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

[VelvetViolet]

A lot of my initial criticisms are undoubtedly kneejerk reactions that I would change my mind on after time to cool down and reflect. Other times, I don't change my mind from my initial reaction but instead become better able to articulate and defend it.

I'll give an example of the latter.

When the second edition of Chronicles of Darkness came out and introduced the God-Machine Chronicle, myself and others were skeptical of the god-machine concept and what it tried to accomplish. The writers were aiming for emulating Call of Cthulhu, but myself and others felt they didn't do a good job and hamstrung themselves by writing lolrandom stuff like (paraphrasing) "the God-Machine wants humans to mine more uranium! Or maybe it doesn't? Who knows! We'll leave it up to the GM." It sounds like they were simultaneously indecisive and trolling their audience. (Some writers literally admitted they trolled their audience, so...) I lost interest in the games due to this disagreement and the cyberbullying explosion caused by the 20th anniversary releases, so I left around that point and didn't think about it again for years.

Years and years later, I bought and read Midnight World and it showed me exactly what I was looking for. It took the concept for the god-machine and improved upon it in every way. In that game, there are numerous "corpse universes" floating across the multiverse playing host to "dread beings" with their own themes and motivations. The titular midnight world has the misfortune of being thin-skinned, so the dread beings can send agents to invade and spread their agendas. This neatly fixes all the problems with the god-machine concept. The dread beings have defined goals (alien as they may be to us), they have defined themes and aesthetics to distinguish them, and there's an infinite number of them all operating at cross-purposes. The problem with the god-machine is that it tried using a single dread being equivalent to cover all of that conceptual space at once, so of course the execution fell flat for me. While the PCs don't need to know that there is more than one dread being and thus might not notice a difference, for GMs I think this design makes way more sense.

YMMV. Ultimately all art, enjoyment of art, and criticism of art is subjective, but the customer is always right in matters of taste.

 

[RenleyRenfield]

...

YMMV. Ultimately all art, enjoyment of art, and criticism of art is subjective, but the customer is always right in matters of taste.

There is a world of difference in the quality of person, when one says "I prefer X because my taste/interests is Y." versus the person who says "X is a terrible change, I wanted Y and they didn't do that, so this thing is terrible." People can work with and build off the first. Not much of anything can be done with the second.

One is someone saying what they like and what they hoped to see. The other is an entitled person thinkin their desires were the only ones that mattered. Again, see my star wars convention example...

I think you made interesting point in your WoD example. Like your example of initial changes or lore introduction to WoD stuff, there are other games that greatly benefit from that too. Maybe there was some aspect you fell in love with for some game's lore early on. But after time, you see that the changes they made enabled the game to be played more to what you actually wanted. In fact, lore/metaplot a retcon, especially in 90s rpgs, can go a long ways towards a game playing the way you thought it did - far better than the original lore.

My example is vampire. Going from poorly developed Sabbat metaplots to deeply rich Lancea Sanctum was a HUGE lore change, but Lancea is sooo much better! And really, it was a tiny effort to bring in any old aspects of Sabbat i did like.

Heck, some changes to lore and metaplot seem so big when read the first time. Then playing through you are like, "oh, this is basically the same as before, just framed different or with changes that don't change what it is or does, and also better enable other areas the game desperately needed."

I think someone else mentioned that- game design is not really in the mind of the player/consumer. Its a much more broad view of what its like to actually play the game, play it lots, and play it many different ways. So lore changes are better, and its backed by other elements of the game that are now better supported, ones that benefit even the most bull-headed of "I never want changes" players.

Oh hey, this guys a badguy now, and these factions are no longer framed as this exact list of factions = that fixed soooo much about vampire that they kept that process/lore in v5 too. While still enabling old sabbat play. Other old games/lore will benefit from this too.

 

[VelvetViolet]

There is a world of difference in the quality of person, when one says "I prefer X because my taste/interests is Y." versus the person who says "X is a terrible change, I wanted Y and they didn't do that, so this thing is terrible." People can work with and build off the first. Not much of anything can be done with the second.

Great. I'll make sure to specify from now on that everything I say is just my subjective opinion.

