Should we undertake a great lore rework?

[Lovecraft]

In an effort to respark an interest in the lore and history surrounding Space Station 13 I propose that /tg/ as a whole adopts an entirely unique, brand new community created lore that fits the atmosphere.
Right now, we exist in this poor man's Douglas Adam-esque environment and I'd love to see the lore given this treatment. Reading the Backstory page on our Wiki at the moment is about as entertaining as doing taxes.

However, to emphasis this above all else, at the very top of our Backstory page you'll find the phrase

"This contains a fluff backstory which is to be taken about as seriously as the clown crying griff. "

and in the interest of not giving valid-salad lads new ammo to work with, everything that would change would be as toothless as what we currently have to make sure that quote stays true.

Does this sound interesting to anyone?

[imblyings]

honestly

I think there is a lot of potential for lore and DEEPEST LORE but I dunno, there's nothing stopping you from writing up new fluff right now and official lore writer positions seem silly

[Drynwyn]

A better question would be "If we undertook a great lore rework, would anyone notice?"

Aaaaaaand the answer is probably no.

[callanrockslol]

We don't need lore, we need context for what is going on, which we have.

[Cheridan]

With Shadowlings and Revenants joining Cult and Wizard, we now have a huge portion of our antagonists that are spooky. I think it would be good opportunity to refluff some of our content to explain why all this weird supernatural stuff is happening and to make the theme more cohesive.

For example, rather than wizards being from "The Space Wizard Federation" and an escapee from "Wizard Prison[/i]"(which is apparently a thing?? This is some Adventure Time level of writing here.), we could say that they're High Magus of the Narsie cult, or that they somehow siphon energy from her realm without following her cult rituals, explaining how they get their powers.
There's some lines here and there about how wizard 'magic' might actually be absurdly advanced technology but I think somewhere along the lines we all just accepted that it's real magic -- which honestly I'm more happy with than if we tried to handwave off retarded magic spells as NANOBOTSSS.

Revenants could be rogue Constructs who have either willingly abandoned Nar'sie or 'leaked-through' into our realm by accident. Detached from Nar'sie's power, they are incorporeal and have to survive off human essence.

Just as a setting-cohesiveness thing.

A better question would be "If we undertook a great lore rework, would anyone notice?"

Aaaaaaand the answer is probably no.

People here don't care about backstory because we've never had it before. Make it interesting and relevant and people will care.

[Ricotez]

i always thought wizards were the embodiment of "technology sufficiently advanced to be indistinguishable from magic"

[DemonFiren]

I always thought wizards were (un)reasonably old men in robes that happened to have acquired powers to the point of going insane.

Thinking it over, pretty much exactly like a certain random event in FTL.

[Fayrik]

I've got a few small ideas for lore. Got some big ones too, actually. But I'd rather hear what other people think on the current lore first.
Specifically like, what direction should we be looking to go in?

Anyhow, maybe we could use an IRC channel or something like that, to hash out some more solid ideas.

Now, something I really can't stress enough here, is that if there's going to be any change at all, it needs to be vague enough for the players to insert their own stories, otherwise you end up dictating how everyone should play and we will gain literally nothing from it.

[lumipharon]

It's usually better to expand and consolidate what we have, as opposed to try rewrite everything for no real good reason.

[Wyzack]

Man if this happens i may writefag some stories in our new lore, i was planning on getting back in to it anyways.

[Steelpoint]

I always liked the explanation, which also coincidently appeared as a quote in XCOM, that "Sufficiently advance technology is indistinguishable to magic".

[Scones]

We tried to organize this a while ago and I was 100% on board. Be interested to actually see it go somewhere, this time around.

You should probably hop in one of the IRC channels and try to organize shit on there.

[onleavedontatme]

But I have my own headcanon and I don't want it messed with. I think the lore being loose and ill defined will make most people happier.

Personally I like to believe that NT owns thousands of identical stations, and when my character survives a round he retires or lives happily or whatever. When he dies he dies.

Some people talk about their characters being immortal clones that respawn every round, some people believe it is groundhogs day. I don't think we'd ever be able to make everyone happy by laying that out clearly.

I think it would be good opportunity to refluff some of our content to explain why all this weird supernatural stuff is happening and to make the theme more cohesive.

I did already try to imply stuff about this though by giving soul stones and Nar-Sie to the wizard.

Anyway if there was going to be more lore I'd rather it be pieced together from item descriptions in the code or easter eggs in the map than some fan fiction on the wiki.

[Steelpoint]

I do think we should at least look at refining our lore, however we will also need to look at doing the same in game.

As Kor noted, it's one thing to have a lore page on the wiki, and its another thing to make that lore consistent with what's in game. I think if we do hammer out a new lore that we should also visit this in game and change item descriptions and what not with some tid bits of this new lore. It won't be hard to do but it would take a bit of time to do.

[RogerWilco]

I like how you guys keep trying to push for MORE ARR PEE and DEEPEST LORES when the server is still "guess the round type and call the shuttle no less than thirty minutes into the round"-station

[DemonFiren]

It is on Sybil.
On Basil, it is more "circlejerk and get as close to ERP as you can with the admins watching", with people making up their own snowflake backgrounds on the go and generally not giving two and a half fucks about the lore.

