Why do we care about setting lore?

[Yora]

I am not sure how long this goes back, but to me it appears very much that currently there is a huge interest by lots of people to learn about all the major and minor pieces of background information for all kinds of works of fiction, be it TV shows, videogames, or RPGs. Often to the point where the setting lore becomes even bigger than the actual plot itself. From what I have heard (but might be mistaken), playing a game of Warhammer 40k doesn't even have any kind of plot, but still the background setting has grown huge.

Why is that? What makes background information on a setting of a fictional story equally or even more interesting than the story itself? Why do we care?

[endoperez]

I have no idea, but it might be a psychological thing. Maybe humans like learning things, or knowing things, or both? About the world/a world, I mean. Like, what to eat, how things work, how not to die?


I would love to hear the answer, if there's a right one.

[BWR]

Are you really asking why setting is important?
Plots are overused and boring in themselves. Drama and characters can be good but setting is where things differ. That's where uniqueness and grounding come int. The setting is why plots work, or don't. It informs and shapes characters and development. It's what differentiates one [insert story type] from another [insert story type] or Hero A from Hero B. Without a setting, even an implicit one, you don't have much left for characters or plots to work with. Lore is just knowledge of the setting.

Learning and knowing about things is fun and the more you know about a setting the more fun you can have. Even if you never tell a story or run a game around a specific thing in it, it's something you can think about and enjoy without doing anything more than that. It's a way to feel part of a larger community even if you can't play the game or haven't read all the stories.

Settings I find are much like cookbooks or map/picture books- you may never use all the recipes, you may never visit all the places but you can enjoy the thought of them, get ideas and get pleasure just from learning about them.

The 40k example is a good one. It's a war game. You have small figures you move around on tables and that's about it as far as plot goes. The lore is what makes them fun, what attracts players, what gives you a sense of attachment to this or that faction and makes it something other than a complicated game of chess.

Lore is history, anthropology, geography, religion and more, and some people find those things fun.

[Bulldog Psion]

Same reason that people research minute details of World War II uniforms or Civil War uniforms, background information, etc. It makes the whole experience more "flavorful" for the mind, provides a feeling of life and depth.

Sketchy backgrounds are inherently less interesting than highly developed ones.

For example, just to pick a wargaming topic, I doubt Battletech would have had the same longevity as "generic giant stompy robots" as it's enjoyed with the Houses, the Clans, and all the history and background material. I mean, they have "Era Reports" sourcebooks, plus "Historicals," "Setting Sourcebooks", and "Plot Sourcebooks." These serve no purpose other than filling in the background.

So the people who want to engage it just as a quick beer & pretzels game can do it. And those who want to pick out forces and scenarios suited to a very specific era and situation can do it. Like you can pick out stuff for a totally generic WW2 wargame (even with totally weird setups like British vs. U.S., say), or you can try to come close to running a simulation of part of the Ardennes Offensive from December 1944. Each has its own appeal, and more options are generally better when it comes to making something popular.

At a more basic level, it gives fans something to talk and think about rather than analyzing the "front line" stuff to death. (They do that anyway, perhaps I should say "in addition to analyzing it to death.)

[Frozen_Feet]

You might as well ask "why do we care about fiction"?

There is no one reason why setting lore would interest people. Rather, because setting lore can be about anything and everything, there will by sheer accident be appeal to many different kinds of people.

A lot of setting lore only gets sold because it's tacked to something more interesting. Basics of marketing: make a good name for your product line and people will buy utter crap just for the name.

More basics of marketing: if by some miracle of God your tacky lore increases your sells, you will see a lot of competition jump in the bandwagon for the chance of hitting the same gold vein.

Finally, some people just happen to be obsessive bean-counters by nature and will overthink and catalogue whatever minutiae catches their interest. (I think people on the autism spectrum are especially prone to this.) The people who make wikis and learn/acquire every bit of lore are the narrow tip of any given fandom.

[Yora]

Of course fiction needs setting. But apparently setting can exist independent of any real plot or even characters. RPG settings are a prime example where you often have a huge world but only a tiny fraction of all that information ever gets used in any individual campaign, even if it goes on very long. But plenty of people still enjoy learning about the rest of the world that will not be directly relevant to any story they'll experience. And that seems somewhat surprising.

