Official V3 Lore Feedback/Questions [Feel free to post here]

[afibon]

Since people are already submitting big lore docs and CT is apparently accepting them already, I feel like this needs to be brought up before people are complaining about a bloated and useless lore a year from now: you also need to change how you are handling player submissions.

While the concept of player-driven lore is cool and all, any lack of QA and -especially- foresight will mean that you will end up with a bunch of useless lore that no one but the author will really know how to make a roleplay story out of.

Main issue I see is that 99% of articles submitted are hard lore: documents written literally like a wikipedia article that list hard facts about pretty much every detail about a city or whatever. Big problem with this is that there is no place for interpretation, no subtlety, no room to maneuver for any would-be short story or any random event. Going back to the 'foresight' issue, if you accept lore like this without considering how the guys actually making the events could use them in the future, you'll end up with GMs being 'confined' by badly written lore that they are not really comfortable with.

A solution would be to start pushing writers to do more story-based lore; or more specifically, start writing articles with an unreliable narrator, hearsay, rumors, events as told by biased sources, faulty intelligence, etc. This way you give event makers a lot lee-way to interpret existing lore as best fit them for the events they are trying to make.
Example: Event kinda contradicts Mr Big Boy's accepted lore about City 123? You can just chalk that up to the unreliable narrator.

It would make for better reads and a better work flow in the back end of event production.

 

[AgathaL]

Are the cities locations and designation same as V2? Are lore submissions on entirely new cities allowed or should cities be based on updating and changing the existing ones?

 

[Lost Coast Chanties]

Guys, I dozed off. Is the wiki done yet?

 

[Dazor]

A few questions:

- How long after the 7-hour war does the lore take place.
- How long did it take for Combine to urbanise humanity into cities
- Are people allowed to live outside cities in lore or are they all considered rebels and have to hide. Does the combine actively hunt people outside of cities
-What happened to celebrities, world leaders and royal families. Did politicians go into bunkers etc, is it unknown
- Why was it decided that the Xen growth was to be sent back West instead of changing the lore to have America a harsh xen wasteland like how in Alyx it’s displayed with the continent crossed out

 

[Bull]

Since people are already submitting big lore docs and CT is apparently accepting them already, I feel like this needs to be brought up before people are complaining about a bloated and useless lore a year from now: you also need to change how you are handling player submissions.

While the concept of player-driven lore is cool and all, any lack of QA and -especially- foresight will mean that you will end up with a bunch of useless lore that no one but the author will really know how to make a roleplay story out of.

Main issue I see is that 99% of articles submitted are hard lore: documents written literally like a wikipedia article that list hard facts about pretty much every detail about a city or whatever. Big problem with this is that there is no place for interpretation, no subtlety, no room to maneuver for any would-be short story or any random event. Going back to the 'foresight' issue, if you accept lore like this without considering how the guys actually making the events could use them in the future, you'll end up with GMs being 'confined' by badly written lore that they are not really comfortable with.

A solution would be to start pushing writers to do more story-based lore; or more specifically, start writing articles with an unreliable narrator, hearsay, rumors, events as told by biased sources, faulty intelligence, etc. This way you give event makers a lot lee-way to interpret existing lore as best fit them for the events they are trying to make.
Example: Event kinda contradicts Mr Big Boy's accepted lore about City 123? You can just chalk that up to the unreliable narrator.

It would make for better reads and a better work flow in the back end of event production.

Thats a good point but there isnt really a medium that the world map's lore is told through. Maybe if the World Map was made by a global faction of resistance historians to keep an archive of what was left of humanity, but the way the world map is presented is implied to be an omnipotent perspective. It's just from a lack of communication, rules for cities to be kept in check, and months of lore from uncoordinated authors that don't communicate with each other to build off of each other's articles, which is what the creative team should be preventing. We need a bit more transparency on the inner workings of them - how do they choose what makes an article good in the deciding process, or is it as simple as just saying "this one reads well" when it appears almost absurdist when compared to neighbouring things on the map.

