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

Retros_x said:

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.

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TiQuinn said:

I remember everyone at one game wanted to kill Drizzt when he showed up one time.

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zakael19 said:

This is a bit of an aside, One of the coolest PBTA “knowledge” moves is from Freebooters on the Frontier:

“Establish

When you introduce a potential fact and the Judge agrees that it might be true, say how you heard about it. When its truth is tested (now or later), roll +INT: on a 10+, it’s just as you say; on a 7-9, you were right, but there’s a caveat or complication of the Judge’s choosing; on a 6-, mark Intelligence, and the Judge makes a move.”

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Bill Zebub said:

Absolutely this.

Too often GMs, or adventure authors, indulge their desire to craft a whole backstory for their world, and expect the players to understand some part of it.

The only way I've seen lore/backstory work well, which includes the players being able to remember it, is when the bits and pieces emerge because they are immediately relevant to player goals.

I'll add that the same is true for lore intended for the GM in adventures/settings: too often the very first section is the history/backstory/lore, with the implication that the GM needs to understand all this stuff. I hate it. I want to know the state of things in the present. All that lore and backstory can be put into an appendix, if it's necessary at all.

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Micah Sweet said:

See, I love history (real or imagined), so I want the history of the setting front and center. That's the most fun part for me. That history is what makes the setting make logical sense, and it needs to in order for me to appreciate it properly. Verisimilitude is a very high priority for me in RPGs (though certainly not my only one).

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innerdude said:

An interesting point was brought up in the What rpg system would you use for a 60+ session fantasy campaign? thread earlier this week.

It was expressed by @RenleyRenfield that fantasy settings were no longer of interest, because "none of their lore actually matters or has intriguing boundaries".



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?

For my own part, I generally still enjoy fantasy settings in the sense of "vaguely medieval-ish time period with magic."

But I'm totally, completely done with fantasy settings that have races/heritages with "alternate physiologies". To the point that I'm this close to basically stating up front for every campaign I GM from now on that human is the only available heritage.

I'm still very much interested in Tolkien-esque fantasy PRECISELY because it means I don't have to worry or care about culturally portraying non-human heritages. I'm not interested in portraying or interacting with cat people. Or dog people. Or walking-tree-people. Or (with apologies to Daggerheart) mushroom, turtle, or frog people.

Humans, elves, dwarves, halflings---and maybe on a good day, orcs, goblins and gnomes. (Truthfully, they're all just "humans with minor differences in appearance traits," but I can at least give my players some illusion of choice, I suppose.)

So this is kind of a weird intersection of Renley's other statement about "boundaries." One particular "boundary" or "distinctiveness" for many fantasy settings seems to be the prevalence of a multitude of heritages----but fantasy (or sci-fi for that matter) trying to set itself apart with "15 new and unique heritages!" does absolutely nothing for me.

In my experience, physiologies based on heritage never matter in play. On the very, very rare occasions a PC's race/heritage ever mattered, it was in such a shallow, superficial manner that it rendered the "matter" trite. In my experience players don't choose race/heritage based on deeper character building / cultural introspection / psychological interweaving. They choose race/heritage for A) the stat bonuses or B) some vague notion of "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if I was a furry cat person?"

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.

This was further driven home by my recent reading of Project Hail Mary ..... which to avoid spoilers, I'll only say that one of the main characters ultimately fits into this same paradigm----the character is of interest PRECISELY because of the presentation of their personality, attitudes, values, mindsets, and thought processes. The character's physiology is only interesting insofar as it presents a metaphysical space for presenting and exploring the character traits.

Another boundary where I diverge greatly from say, Brandon Sanderson --- I couldn't care less about how "unique" and "special snowflake-y" the magic system is. I don't care if your magic system is mentalism/psionics, Vancian waving of bat poop and pearls in the air until your spell goes off and its "burned from your memory", sorcerous "burning of the blood," ingesting bits of metal into your stomach to activate powers, or convincing alternate-dimension demons / angels / fairy sprites into altering reality at your behest.

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.

Say what you will about the presence of the Jedi in Star Wars, the Jedi Order absolutely creates an interesting social play space inside its fiction. Anyone who watches Star Wars with any level of non-passive interest can describe for you the social normative conventions of Force use imposed by the Jedi --- their political aims, their teaching and instruction style, the limits of use for avoiding the "dark side, etc.

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Micah Sweet said:

See, I love history (real or imagined), so I want the history of the setting front and center. That's the most fun part for me. That history is what makes the setting make logical sense, and it needs to in order for me to appreciate it properly. Verisimilitude is a very high priority for me in RPGs (though certainly not my only one).

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zakael19 said:

Yeah but while there’s a handful of people like you, threads like this wouldn’t exist if this was a common paradigm in the hobby.

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