dealing-with-lore

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  • Storyboard: Lore -- what is it good for?

    by 
    Eliot Lefebvre
    Eliot Lefebvre
    09.10.2010

    Over the course of the long holiday weekend, I took the opportunity to apply to a guild. (That's right -- I don't get free passes; I have to apply just like everyone else. On a related note, keep an eye out for my list of guilds that I'm not in that are also horrible.) Among the many questions on the application was one that immediately made me sit up and take notice. To summarize, the question was asking how important it was to the applicant that all RP remain grounded in the game's lore. In my mind, lore has a strange relationship with roleplayers. On the one hand, it's rare that you'll start playing in the world if the lore doesn't interest you at least somewhat -- no one wants to play in a game that doesn't feel like a remotely plausible world. (Yes, we're using "plausible" in the sense that dragons, alien invasions, and human-like robots can all be accepted. Plausibility for unreal settings is an odd concept.) Yet at the same time, the lore is its own creature, not really actively supporting roleplayers and sometimes ruling out cool stuff. How do we deal with our simultaneous friend and enemy?