If You Were Loremaster (im not resigning)

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

I remember the good old days when I had just become loremaster, people were always complaining. My entire first few months into my tenure were handling angry, aggressive, rage-fueled tirades.

But these last few months I've had a hard time getting people to give me feedback or their stances on various things that I do. An annoying situation I'm in is that I only hear feedback through secondhand sources, or I have to pry it out of people. I don't like this because a lot of how I do things is shaped by arguments against it - I've always felt that my stances and beliefs are only really worth having if I can defend them in an argument. It's really awkward for me to move forward on whatever I'm doing without any feedback because I worry that I'm doing it wrong, but I have no way to tell since no one's talking to me. It's really easy for me to tell when someone is really into what they're complaining about, because there's always something constructive or valid at the core of it. The last three people I've appointed to the lore team hated my guts and spent quite a long time angrily tearing down what I'd been doing for whatever they cared about respectively.

The question I've found gets the most out of people is:

If you were loremaster for Aurora, what would you do different?

What would you do with the lore, what specific areas, and why?

What do you want to do with the wiki, or any other aspect of the lore?

What major decisions or lore has been made that you disagree with and would change, what would you replace it with, and why?

[Nanako]

I'd want to outline a clear development plan for all races, what mechanics you expect them to have, etc.

Personally i view the loremasters as the decisionmaking authority on stuff for me to code. Anything i'm doing for a species is run by them

I'd also like to see the wiki standardised more. I like facts and figures, like average heights, weights, breeding cycles, temperature of their homeworld, etc. I'd like to see all kinds of specific information, and if one species gets information in a given area, all of them should have something on the same topic

I'd also like to see more ideas out of you guys for various species-specific things, like plants from their homeworld, recipes from native cuisine, unique styles of fashion that could be added to wardrobes, native weapons and armours, native drinks, etc.

Basically, i see loremasters as a creative force to drive development, and to plan out the future that we can work towards

I'd also like to see interesting, detailed and specific guides on how to roleplay as each species. With details on topics like social mannerisms, local customs, methods of address, comfort with various activities, common dislikes, etc

[Mofo1995]

The only two species lore I'm heavily invested in are Skrell and Tajara, and so far I think their respective lore overseers are doing outstanding jobs with the directions and detail they have in it. Admittedly, I'm not aware of any changes Hive may have made to Tajara, but I appreciate the stricter whitelist enforcement on his part to push people towards Sue's lore for them. I think the upcoming Mendell City Council elections are fantastic for drawing people into the lore behind the Republic of Biesel, and this is good because people should know about the nation they live in. It's also giving players a more hands on approach to lore by letting them directly influence it and make their own path with it. I'm a massive fan of the Izweski succession crisis, the nuking of the ALA by the PRA, and the expansion and detail given to Skrell lore in the past few months.

Now, for criticisms. I'm a supporter of keeping Vaurca around, and I like how people on the station treat them like scary freaky bugs. But, the whole hive fleet getting trapped in Tau Ceti thing is... strange to me. It's not that I don't like it, I'm actually a big fan of the concept and the situations it helps create, but I suppose I question why they chose Tau Ceti of all places, given the distance between Vaurcae space and Tau Ceti on the galactic map. Maybe it's personal projection, but I like how there are parallels between the Vaurcae refugees and the European refugee crisis, it helps make the situation more immersive for people to step in and take a side, but I question how 2 million refugees in a nation of over three billion can be seen as a cultural invasion. The proportionality seems a little off to me, even when attributed to media alarmist sensationalism hyping up the issue.

Onto IPCs and synthetics, I don't really have issues with the lore that's there and spoken about so much as I have issues with what isn't there. What I really want to see are numbers, how much does a shell cost? How long does it take on average for synthetics to buy their freedom? If a lawed borg wanted to be able to become an IPC, how many years would they have to work? How expensive are they to develop and produce? Maybe there are things there that I didn't see, afterall I don't have an IPC whitelist so I'm not the best versed in their lore, but these questions have been coming up a lot and no one seems to have an answer or idea. I do know Botanist graced us with the knowledge that like, 95% of a synthetics worth in parts is tied up in their positronic brain.

