Please don't consider this a negative feedback but rather the starting point of a possible discussion. I think lore should operate the other way round: if you use it as a 'filler' just to answer to the current questions of the players you might reach the point where a question might bring to an answer that goes against the others since you don't know all the future needs/requests of the players.
On the contrary I believe that lore should be the backbone of the setting and for this reason it'd be thought (at least) beforehand. Without a clear idea of a consistent lore, then you could reach to some point where you might have no plausible explanations to players questions.
Then if you want to only think about lore as a whole rather than write it fully down, that's another point! What is important to my eyes is that lore should embed the message/purpose of your game otherwise the remaining part of the setting might leas to nowhere... and a game with no purpose is really dangerous (in case you wonder why, I have a post for that explanation).
Thanks in advance for your thoughtful post and looking forward to reading you!
I probably didn't express my thought as well as I could. I do want there to be lore, but in the past that might mean I know everything that happened in the world thousands of years ago, 99.9% of which would never come up in my campaign (had I even ended up playing it). It was lots of fun to write, but it didn't go anywhere.
By starting at the time of the campaign and working backward instead, I hope to fill out the details that characters are much more likely to discover. That might include some things that go far back into the world's history, but my efforts would be focused on the world as it exists at the time the campaign is placed.
If an ancient detail is particularly important to something modern, I'd still flesh it out, but not necessarily worry about fleshing out ALL of the ancient details.
I guess the other other thing to note is that I'm thinking mostly of a setting I hope to publish this year. I like the idea of explicitly leaving some details vague or mysterious to give GMs a place to plug in their own ideas.
All that said, thank YOU for the thoughtful response. I agree that a consistent lore is important to a setting. I definitely don't want to skimp out on that so much that the setting ends up as a total DIY for someone else picking it up. I own a couple of settings like that, and while I adore their minimalist presentation and rulesets, I'd like a little more help for story elements.
Thanks for considering my first comment! I do agree 110% on you reply! Happy to read it, and looking forward to complete my cosmogony (I will send you a comp copy for sure!).
Please don't consider this a negative feedback but rather the starting point of a possible discussion. I think lore should operate the other way round: if you use it as a 'filler' just to answer to the current questions of the players you might reach the point where a question might bring to an answer that goes against the others since you don't know all the future needs/requests of the players.
On the contrary I believe that lore should be the backbone of the setting and for this reason it'd be thought (at least) beforehand. Without a clear idea of a consistent lore, then you could reach to some point where you might have no plausible explanations to players questions.
Then if you want to only think about lore as a whole rather than write it fully down, that's another point! What is important to my eyes is that lore should embed the message/purpose of your game otherwise the remaining part of the setting might leas to nowhere... and a game with no purpose is really dangerous (in case you wonder why, I have a post for that explanation).
Thanks in advance for your thoughtful post and looking forward to reading you!
I probably didn't express my thought as well as I could. I do want there to be lore, but in the past that might mean I know everything that happened in the world thousands of years ago, 99.9% of which would never come up in my campaign (had I even ended up playing it). It was lots of fun to write, but it didn't go anywhere.
By starting at the time of the campaign and working backward instead, I hope to fill out the details that characters are much more likely to discover. That might include some things that go far back into the world's history, but my efforts would be focused on the world as it exists at the time the campaign is placed.
If an ancient detail is particularly important to something modern, I'd still flesh it out, but not necessarily worry about fleshing out ALL of the ancient details.
I guess the other other thing to note is that I'm thinking mostly of a setting I hope to publish this year. I like the idea of explicitly leaving some details vague or mysterious to give GMs a place to plug in their own ideas.
All that said, thank YOU for the thoughtful response. I agree that a consistent lore is important to a setting. I definitely don't want to skimp out on that so much that the setting ends up as a total DIY for someone else picking it up. I own a couple of settings like that, and while I adore their minimalist presentation and rulesets, I'd like a little more help for story elements.
Thanks for considering my first comment! I do agree 110% on you reply! Happy to read it, and looking forward to complete my cosmogony (I will send you a comp copy for sure!).
May the fun be always at your table!