Lore opinions

[Bolden Denusk]

What's your opinion of Lores granted by ST's?

[Tiki]

Votes for the more the better. For Mizahar to properly reflect a reality, you need to look at our own reality. While we as people do seek inforation that would benefit our own causes, we don't pick what makes us who we are. Instead we absorb everything, but then focus on our interests. Needless to say, there is a chance that the useless information that might not directly improve our characte becomes beneficial at some point, or at least has potential to. So as to those who are greeding on direct beneficial lores, may your Mary Sues die in many fires. Did I say thaaaat? ha, but honestly consider that perspective too.

[Jameson Kindle]

I honestly don’t know how exactly the whole lores thing is supposed to work, but I do know that I have done a lot of reading into the CS’s of players who have been here since the beginning (such as Jen and Mike). I have seen long, long lists of lores in the CS’s. Some of them are intriguing, some make me laugh until my sides split, and some make me want to read the thread they were awarded in. I’ve seen some crazy ones, and frankly, they make me excited to get my first thread graded. I can’t wait to see what kind of stuff the ST’s come up with to award me. AND YET, I do understand that the lores are knowledge. While I would like to have some fun ones, I would also like to have some beneficial ones. So I guess what I’m saying is, a mixture of both?

[Siiri]

Let's look at the definition of Lore. From the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

1 archaic : something that is taught : lesson

2 : something that is learned:
a : knowledge gained through study or experience
b : traditional knowledge or belief

3 : a particular body of knowledge or tradition

While getting a lore like "Patrick the Starfish snores like an active volcano" may be amusing to get, I don't think that particular tidbit will help a PC if they find themselves sleeping with another person named Patrick who looks like a starfish.

I'm all for pertinent lores, meaning I'd rather get "Using one's own spit to distract enemies" rather than "Using spit to look like a jackass". The first one is actually useful as your PC will learn a new application for his spit and whether or not said application will work in a certain situation. The second one, while it may be amusing to some, is just an event that happened in the course of your PC's life.

[Alric Wilmot]

Voted for the more the better. I think its a great way to see how your character is progressing and showing others what you've been through. Although, I think someone who had a basic education in Mizahar should start out with more than just two, but so far I've pretended like I knew basic information I should know as a citizen of Alvadas, and that's worked out fine. So I guess I'm just blowing smoke really.

Anyway, I like lore, It makes me feel like I accomplished something. I know it really doesn't affect your RP, but it really does seem to contribute somehow. I don't know, but that's my opinion.

[Faroul]

Disclaimer: None of my own threads have received a grading yet, but I do pay attention to how various storytellers award xp and lores.

That said, I feel that the way lores are currently granted has caused them to balloon past a point of usefulness. Like Siiri stated above, and like Abashai mentioned in his scrapbook, lores should be pertinent and practical. A player should be able to use them to immediately answer the question "would my character know about X?" X being the layout of a city, a recipe for a potion, or the ins and outs of a drug trade, for example. They represent the collection of a character's knowledge.

As such, lores should be things like:
Lore of First Aid (Intermediate)
Powerful Groups in Sunberth
Lore of Talderan Wildlife
Vantha Folktales
History of the Syliran Knights
Lore of Yahal
Lore of Siiri's Origins (Basic)
Akvatari Culture
Dual Wielding: Advantages and Disadvantages

These all have an applicable use. They benefit play by telling a player what their character knows.

Lores should NOT be things like:
Lore of Being a Jackass
Lore of Eating Oatmeal
Asking Awkward Questions
Wanting to Go Home
Encounters with Cute Girls
Being Naked in Public

They're cute, but they merely document what has happened to a character. They aren't useful in play, nor are they particularly important. After participating on Mizahar for a long time, they'd also take up a lot of space.
Consider that a character sheet is a reference for play, for both writers and storytellers. If something doesn't affect play, it needn't be on the sheet. The utility of the CS as a reference document is hampered when it is clogged with non-relevant information.

Consider too how lores affect Mizahar in the theoretical sense. The point of Mizahar is to tell stories - to have plots move. All plots move because of characters working towards a goal. How are goals worked towards? By making decisions based on information, and then applying one's skills to carry out said decisions. Therefore knowledge is critical to story movement. Knowledge affects what characters can do, by opening greater avenues of choice and action. Since lores are Mizahar's way of codifying that knowledge, they are very important.

Lores turn knowledge into a game mechanic. If lores continue to bloat, if they continue not to represent character knowledge but instead just document happenings, they won't really mean anything anymore. Their power will be diminished. They won't help you determine your character's possible actions based on what you know, and that is bad. In that case, you would simply have to guess at what you know, or arbitrarily decide what you know in a way that storytellers can't easily regulate. This opens the door to god-moding and the game breaking down.

Let's not go there. Let's keep lores conservative. They should solely represent your character's collected knowledge, and not much else.

[Caelum]

I am in complete agreement with Siiri and Faroul. They doubtless said it better than I could, but I will nutshell my most salient reasons below. - Excessive, useless lores cause the Lore mechanic to be diminished in practical use and integrity. - STs have gotten into the habit of awarding useless yet amusing lores as if they are prizes. I do not want a lore I cannot use in place of actual XPs or actually applicable lores when I have spent considerable effort in composing a well written thread. It irritates the hell out of me when not only am I told that I don’t deserve decent XPs because I failed to bore the audience indefinitely with a long winded description of cutting turnips or whatever, but as if to rub salt into the wound I’m given some empty, joking lore like its supposed to console me over how amazingly unsupportive our grading system is to the continued development and honing of writing skills. - If one must award silly lores, then players should place all silly ones in a separate place on their CS or, perhaps, rank them in order of relevancy. Mm. I need more coffee this morning. But I mean every word. *hops off soapbox*

[Antar]

I prefer extremely pertinent or specific requests for lores, if I *really* want a funny one- I'll ask for it Most of the time I'll ask for specific ones that I know will be useful for later on down the line in training threads, etc.

Let's face it- it's also hard to organize lores effectively unless they're categorized.

I'd always prefer a lore like:

Shielding: Two layered shields (basic)
or
Hunting: Predicting behavior and characteristics of elk(basic)

then just Predicting behavior... etc etc etc or even worse: "Behold Ice cream"

If you have a lore that works with a specific skill- it's easiest to just group them together for your knowledge tree.

[Oracle]

I feel like odd man out here! ha, I love lore myself. I personally feel it fleshes out a character's history and personality. I also love to give lore, my almost always present disclaimer is "feel free to pick and choose". Some are like me and gobble it up while other's do like the more practical approach.

Which reminds me...I really should go clean up my PC's CS, I've been meaning to divide useless lore and my own lovely lore for a while now and this thread reminded me. yay!

[Taln]

You're not the odd one out--I love all lores. I'm a lore ho. I spent too much time years ago with power levelers and it sucked. It was just about greed for whatever their PC's could gain until anything under level 40 was considered lame. I fell into that trap early on and fell out of it with an ugly thump. Now I simply want my PC's to feel REAL, with real flaws and goober moments. I think that's why I love Mizahar so much. It lets the power players do their thing and the quirky players do theirs. The only lore I wasn't keen on at first, was Bolden getting the lore: being an a-hole and a jackass. Then, I realized it was a first time thing, so now I'd really like a trailblazer award for the lore of being the first mizahar a-hole!!

** Please note that this poll was NOT started as a criticism of the staff, flaming, or how they do what they do, but simply an interesting topic of conversation. I've seen people with opposing, favoring and halfing view points on it and I thought this would be interesting.