Another annoying thing about it is how random citizens in Geneva will know about random events from across the world through no plausible explanation. More restrictions should be put on knowledge in certain areas, especially considering that the only global method of communication that can be explained to exist is UNIONBIOS, which is Combine-owned anyway so there'd likely be censorship on it.

 

[afibon]

Thats a good point but there isnt really a medium that the world map's lore is told through. Maybe if the World Map was made by a global faction of resistance historians to keep an archive of what was left of humanity, but the way the world map is presented is implied to be an omnipotent perspective. It's just from a lack of communication, rules for cities to be kept in check, and months of lore from uncoordinated authors that don't communicate with each other to build off of each other's articles, which is what the creative team should be preventing. We need a bit more transparency on the inner workings of them - how do they choose what makes an article good in the deciding process, or is it as simple as just saying "this one reads well" when it appears almost absurdist when compared to neighbouring things on the map.

Another annoying thing about it is how random citizens in Geneva will know about random events from across the world through no plausible explanation. More restrictions should be put on knowledge in certain areas, especially considering that the only global method of communication that can be explained to exist is UNIONBIOS, which is Combine-owned anyway so there'd likely be censorship on it.

Don't see the point, the world map is an OOC tool that should just be used as a canvas to show the progress of the players actions through the events of the server (of which we have a lot), current world map has a lot of these entries, and they're frankly the most interesting to read about. The rest are just lazily written lore docs plastered all over the map as filler; they're completely disconnected submissions by a dozen different writers. Frankly, they're usually of dubious quality and will hardly ever be useful because they're not written in tandem with the people who have the power to make them into actual events.

Teach your writers to make soft lore and the whole problem becomes irrelevant; your absurd submission about Xenian ghosts in the haunted wastelands of (instert random place on Earth) can become an interesting read if it's presented as a bonfire story of wastelanders that was transmitted as hearsay through the roads (instead of the dull submission that lists everything as hard facts).

 

[Bull]

Don't see the point, the world map is an OOC tool that should just be used as a canvas to show the progress of the players actions through the events of the server (of which we have a lot), current world map has a lot of these entries, and they're frankly the most interesting to read about. The rest are just lazily written lore docs plastered all over the map as filler; they're completely disconnected submissions by a dozen different writers. Frankly, they're usually of dubious quality and will hardly ever be useful because they're not written in tandem with the people who have the power to make them into actual events.

Teach your writers to make soft lore and the whole problem becomes irrelevant; your absurd submission about Xenian ghosts in the haunted wastelands of (instert random place on Earth) can become an interesting read if it's presented as a bonfire story of wastelanders that was transmitted as hearsay through the roads (instead of the dull submission that lists everything as hard facts).

Maybe so, but doesnt that make most of the world beyond (at most) Russia irrelevant?

 

[afibon]

Maybe so, but doesnt that make most of the world beyond (at most) Russia irrelevant?

I'd say all world map lore that can't be used to set up an event is irrelevant, what you can do is make your submission an enjoyable read even if it's irrelevant, but current world map is filled to the brim of AI-generated-tier boring points of interest (and I kinda fear it'll be the same in V3).

 

[Dazor]

Hello,

This is just a thread to give feedback to V3 lore since I realized someone accidentally posted on the V3 Announcements itself (oopsie)
So made this thread for you all instead.

If you have any questions or comments, then please post below!

This post relates to the following thread:

V3 Lore Announcements/Changelog

Willard V3 Lore Announcements and Changelog This thread exists to keep you up to date with changes being made to V3 Lore and even its World map. It is also where I will post relevant V3 announcements regarding the direction the lore and story are taking and where we will go from here. If you...

willard.network

Do you think it’s going to be a possibility that the world map and settlement[WIP] will be combined so that they will show on the map, maybe too that players can apply for the different city administrators and can form sort of a forum game