Here's what I'd like for all species, but would obviously take a boatload of work: Different names of famous people in their histories. Great scientists, great world leaders, famous religious figure heads in history. These types of things. I want to be able to, as a different species, reference Newton's Laws as belonging to a different great scientist who discovered it independently and at different times from others. And, biased here, calendars and different ways of reckoning the passage of time are also things I'd like a lot.

The last bit was personal preference, I don't expect anyone to actually do it, except Loow who is really full of crisp sexual tension.

Hope this helps!

[Gollee]

I'd like to see Akhet and the Epsilon Eridani system developed more, as far as I am aware, only Skull and I actually have characters from there; despite it being the wealthiest and most densely populated system besides Sol.

[Dreamix]

If I were a lore-man,

I wouldn't have to work hard,

Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum...

I have no idea, honestly. The general stuff, I guess? Things that everyone needs to know, conform and relate to. General Odin's layout? Security checkpoint's procedures (so we don't have any thieves here)? Biggest systems, like Gollee already said? Ongoing elections (hopefully not riggged)? Return of the shell tags, as well.

And REMOVE CATBEASTS, LIZARDS AND BUGS, I guess. Especially the bugs.

[Bokaza]

I've had this account for 5 hours and I'm already involved in drama. Sigh. As one of the people tearing your guts out, I feel obligated to respond, so I will.

Before I start, let me make a few things from my standpoint clear. The best things I wrote were during my periods of extreme inspiration, a feeling of energy and clarity that makes me unable to sit down and shut up unless I'm focused on something. It can last for minutes, hours or days. It stops me from sleeping and makes me abandon self-preservation instinct. One time it happened and I actually focused it on something creative, I ended up writing a shitty Skyrim fan-fiction novel for 5 days straight, ignoring my classes, physical needs and shower, only really stopping when asleep. Now, imagine all of that energy being focused on something bad. Because honestly, I am a salty asshole. Things get to me easily, be it real or imaginary slights, which makes me read and overread between the lines. I get angry and can't think clearly. A fact that causes emotion to bubble up even further.

So why don't you, instead, ask why I'm angry? I'll tell you anyway. It's mainly your style of management, not the lore you write. The fact you pull new people out of the blue, for roles that can be filled by existing members. The fact you don't rely on, or involve your team in almost anything. Or you do, and I just didn't seem to get invited, despite the obvious indication that I might want to. You once made a statement that you want us to do what we like. Well, it doesn't seem that way to me. To me, it demonstrates a lack of vision for the lore.

Because while you are off doing meme lore, our actual lore has large errors, inconsistent facts, outdated wiki pages and lore arcs unraveling so rapidly and unreasonably that it would put your average hippie round to shame. And what happens when there is an actual conflict with some the existing lore? It's changed over and over like it's no one's business. Our lore is not a castle, where every brick fits perfectly next to each other, creating a logical, thought out and beautiful world. No, Jackboot, our lore is a giant fucking heap of smashed bricks. Almost every new loredev just throws a new brick right into the fucking pile, smashing the whole thing to dust even further.

I tried to fix it, did some of it, but no one cares. Yes, not even you, Jackboot. You of all people DO NOT seem to give a fuck the most. You are the grand architect that just puts a new brick on the top, slaps a new coat of meme paint and calls it a lore update.

So please, excuse my anger. My disillusionment with my former role arrived on day 2 of me being it. So excuse for being sceptical with my your ability to be the loremaster. So, let me answer your questions.

1. Stop the memes. Stop changing the lore. Stop adding new coats of useless paint. Fix the wiki and actually try to lead and utilize my team of creative and talented individuals, instead of treating them like kiddies in a sandbox.

2. Freeze the whole thing from further development until someone actually has any idea where the lore is going. Not rework anything, not even the ridiculous Unathi Spring events.