Oh hey, this guys a badguy now, and these factions are no longer framed as this exact list of factions = that fixed soooo much about vampire that they kept that process/lore in v5 too. While still enabling old sabbat play. Other old games/lore will benefit from this too.

Two corrections.

1) The ideas behind the sabbat were actually split between the Lancea Sanctum, VII, and Belial's Brood. The LS is basically VTM's Path of Night expanded into an actual organization. Belial's Brood recycles rules like the valdery (it uses the exact same jargon). VII serves the role of unknowable bogeymen that civilized vampires fear.

2) V5 doesn't have covenants at all. It still tries to make everything run off its 13 clan straitjackets. That's one of the reasons I don't like it. I don't like VTR either (as I said, I vastly prefer Unisystem after getting time to mull it over), but V5 is mostly a downgrade by my unscientific estimation. The multiple powers per level rule makes more sense to me than VTR's devotion bloat, but the limit that characters can only learn one per level is stupid imo.

The only problem with that is too many parts of Witchcraft are mechanically a mess. There are far too clearly winners (Mages) and losers (Mediums) in function type, and that's not the only problem. Some campaigns only using one type might work okay, but as a concept for an inter-group urban fantasy game, it simply wasn't sufficiently well designed.

Fair enough. I never said it didn't have problems (and those can be fixed in a new edition anyway). It just doesn't have the many many specific problems that make me hate World of Darkness. Problems that were fixed by other games that never got the recognition they deserved.

I think you made interesting point in your WoD example. Like your example of initial changes or lore introduction to WoD stuff, there are other games that greatly benefit from that too. Maybe there was some aspect you fell in love with for some game's lore early on. But after time, you see that the changes they made enabled the game to be played more to what you actually wanted. In fact, lore/metaplot a retcon, especially in 90s rpgs, can go a long ways towards a game playing the way you thought it did - far better than the original lore.

Yeah, no. My point is that the god-machine failed, another game did it better, that other game was forgotten and never got the recognition it deserved.

I still hate the whole concept of lore and I still cannot understand the appeal even after trying. People who like it cyberbullied me for not being in lockstep with them. When I tried getting into lore, then publishers changed it, multiple times with every new creative team, and insulted me for not being in lockstep with them. There's no point in engaging because every single time I get driven away no matter what I do. Lore attracts toxicity like magnets attract iron filings. If I want to stay sane and healthy and happy, then I have to dismiss the entire concept of lore as a cancer that must be cut out and burned before it kills me.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I still hate the whole concept of lore and I still cannot understand the appeal even after trying. People who like it cyberbullied me for not being in lockstep with them. When I tried getting into lore, then publishers changed it, multiple times with every new creative team, and insulted me for not being in lockstep with them. There's no point in engaging because every single time I get driven away no matter what I do. Lore attracts toxicity like magnets attract iron filings. If I want to stay sane and healthy and happy, then I have to dismiss the entire concept of lore as a cancer that must be cut out and burned before it kills me.

I have to say that this doesn't entirely jibe with what you said earlier, because you seemed to like the lore in Witchcraft, and there was plenty of it there (even if some of what was in the process of coming out never saw the light of day because the line died in the middle of some of it arriving).

Honestly, it sounds more like you didn't like the particular lore in the WoD line and how it progressed, and then had problems because it was so popular people got really soggy with you about it. But that's not the same thing as disliking lore in general. Lore exists in any system with embedded settings, and if there's only one setting the lore is going to be pretty visible. The only way to avoid that is to avoid games with settings completely, by aiming for narrow or broad generic systems and rolling your own.

Otherwise, at the risk of being rude, what you want seems intrinsically contradictory.

 

[VelvetViolet]

Otherwise, at the risk of being rude, what you want seems intrinsically contradictory.

I think I’m talking about “lore” and “canon” interchangeably, sorry. I don’t mind “lore” in the sense of “content”. Classes, factions, monsters, etc. I love that stuff.

What I don’t like are these dogmatic religions that spring up around lore. The edition wars, fandom toxicity, and so on. It always drives me away.

