{"id":44714,"date":"2018-09-03T07:57:00","date_gmt":"2018-09-03T07:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/325697"},"modified":"2018-09-03T07:57:00","modified_gmt":"2018-09-03T07:57:00","slug":"blog-knowing-when-and-how-to-lore-dump-in-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2018\/09\/03\/blog-knowing-when-and-how-to-lore-dump-in-games\/","title":{"rendered":"Blog: Knowing when and how to lore dump in games"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra\u0092s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company. <\/small><\/i><\/strong> <\/p>\n

\n

Lore dumps.\u2019 It\u2019s not an attractive phrase.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Bit of housekeeping first. I want to remember that most games are not written under perfect circumstances where writers see all their work go into the game in a perfectly executed way. Maybe someone wrote a series of dialogues with a companion NPC where the protag carefully teases out the oral history of that NPC\u2019s homeland, and why they\u2019re at war with the player\u2019s homeland, and that serves as a basis for choice-driven relationship development between the NPC and the player\u2026 and the setting information seeped invisibly into the game\u2026 and then the NPC got cut at the last minute because budget. Now no-one understands anything about the setting history and it\u2019s two months from launch and a big chunk of the plot no longer makes any sense. What are you going to do? well maybe you\u2019re going to wince and add pop-up text screen explaining the whole thing and resign yourself to people groaning \u2018UGH LORE DUMP\u2019 for the next five years because it\u2019s the smallest evil.<\/p>\n

Nother bit of housekeeping. Some people *like* lore dumps. Technical manuals for film franchises keep on selling. You know your audience and your game better than I do. But you don\u2019t have to put it in everyone\u2019s face. You can leave it in a book on a shelf, where it belongs, and where it won\u2019t annoy the non-dumpthusiasts.<\/p>\n

But here are some signs that you\u2019re going to put something in your game that will send your player off to make herself a cup of tea, or alt-tab out to bitch about your game on Twitter.<\/p>\n

1. Lore dumps that don\u2019t sound like something a human would say.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Player:\u00a0tell me about this city.<\/em>

\nNPC:\u00a0Darkburg is the capital of the Kingdom of Gloaming. It attracts merchants from all over the world, although many people here are concerned that the coming war with Shadowville means we\u2019ll see fewer visitors.<\/em><\/p>\n

Player:\u00a0tell me about this city.<\/em>

\nAlexis:\u00a0London is the capital of the UK, and of England. It attracts tourists from all over the world. But many people here are concerned that the coming exit from the European Union means we\u2019ll see fewer visitors.<\/em><\/p>\n

2. Lore dumps that don\u2019t read like something a human would write.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

[Letter]:\u00a0As you know, my lady, the Chancellor is very concerned about the coming war with Shadowville, although she claims in public that it\u2019ll be a triumph that will regenerate our nation\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

[Email]:\u00a0As you know, Lottie, the Prime Minister is very concerned about the coming exit from the European Union, although she claims in public that it\u2019ll be a triumph that will regenerate our nation\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

3. Lore dumps that feel like homework.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

NPC:\u00a0the West of Darkburg contains some of our highest-rent districts. In the centre, we have the Temple of the Great Night, the Empress\u2019 Residence and the Museum of Pain. You can find lots of shops in the Brass District. The best way to get around is\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

Alexis:\u00a0the West of London contains some of our highest-rent districts. In the centre, we have St Paul\u2019s Cathedral, the Houses of Parliament and the British Museum. You can find lots of shops in Oxford Street. The best way to get around is\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re thinking \u2018here is a big list of all the information about this place: I should put the information into some words, and then the words will go into the player\u2019s head, and so will the information\u2019 then you risk ending up with something like the examples above. It\u2019s okay not to tell players some of those things. It\u2019s okay to tell them things in character. It\u2019s okay not to tell them everything right now. They\u2019re still going to be in your game an hour from now, and if they\u2019re not, you have bigger problems.<\/p>\n

4. Lore dumps that could be copy\/pasted into another game without anyone noticing.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