3. Make it the actual fucking source of Canon it's suppose to be, so I don't have to pull shit from my asshole.

4. This is the tricky part. With all above said, if you can actually prove within margins of acceptable doubt, that you actually know what the fuck you're doing. I wouldn't change anything. I wouldn't ask anything to be changed. I wouldn't care. But all evidence indicates this is not so. So I disagree with a lot of things you are doing.

[Tenenza]

I'd make everyone on the lore team fight to the death until only half remain. A good purge really motivates the work force.

Also, get the lore team to collab with the admin/event hosts to plan and write out events before hand, to try and make events that are both interesting, dynamic, and have solid writing and roleplaying.

Also, make it very very clear that Dionaea eat Uranium like candy. That's the most important lore thing. Everything else is secondary.

Uranium.

Like.

Candy.

[ChevalierMalFet]

I have only one thing to say, and you can probably guess already what it is: The best and best-regarded things ever written about the Vaurca are the things that I wrote about them. I could work with what we had, but I can't work with what we have now. Together, we could have made something really wonderful for them.

[Guest]

How do you justify the overwhelming amount of memery that's written within every current facet of the lore-- whether it be on the forums or elsewise?

What's your defense for the extreme opposite, however, in that you've written people and the organizations they belong in to commit the most outlandish, borderline edgy-slash-grimdark sorts of decisions while expecting us to be immersed and taking the current setting seriously?

No, really, why Glorsh? Why do Skrell need such an excuse to be prejudiced towards synthetics? Was there no other option other than just paraphrasing what occurred in the Armenian Genocide and substituting labels to fit the Aurora setting?

You've denied many an Unathi/Tajaran application because they were outlandish and too weird for our setting, what's the excuse for not bothering to check in on frequently-playing whitelist holders and ensuring they're following the established lore, expectations and staying in line with roleplay standards?

What is more important, progress or stability?

[Rusty Shackleford]

I'd also like to see the wiki standardised more. I like facts and figures, like average heights, weights, breeding cycles, temperature of their homeworld, etc. I'd like to see all kinds of specific information, and if one species gets information in a given area, all of them should have something on the same topic

I'd also like to see more ideas out of you guys for various species-specific things, like plants from their homeworld, recipes from native cuisine, unique styles of fashion that could be added to wardrobes, native weapons and armours, native drinks, etc.

 

Back when I was on the lore team, I was actually in the process of trying to do this stuff, trying to align the wacky shit of SS13 with some real world relatable science. I had a list of about 50 planetary systems and I was using SpaceEngine and reports from NASA and the ESA to detail everything about each planet. You can actually see leftovers of my efforts on the wiki, in the forms of the Altair, Sirius and Trimirti star systems still present on the quickbar thing.

I was also writing lore for some scientifically viable cloning, as well as for species like Vox and changelings, but apparently my rewrites were "too radical" and "way too detailed, nobody cares about all this stuff".

Oh, I'm also responsible for even giving Epsilon Eridani the time of day and actually making the planets of that system somewhat consistent, and renaming them.

[Jboy2000000]

If you were loremaster for Aurora, what would you do different?

Canon Genital Scorpions I would do much different. I certainly have a few problems, which will be brought up in the later questions, but overall you've done an amazing , even if you have some troublesome staff.

What would you do with the lore, what specific areas, and why?

Id give some more attention to the cats and Diona. A long time back, in internet time, Boot asked how advanced people thought Tajarans were, and across the board people thought they were still potato farmers using rifles akin to Soviet WW2 weapons, when really they were advanced enough to have surface-to-orbit Ion cannons. Theres an obvious disconnect that no other species have with that, and Id like to fix that. For Diona, there are SEVERAL ideas floating around in my head that would take up far too much time and space to draw out here.

What do you want to do with the wiki, or any other aspect of the lore?

Id leave the wiki how it is, same with the other "aspects" of lore, if you by that you mean like the news channels on the forums and stuff like that. If I had the choice to redo the lore team in this scenario, Id give the job back to Nanako to fix the forum since they seem to be doing a good job. Better than any other loremin, no offense meant.

What major decisions or lore has been made that you disagree with and would change, what would you replace it with, and why?