I had so much negative experiences with WoD fans in particular, just because I liked the CoD reboot at the time (not so much now, since the bullying eventually got to me). Paradox made V5 to spite them. BL2 got $37 mil written off. That doesn’t help me in any way, but it feels like cosmic justice for them being nasty people.

I’m permanently reticent to touch any remotely similar games. They all inevitably seem to turn into boiling cesspools in the same way.

I think games like Night’s Black Agents and All Flesh Must Eaten are the pinnacle of design. They don’t really have lore or canon as such. Multiple sample settings are provided, but groups are encouraged to invent their own stuff. I wish all games were like that because that feels like what I’ve wanted all along.

WitchCraft does have only a single setting, but it’s very broad and flexible in ways that others I had bad experiences with are not. E.g. the werewolves can be traditional crazed killers under the full moon, they can be Sumerian spiritual warriors guarding the balance between muggles and magic, born werewolves, infected by an attack, cursed as punishment, animals other than wolves, or really whatever strikes the player’s fancy. It doesn’t do everything I could imagine (e.g. it isn’t The Everlasting or Fireborn), but it does do a lot more than games I had bad experiences with. That’s impressive to me since it only got a handful of books before being canceled.

 

[RenleyRenfield]

I think I’m talking about “lore” and “canon” interchangeably, sorry. I don’t mind “lore” in the sense of “content”. Classes, factions, monsters, etc. I love that stuff.

What I don’t like are these dogmatic religions that spring up around lore. The edition wars, fandom toxicity, and so on. It always drives me away.

I also do not mean this to be rude, it's just there is some obvious dodgy logic here. This ^ is not a real delineation. This is just some odd deflection to defend personal entitlement to whatever game is precious. To try and say such sound more like trying to defend personal attachment to game X's lore, while not realizing that is a mere personal preference and not some holistic change that actually affects play.

Lore for why there are N clans in vampire = lore for what each clan is defined as. Same same.
Lore for why there are clans at all = lore for why vampires interact they way they do. Same same.
Lore for why the rules interact with mechanics that enable all these above distinctions = lore. same same.

You can't say out of one side : "lore" is a "classes I am ok with" and then say: "class lore" has nothing to do with cannon. Like... they are quite literally the same thing.

Change a class, you change canon. Change canon and you change a class.


Vampire V5 very much did what Requiem did, with its covenants as Blood Cults. And they are greatly pulled from and influenced by Requiem's content. So much so they even utterly re-wrote Giovanni and broke out a new "Hecata".

V5 is a great example of making sweeping changes to various clans, and in doing do changed/retconned lore/canon and at the same time improving play though better diversity in clans (in this case the blood cult ones). Requiem and V5 are both wildly successful as RPGs and design. I am not saying ever choice was perfect, but after going back to a V20 game.. V5 is lightyears better lore/canon/updates... Were their marketing practices the best, well.. eh... but the games are both great!

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think I’m talking about “lore” and “canon” interchangeably, sorry. I don’t mind “lore” in the sense of “content”. Classes, factions, monsters, etc. I love that stuff.

Yeah, but it goes beyond that to history and such. If that's not lore, I'm not sure what is.

What I don’t like are these dogmatic religions that spring up around lore. The edition wars, fandom toxicity, and so on. It always drives me away.

That seems more about gamer culture and certainly isn't lore as this thread is talking about it.

WitchCraft does have only a single setting, but it’s very broad and flexible in ways that others I had bad experiences with are not. E.g. the werewolves can be traditional crazed killers under the full moon, they can be Sumerian spiritual warriors guarding the balance between muggles and magic, born werewolves, infected by an attack, cursed as punishment, animals other than wolves, or really whatever strikes the player’s fancy. It doesn’t do everything I could imagine (e.g. it isn’t The Everlasting or Fireborn), but it does do a lot more than games I had bad experiences with. That’s impressive to me since it only got a handful of books before being canceled.

And yet, each of the mage groups has specific history and culture, and the Immortals are all descended from Atlantis. I really don't think the distinction is at all clear here; it really does smack that you like one and not the other for multiple reasons so you don't see them as the same.

