Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 224 - Lore Part 1

Episode Date: May 19, 2024

Lore, like so many other aspects to our game can be as present or absent as you would like it to be.  Lore makes your world richer and deeper but how do you reveal it to your players?  Tune in and find out.   #dnd #pf2e #dmtips #gmtips #lore Resources: Matt Colville - Lore Delivery Systems - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tBXnD9g0XY  Sly Flourish - Bathe Your World in Lore - https://slyflourish.com/bathe_your_world_in_lore.html Alphastream - Make Lore Actionable - https://alphastream.org/index.php/2022/06/02/your-games-lore-make-it-actionable/

This week on the Taking20 Podcast. All that information about the god and the storm giant invasion and the bracelet, I'd reveal that over many different sessions leading up to the big reveal. It should be present in your mind or in your notes or written down behind the screen to insert whenever you need to, but let that lore out in little bursts when checks are made or research is done, the right NPCs are engaged or they go to the right location. Thank you for listening to the Taking 20 podcast, episode 224, tips for handling lore in your world.

I want to thank this week's sponsor, Shrimp. I bought a ton of shrimp and got a great price for it. After all, I did buy them at the prawn shop. Okay, they can't all be screaming goals from outside the 18-yard box, okay? Sometimes you have to settle for an own goal off the rear end of the keeper to keep the game alive. Every week look I stare at the screen trying to think of a pun that I haven't done before and sometimes I come up with gold. Sometimes it's just silver, but this week it was prawns.

Ha ha! Two for one special in the cold open! Woooooo! I just want to say how much I appreciate you listening and I really hope you're enjoying the content. To be honest, making the podcast possible takes a lot of time, effort, and resources. If you're getting anything valuable out of the podcast, I'd be incredibly grateful if you could consider making a donation to help cover the costs and allow me to keep creating

content for you. Any amount, big or small, truly makes a difference. You can support us by visiting ko-fi.com, taking 20 podcast every dollar goes back into the podcast to help pay for operational costs I don't get a salary from this I'm not I'm not asking for one but it would be very nice if this podcast at least wasn't a money sink for me and my family so please consider donating if you can okay so let's start with the most trite opening I could think of. What is lore? Baby, don't hurt me. No, I'm not going to start singing the Hadaway or BB

Rexha song, but now that I've mentioned them, I bet at least one of them's in your head right now, and you are so very welcome. In short, lore is the details and history that's unique to your game. Lore brings the past of your game world to life and makes the world feel lived in and real. After all, some stuff happened before the PCs came into being and that stuff feeds and becomes the lore of your world. This lore, by the way, can be 100% true, or the legends could be 100% false, or maybe even based on real people or events from history with fantastical elements added. Let's talk examples from the real world.

Now you've probably heard the story of Noah's Ark. Now at this point, I want to pause and remind you that this is not a religion podcast. I'm not here to espouse one belief system or another. I believe faith is a very personal thing for everyone. And I'm not here to persuade you into believing what I believe or having faith in what I have faith in. I just want to use some stories from various religious texts as example of lore from our planet that we're all familiar with. Okay? Please promise to forgive me if I mention something that you think is false.

Okay, let's give each other some grace and forgiveness and continue on. You've probably heard the story of Noah's Ark. God tells Noah to build a big boat, big enough for two of every animal and eight people to survive a great flood. This is an example of lore. Another would be Atlantis, written down by Plato about a great

civilization of demigods that lived in a perfect society and was destroyed by a great cataclysm. Or the story of the god Rama building a great floating bridge between India and Lanka. Prometheus giving fire to man. The Sun, the great apportioner, creating strawberries to ensure the first man and woman would remain together. There are even items from our history with lore attached to them, like the Holy Grail, the Bow of Odysseus, Prydwen, the Shield of King Arthur. The list of earth lore is long and detailed.

But I want to cite a more modern example. Let's talk about World War I. Don't worry, no deep dive here, there's not going to be a history exam. World War I ended about 106 years ago as of this recording. The last living World War I veteran passed away in 2011, and the last combat veteran passed away in 2009. We now have all of the first-hand accounts of World War I that we will ever have from those who fought in it. of the first-hand accounts of World War I that we will ever have from those who fought in it. But the stories of the Great War are told in the lore of our history.