I think maybe part of the enjoyment comes from discovering the connections between all the elements that are not crucial to the story and are easy to overlook or ignore, but are still there. That would have some traits of putting puzzle pieces together, and that's generally something that makes people feel having fun.

[factotum]

I think you can actually *tell* when the background of a piece of fiction has had some real thought put into it, and when the author is making it up as he goes along. Just look at Tolkien's works--there's a depth of history behind them that may only result in a single sentence here, a paragraph of description there, but they add hugely to the work even though they're not immediately relevant to the plot at hand.

Just compare book and movie: in the book, the statues at the Argonath have an almost mystical dread about them due to their size and antiquity--Frodo is so scared by them that he cowers in the bottom of the boat. In the movies, Frodo looks at them the same way he might look at a shopping trolley dumped in a canal, and then a flock of birds flies out of one of the statue's eyes just in case there was any awe remaining unkilled in the viewer. I know which one I prefer.

[Aotrs Commander]

You might as well ask why does history or zoology or palentology hold any interest for anyone?

Because that's what good world building IS, just of a fictional variety.



I should note, I am the sort of person who will often read campaign source material (Pathfinder's Golarion in particular), just for the sake of it and even though only the smallest fraction will ever see use in my actual games. In a fashion identical to the military history and natural history and so on which I read.



(Hell, nevermind read it, I WRITE that all that stuff on a regular basis for my campaigns and wargames...)

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Initially, my answer was "you know, I have no idea even though I totally do care about setting lore". Then I started thinking about it, and--learning small, allegedly insignificant details about something we love is a way that we can experience it more and make it more a part of us. I mean, you spend time with friends and loved ones slowly learning about their little quirks, their past experiences, and their likes/dislikes. It lets us understand them better, and it brings them closer to us. Knowledge is a great gap-closer.

So I think maybe the answer is that whenever we care about something, that means learning more about it, which in the case of stories means we invest more deeply in the worlds that the stories come from. Because we care about those stories.

[Yora]

Though I am wondering if there's some kind of pattern to what things make background details exciting to discover or bland and irrelevant? In any case, I think the wider context is most likely crucial. When you have an item description or short document in a videogame, it is generally not telling an actual entertaining story or describes a local custom or phenomenon. I think a small piece of information is usually the most fun to discover when it elaborates on something that is already part of the main story and gives you more insight into the story characters and who they are and where they come from.
When running an RPG campaign and you want to tell players something about the backstory of the world, it's always important to give them pieces of information that relate somehow to what they are currently trying to accomplish in the narrative of the game, or it just goes in one ear and out the other like technobabble. (Is there a word for it? Mythbabble? I think there should be. :smallamused:) In an RPG, players remember things which they believe will be useful to understand what they need to do to accomplish their goals. I wouldn't be surprised if good setting lore that people care for does something similar.
I very much enjoy the worldbuilding lore from the Mass Effect and Dragon Age games, and those elements that always fascinate me the most are those that help me understand the exact nature of the old and ongoing conflicts between the various factions. Knowing that "Mages can become possesed by demons and because of that the church always keeps them under close watch and kills anyone who tries to slip away" is sufficient to understand why mages and templars often get into fights and why templars are so kill happy and many mages go rogue. When you run into some templars and mages fighting, you have what you need to sort it out. But there's a whole big backstory on the nature of mages, the specifics of demon possession, and a long line of major historic events that lead to the creation of various institutions as they exist now. You don't need that to take sides in an argument that deals with something right now in the present. But it increases your finer understanding of the overall situation and how the present situation is just a minor part of something much bigger. And I think that's maybe one of the big factors that make lore engaging.
I don't think lots of people would heap praise on the lore of a world because it explains the methods of cheesemaking and the current dress fashion.

[Aotrs Commander]

I don't think lots of people would heap praise on the lore of a world because it explains the methods of cheesemaking and the current dress fashion.

Again, what about the people who enjoy reading history and/or nonfiction, even just as a lay interest?

I'm quite happy to go around a mining museum and learn about mining history, why wouldn't I want to read about a fantasy version, especially if it demonstrates the writer has made some effort?

Stuff is interesting for just being stuff, ofttimes.

[factotum]

When you have an item description or short document in a videogame, it is generally not telling an actual entertaining story or describes a local custom or phenomenon.

