such things, magic, classes, monsters, etc etc; too. At the end of the day, everyone is just playing a human. We still haven't given purpose or interconnected reason why any race even exists. Let alone why they come up with human only practices

It's that trite shallowness of personhood that makes it non-valuable at its core.

This is a fairly excellent and concise summary of my general feeling as well. Especially when, as a GM, I'm looking for much more in terms of character realization from my players than the generally shallow/trite tropes that often arise from non-purposeful anthropomorphism.

But to be fair, I do see the opposing argument of, "Well even if it isn't 'fully realized lore,' what's the harm of just letting people have a little fun and play 'physiology dress-up' as a cat-person or bird-person if they're so inclined?"

I recognize there's no inherent wrong, or "badwrongness" in a player wanting to have some kind of visualization/representation of their character that appeals to them.

But the tradeoff for me as the GM is that I am then committing to making any and all race/heritage representations matter, simply because as a point of emphasis for me, I don't want those things to remain non-purposeful or mere color. It places a burden on me as GM to engage with components of the setting "lore" or "backstory" that build meaning and purpose into the existence of that heritage as part of the fabric of the setting.

Because---whether the player cares or not---that level of integration into the lore is important to me. It needs to make sense, it needs to have a structure and causality.

But doing all of that work has almost never given me anything materially rewarding in play. In my experience, once the player makes their choice of heritage, they give little thought to it beyond the occasional, "Oh, he he, I'm a bird-person, I totally ruffle and pluck my feathers when I'm bored." As noted by @RenleyRenfield, it gets played back in shallow and trite fashion.

The closest it's ever come to mattering was when we played a 4th Age Lord of the Rings campaign using Savage Worlds. I had two players who did, at some level, get a bit deeper into understanding what it meant to play a Noldor in the world of Lord of the Rings. They found a deeper level of pathos because they were really exploring what it meant to live as an immortal being in a world that has been shaped largely by the failures of their ancestors, and only partially shaped by the successes. It didn't play out all the time, but there were definite moments where we experienced them playing character traits that meshed with that history.

But imagine the level of lore and backstory present to give that kind of character pathos---the thousands upon thousands of written pages of one of the great writers and philologists in modern history.

To give a more modern example---despite it not being as fleshed out as I might like, I absolutely love Golarion's concept of gnomes with "The Bleaching." It's such an interesting note or tidbit of gnomish heritage that gives it such an interesting spike of connection to the lore. It's literally the only time in my life I've thought that playing a gnome sounded appealing--"Wow, that would be really interesting to explore that as a player. What does it mean to be a person who literally must seek out novelty to survive? What kind of social and biological mechanisms would such a people possess to meet that need? How would my friends and fellow party members perceive that trait?"

 

[RenleyRenfield]

The closest it's ever come to mattering was when we played a 4th Age Lord of the Rings campaign using Savage Worlds. I had two players who did, at some level, get a bit deeper into understanding what it meant to play a Noldor in the world of Lord of the Rings. They found a deeper level of pathos because they were really exploring what it meant to live as an immortal being in a world that has been shaped largely by the failures of their ancestors, and only partially shaped by the successes. It didn't play out all the time, but there were definite moments where we experienced them playing character traits that meshed with that history.

I want to add to this as a bit of a digression, because.. reasons.

I ran a game of Forgotten Realms where there was some reason for Drow. Subterranean, pitch black, shorter than normal, and matriarchal and a few other things.

So, instead of burying my players in lore to read, or history to read, and not giving them much other than what a "here and now living Drow" would be thinking about. We set out to play.

The game was nothing but Drow.

You cannot go to the 'surface' - there IS NO surface.

There are no humans, no dwarves, nothing.

Just you and the endless caves of the Underdark. Forever.

We took time to play out various cults and factions of the Drow all based around some ancient and vague lore that Corellion, the Sun god had cursed and banished his dark wife, Lolth and her children, to a place "as hard as heart of stone".

That's the backstory they got, one sentence.

From this is became easy to roleplay out the disdain women had for men from the reason they were here being because of a 'man'. So our political matriarchy grew, and it got heated.

Our cults grew as magic was odd, different and without other sentient races, largely not about murder = but about survival.

Now we see a Purpose for magic, and the specific magics the Drow used/developed/mastered. They needed food, they were desperate for anything more than rare grubs, worms, and fungi. Magic could only aid them so much in this...

Their weapons were for caves, for things with chitin, for digging or climbing or swimming. NO armor, no baggy clothes. Just by playing as an entire race of people trying to live in the Underdark alone, that built a HUGE amount of reasons for why their skin was black, why their skin was tough as iron, why they were short, why they saw in the dark, why their teeth were sharp to crack chitin and tear worn flesh, why they are resistant to mind affects from years of Psilocybin mushrooms... Evolution and magic drew them to survive! Their features and magic are now after, derived from, purposeful because of the lore and history of these people.

So...

Imagine then... after a Year of roleplay, after 4 hour games, every week for a year... They broke through to the surface.

I didn't have to aid the players in acting "Drow" around humans. I didn't have to remind them of Drow features when around orcs. They were SO immerse in the personhood of the Drow, that Humans were so alien, farms were so magical, and Golden Elves were demonized after generations of self-mutating drow oral traditional lore and blind faith.

Never had we felt such a truly alien and inhuman "race" in a fantasy game - ever.

And all it took was a few sentences to read. The rest was just the night to night fun of roleplay.

Now, when we later on flip the script, and play as humans or whatever, and these players meet a Drow, they know how strange that interaction is about to be - and it has nothing to do with dark skin or white hair and other frivolous aesthetics

Not to mention the delight and horror new players get when they meet these 'Drow', breaks expectations and enriches their 'otherness' ten fold!

//sorry for the aside. it was just a fun time! and seemed relevant to making races and magic both deeply purposeful.