Is aurora serious or just an irreverent atmos game?

[Marlon P.]

When talking about lore or changes over the hears ive heard the common refrain "aurora is an atmos sim with clowns. Don't expect it to be serious."

This is used to say lore shouldn't try to follow mechanics.

But often when it comes to lore that the groups that use this refrain like, there's a committment to realism and irreverence is a sin. And both arguments are used at the same time without irony.

So is aurora meant to be an irreverent atmos sim where we should actively reject realism and not judge irreverence,

Or is this a game thats moved beyond its roots and should take itself seriously?

Are we a funny atmos sim or a role-playing game? 

Where on the spectrum are we meant to be? You can't claim both sides of the imagined binary interchangably.

Thanks for reading.

[Kintsugi]

I didn’t realize Aurora’s seriousness was up for debate.

[Marlon P.]

30 minutes ago, DanseMacabre said:

I didn’t realize Aurora’s seriousness was up for debate.

What do you mean by that? Do you feel it's a settled question where there is no room for dissoante opinions?

And anything is up for debate. I like having conversations. I see opposing statements about the same thing. It is fun to talk about that.

Edited May 5, 2022 by Marlon P.

[MattAtlas]

We are serious, yes. Or at least, we try to be.

Most of the time.

[Captain Gecko]

Aurora is just like Star Wars, or Warhammer, or LOTR, etc. It's a fun hobby that also happens to have a setting with a more or less deep lore. Just like these franchise, it's purely fictional and has lots of room for mindless fun. It also has lots of room for people to get hooked into it, follow it eagerly, take part in it, etc. The lore becomes the hobby as much as the... Well, hobby itself.

As far as Aurora itself goes... I'd say there's a bit of seriousness at least? In the lore/atmosphere, firstly, there's drama between interstellar powers, wars... There's lore and articles going in details of societies several-centuries old... I mean it's not Hippie where you can fart your ass off, or some ERP server where's we're just here for smut and no one cares about lore... There's stuff happening, and it's dramatic stuff! In the work done, secondly, obviously there's some seriousness... Lore is developped with teams, there's organisation, there's hours spent in there to contribute to the lore... For free, for fun! We wouldn't be there if we weren't having fun (I hope), but there's a lot of work going there, so yeah, serious, I think.

As far as the individual player goes, I don't think there's a way to arbitrarily say if something is meant to be taken seriously or not. At least in the realm of hobbies like these. Do you want to get involved in the deep lore? Take it seriously? Do so! Have fun! You're here to have fun are you? Are you not into the lore and just here to enjoy the game without a care in the world for all of the interstelar drama and corporate hell that awaits for you in the lore of the Spur? Go ahead too! (So long as you don't actually go directly against the lore like "Oh yeah, I come from Earth when it was nuked 10 years ago in 3010" or something".)

 

TL;DR:

- Is Aurora a "serious" work? Yeah, I think so.

- Is Aurora meant to be taken seriously? I don't know. You make it as serious as you want it to be.

[Carver]

A little of column A, a little of column B. Let it be flexible depending on the situation and you can have the best of both worlds. I consider it serious, but I also enjoy making a joke here and there.

As for "lore shouldn't try to follow mechanics", I heavily agree with this statement. Instead, mechanics should generally follow lore (within reason - balance can be tricky). Lore offers a guiding trail for interesting mechanical implementations, such as Srom.

[Myazaki]

It's a game that tries to be reasonably serious. But is held back by having a lot of mechanics that were designed for lrp servers.