I'd have to disagree there. Have a look at Might and Magic VI, VII, or VIII some time (aka "the good ones")--the item descriptions in that often gave small snippets of history and lore that there would otherwise be no way of finding out. I certainly don't think those snippets actively *detracted* from the experience of playing the game, and it was often fun reading those little one-paragraph stories and imagining the wider story they were a part of.

[Ninja_Prawn]

I think most of the key answers to the titular question have already been covered by others, but I wanted to offer a specific response to this:


RPG settings are a prime example where you often have a huge world but only a tiny fraction of all that information ever gets used in any individual campaign, even if it goes on very long.

As a DM, I need to know all that peripheral gumpf just in case it comes up. Having a holistic picture of the world in my head also helps to tie up the PCs' backstories so that I can weave them into the world organically. It's hard to explain in concrete terms, but little details, even if they are never explicitly mentioned at the table, help me to create that picture.

Even as a player, I find it really frustrating when a DM says "The setting is a fantasy world and you live in a village. There. Go create a character." I feel like I can't put my heart and soul into that character, because they live in a bland, colourless vacuum.

[Legato Endless]

Why is that? What makes background information on a setting of a fictional story equally or even more interesting than the story itself? Why do we care?

Because sometimes the setting is the story.

Life isn't just the big personas and what happens to them. It's also the environment you're raised in, the society in which you live. Doesn't the fact that something is monolithic in life justify itself for having it's story told?

Warhammer 40K is loved for it's lore because the setting's the point. Warhammer is about fighting what can't be fought. And whether an oppressive society can be justified in those circumstances. This is what speaks to people, and the lore, more than any plot or character, is the primary conveyance of that theme.


Of course fiction needs setting. But apparently setting can exist independent of any real plot or even characters.

Yes. The same way a story can have brilliant characters independent of any interesting plot.


I think maybe part of the enjoyment comes from discovering the connections between all the elements that are not crucial to the story and are easy to overlook or ignore, but are still there.

What makes a setting element crucial to a story per se? Don't these details change in significant depending on the shape of the narrative?


I think a small piece of information is usually the most fun to discover when it elaborates on something that is already part of the main story and gives you more insight into the story characters and who they are and where they come from.

That's something of a false dichotomy. The setting can be a character. In which case, all those little details become vital characterization.

The protagonist of Sin City is the city. The lead character of Space Battleship Yamato is the ship, not the crew's ranking officer. Is Silent Hill merely a haunted ground for the player character to explore? Journey is not the story of hooded figure wandering the desert. It's the story of an ancient society amidst the cyclical nature of life.

I think part of the confusion people often feel in the last decade when fiction breaks various conventions they felt were rules is partially based on an over focusing on characters, partially fed by modern social anxiety. We worry continually about being ever more disconnected, so the power of Friendship is this huge ubiquitous theme since the 2000s. Augmented by how individualized Western culture is, which makes the reader tend to deemphasize the role of society, collectivism, and the environment as more than just a grounding for people to move in, but a powerful facet itself that speaks to people and informs our lives.

[Yora]

With Silent Hill I certainly agree. The stories that take place there could only take place there and nowhere else. Unique traits of the setting are integral components of the plots. Star Wars is probably another case. You need the Force, the relationship between Jedi and Sith, and the culture of the Empire for the story to work. I mentioned Dragon Age and Mass Effect earlier, and many of the various storylines that are interwoven also tie in directly to the culture and history of the various peoples. And further back Morrowind. The plot of the game revolves around events in the past and how they shaped current culture.

If the plot rests almost entirely on the interaction of characters, that's not really the case. Pirates of the Carribean is a huge fantasy movie series, but they don't appear to create the impression that there's any interesting lore out there to discover. Or Indiana Jones. Admitedly, both are set on planet Earth, but they both have some elements that are pretty far out there. But they appear to be limited to the characters and the plots, not to be part of a wider cultural world.
If for example we'd been told more about the Indians who cured the gold from the first movie, would we even care or just discard it as irrelevant? Would it tell us anything new about the characters and what they are trying to do?

[danzibr]

I like factotum's line about preference of versions.

As for me, I am one of the many who loves lore. I happen to be into math. I may not need to know Calculus or anything about epsilons and deltas or when Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz lived or what the Laplace transform or what the gamma function is or residue theory or what quasi-metric geometry is to teach Algebra I and Algebra II, but it helps. It's like the difference between knowing a single path through the forest and having a map of the whole thing in your mind.

