You're Doing Lore All Wrong!! -OR- A Prototype TTRPG Lore Checklist

Lore! It's been a hot topic lately (see: In search of a better gazetteer and Lore! What is it good for?) and I have some opinions. Mostly that I think lore is great! Lore is cool! Lore helps you build your world's themes and gives your players gameable tools! Lore is what makes a game truly unique and amazing!! And I keep seeing and hearing about so many of you using it completely wrong. 

Well, OK, "wrong" is subjective, but it works well for the clickbaity title.

If you're not in the mood for a long read I'll skip to the good part which is that Lore should be play. It should establish the play field, be wielded as a tool, be slowly puzzled out and most of all Lore should be fun! Even fun to read!

We're getting ahead of ourselves though. First, what is Lore? I'm pretty much using it as "History + Physics." The rules that govern the world and the events that have transpired. Pretty dry stuff. It's why a lot of Lore reads like your least favorite high school textbook interspersed with AO3 fiction. But we can spice it up:

1 - Lore Establishes Setting

"Well duh" I hear you say. Listen up theoretical reader! It's more complicated than that! It's a give and take of inferences all of which should feel organic and playful. Which of these tells you more about the setting:

Exhibit A:

In the fortified city of Veluzi all equipment is +10% more expensive than is listed in the Shopping Guide, due to a Cruxian tax. Merchants seem reluctant to bargain because they are being pressured by other taxes on essential goods, something they're only willing to grumble about when the gilded military patrols aren't near their stall.  

The Duke of Cruxia's throne room is adorned with artifacts and oddities. Many of these artifacts bear the symbol of an Eagle with a burning heart, the same symbol on the banner of the Duke's New Cruxian Battalion ((who the Players have already randomly encountered aggressively clearing out the wilderness with brutal efficiency)).

The Duke has summoned the PCs for their dungeon crawling expertise. He requires them to collect a "Gustonian Imperial Standard," a banner of pure gold which bears the same Eagle iconography. It's buried with a dead Gustonian Noble at the heart of a local dungeon. When asked about the history, the Duke is all too happy to regale players with tales of the "righteous" Gustonian Empire's military conquest over local barbarian tribes some hundreds of years ago.

Exhibit B:

From -355 E.C. (Era Civil) to 650 E.C. the Gustonian Empire ruled the northern reaches with an iron fist after years of military expansion. They built vast catacombs beneath the wilderness to transport troops and bury their dead. Their political structure was largely that of a militaristic plutocracy.

In 1625 E.C. (present day for the PCs) Cruxia has begun to mobilize an impressive military via a heavy taxation policy. They are localized out of the city of Veluzi, where the Duke of Cruxia resides. Also stationed in Veluzi are the New Cruxian Battalion who are clearing the wilderness in preparation for further military expansion of Cruxia's territory. 

Which did you learn more from?

Or more importantly, which was more fun to learn from? In Exhibit A you're pulling apart a puzzle box of associations and implications. Sounds like these Gustonians were really powerful, and maybe even built some of the Underworld? Also seems like the Duke is obsessed with imitating them. Sounds a little fascy and like someone who has ambitions beyond his border. Meanwhile Exhibit B is neither fun to read nor fun for a GM to have to figure out how to express to a Player. Maybe have someone roll a history check and then explain it all to them? 

It's important that establishing information is gameable, a GM doesn't have to wrack their brain about how to organically deliver the history, because the present world organically should be engaging with it. That history (and lore) should be informing the setting, thus from the setting you should be able to infer the lore. And this is without getting into how setting, lore and mechanics all blend together to establish a game's theme and feel.

It's an obvious checkbox, but a vitally important one from a design standpoint and as GMs homebrew their settings. Everything is interconnected, no part of history or physics exists in a void. Likewise, that history is interpreted and retold subjectively. Through context clues we can tell the Duke cares more for military conquest than his own people's wellbeing. We also know that he thinks the Gustonian Empire was the tits. Thus we can infer that the Gustonian Empire was similarly militaristic (or at least that's how the Duke understands and appreciates them). And thus through his amorous imitation we understand the guy has delusions of grandeur.

Anyways I'm trying to get more into Fantasy these days so let's stick with this example for a bit.

