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

[Lanefan]

Never give them lore straight, filter it through a narrator, Grantus the sage said "...." and the like. Or you recall from your studies that "...."
History is often unreliable and contradicts.

Factual history, such as who reigned when and what years the red comet appeared, should be fairly reliable in any society a) whose language has a written form and b) puts any value on recordkeeping.

In a typical RPG setting, the longer-lived species would seem to make the best such lore-keepers. For play purposes, a player-visible document or webpage containing such basic factual info can be really useful.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'll second that. Most D&D races that stay true to their racial characteristics are neither more nor less than a Star Trek (TOS) Planet of the Hats.

Also adventurers pretty much by definition are weird and strange, having turned their back on their species normal way of life for the life of an adventurer no matter what that way of life is. The closest you'd get is something like someone who's taken something equivalent to an Amish Rumspringa and gone ludicrously above and beyond.

Its not impossible for an adventurer to still land within the range of more or less "normal" things their species does, depending on the range of such things in a first place. My character in a limited-run PF2e campaign some years ago started his life off as a professional mercenary, had a wife and kids, but worked far afield and sent money back to them. At one point he figured out that while the hazard was theoretically higher, he could actually make more money operating with adventurers than as part of a mercenary band, and shifted over (he probably could have done a better mix of risk to gain becoming an officer, but his personality was poorly suited to that and he knew it). He wasn't much different from anyone else who became a mercenary, or even a professional soldier in most ways (you can, of course, argue how normal that was as an occupation, but there have been places and times in our own world where you couldn't really call it uncommon).

 

[Thomas Shey]

I can only speak for myself, but my stake is that other species that are functionally treated as humans have a tendency to edge into becoming like analogies or allegories for real life ethnicities, which I find kind of questionable. A thought I had recently is that if a character comes from an analogue to a real life culture, I’d much rather they be human than otherwise. Making, say, a China-like nation majority gnome opens the door to way too many headaches in my observations.

This of course isn’t inevitable when using species for aesthetics, but I found it after goes hand in hand.

While I understand the concern, I'm not sure people playing humans they're trying to evoke other cultures with do much better routinely, so...

 

[Micah Sweet]

Does somebody who wants to play an outlier, "weird" human have to adhere to the same standards and justify it?

Yup. Everyone comes from somewhere.

 

[Bill Zebub]

The history of D&D especially in the TSR era. oD&D and Keep on the Borderlands is basically a fantasy Western with the orcs and co standing in for Native Americans - and that's before we get into e.g. Mystara.

I think that poster was talking about players themselves having that interpretation. I do agree that official materials shouldn't promote those stereotypes, but I also think it would be going a bit too far to try to avoid rules that might get used in negative ways at some tables.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The, "can't be bothered" is a characterization loaded with presumptions.

I will repeat - the setting lore for a species is typically a stereotype. Real sentients vary widely in behavior. If this is supposed to be a simulation of something like real people, we should not expect individuals to adhere to a stereotype any more than we should expect humans to adhere to the various cultural stereotypes we have about them.

Not having a specific justification for playing other than the bog standard stereotype is less an indication of "couldn't be bothered" than it is an indication that the player doesn't feel a justification should be necessary or required.



So, the base question of the thread is, "What makes lore matter to the players?"
You are the GM in this scenario. "The GM thinks it isn't too much to ask," is not a selling point to a player.

Like @Bill Zebub said then, I guess we're not allowed to wander off topic then? Because I wasn't directly answering the OP's post in my response to you.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This is the point I was trying to make with my thought experiments about playing humans in varied ways. We accept a huge variety of personality types with humans...in fact we encourage and even expect players to come up with something more interesting than standard tropes. And yet we expect non-humans to conform to expectations/norms? Seems like a weird double standard.

I just want your character's culture and background to inform them, just like it does for everyone in real life.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Never give them lore straight, filter it through a narrator, Grantus the sage said "...." and the like. Or you recall from your studies that "...."
History is often unreliable and contradicts.

All of Lord of the Rings is based on reports by not especially reliable sources. And don't even get me started on The Hobbit! Bilbo is basically a travel influencer.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I just want your character's culture and background to inform them, just like it does for everyone in real life.

I'm glad you apply the standard symmetrically. I get the feeling that not everybody does.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Factual history, such as who reigned when and what years the red comet appeared, should be fairly reliable in any society a) whose language has a written form and b) puts any value on recordkeeping.

Oh god do I feel the urge to cross the red line into current politics to refute that assertion...