[Legato Endless]

Unique traits of the setting are integral components of the plots.

But the setting isn't always a plot component. Sometimes it's why we're here, and the plot is just an exploration of the setting. That might not be true for how you parse fiction, but it is way a lot of people connect to life through a narrative. Then the details matter. So of course people obsess over the lore. It's the heart of the story.


Or Indiana Jones. Admitedly, both are set on planet Earth, but they both have some elements that are pretty far out there. But they appear to be limited to the characters and the plots, not to be part of a wider cultural world.
If for example we'd been told more about the Indians who cured the gold from the first movie, would we even care or just discard it as irrelevant? Would it tell us anything new about the characters and what they are trying to do?

That presumes a oneway relationship between the constituent elements and the work's identity. If Indiana Jones is framed as an imperialistic acquisitive interloper desecrating the memory of uncounted silent victims, than the lore of the Indians is pretty important. Much more so than whatever the archaeologist is doing, because he's much more a symbolic figure here than a sympathetic escapist everyman in a popcorn serial.

[cobaltstarfire]

Setting adds depth and context to the story/characters/game/ect.


I usually think of setting as the collective stories of the world and its people, even if many of those stories may not surface, they still exist and may even be referenced in a way. Like all the books you can find and read in neverwinter nights, or world of warcraft. You don't need to read them, but if you do you may learn something about why the world is the way it is. Because some elemental force did this, or that some god thrown to the world in mortal form did that, or some humorous thing happened and now you can giggle at it.

[Yora]

Setting adds depth and context to the story/characters/game/ect.

But I think there is an important difference between setting elements that appear in the narrative and setting elements that are supplemental. Good setting is of course essential to many stories, but from that it does not automatically follow that people would be interested in additional supplemental background information after the narrative has already concluded.
Story is over, all problems solved. Any additional information won't make a difference anymore. But maybe it does make a difference? Does learning about hidden background information make (some) people appreciate the tale more even after the fact? That's the question that is on my mind.

[cobaltstarfire]

Does learning about hidden background information make (some) people appreciate the tale more even after the fact? That's the question that is on my mind.

From a personal perspective, yes, I likely will appreciate a story even more after the fact from learning more about it, and it'll usually put the original story into a new light when you go back and consider it after learning some more bits of info.

I wouldn't say that that is the case all of the time, but a lot of the time it can be.

[Ravens_cry]

Because it adds depth and gives an added feeling of reality beyond the story itself. A story can be like a landscape, but lore is like getting a look at what lies beyond the edges of the frame.

[Kitten Champion]

Epics traditionally were used to teach willing audiences about the world and important events in some preceding time while conveying significant morals and axioms so the masses could understand them. That aspect of it is still pretty evident in the modern genre fiction, it just takes the form of world-building and has adopted its own criteria and tropes.

For something like Star Trek for instance, I don't really think much of the lore since it's usually quite unimportant to the proceeding events anyways. I mean, its format meant the world would reset at the end of the episode so alien races generally didn't exists beyond the confines of that hour and the mainstay major races which are not are nearly self-explanatory Hat-wearers in the first place.

Which is fine, usually, the point of the universe is to be a generic template to tell science fiction stories with a very human and optimistic tint to it - not to tell the story of the Star Trek universe.

While for something like Star Wars, it's very much about this galaxy far far away a long time ago, it's the important events in this fictional world's history and explaining the world comes part-and-parcel with engaging with Luke Skywalker's story as the pivotal figure in the history.

[Closet_Skeleton]

From what I have heard (but might be mistaken), playing a game of Warhammer 40k doesn't even have any kind of plot, but still the background setting has grown huge.

A game of 40k has as much plot as you want it to, just like any table top game. A 40k campaign can have just as much story as a D&D campaign and even a stand alone battle is a story even if the players don't put any thought into it.

Most hardcore warhammer players put as more thought and customisation time into their army's character models than casual RPG players put in at character creation.

The huge part of 40k background is in the tie in novels which I don't think counts as setting for setting sake since they're narratives, there isn't really all that much background really and most of the factions are pretty flat and haven't had much fleshing out for decades. Faerun probably has more.

