Worldbuilding, Lore & Pain - Printable Version

Worldbuilding, Lore & Pain - Printable Version

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Worldbuilding, Lore & Pain - Hippie - 05-22-2021

Worldbuilding, Lore & Pain

AKA Hippie posts yet another deranged rant.

If you're wondering what the image is, it's from a game called Kenshi - one of my favorite games in terms of how they built their world and lore, and how they decided to showcase it. It's mostly there just to save me the eyesore from the wall of text.

INDEX

1. Introduction

2. The Issue At Hand
3. Worldbuilding, Lore & Pain
4. Mechanical Backing
5. Counterpoint: Freedom of RP
6. Counterpoint: SL2 Isn't Serious
7. Proposal & Conclusion

1. Introduction

For the sake of your sanity and mine, I decided to make a little index to keep my thoughts organized and to (try to) make this post an easier read for everyone. I started writing and rewriting this at 7 PM and it's now 3 AM.

I want to start by prefacing the following: SL2 is a game I love. I registered on BYOND back in 2015 to play SS13 after I got tired of playing High RP servers in San Andreas Multiplayer and figured I would see what else BYOND had to offer besides SS13. That is how I stumbled into SL2 and I have been playing since with a few breaks here and there. I've had my ups and downs in it, and yet I keep coming back to it every time.

That is, largely, for two reasons. The first is the roleplay. The world of SL2, while not fully fledged out, has a lot of very interesting concepts that you rarely if ever find anywhere else. It's a game with a lot of potential to be something great and I've had extremely memorable RP playing it. The second, naturally, is the players. I have met some of the best roleplayers in my life playing SL2 and they're some of the nicest people I still regularly talk to. Without them, the game just wouldn't be the same.

The PVP and PVE in SL2 is no doubt one of the main draws of the game. I've spent many hours trying new builds, trying to synergize classes and calculating builds. But the novelty of it wears down fairly fast. PVP alone is not enough to make me want to play the game, and the roleplay in it really makes it shine and be something much more enjoyable. Updates to the combat system add some of the spark there was before, but it too doesn't last for long once you've played around with it enough.

In the sections ahead, I will try to explain what I see as an issue with the direction of SL2. I am speaking from my own perspective, naturally, so I'm not speaking for anyone else in the community. Some players have a similar sentiment to mine, but that is for them to voice.

2. The Issue At Hand

What is the problem with the game, then? Roleplay.

Roleplay in SL2 is not as developed as it should be. Worldbuilding and lore are the two core obstacles currently stifling roleplay. We have plenty of lore, most of which is scattered in game chat pop-ups, a sorely lacking fandom wikia, many lore questions threads that have been compiled into one big .txt file and an in-progress wiki that is properly expanding upon bits of lore. When you put all of these together, you have lore that is, well. Inadequate.

Mind you, the lore and world exist. They are there. They are simply hard to reach, or have not yet been put down into words. What the playerbase knows about the world is what bits have been scattered in NPC dialogue, what questions have been asked to Dev and what the GMs know and pass down to the players when asked. This is an issue.

The lore questions system is fundamentally backwards. Lore questions should be used as a secondary means to clear doubts regarding a fleshed out setting, rather than the primary means to try and understand said setting through once-a-month questions. It's like trying to fill a sandbox a grain at a time. Fictional worlds are meant to be big worlds full of opportunities, possibilities and knowledge. But charting it out one question at a time is not going to help players understand it.

This leads to two things. The first being that players enclose themselves in their own bubbles of headcanon, lacking knowledge about the world that should be fundamental and coming up with their own answers to their own questions until they step on a GM's toes. The second being that it leads to a lack of roleplay. People have no real grounds to interact with others save for normal conversation to pass the time. There is little drive to initiate conflict, as there are no stark cultural differences, no tensions between the many different races or beliefs, no grudges over historical events to overcome through character development. Interactions can end up being ultimately meaningless, as it's hard to feel like your character is a part of the world and be immersed in it.

The Sigroganan Empire, the central nation and that which the world is named after, only has a few small paragraphs in its wikia page after all these years. One example out of many.