A while back there was a thing where Tajarans suddenly went from "gay is alright, we don't give a shit." to "gay is wrong, fuck you, get lynched and gulag'ed." Back then and now, this doesn't really add much, and it took away from people's characters more than that. It was a sudden, drastic change to the core social structure of Tajarans out of no where for no reason. If given the chance Id put it back to how it was, or at least see if people were enjoying it, what people felt was added and lost by the change. Id also like to remove some of the restrictions that some species face with whitelisted positions. Namely the IPC's and Diona. Id like to see them opened up to every position but captain like the rest of the original species we had, because there just doesn't seem to be a reason for them to be locked out of the positions that they are, and people have very clearly showed interested in having these species in these positions in the past. Id also like at more restrictions and remove Vaurca from security except for cadet positions since people seemed really keen on that and I don't disagree that Vaurca wouldn't and shouldn't be trusted, being so new of the scene.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

I'd want to outline a clear development plan for all races, what mechanics you expect them to have, etc.

 

I try to leave as light a hand as I can for the races when they have an overseer. When I give someone a race it's because I trust them enough to have a plan for these things. I try to stick to pitching ideas I might find interesting or wielding the power of the veto. My concern is shaping the bigger picture; the 'theme' of the species, but it's still up to their overseer to work out how this can be accomplished.

 

but I suppose I question why [Vaurca] chose Tau Ceti of all places, given the distance between Vaurcae space and Tau Ceti on the galactic map.

 

We have more of a reason to care about the Vaurca if they are having an impact on the community most of us live in, which is Tau Ceti. Tau Ceti is our setting - the Vaurca are here instead of across the galaxy. Because you live in Tau Ceti you have more of a reason to have an opinion on them, which makes it easier to let your characters shape their own perceptions on Vaurca, because giant 8 feet tall bug monsters are becoming their neighbors. As for the bigger reason why - Tau Ceti isn't the only place that the Vaurca landed. Tau Ceti is the biggest system with "open borders" - it's a story justification as to why it has such a mix of races and cultures. It's easier to get settled in Tau Ceti than the giant Sol Alliance that surrounds it, which is like "uhmmmmm no????? go away?????"

There are two other major hives centered around their major hiveships. These aren't the only three ships - Vaurca left their homeworld in all directions. There may be more ships on the way. We don't know how many, or where they'll appear, or how they'll react to the factions in known space.

 

but I question how 2 million refugees in a nation of over three billion can be seen as a cultural invasion.

 

The last figure I heard was about 2,400 Syrian refugees that have so far been resettled in the United States, and president Obama wants to bring in about 10,000. Politicians (and their voters) in the USA are losing their shit because people are in a moral panic over the cultural and religious differences. If Syrian refugees were also giant 8 feet tall bug monsters with mandibles that can tear off your arm who all possess a hivemind and undying loyalty to their absolute monarch we'd probably have even more people rather upset that they're becoming their new neighbors.

 

Here's what I'd like for all species, but would obviously take a boatload of work: Different names of famous people in their histories. Great scientists, great world leaders, famous religious figure heads in history.

 

You're free to make them - so is anyone else! Open a museum or an opera house and start dropping names. If you want to start a pop music band and have a tour on the station arrange it and work with admins to have them board the station and have a concert. One of my policies is allowing players the freedom to shape these things. I only try to drop in if it becomes bizarre or there's an issue that I can try to work out with the player.

 

Because while you are off doing meme lore, our actual lore has large errors, inconsistent facts, outdated wiki pages and lore arcs unraveling so rapidly and unreasonably that it would put your average hippie round to shame.

 

If you could point me to a sci-fi setting that wasn't filled with large errors or inconsistencies I'd be very impressed. Outdated wiki pages and inconsistencies can be issues, and my only real defense there is that we are a small team of developers and our wiki is rather large. And the lore arcs unraveling rapidly is also something I hear, but I also hear people giving the criticism that news is slow to unfold or not updated enough. It will be interesting to see how to try and find the middle ground in that issue.