[Yora]

So a bit like using story to guide the audience on a tour through the world? Interesting approach and I can easily see how it might apply to the two recent Bioware settings. The companion quests are always just as much about giving a lot of exposition as they are about the companion character's story. Which is a smart move, as the companion character becomes the reason why you care about all the exposition. It helps the players to understand what the characters are dealing with and how they could help solving that problem. It's not obvious infodumping but makes the audience invested in understanding this particular aspect of the setting.

And maybe that could also work the other way around. The audience being interested in the protagonist and his activities because it's an opportunity to get an easy to comprehend introduction into a particular fascinating aspect of the world. Maybe characters could actively use that to create stories that are percieved as gripping and original. For people who read or watch not so much for following conspiracy investigations, action, or romance, but more for discovering wonderous worlds, such an approach might work quite well.

[Aotrs Commander]

But the setting isn't always a plot component. Sometimes it's why we're here, and the plot is just an exploration of the setting. That might not be true for how you parse fiction, but it is way a lot of people connect to life through a narrative. Then the details matter. So of course people obsess over the lore. It's the heart of the story.

To expound on this more, a mate of mine (a cartoonist by trade) is working on a project which is essentially sort of a campaign world only without the RPG to tie it in to. He's drawing a comic about it (which he may or nor may not one day release, though it will be a crying tragedy if he never does), but the comic is basically a way to express the world; the world is not there to support the comic.

(One might observe that Lords of the Rings is basically that: a book written so that Tolkien had some way of sharing out his "history of fantasy language" hobby.)

[Yora]

That is about what is going through my mind. How would one even start using narrative formats (novel, comic, movie, ...) to explore a world rather than character development?

I've just been reading user-reviews of Perdito Street Station and the negative ones pretty much all complained about being burried in too many new ideas all the time with the plot never progressing anywhere. It seems to have tried something of this kind, but for many people didn't work.

[Closet_Skeleton]

(One might observe that Lords of the Rings is basically that: a book written so that Tolkien had some way of sharing out his "history of fantasy language" hobby.)

Technically LotR is a cash in written because The Hobbit was popular that the author had to stuff full of random details from the world he'd built for the unpublishable Silmarillion in order to get through the economic drudgery.

Claiming Tolkien invented fantasy is a joke but he did make the idea that you could sell tie in works that were just details economically viable, even if much of that work was actually done by other writers cashing in on the cash in.

[Aotrs Commander]

That is about what is going through my mind. How would one even start using narrative formats (novel, comic, movie, ...) to explore a world rather than character development?

The best book ever written is Spacecraft 2000-2100AD.

It is essentially a "Jane's guide to spacecraft" written from the point of some latter-day future historian.

It tells the story, in little snippets, of the Terran Trade Authority and (primarily) the war between the alliance of Earth and Alpha Centauri and against Proxima Centauri.

It is UNQUESTIONABLE the single biggest influence of any kind in my life and unlife.



There are MAYBE three people named in it.



You do not need people to tell a story.

(In fact, I find the modern trend of character development as the sole metric of narrative quality to be entirely misguided and frequently detrimental.)

[Legato Endless]

That is about what is going through my mind. How would one even start using narrative formats (novel, comic, movie, ...) to explore a world rather than character development?

Why does this continue to mystify people? This isn't some experimental nouveau form of storytelling. It's like ignoring the whole history of mythology KC mentioned above.


Technically LotR is a cash in written because The Hobbit was popular that the author had to stuff full of random details from the world he'd built for the unpublishable Silmarillion in order to get through the economic drudgery.

True, but the Silmarillion was created by the author for reasons that support AOTR's point.

@Aotrs Commander- Thank you.

[factotum]

Technically LotR is a cash in written because The Hobbit was popular

That'll be why it took him 17 years to write it, presumably? Always need to get in there quickly with these cash-ins... :smallsigh:

[zimmerwald1915]

How do we experience drama? We experience drama as life lived truly, but in imaginary circumstances. The more particularized the circumstances, the truer the lives lived in them are.

[Aotrs Commander]

How do we experience drama? We experience drama as life lived truly, but in imaginary circumstances. The more particularized the circumstances, the truer the lives lived in them are.

I... am honestly unsure as to which side of the debate you are attempting to illuminate, as it appears to read both ways...?