One of the solutions to this issue was introducing Eventmins. It was a long awaited addition to stir up more roleplay and make thing less samey and monotone - but ultimately, it is a bandaid to what is a problem far larger. Even Eventmins have to run their own self-contained events, as their addition changed nothing in regards to how much of a world we have to work with.

The issue at hand is that SL2 needs worldbuilding.

3. Worldbuilding, Lore & Pain

Worldbuilding is an important step for any roleplay game. There needs to be an establishing of the internal logic that dictates a world. While SL2 does have bits of worldbuilding here and there, for the most part, the world feels empty and directionless. Everybody roleplays in their own self-contained bubbles of lore and there are little lore interactions between people unless they're pre-arranged through OOC means.

As my main character is a Shaitan, I can provide an example of the above.

According to lore, the Shaitan are a people with barely if any rights in the Sigroganan Empire. They are commonly feared - and rightfully so - for their scorched mind, star-given mood swings and dangerous claws that are capable of tearing people to shreds. Officially, the Sigroganan Empire does not acknowledge them as real and the Secretary of Defense holds the authority to swiftly imprison or execute Shaitan without due process. Despite all of this, I consisently stumble into people who freely acknowledge the Shaitan as people and will proudly say so in public despite the danger it should entail for one to go against the Empire's whims. When I act on this and attempt to silence the offender with threats or persuade them that Shaitan do not exist, I am completely alone in this because very few people play along with this fact.

This is not to say that the players who acknowledge Shaitan are at fault or have done anything wrong. This is to say that the lore we have on the culture/laws/etc surrounding the Shaitan are very lacking. It amounts to, without exaggeration, two sentences. These concepts need expanding upon, the Shaitan example being only one of many.

What's the population of the Empire?

What's the Empire's main economic resource?

How do politics in the Empire work?

Who are the faces that lead the Empire?

What is the level of education the average Imperial citizen recieves?

All of these questions are examples of what I refer to with worldbuilding. These are little questions that on their own have little impact, but all of them put together helps build a believable world that everyone can understand and play around. It doesn't mean that people should never ever acknowledge Shaitan because the Empire doesn't, but it should mean that the people who acknowledge them understand what they're getting into if they choose to do so in public. Otherwise, we're all just throwing around what we think is how the world works, and thus stifling RP that could otherwise be extremely entertaining.

GMs and other people who have asked those example questions know the answer, I'm sure, but that's not the point of presenting them as examples. The point of presenting them is to showcase what I mean with what should be asked of the setting to piece it together. Asking GMs or other players should not be my go-to when I need an answer to a question about the setting, it should be as simple as having a detailed wiki article in which, for example, all of the important aspects of the Empire are covered. An overview, its history, its politics, its factions, its economy, its laws, its culture. That much is necessary for a proper roleplaying game.

That is, also, not to say that everyone needs to know how many grams of yarn the Empire exports to the decimal. If someone really wishes to know information so precise, for whatever reason, that is where lore questions would optimally cue in. Lore questions should serve as a backup to answer the doubts players have from reading the detailed lore about the world, instead of making it the primary means of understanding how the world works.

For all of these matters, I have a solution I will propose at the conclusion of this post, but there are matters that still need addressing.

4. Mechanical Backing

Although this section is a bit of a tangent, I feel it's still a matter that is worth mentioning. In regards to roleplay in general, an emote command alone does not suffice. I'm hyperbolizing, of course, but SL2 as a game should have mechanics directly geared for the purpose of roleplay. The PVP is certainly one of the main draws of the game, but what enhances it the most is the roleplay that entails those fights and happens within them. Roleplay and mechanics dedicated to it should be as much of a focus of the game as is the combat.

The inclusion of roleplay traits was certainly a step in the right direction, but as of right now, the roleplay traits are extremely underwhelming. Some traits are plain and simply combat traits. One that really stands out as the trait I adore the most is Oracle's Voices of the Past. It is purely a roleplay trait and opens up a whole new avenue of possibilities for roleplay alone, be it opportunities to approach someone, the ability to spy on others through lore-relevant means, etcetera. That is the direction roleplay traits should take in making players get immersed in the races they play - though it shouldn't be necessarily restricted to racial traits.