[Stickymayhem]

I like being able to reinvent the lore for events when it suits me. If I ever saw "BUT THAT MAKES NO SENSE BECAUSE IN 2547 THE SPACE FEDERATION DECREED..." I'm burning the station to the ground.

[DemonFiren]

Exactly that. Going archive-diving just to be able to create your character is something that I do not want to be forced to do. It's one of the many reasons I fled Bay.

[Steelpoint]

Just because we want to refine our lore does not necessarily mean we need to go to such in depth information as presented.

If anything the lore could intentionally be vague, giving only more concrete information for very distant past events that have no relevance in game, whereas lore that does effect what happens in game can either just be explanatory in nature (Syndicate is X and wants Y) or just not give too much information away.

E: Just so we all know, the most recent change to our lore was a while ago and it essentially just added a brief paragraph as to why now Nanotrasen were accepting Lizardmen as employees above the rank of Janitor.

[Shaps-cloud]

What kind of stuff would you guys be interested in adding to the lore? Whether or not SS13 is actually state of the art and super valuable, or just an expendable glued together ball of orbital wreckage should be left mysterious and not set in stone so people can believe what they want, but adding background events and stuff that people can use to flesh/fluff out their characters would be cool

[Steelpoint]

I think the most we need to elaborate on SS13 itself is that it was set up by Nanotrasen to primarily research new technologies in relations to Plasma and Bluespace Crystals, and that there's some dispute over the quality of the station's construction and hired personal.

[Shaps-cloud]

Pretty much all the codebases agree that thanks to how deep in space SS13 is, Nanotrasen is forced to hire whatever thugs they can get. As for it's purpose, for a plasma research facility there's really no plasma research actually taking place.

[Stickymayhem]

Syndicate are a division of nanotrasen think about it the truth is out there

[QuartzCrystal]

Our lore has generally evolved pretty naturally and I'd like to keep it that way. The Honkmother was originally just something me and a few others started talking about when I ran a Tunnel Clown Assassination Guild event years ago and we just kept it up IC until eventually I added a small line to the wiki. I don't think there's any need to re-write anything, as there's some gold we have that has emerged without much effort but people are attached to.

[Cheridan]

But I have my own headcanon and I don't want it messed with.

But that's a huge problem. If I have 'headcanon' about something, and you have your own 'headcanon', then how can we even discuss a topic on equal footing in game? If your character's backstory is that he's from a small town in Indonesia on planet Earth, and my character's backstory is that he fled Earth after it was entirely blown up by aliens, and we start to talk about our backstories in game then we just met a stumbling block.

I mean, fuck, I played a Dremora from The Elder Scrolls on Basil for a while just to see if anyone would bat an eyelash.

It's not possible to write an in-depth fluff backstory that fits with literally everyone's headcanon. Which is a shame. But you can come up with something people can generally be content with.
The way that people have gotten around the difficulty of reconciling one character's backstory with all the others seems to be, um, not having one.

Anyway if there was going to be more lore I'd rather it be pieced together from item descriptions in the code or easter eggs in the map than some fan fiction on the wiki.

As a coder; literally retarded.

There is nothing that makes a mapper or a coder adding fluff more valid than someone on a wiki writing fluff, unless you think that the barrier to entry will make the entries of a higher quality (disputable).

As for it's purpose, for a plasma research facility there's really no plasma research actually taking place.

This is a piece of ludonarrative dissonance that came about from the fact that the original devs never got around to updating atmos/toxins and the code system was too obtuse for anyone to really update afterwards. Plasma (originally just called Biotoxin, it seems the original devs had just as much of an issue coming up with interesting fluff as we do) was originally intended to have lots of unique features beyond "it burns good".

[Scones]

Cheridan's post reminds me of a pretty funny situation a while back- a conversation between 3 scientists wherein our backgrounds basically contradicted each other in a way that fucks over the others. Went something like:

"Earth? Yeah, it's nice and green and I have family there!"
"Really? I thought it was blasted lifeless rock these days."
"Earth exists? I thought it was destroyed and that catalyzed our exodus..."

This game has roleplay in it. Lore, no matter how barebones, prevents those situations and is conducive to better roleplay. Things like earth, nt, and the syndicate should all be set in stone with some wiggle room for personal additions.

[imblyings]

"Earth? Yeah, it's nice and green and I have family there!"
"Really? I thought it was blasted lifeless rock these days."
"Earth exists? I thought it was destroyed and that catalyzed our exodus..."

Honestly I'd rather have those sorts of situations over other types of roleplay centered around things set in stone

When fluff does ever get referred to in game, players can do that and come up with hilarious contradictions, and they can also build on each other sometimes and come up with some really neat improvised conversations about past events. It's entirely up to the players involved and it will change every round and tbh that's fine by me.

[srifenbyxp]

I can hype shit up really good. Hell i'll make a lore remake right now if you want me to

[eldomtom2]

Please no massive lore. I like being able to pretty much have my own interpretation of the world, and more concrete lore would spoil that. It's not like this sort of thing comes up anyway. If I believe the Earth is a paradise for the super-rich and another person believes it's a nuclear wasteland, our differing lore views are very unlikely to come up. If contradictions do come up, they just add to the nonsensical, silly atmosphere of SS13.