2 - Lore is a Tool to Wield

Deep in those dungeons the Players pass by a wall with a giant Eagle etched across the surface. At the eagle's center is a small hole, a little larger than a fist. Closer investigation or skills checks may reveal faint burn marks within the hole. 

This wall and puzzle are completely optional, but observant readers who are keeping up with the lore may have figured out the solution: Place a heart in the hole and burn it, then the wall will split open revealing a small treasure room. Neat! 

This is the simplest example of what I mean when I say lore is a tool. Knowing the history should give you an edge in the present, otherwise it's not really information the players need. I don't particularly care what types of clay Gustonians used in their ceramics, but I do care about there being slime residue all over the ancient kitchen along with a scroll of Slime Binding. A long lost recipe included milking a slime? [[Quest Accepted: Slime Gourmet?!?!]]

Maybe you saw a relief in the underworld of a Gustonian king being stabbed by figures clad in pearls and rings, and you use an etching of this relief to sow doubt in the Duke's mind and get rid of the pesky retainer that keeps interfering with your bargaining. Much more interesting than "The Third Gustonian King was assassinated by the leaders of the Noble Houses."

Maybe you encounter a Lemrois farmer with a Cruxian accent and your Players ask why that is. He recounts that the farm was Cruxian lands some 80 years ago, before a war broke out with Lemrois that his father died in. Can't imagine which hexes we should avoid when the Duke starts invading Lemrois (or pursue for battlefield loot). 

Maybe you're slowly piecing together the catastrophe that brought down the Gustonian Empire in the first place and now have shifted goals to trying to prevent (or actively recreate) it. 

Those who do not learn from history...

3 - Lore is a Puzzle to be Solved

All of this has been leading to the same basic theorem. Your lore is a puzzle to be solved, not info to be dumped. And I don't simply mean "Your lore is there to help you puzzle things out." I literally mean your players should only be told the minimal amount of important lore before the campaign starts:

"What are the nations in this world?" - As an inexperienced adventurer you mostly know about Cruxia, but here's a list of other countries you've heard of [[Hands them a list of 5 countries, their relative cardinal directions from Cruxia and 2-3 sparse hooking sentences about each]]. You'd need to travel to other countries or ask around ((getting subjective knowledge)) if you want to learn more.

"Are there undead in this setting?" - You've certainly heard rumors.

"Why is worshipping the deity of war outlawed?" - I have no idea, you'd have to ask the locals.

"How does magic work in this setting?" - Fuck around and find out.

Any time your player's character would know the answer, make sure to make it subjective! Inject it with propaganda and biases of that character's upbringing:

"What is a Roller Beast?" To your knowledge it's just another mindless flesh hungry monster from the underworld that eats adventurer brains. Rumors say these vile creatures can even mimic human speech. [[Rollers are actually quite intelligent if often malevolent remnants of the Gustonian Empire - Some seek revenge, others seek redemption, all of them speak fluent Cruxian and are by no means mindless.]]

What this does is solve two problems: If your players don't care about a given piece of lore, they won't ask and you won't have to spend time explaining anything to them. If your players do care about a given piece of lore, you can now have them explore that curiosity diegetically, sharing theories between sessions, mulling over sparse evidence. Each puzzle solved might help solve other puzzles, whether that's inferring character motivations, uncovering horrible secrets or literally opening secret rooms. (There can even be genuine joy in hunting down lore for the sake of lore. Dark Souls is a prime example.)

This is already baked into the apocalyptic nature of many campaign settings (See: What's Your Apocalypse?). A derelict spaceship. A thriving post-nuclear war landscape. A mythic underworld of dungeons built by an ancient empire. They all beg the same question: What happened here?

For the love of the game do not ever answer that question before the game starts. Or if you do, answer it only in part and very subjectively.

Most video games are excellent at making their lore focal, while never telling the player too much at the start. Whether that's the inspiring techno-primal world of Horizon or the many many mysteries of The Evil Within. Even in a game as narratively sparse as Breath of the Wild, lore takes a center stage as a forgotten past that Link must put together ((even if the actual delivery is a bit spoon-fed, especially in comparison to the gradual world building of the Souls games - See: Minimalist Lore)) 

Let the players know the basic parameters of what they need, and then shush about the rest until they ask. This keeps the players from getting overloaded with info and offers a whole subset of player-driven adventures to go on.