NPC:\u00a0Hundreds of years ago, the Dark Lord Alpha seized the power of Beta for himself, and covered all the lands of Gamma in illimitable darkness. At last the wise mage Delta bestowed his finest pupil, Epsilon, with the power of Zeta. Epsilon fought her way to the heart of the dangerous realm of Eta and slew Alpha with the Zeta. Peace reigned over all the lands of Theta. But now we hear dark rumours of dark stirrings in the dark heart of Eta. In the peaceful hamlet of Iota you know nothing of this, yet, but soon you must begin your journey to<\/em><\/p>\n

Honestly, why bother? \u2018Because I\u2019m on a day rate to write a Terry Brooks pastiche for a mid-core mobile game\u2019 is actually a fair answer, but there\u2019s probably something more interesting to be done. Or at least shorter.<\/p>\n

5. Lore dumps that are in there out of a sense of mistaken duty<\/strong><\/h3>\n

A lot of things in games are there because people kinda thought they ought to do that because isn\u2019t that what people do? This is the same reason that indies write press releases that begin \u201cwe\u2019re excited to announce\u201d.<\/p>\n

\n

Here are some things you can do to minimise the tea-making and the bitching on Twitter.<\/p>\n

0. DON\u2019T WRITE THE LORE IN THE FIRST PLACE.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Some folk write lore because it\u2019s what they love doing, some folk write lore because they need it to fill the technical manual spinoff book, many because isn\u2019t that what you do when you\u2019re making an SFF game?\u00a0you sit down and invent five nations and write a timeline?<\/p>\n

I mean, you can, but the thing about things that everyone does is that those things are then things that people get bored with, because everyone\u2019s done it. I love Tolkien, but he started putting his legendarium together almost a hundred years ago now, and he doesn\u2019t need to be the default model to follow. More along these lines here:\u00a0https:\/\/www.gamesindustry.biz\/articles\/2017-02-02-against-worldbuilding<\/a><\/p>\n

If there are five nations in your world and the player is only ever going to visit one and they\u2019re not involved in politics anyway, maybe only write up two nations.<\/p>\n

If you need a third nation,\u00a0then you can invent it later!<\/em>\u00a0And if you haven\u2019t given the player a tour-guide talk on the Wheat Wars between Cerea and Gluta, then when you cut the Wheat Wars from your plan, you\u2019ll have fewer continuity issues.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m being a bit glib. Planning helps. But it\u2019s okay to leave room to invent or change stuff later. You don\u2019t need to show the player all your draft setting notes.<\/p>\n

1. Keep the information to an absolute minimum.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Here\u2019s the lore dump I put at the beginning of Sunless Sea.<\/p>\n

\""Three<\/p>\n

There is a\u00a0lot<\/em>\u00a0of Fallen London lore. This doesn\u2019t mention nine-tenths of the setting info. The first draft was like five paras. But I realised very quickly that most of it is just so much blah to new players, and so much yeah I know to people who\u2019d played Fallen London.<\/p>\n

So this says (a) you are in Victorian London but (b) it\u2019s weird and (c) underground, nevertheless (d) people are used to it now and, btw, (e) the Unterzee is the thing in front of you. That\u2019s actually all you need at this point.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The awful clanging obvious expository sections in everything that seem utterly crass? Big chunks of the audience demand them and get upset when they’re not there.<\/p>\n


\n\u2014 Mode 7 – Paul Kilduff-Taylor (@mode7games) July 18, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That\u2019s the tweet that kicked off this blog post. Paul\u2019s right (I think \u2018a big chunk\u2019 is \u2018about 5%\u2019, but with an audience in the hundreds of thousands that\u2019s still thousands of players). But you know what? Let \u2019em. No game is universally beloved, and it\u2019s better to frustrate the impatient than to bore the attentive. A minority of people have complained for ten years that Fallen London needs a codex or an opening cutscene or something. But the vast majority of people are there to get the lore nugget by delicious nugget. And a lot of the frustrated folk come around in the end.<\/p>\n