Flanders fields, wearing of poppies and their symbol of remembrance. The tales told of Sergeant Alvin York or Major Samuel Woodfill serve as inspirations for courage and bravery. The painting over the top by John Nash, they're all examples of history being captured and contributing to the lore of Earth and this lore was given to us only about a hundred years ago. There are many examples of history and lore about this war that we can all see if we seek it out and that's the important point. First one I want to make, lore can be as pervasive and present in your world as

you want it to be. If you don't want to take the time to make any lore then don't. If instead you want to take Sly Flourish's advice and bathe your world in lore, do that instead. By the way Sly Flourish is one of my favorite writers when it comes to DM tips. I'll put a link to one of his lore articles in the description of the episode. He makes some very good points in the article and I encourage you to go read it if you want a deeper dive on the subject. I assume you're still listening because you want to make some lore for your world. Or maybe your commute isn't over yet and you're not interested in trying to find another podcast

right now. Either way, thank you very much for listening and please feel free to provide me some feedback by messaging me on social media or sending it to feedback at taking20podcast.com. So let's start with the why of lore. Why should you create it? Lore as I mentioned, details and history and let me demonstrate with an example. You're running a fantasy RPG and the PCs enter the ruins of a forgotten temple, kill the undead within it, and find a bracelet on a stone statue in the sacristy of the forgotten temple. It's magic and lets the wearer constantly detect lies in a 10 foot radius around them

as the spell of the same name, cast by a 15th level wizard. Neat! Sounds like a fun game session. But let's tie that same session to your world's lore. While exploring the temple they discover statues and iconography representing the god Yamiant. A successful religion or history check, or discovery of the tile depiction in room 13 reveals that Yamiant was the god who was deceived by the storm giants before the invasion of Titania more than 4,000 years ago.

With one sentence I've created the lore of a possible deity named Yamiant, the fact that storm giants are old and interact, or at least once interacted with the gods, and that there was a lie tied to a war with an invasion of a country called Titania. All of that is lore, and it means that it's not just random bracelet number 731 that was lost in temple number 623. It's the bracelet of veracity forged by Yamiant to ensure he would not be made the fool again by giants. All of that gives your world a history, makes myths feel real and your world springs to

life because of it. That's why you should consider creating some lore for your world springs to life because of it. That's why you should consider creating some lore for your world. It gives depth, context, connections, and really fuels the imaginations of the players as they imagine a war between giants and demigods in the days gone by. Now, that's a lot of lore I just dumped on you

in that paragraph, and that's not my usual MO. When it comes to lore, my first tip was lore can be as present as you want it to be and my second tip would be sprinkle lore like pollen, make it available but in small doses. Too much at once makes the PCs sick of it. All that information about the god and the storm giant invasion and the bracelet, I'd reveal that over many different sessions leading up to the big reveal. It should be present in your mind or in your notes or written down behind the screen to insert whenever you need to, but let that lore out in little bursts when checks are

made or research is done, the right NPCs are engaged, or they go to the right location. Lore can be verbal, told to the PCs as they have conversations with the Sage of Joyton, the Queen of Nesfitgrove, the village matron who's seen a hundred summers, whomever it happens to be. The PCs ask a question, the NPC answers through the mouth of the GM to give the bit of lore to the big damn heroes in town. But lore can also be written. You can hand it out to the PCs on little slips of paper when they make the right check or look in the right location. One of the hardest tips

to implement though is my third tip. Make the lore fun and or necessary to discover if you want to make sure you have a chance to reveal it. Matt Colville in his lore video references an old episode of a show called the Outer Limits where a technologically advanced hand is missing fingers, and because of it, the knowledge the hand possesses is incomplete. Retrieving the missing fingers of the hand expanded the hand's capability to provide important facts and information the protagonist needed to find out why someone was chasing him. A sci-fi adventure where the PCs are retrieving crystals containing the lost histories of

Hang Shui? Sounds fun! Maybe the great beast from beyond the stars was beaten back by Hang Shui 5,000 years ago and your kingdom now needs to know how to duplicate that feat. The retrieval of the lore is the adventure, making it necessary to collect these crystals and with each crystal of knowledge collected, it adds to the great and ancient machine called the Calculometer, which gives the path to save the kingdom. How do the PCs get the crystals? Well, those are the adventures, aren't they? Retreating one from the Dragon's Lair, another from the sunken tomb of Greshaf the Exanguinator, and a third from the halls of an insane god who speaks to the crystal as if it

was a long-lost friend, would make exciting adventures. Come up with a reason why the crystals were scattered from the kingdom of Heng Shui and baby you got a campaign stew going. I think you get the idea. Making lore important to the campaign and sprinkling it in small doses is my preferred way to reveal the lore of my worlds, whether it's a world of my creation or a pre-built world that I'm using. Lore writing is one thing, and it's critically important, but so is how you reveal it to your players. My next piece of advice would be to reveal the lore using multiple methods.