 

I tried to fix it, did some of it, but no one cares. Yes, not even you, Jackboot. You of all people DO NOT seem to give a fuck the most. You are the grand architect that just puts a new brick on the top, slaps a new coat of meme paint and calls it a lore update.

 

I'm not sure what meme paint is. Even assuming that "meme" has become interchangeable with "joke" the statement is difficult for me to wrap my head around. I don't know which lore updates have focused around jokes except the theft of rare pepes from the mendell city museum and that was months ago, and I did that because I thought it was funny to imagine archaeologists in the 25th century being very serious and interested in ancient relics that were shit when they were made. Like we have entire websites and archaeologists dedicated to cataloguing ancient roman graffiti. There are ancient roman dicks scribbled on walls meticulously preserved in museums. You can go to a museum and look at a crudely drawn penis someone drew thousands of years ago. I lost my shit just thinking about it again to write this.

sentence.http://metro.co.uk/2016/01/05/turns-out-romans-were-obsessed-with-drawing-penises-who-knew-5602007/

Freezing all development is impossible and not really necessary. You couldn't say to the coders to stop all updates until we fixed all the bugs. I'll still communicate with my staff and try to find ways to discover how I can improve my management of the team and what paths of development I can have them go on/encourage to have everyone be more satisfied and productive. This is a volunteer duty, after all. I am also aware that my nature of being loremaster and thus their boss means even passing comments from me can be interpreted as orders from the emperor, so I actively try to acknowledge this and it's one of the biggest reasons that I try to be so hands-off. But I'm also plagued with memory issues and i'm really impatient so I imagine working under me can be quite a wild ride. But failing is how we learn if we work on improving, and communication is important in doing better for next time. I will try to open more dialogue with my team and try to figure out where I can improve in management.

 

Also, get the lore team to collab with the admin/event hosts to plan and write out events before hand, to try and make events that are both interesting, dynamic, and have solid writing and roleplaying.

These are usually fun but they are also controversial. Because we try to canonize lore events for the station their death count is required to be rather low. There are accusations that the events can be, according to OOC after they end, "boring", or "lame", or "fucking shit kill yourself".

 

How do you justify the overwhelming amount of memery that's written within every current facet of the lore-- whether it be on the forums or elsewise?

 

There is that word again. What do you mean??? Do you mean "stupid", "nonsensical", "non-serious"??? A meme is a cultural phenomenon where something becomes very popular and spreads everywhere. Even in our community the word has become a new phrase but it's used in so many different contexts that I have a hard time interpreting the meaning behind their use. I'm going to try to avoid glossing over what you said though and just try to interpret it how I think you are meaning.

 

What's your defense for the extreme opposite, however, in that you've written people and the organizations they belong in to commit the most outlandish, borderline edgy-slash-grimdark sorts of decisions while expecting us to be immersed and taking the current setting seriously?

I've been fielded with the "grimdark" accusation before. Grimdark isn't the same as having tragedy - Star Wars had a genocide of an entire planet (Alderaan) and it was a major plot point. Several people in the star wars movies were burned alive, maimed, assassinated, and murdered on-screen and a major plot development revolved around a main character killing several children during a massacre. Is Star Wars grimdark? The Star Trek universe has the Borg, who assimilate and exterminate all life. Is Star Trek grimdark?

Grimdark is appropriate when the entire story or all the arcs revolve around the tragedy. Warhammer 40k is unashamed in its focus entirely on the suffering. Suffering is central to everything in the setting. Suffering and tragedy are the driving force and the destination for its setting. Grimdark is the atmosphere attached to the entire piece. Game of Thrones has murder, torture, dismembering, rape, child murder, infanticide, and incest on-screen. Is Game of Thrones grimdark? Arguably, because R.R. Martinez is intentionally creating a setting where suffering is a major theme.

 

No, really, why Glorsh? Why do Skrell need such an excuse to be prejudiced towards synthetics?