Traits aside, there are a lot of possibilities for little roleplay mechanics that could be included. Little things such as letting Guards actually handcuff and pull criminals around, the ability for winged races to hover over the ground as if they're actually flying, more NPCs with more insight into the world of Sigrogana, anything and everything that expands upon the roleplay and immersion of the game, rather than a continued focus on PV(P/E) updates.

5. Counterpoint: Freedom of RP

An argument I've heard very often while discussing the topic of worldbuilding and lore with other players was that if SL2 were to have more detailed lore, it would heavily stifle creativity and force everyone to rework parts of their characters.

The answer to this concern is rather straightforward. Building a world does not imply that everyone becomes all of a sudden forced to roleplay accordingly to how a set of rules says you should. This is simply not a thing. Building a world means building a framework in which any person is free to grab it and weave their own stories around it. The only feasible way in which building a world could impact your character is if, for some reason, your character's story heavily relies on how many grams of yarn the Empire exports. What I mean by that is that if you created your character solely based off your headcanon about how the world works, then yes, your character will be impacted.

Lore doesn't in any way restrict creativity from players. Lore is there for everyone to be on the same page and have meaningful interactions in a world that isn't our own. With lore, you and I both could play veterans of the Oniga-Sigrogana War and have meaningful interactions over something relevant to lore, speaking at a bar about our tales of war. The more depth to the War, the more we have to work off for being able to interact. Perhaps your character and mine served alongside the same skirmish at Tannis, or perhaps we both held the line in the bloodbath as the Onigan forces pushed into the forests.

That is the framework a detailed world and lore gives for players to interact. To have characters with knowledge and traits in common that they can discuss, or react to one another for. But those interactions cannot happen without fully fledged out lore unless you and I coordinate the interaction OOCly.

6. Counterpoint: SL2 Isn't Serious

Another point that has been brought up while discussing the topic is that SL2 is not a serious game, that the lore should be left as is to allow for creativity from players and that making more detailed lore means stepping on the players that like to enjoy the game casually.

Technically, the counterpoint is not untrue. I've been all over when it comes to roleplaying games and I've certainly experienced very demanding ones that would have a cop giving you a fine over running in the streets. That might be too extreme of an example, however. But much like the previous counterpoint, the expanding upon of lore would have little impact on the way SL2 is. SL2 would still be SL2 even if we focused on expanding upon the roleplay and lore. There is nothing new to be created here, nor any new rules to be added.

At most, it would encourage people to act more upon concepts established in lore if they're properly detailed.

7. Proposal & Conclusion

My proposal to try and help to solve the problem of worldbuilding is that of what I can only vaguely refer to as Loremins.

From what I understand, Dev works a job and doesn't have all of the time in the world to dedicate to SL2. That much is assumed and understood throughout my entire wall of text. And that is why I bothered to write it in the first place. My goal with this thread is to find a way to help Dev develop the wiki for the playerbase to have a steady flow of information about the world of Sigrogana. That is why I propose Loremins.

A Loremin's task is to largely replace the lore questions system temporarily. Instead of having one whole thread about questions that can range from the tiniest to the largest detail, have a group of players instead bounce off questions that are key to understanding how the lore works. That is not to say the secrets of the lore should be posted all nice and pretty on a wiki, but rather, the core topics that need to be covered to have a cohesive and unified world. Nations and how they operate, Gods and their worship, magic and how it works, cultures, geography, etc. All of this information can then be neatly compiled, checked through Dev to make sure it's good to publish, then post it on the wiki for everyone to read.

That would speed up the process of getting more lore, and I'm sure the finer details regarding Loremins can be ironed out with more input beyond my own.

To conclude, however, this is ultimately all my subjective opinion. I, personally, don't enjoy the current state of lore. I really want to try and engage with others more with the setting, but it's hard when we're all on different pages and not adhering to one unified world. In the end, it's Dev's game and it's up to him whether he wants to work on roleplay/lore or not, I can only give my opinion on what I feel is the right direction.

Thank you for reading my schizoid blogpost.

TL;DR