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

[overgeeked]

Lore matters to players when it matters to their characters. Lore matters to the characters when it has an immediate and direct impact on what they’re doing right now, something that’s coming up very soon, or something that happened in the recent past.

No one cares about the history of the world 1000 years ago unless it directly effects the current situation, provides relevant and necessary information about something they’re about to do, or something they’ve just done.

Basically, does this info matter to the actual game we’re playing right now? If not, it doesn’t matter. The geography and politics of continents on the far side of the planet are irrelevant…unless they’re somehow directly relevant to the current moment the PCs are experiencing.

Randomly telling the players through their characters that the elves are different here will be met with blank stares or questions about why it matters. Or worse, the dreaded, “So what?”

Pit the PCs against one of your special and different elves and suddenly exactly how they are different really matters.

 

[billd91]

Last time we talked about this ("how do you get your players to care about your setting" was the thread I think), I said that having your players co-create a bunch of the details is the only thing that I've seen really work. <snip>

We're setting up the end of the campaign right now, and each player has highlighted a number of burning questions they have about the lore and the world they'd really like to have answered. 9/9 players I've had across two instances of the game have said that learning more about this world their characters inhabit is one of the top reasons they are excited to show up to a new session each time.

I think zakael19 is on the right track in the sense that the thing that makes setting lore matter to the players... is the players. It could be by direct investment of effort through shared world-building as in zakael19's post. But it could also just be attitudinal whether directly invested or not. If the players WANT to know more about it, then the lore will matter.

If the players are neither invested nor have the attitude to want to know more, nothing in the lore itself - whether shallow or deep as the Marianas Trench - will really matter to them.

 

[zakael19]

I think zakael19 is on the right track in the sense that the thing that makes setting lore matter to the players... is the players. It could be by direct investment of effort through shared world-building as in zakael19's post. But it could also just be attitudinal whether directly invested or not. If the players WANT to know more about it, then the lore will matter.

If the players are neither invested nor have the attitude to want to know more, nothing in the lore itself - whether shallow or deep as the Marianas Trench - will really matter to them.

Yeah, I've definitely heard people say they were super interested in some aspect of this world or that one, I just haven't seen it in play! Hell even the CR fans I had playing Call of the Netherdeep were interested in Exandria because of their fondness for the media; but not super interested in most of the lore of the module. When there was a callout to some beloved character or whatever, they were like "oooh, it's so and so from episode whatever the heck!"

 

[Reynard]

To circle back around to lore broadly, I am a "shallow lore" person -- both in settings I prefer to play in, and when i create worlds for my games. Deep world building just doesn't interest me -- but I do liek flavor. Star Wars is my Platonic Ideal for this kind of lore and world building. SO much of it is just stuff thrown at the wall with no real concern over how it all ties together. And that is totally fine wit