 

JackFractual was the brainchild behind the Three Incidents, but it was his desire that they be left as vague as possible. I disagreed with his decision but because I try to not intervene a lot I let it sit. After he left and the Skrell defaulted back to me I decided to experiment and read up on AI rebellions in other settings before I revamped their history and created Glorsh. I had a very fun time watching one specific short film just before I reached the Third Incident. Its the best way and a common way to justify why a faction or species does not like artificial intelligence. Before you say "Well try to be original and not lazy" I will counter-argue preemptively that we're not here to be 100% original and true originality is impossible, we would only be creating more and more convoluted reasons and dance around what is already well established in science fiction literature. After Skrell was handed off to Loow he decided that Glorsh worked for him and kept it, even if he got massively triggered about the "genophage" because it referenced Mass Effect. It was not a unilateral decision - three generations of lore developers for skrell fostered it, I just dropped the specific names and created the scenes themselves. If you feel the entire concept of the Skrell's relationship with AI is unreasonable or creative you can always contact Loow.

 

Back when I was on the lore team, I was actually in the process of [aligning] the wacky shit of SS13 with some real world relatable science. I had a list of about 50 planetary systems and I was using SpaceEngine and reports from NASA and the ESA to detail everything about each planet..

 

This is one of the earliest controversies I had to handle when I first became loremaster and one that I grappled with for quite a long time into my tenure: the notion of realism, and how realistic we need to be. While I appreciate the work and investment I still created the mantra "Know your setting". I decided we should embrace the whimsy and unrealistic aspects of our setting and focus on consistency, meaning we could free ourselves from NASA's astronomical observations.

More specific to this is that I am not an astronomer and I only have a very passing awareness of simple astronomical concepts so many wiki pages on planets were absolute gibberish. I didn't know that New Gibson was inhabited or anything about the planets that would relate to my characters because the focus was on explaining the planet itself and the scientific observations. The wiki is meant to be a foundation for players to build their own characters, backstories, or creative fiction, and unless I am woefully out of touch with the community I also do not think there is a sizable portion of our playerbase that is involved with real life space programs. I tossed many pages filled with these scientific justifications and equations to over a dozen people and the most common feedback was that they were very dense and difficult to read or find useful information on.

 

Id give some more attention to the cats and Diona. [...] Boot asked how advanced people thought Tajarans were, and across the board people thought they were still potato farmers using rifles akin to Soviet WW2 weapons, when really they were advanced enough to have surface-to-orbit Ion cannons. Theres an obvious disconnect that no other species have with that

 

Yes that is an issue. I thought that too and I spoke to Sue about where their development level is. While species can have very glaring and obvious stratification issues (Earth shares the powerhouse USA with somalia) we still need a good idea. The Tajara were intended to be the "middle race" and superior to unathi, and we had a debate over the fact that I don't feel you can arbitrarily just upgrade the entire species without any build up. Our "living lore" where the dynamic of factions can wax and wane is often accused of going too fast, but I still try to have a build up to it so everyone can sort of vaguely understand that there's a curve involved instead of a sudden leap upwards. Hivefleetchicken is doing good with this, we'll have to see where his developments continue and how he fleshes out our catbeast horde. I for one can't wait for the day when the tajara create an alliance with the vulpakinn and dominate the entire galaxy. Praise our furry overlords, may they show us mercy.

 

A while back there was a thing where Tajarans suddenly went from "gay is alright, we don't give a shit." to "gay is wrong, fuck you, get lynched and gulag'ed."

That was an interesting couple of days. I am honestly surprised there was not the explosive trainwreck that we were plagued with from tajara players before. Our community continues to defy my preconceptions on how things are going to go; I like to think it's because the tajara playerbase has matured. My justifications for it are in the announcement - which sue agreed with. It did not make sense to me that this dystopian kitty soviet union we were cultuvating was also a hotbed of social justice, when it is also plagued with racism. Communities that place heavy importance on the family and marriage and community itself tend to not be open to homosex. And yes the jarring shift probably caused issues with characters I do not doubt that. My own tajara, rhazzle-dazzle Jawdat, had to undergo heavy changes to slide him back into conforming with the new tajara lore we've established. But I still feel that the tajara playfurbase we have now is better fur it. I used to be asked if Tajara engaged in cuddle-piles on Adhomai to stay warm, and I was fielded with questions asking about Tajara genitals. They were dark times.