4 - Lore is Shown Not Told

Maybe you enter an NPC's room and notice there's fist sized holes in their walls. Maybe you descend into a dungeon and every elf skeleton you see is in chains, their rib cages shattered outward. Maybe your new +2 Blade of Bloodlust carries the same symbol as the supposed deity of peace whose followers preach pacifism.

The Lore that is told should always be subjective and/or sparse, always from someone's point of view, and the lore that's truly objective? That can only be shown not told. Lore is evidence of a history that once was, and it's up to the players to come to their own conclusions. Hell maybe the theories they have are more interesting than the lore you'd intended and you shift gears behind the scenes a bit!

Environmental Story Telling is a key tool in the toolbox of game design and one that makes learning the lore engaging and fun. And I don't just mean fun for the players. We hear so much discourse about how the GM is a player too, that we completely forget that reading a module can be play. 

I adore adventures that don't tell me too much upfront, that expect me to find the common threads, modules structured in such a way that I as a GM feel like I'm exploring the dungeon as I read through it. These are especially fun, because as players prod into dark unwritten corners, I get to learn and write the lore with them ((even better in a homebrew settings where everything can seem planned from the start)). The "reading lore as play" experience is superbly exemplified in my all-time favorite adventure: Gradient Descent. Without going into too much detail or spoilers, I can't recommend enough the journey this adventure takes you on when read cover-to-cover. Stepping you through each area as a player might, as you spiral down into the truth. ((Plus it has great ideas for how the module and its resolution infect and affect future adventures.))

In the instances where you really do have to tell and not show ((such as a list of nations known to the player at the start of a campaign)) make sure to keep information sparse but still hooking. For example:

• Lemrois (North-West) - Nation of merchants and cheese. Host to the greatest (and most pirate infested) port city in the land: Port Sulvisse. Supposedly a dungeonless land.
• Griksfield (North) - Nation of iron and ice. Famous for its military's iron-drake riders. Home of the legendary dungeon from which few adventurers return: The Glass Keep.

There's still plenty of mystery in there, but there's some solid factual anchors (much like a landmark on a hexmap) for players to latch on to and create their own adventures. The best part is that these kinds of handouts are supremely low effort, put very little strain on Players who do decide to read it, and allow you to diegetically explore the rest ((maybe a player wants to go to the local adventurer's guild to learn more about the Glass Keep?)). As an added bonus, player reactions to this kind of info give clues into what parts of the history and what types of lore your group is interested in!

Lore Should be Play

All too often Lore gets framed as some stuffy history force-fed through a textbook, instead of a juicy toy box and an exciting adventure to live through. Lore has impact on the present and ~implications~ for the future, and is well worth your time to consider and write! But make sure you remember you're writing a game, and that your lore is something to be played in and with. You're not trying to make a Lore that excites you with its grand ideas and exhaustive details, you're trying to make a lore that excites you to play in. This is a game not a book. Living history, not static story.

Tenra Bansho: Zero's lore is exciting because you want to play as a Samurai with cursed gems that let you trade away your humanity, or as a child soldier trapped in a magitek mecha suit, or as a healer who has magic worms that keep you alive from the inside. For all the flak it gets about its exhaustive descriptions of its politics, at least those parts of the lore are gameable and playable (even if I personally breezed right past them). 

And this is to say nothing about why I think your lore and mechanics should absolutely be tied together.

I agree with my contemporaries that gazetteering isn't all it's cracked up to be, but my rationale seems to be a bit different. Concision and setting flexibility would vastly improve a lot of gazetteers, but what many of them do more than anything is spoil the perfectly mysterious plate of goodies and hooks that is a setting's lore.

A gazetteer should be a toybox, a playset, a bundle of fun miniatures and mysteries in lore form. It should not be a club to be wielded by GM and player alike to beat the campaign into a certain direction nor a manual from which relevant information needs to be sorted out from useless fluff. In short good lore asks the players just as many questions as it helps answer for the GM. 

And frankly if you're using your lore only to answer questions and not to raise them, you're doing it all wrong.