Now I can hear your voice, Jeremy, how can I reveal the lore using different methods when it's all coming from me? Well, that's true. But think about how the characters come across the piece of lore. Or another way to say it, how will they encounter it? You're a good GM and you vary your encounters significantly. Sometimes it's a sandstorm or in a tree village

or in an underground cavern with lakes and ponds. Sometimes the PCs and enemies start 30 feet away from each other and sometimes it's 300. You add environmental and ponds. Sometimes the PCs and enemies start 30 feet away from each other and sometimes it's 300. You add environmental and magical effects. So you're good at varying up your encounters. Let's apply that same creativity to lore and history. So how could PCs come across it? Let's start fancy. That sounded a little southern. Let's start fancy. They could encounter it in art, paintings, sculpture, poetry, cave drawings, music, theater, any other art form you can think of. Why wouldn't dwarves display their lore and history with fine gem carvings, precious

metal statues, or carved into the very rock of their home, or maybe even with the drumming music that they make. Why wouldn't elves make beautiful wooden and metal sculptures celebrating their lore? Goblins and hobgoblins in 2e are starting to blend into the world, and why wouldn't they have poems and art and music and dance on their own?

But Jeremy, I can't paint or dance. Ha ha, me neither. But you know what we can do? Describe it. I can't make a bunch of clay look like anything other than a completely hideous bowl or maybe a phallic symbol. But I can't tie all of my world's lore back to genitals and bowls. Or me? You know what?

Maybe I can. The world was created when the great god Phallus-O dipped his **** and the oceans came into being from his ****, culminating in huge earthquakes that ****. What is wrong with you? Sorry, back to live action. You don't have to create the art if you don't want to or you can't. All you have to do is be able to describe the statue, speak out the lyrics of the song or poem. You can use whatever method you want to convey the lore as if the characters are discovering it like a piece of art. Or

maybe they could discover it in a book. It's not uncommon for lore and stories and histories to be written down. That historian that's recording it could be a reliable narrator or could be an unreliable one adding in certain facts and pseudo facts to fit a particular narrative. Another way they could learn this lore is from NPCs. This is the oldest way of revealing lore dating back to D&D first and second edition. The party needs to know something. The DM would casually mention, oh there's experts around somewhere, sages and wise women and oracles or whatever. Someone

knows go ask them. That person would invariably need something or a favor done and would only reveal the lore to the PCs if they quested for whatever that person needed and voila! The adventure continues discovering the next step, lather, rinse, repeat until the big bad is slain. You could always reveal lore via

magical or technological items. I mentioned Matthew Colville earlier and if you're not watching his DM videos you really are missing out. He has a whole video on using items to deliver lore called the Lore Delivery System with creative ways to deliver lore using objects. I'll put a link in the description of the episode, please go check that out. The crux of the episode and the crux of the point that he makes

is that through the existence of magical items you can pass on lore of your world. It's not a greatsword, it's the greatsword used by Speznor the Mad, the barbarian queen of the mana wastes who slayed dozens of river drakes in the Battle of Dorben Hill. It's not a leather cap, it's the hat that once belonged to Bicero the Wizard. It's not just another necklace, it's the Amulet of Kaniba-Nan. Giving history and names to your magical items and having the PCs discover them is a convenient way for you to reveal some of this lore. If nothing else, they may ask, who the hell was Keneba Non? And that gives you an N to encourage the PCs to go find out.

More directly and closer to the NPC method of revealing lore, if the magic or technological item can speak, it's intelligent, or it has archives of some sort, the PCs could retrieve the lore directly from them. They pick up the sword and hear in their mind, Uhhhhhhhhh, oh, hello, who are you? An often overlooked way to reveal lore is in details of the environment the PCs are in. In one game I'm running the PCs just entered a chamber where there was a huge battle

hundreds of years ago between an evil sorcerer and PCs at the time who were chasing them. The last battles took place across two levels so when the party entered the area I described that the areas of the wall looked like they had melted a long time ago and still standing wall of stone that cut diagonally across part of the room. The scorched floor and the frayed and burnt areas of the carpet, while some of it was still stained dark brown from ancient blood. When I described the first room with these clues, one of the players said, the heck could have happened here? A few checks and discovery of one corpse later, and they had clues that this is where the sorcerer met their fate long ago.

Their last breath stolen by a fighter on her last leg, blood pouring from dozens of open wounds all over her body, but she had the strength to sink the axe mage slayer into the sorcerer's shoulder, sinking it down to the navel and rending soul from flesh as the fighter collapsed against the wall to be brought back from the brink by a nearby cleric. Just like that, one event and a ton of lore hinted at. Well I'm just looking at the time of this episode and how much I still have left to go over and there is no chance I'm going to be able to get all this covered in one week. So with apologies, I'm going to have to continue tips for handling lore next week as well.

So tune in for the second half of this topic. Before I go, please like rate and subscribe to the podcast, wherever you happen to find it. Tune in next week when I'm going to go over part two for tips of handling lore. But before I go on, I think this week's sponsor, Shrimp. I don't like Shrimp because they don't like to share. After all, they're all a kind of shellfish. This has been episode 224,

part one of tips for handling lore in your game. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking 20 podcast is a publishing cube media production. Copyright 2024. game is your best game.