[Yora]

For something like Star Trek for instance, I don't really think much of the lore since it's usually quite unimportant to the proceeding events anyways. I mean, its format meant the world would reset at the end of the episode so alien races generally didn't exists beyond the confines of that hour and the mainstay major races which are not are nearly self-explanatory Hat-wearers in the first place.

Which is fine, usually, the point of the universe is to be a generic template to tell science fiction stories with a very human and optimistic tint to it - not to tell the story of the Star Trek universe.

I agree. But I don't know why.

Starting from Season 3, Deep Space Nine stepped away from Alien of the Week plots and introduced that big Dominion War storyline. That would have been very fertile ground for big worldbuilding, but somehow it never happened. We never get to see a single Dominion world and for most of the whole show Cardassia consists of a single basement office. I think today that might no longer fly with audiences.
Though even Babylon 5, which I think was at the time considered to have amazingly complex worldbuilding, never really did much with developing alien cultures and history. The Centauri probably got the most. (While I like the idea of the Minbari, the execution is awfully bland and you can't really talk about Narn "culture" with only one and a half actual characters of that species.)

My hunch would be that Star Wars turned out to become this lore leviathan partly because of business sawy, but also because it didn't have new episodes on TV for years on end. Novels and videogames where the only way you could get any more Star Wars until relatively recently.

[factotum]

We never get to see a single Dominion world

I'm pretty sure we saw the Founders' home world on a couple of occasions, but having said that, we barely saw anything of any other planets in DS9 either? Maybe an admiral's office on Earth or the temple on Bajor and that was about it--it was almost entirely ship and station based, in a way no other Trek series was. I mean, we learned of the deaths of 800 million Cardassians at the hands of the Founders purely through a line of dialogue from Garak--never saw any of that fighting at all!

[Kitten Champion]

I agree. But I don't know why.

Starting from Season 3, Deep Space Nine stepped away from Alien of the Week plots and introduced that big Dominion War storyline. That would have been very fertile ground for big worldbuilding, but somehow it never happened. We never get to see a single Dominion world and for most of the whole show Cardassia consists of a single basement office. I think today that might no longer fly with audiences.

I think because the Dominion War was more of a means of exploring the sorts of stories you can only tell about good people going to war - rather than pushing it off on "less evolved" aliens - using that basic SF template. Sure, it had the appearance of more serialized story, but I think it was closer to TOS episodes like Balance of Terror, The Enterprise Incident, and The Day of the Dove than a Mass Effect - in that it was still pretty message-of-the-week even if the subjects remained the same.



Though even Babylon 5, which I think was at the time considered to have amazingly complex worldbuilding, never really did much with developing alien cultures and history. The Centauri probably got the most. (While I like the idea of the Minbari, the execution is awfully bland and you can't really talk about Narn "culture" with only one and a half actual characters of that species.)

We really see so little of the B5 universe due to the constraints of series. The important events are there certainly, and we get to know the movers-and-shakers, but it's rather predisposed to the same sets day in and day out with the emphasis on political drama at the space UN.



My hunch would be that Star Wars turned out to become this lore leviathan partly because of business sawy, but also because it didn't have new episodes on TV for years on end. Novels and videogames where the only way you could get any more Star Wars until relatively recently.

Star Wars' strength as a universe and in general can be summed up with this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gpXMGit4P8), I think.

[Reddish Mage]

I think there are two types of people when it comes to setting lore:


1) Playgrounders aka Nerds aka Geeks aka Fans

We like the franchise so much we want to know everything about it and get more familiar with the world itself.


2) Everyone else

Mainstream types often hear this stuff and go "eh..." however, notice how often they get drawn in by media that evoke a greater universe and don't bring in elements at random to fill in the backgrounds.

Movies require setting lore to guide the technicals of creating the movie, just like stories require writing that advances the script. Deviate from those basics too much and its not just the geeks and critics that cry foul, no one wants to see those sorts of movies.

I think this is why "Catwoman" failed as a movie or "My Super ex-Girlfriend" seems so thin. Its not the acting by the A-listers that fell flat so much as what they were doing had no appeal because it came out of a vacuum. Of course it had nothing to do in those cases that, being superhero movies, one of which starring a girl named after a DC villain and the other a clear female clone of someone, that lore was expected or readily available and mysteriously completely ignored or something.