Every time an interviewer says \u201chow could game narrative improve\u201d my answer is \u201cactually it\u2019s very often very good these days. But we could all do with respecting our players\u2019 intelligence more.\u201d<\/p>\n

2. Give the player a reason to be curious.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

NPC:\u00a0For a thousand years the Moon Queen ruled over Selentia, and her werewolves were everywhere. Theirs was the power of the Moonplague! Finally she was imprisoned, but only with the use of\u2026. [dramatic pause]<\/em>

\nPlayer:\u00a0WHERE\u2019S THE SKILL TRAINER

\n\u2014<\/em><\/p>\n

Player:\u00a0Something bit me!<\/em>

\nNPC:\u00a0Lo, the dread bite of one of Selentia\u2019s werewolves!<\/em>

\nPlayer:\u00a0Okay. Cure Disease, pls<\/em>

\nNPC:\u00a0For a thousand years the Moon Queen ruled over Selentia, and her werewolves were everywhere. Theirs was the power of the Moonplague! Finally she was imprisoned, but only with the use of\u2026\u00a0[dramatic pause]<\/em>

\nPlayer:\u00a0CURE DISEASE PLS

\n\u2014<\/em><\/p>\n

Player:\u00a0Something bit me!<\/em>

\nNPC:\u00a0Lo, the dread bite of one of Selentia\u2019s werewolves! which drives mo \u2013<\/em>

\nPlayer:\u00a0I\u2019ve got an Intelligence drain? it looks permanent?<\/em>

\nNPC:\u00a0drives mortals mad!!<\/em>

\nPlayer:\u00a0CURE DISEASE PLS I AM A MAGE I CANNOT AFFORD THIS SHIT RN<\/em>

\nNPC:\u00a0\u00a0For a thousand years the Moon Queen ruled over Selentia, and her werewolves were everywhere. Theirs was the power of the Moonplague! Finally she was imprisoned, but only with the use of\u2026\u00a0[dramatic pause]<\/em>

\nPlayer:\u00a0DID I STUTTER. CURE DISEASE

\n\u2014<\/em><\/p>\n

Player:\u00a0Something bit me!<\/em>

\nNPC:\u00a0was it, like, a big silver wolf? Do you feel your wits grow weak and<\/em>

\nPlayer:\u00a0\u00a0yes! intelligence drain! fix!<\/em>

\nNPC:\u00a0I don\u2019t know much about big silver wolfs, but is there anywhere around here that looks like it has to do with big silver wolf magic?<\/em>

\nPlayer:\u00a0oh God I don\u2019t know unless maybe well there\u2019s that white marble place with the silver glow over in the Moonwood haaaang on a sec<\/em>

\nNPC:\u00a0the palace of the Moon Queen? yes, that sounds like a good place to start looking for a cure!\u00a0<\/em>

\nPlayer:\u00a0ta. I hadn\u2019t realised this was a game where setting and mechanic worked harmoniously together, so I\u2019d written it off as scenery. back in a sec<\/em>

\nNPC:\u00a0how did your weapons work against that big silver wolf?<\/em>

\nPlayer:\u00a0it had some pretty serious phys resistances, actually<\/em>

\nNPC:\u00a0Mm.<\/em>

\nPlayer:\u00a0What do you mean, \u2018Mm\u2019?<\/em>

\nNPC:\u00a0Oh nothing it\u2019s probably just a silly story<\/em>

\nPlayer:\u00a0No, go on,\u00a0we burnt through all our potions fighting just one of those things, and if there\u2019s a plot weapon somewhere I\u2019d like to know<\/em>

\nNPC:\u00a0For a thousand years the Moon Queen ruled over Selentia, and her werewolves were everywhere. Theirs was the power of the Moonplague! Finally she was imprisoned, but only with the use of\u2026\u00a0[dramatic pause]<\/em>