 

[VelvetViolet]

I also do not mean this to be rude, it's just there is some obvious dodgy logic here. This ^ is not a real delineation. This is just some odd deflection to defend personal entitlement to whatever game is precious. To try and say such sound more like trying to defend personal attachment to game X's lore, while not realizing that is a mere personal preference and not some holistic change that actually affects play.

I am entitled and I hate myself for it because that is the exact same thing that motivated the cyberbullies who traumatized me.

Vampire V5 very much did what Requiem did, with its covenants as Blood Cults. And they are greatly pulled from and influenced by Requiem's content. So much so they even utterly re-wrote Giovanni and broke out a new "Hecata".

I don’t consider them interchangeable. I don’t think all change is inherently good. Do you?

it really does smack that you like one and not the other for multiple reasons so you don't see them as the same.

Basically yes. WoD fans cyberbullied the hell out of me for not worshipping their lore and I’m still traumatized by that. It’s been years and years and I still get triggered every so often. Now I’m being told all change is good change and I should shut up and be grateful for anything.

This entire convo I’ve been feeling very turbulent because I feel like I’m told my feelings are invalid, I shouldn’t care about anything because it’s all dross and make believe games, and I was stupid to invest any emotional energy in these silly make believe games in the first place. I feel like I’m going insane here.

 

[Scott Christian]

And it got me thinking---what qualities must lore possess to rise to the level of "actually mattering" in play?
Or perhaps put another way, what qualities must players perceive about lore for them to consider it as "actually mattering" in play?

Lore matters when the story makes it one of the characters. A dungeon isn't a group of pathways underground to be cleared out, explored, or destroyed. It is a character, and each step inside of it reveals more about the character. Then, once players see it as such, lore will matter greatly.

The problem is...

For DMs to create a character dungeon (or any lore that becomes a character), they must do a lot of work ahead of time. If it doesn't flow, or if it is inconsistent, or if it fails a logic/smell test, then it is no longer a character - it is a dungeon. But like I said, it takes a lot of work on the DMs part to pass that smell test, especially for players that pay close attention.

In my personal life, what I have found is that most DMs I talk to believe they can just "pull this off." But I have never seen them "pull it off" without the work. Most that think they "pulled it off" just have players that don't know better, don't worry about such things, or are happy not having lore as a character. And that's cool, for them.

As a GM, I want players to bring personality, attitudes, values, mindsets, thought processes to life through their characters---the things that make us as individual humans interesting. Making your character a "walking mushroom" just because "that would be so rad" actively hinders getting to the character traits I'm actually interested in seeing from their characters.

Again, that is a hard ask from a player if the DM hasn't put in the work to create the cultures and make them interesting. To have values, mindsets, and thought processes different from a human, they must have a culture that is distinct from a human. That doesn't mean this new created culture of say, a turtle person, can't be an amalgam of cultures we know from history or fantasy/sci fi settings. The player has to have something to draw from. And that takes the work of the DM.

And let's face it. Many players don't want to play their turtle that way. They want it to be human, but to look like a turtle. But, if your question is actually answered: What qualities must lore posses to make it matter? And we're discussing races. They must have a culture that the player finds interesting. And this again, falls back on the DM. If you want lore to matter to your player that chose a turtle, then start introducing that lore as early as possible; have them stumble on a seaside inn that makes jellyfish stew, just like mom used to. Have them find the remnants of that war hundreds of years ago that almost wiped them out. You know the remnants? The seaside beach where people still find washed up shells, the cliff face still has a blackened blast and arcane symbols that glow at night, and parts of the giant nets used to pull the soldiers away are still caught in the coral reef below the water. (Man, I hate the saughagin!)

It's all DM work.

What's intriguing about magic isn't the inner workings---its how the characters and the assumed cultural society develop norms around its use. For me, magic is only interesting insofar as it creates meaningful social play space inside the fiction. If it doesn't serve that purpose, I generally don't care about magic at all.

Again, the DM makes this happen by creating consistency; that interconnection between magic and history and culture. The same thing you say for magic could be true of religion in a TTRPG as well. It doesn't mean much if there is no religious social play space for the players to use.

And, say it with me, that means, the DM had better be doing the work to make sure it is there, it is interesting to their table, and has thought it through so it passes the smell test.