[factotum]

I think this is why "Catwoman" failed as a movie

Oh, I think there were plenty of reasons other than that why Catwoman failed--you've seen it, right? :smallwink:

[Dhavaer]

I don't think lots of people would heap praise on the lore of a world because it explains the methods of cheesemaking and the current dress fashion.

There was a Dragonlance book about the various regional foods, clothing and similar throughout Krynn. I have no other interest in Dragonlance, but I loved that book.

[BWR]

That is about what is going through my mind. How would one even start using narrative formats (novel, comic, movie, ...) to explore a world rather than character development?

I've just been reading user-reviews of Perdito Street Station and the negative ones pretty much all complained about being burried in too many new ideas all the time with the plot never progressing anywhere. It seems to have tried something of this kind, but for many people didn't work.

My problems with Mieville are his characters. His plots are pedestrian but passable, but his world-building is great - I would be more than happy to read nothing but his descriptions of Bas-Lag and its history.
His characters are terrible and ruin everything, making an otherwise great book into a chore.
You want to see what world-building without characters or plot is like, read Olaf Stapledon. "Star Maker" and "Last and First Men" are amazing books of imagination, though they are more about broad strokes than depth - necessarily, considering the purpose of the books.

As for cheesemaking etc. one of the most popular books for the L5R rpg is "Emerald Empire" (two versions), which details minutiae of the setting like what people do in the various seasons, flora and fauna, food, traditions and superstitions of the factions, notes on fashion etc. etc. Why do people like it? Because it gives depth and life to the setting. It tells you more than a note of wars and politics and mechanics, It tells you of what these people are like. It aids the roleplaying aspect of the game more than any number of mechanics or politics or plots because it tells you what the culture and setting are like.
Lots of people love that stuff.

[DomaDoma]

Just compare book and movie: in the book, the statues at the Argonath have an almost mystical dread about them due to their size and antiquity--Frodo is so scared by them that he cowers in the bottom of the boat. In the movies, Frodo looks at them the same way he might look at a shopping trolley dumped in a canal, and then a flock of birds flies out of one of the statue's eyes just in case there was any awe remaining unkilled in the viewer. I know which one I prefer.

They were plenty majestic in the film. The movie versions of the characters are just less in the habit of superstitious flinching from the glories of antiquity, racially profiling random swans on the river, and so forth. It would have been nice to know that they were representations of Isildur and Arnor, though; in the film, they're very cool and pannable and the Howard Shore music is swelling, but the actual significance gets rather lost. (The renewed emphasis on Osgiliath might somewhat make up for that, though.)

Anyway, BWR's post on the first page ought to go into any hall of fame we have going.

[Legato Endless]

Why do people like it? Because it gives depth and life to the setting. It tells you more than a note of wars and politics and mechanics, It tells you of what these people are like. It aids the roleplaying aspect of the game more than any number of mechanics or politics or plots because it tells you what the culture and setting are like.
Lots of people love that stuff.

Indeed. Part of the success of the IP that inspired this forum is based on the desire to involve ourselves in an alien world. It isn't just characters that are often escapist.


How do we experience drama? We experience drama as life lived truly, but in imaginary circumstances. The more particularized the circumstances, the truer the lives lived in them are.

+1

[Reddish Mage]

I would say that one of my greatest disappointments of the Peter Jackson movie is that he leave sout a lot of the setting lore. But even more so, I miss all the little side quests the hobbits undertake by themselves when Gandalf and the humans aren't around.

[enderlord99]

That is about what is going through my mind. How would one even start using narrative formats (novel, comic, movie, ...) to explore a world rather than character development?

You don't. You explore the world in addition to those living in that world. I don't see why events happening in a given order via cause-and-effect (a plot) somehow has more to do with a small subset of people caught up in those events (a cast of characters) than it does with the thousands of others caught up in the events, the places where the events happen, and the even larger-scale ramifications (a setting.)

[Mascara]

I like it because I like to imagine how would be my life in that setting.

And it gets easier to imagine that if you know the lore.

EDIT: Also it is like a history class but with dragons! And I love Dragons and history.

[Tvtyrant]

Personally I think it is evolutionary. Stories are the way we passed down knowledge, and the way we teach is still heavily influenced by storytelling. When someone memorizes lore they are fulfilling an urge to preserve vital knowledge, but are redirecting it into a new direction.