\nPlayer:\u00a0TELL ME WHAT DEFEATED THE MOON QUEEN ALREADY

\n\u2014<\/em><\/p>\n

Okay, I\u2019m exaggerating for effect, and actually the player has prolly kept reloading until they managed not to get bitten, and then gone online to complain that the intelligence draining wolfs make mages unplayable unless you keep reloading, but yswim.<\/p>\n

3. Write it extremely good<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\u201cThe Dwarves tell no tale; but even as\u00a0mithril\u00a0was the foundation of their wealth, so also it was their destruction: they delved too greedily and too deep, and disturbed that from which they fled, Durin\u2019s Bane.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

If you write it so evocatively that people recognise the quote seventy years later and\u00a0TV Tropes names the trope page<\/a>\u00a0after your lore dump, you\u2019re allowed to do it. that\u2019s official. if anyone asks, tell them AK sent you. tell them he says it\u2019s okay not to capitalise sentence starts if you\u2019re writing online and wanting to sound urgent and conversational, too.<\/p>\n

NB though that part of the reason it\u2019s evocative is that he was writing about an endgame boss coming up from the bottom of a dungeon thirty years before D&D was even thought on. Never copy Tolkien outright.<\/p>\n

4. Add a point of view.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Cultist Simulator is pretty much a lore dump redesigned to be playable as a game already, but I jazzed up some of the more expository occult tomes by adding a point of view.<\/p>\n

label:\u00a0\u201cRead this volume of Travelling at Night\u201d,

\nstartdescription:\u00a0\u201cIllopoly\u2019s disquisitions on fire and the Unburnt God are interrupted by passages of distractingly erotic poetry addressed to \u2018Baldomera\u2019.’\u201d,

\ndescription:\u00a0\u201c\u2018To reach the Stag Door, I believe that all you really need is to want something enough. But I\u2019ve never wanted anything that much, except of course Baldomera, and I\u2019m very much afraid that the knot in the story is this: what Baldomera wants is the Stag Door. But here\u2019s something I learnt in Persia. Perhaps it\u2019ll teach you what\u00a0you\u00a0<\/em>want.’\u201d,<\/p>\n

Exposition here (which will probably only make any sense if you\u2019ve played a bit of CS): this book contains Forge-principle lore; the Unburnt God is one way the Forge of Days was worshipped in Persia. Christopher Illopoly is sweet on Baldomera; Baldomera might not reciprocate; the player should use Dream with their Desire to approach the Stag Door. I could just have put that as a list of bullet points, but it was more fun to make it a character moment. It nearly always is.<\/p>\n

5. Let the player ask questions about it.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Even if it\u2019s a basic lawnmower dialogue where the player says things like \u2018Tell me about the north side of Darkburg\u2019, that\u2019s better than a text crawl. Little bit of call-response to keep them awake is all you need. This is a good way to get a point of view or some character writing or a reason to care in too.<\/p>\n

6. Break it up and scatter it through the game.\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n

If you\u2019ve ever tried to feed vegetables to a small child, you\u2019ll know the principle.<\/p>\n

Loading screen messages are great for this. Coincidentally, so are conversations where the player asks questions.<\/p>\n

If you do this, the best approach is to approach the same fact multiple times from different angles.<\/p>\n

7. Lampshade it.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got to sit through this really boring lecture on the Trade Federation blockade, but I\u2019ll sit next to you talking about my backstory and I\u2019ll nudge you in the ribs when the lecturer gets to an important bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lampshading is generally a technique of last resort, but sometimes you need a last resort.<\/p>\n

I had an NPC interrupt like this in Fallen London, actually, when you go to talk to the Lady in Lilac while a performance of the Seventh Letter plays out in the background. There\u2019s some juicy lore in the Seventh Letter, but if you had to sit through me write out the whole thing you\u2019d be bored as balls and I\u2019d be way over deadline.<\/p>\n

8. Don\u2019t use words.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Okay, there are words on screen here. But writers can forget there are other ways to convey information.<\/p>\n

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The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra\u0092s community.The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company. Lore dumps.\u2019 It\u2019s not an attractive phrase. Bit of housekeeping first. I want to remember that most games are not written under perfect circumstances […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44715,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}