 

Id like to see [all aliens] opened up to every position but captain like the rest of the original species we had

 

It's rather heavy handed and perhaps hamfisted but the restrictions on command is really one of the only ways we have to portray the social stratification in tau ceti and the standing of the different races. The only other alternatives are even more hamfisted and convoluted and probably not any fun. And you (or me!) might be misremembering - it used to be that tajara could not be in any command. Houssam Jawdat becoming a HoP suddenly became a no-no. Their position in command changed quite a few times but the restrictions used to be even more... Well, restrictive. I was one of the people that argued to open up command more. I'd have to hunt deep into my posting history to see how my positions have changed, because my memory is not reliable.

[Conservatron]

if i were loremaster i'd write in a plague that wiped out all non-human xenos #exterminatus

[Tenenza]

Also, get the lore team to collab with the admin/event hosts to plan and write out events before hand, to try and make events that are both interesting, dynamic, and have solid writing and roleplaying.

These are usually fun but they are also controversial. Because we try to canonize lore events for the station their death count is required to be rather low. There are accusations that the events can be, according to OOC after they end, "boring", or "lame", or "fucking shit kill yourself".

 

I think it'd be fun if the lore team helped write non-canon events.

Weird stuff that'd let them stretch their insanity creativity.

Maybe make use of some of the cut lore stuff or do Twilightzone WhatIf Stories.

Or maybe do that thing I did with the mysteries uncovered event series, where I had a whole event Canon Universe that was internally consistent only for those events.

[vtipoman]

I'd like the day-to-day life of ordinary people explained a bit more.

[hivefleetchicken]

I'd remove the Tajaran race since it's hard as fuck keeping that beast broken and tame

[Bokaza]

Because while you are off doing meme lore, our actual lore has large errors, inconsistent facts, outdated wiki pages and lore arcs unraveling so rapidly and unreasonably that it would put your average hippie round to shame.

 

If you could point me to a sci-fi setting that wasn't filled with large errors or inconsistencies I'd be very impressed. Outdated wiki pages and inconsistencies can be issues, and my only real defense there is that we are a small team of developers and our wiki is rather large. And the lore arcs unraveling rapidly is also something I hear, but I also hear people giving the criticism that news is slow to unfold or not updated enough. It will be interesting to see how to try and find the middle ground in that issue.

The errors and inconsistances in larger, older universes isn't because of lack of canon and constant reworkes, it's because of holes in the knowledge of the people editing it. Our wiki isn't open to everyone's use and loredevs suck at the role of editing and keeping it up to date. Besides, it's not that big, it's just a fucking mess.

 

I tried to fix it, did some of it, but no one cares. Yes, not even you, Jackboot. You of all people DO NOT seem to give a fuck the most. You are the grand architect that just puts a new brick on the top, slaps a new coat of meme paint and calls it a lore update.

 

I'm not sure what meme paint is. Even assuming that "meme" has become interchangeable with "joke" the statement is difficult for me to wrap my head around. I don't know which lore updates have focused around jokes except the theft of rare pepes from the mendell city museum and that was months ago, and I did that because I thought it was funny to imagine archaeologists in the 25th century being very serious and interested in ancient relics that were shit when they were made. Like we have entire websites and archaeologists dedicated to cataloguing ancient roman graffiti. There are ancient roman dicks scribbled on walls meticulously preserved in museums. You can go to a museum and look at a crudely drawn penis someone drew thousands of years ago. I lost my shit just thinking about it again to write this.

sentence.http://metro.co.uk/2016/01/05/turns-out-romans-were-obsessed-with-drawing-penises-who-knew-5602007/

Freezing all development is impossible and not really necessary. You couldn't say to the coders to stop all updates until we fixed all the bugs. I'll still communicate with my staff and try to find ways to discover how I can improve my management of the team and what paths of development I can have them go on/encourage to have everyone be more satisfied and productive. This is a volunteer duty, after all. I am also aware that my nature of being loremaster and thus their boss means even passing comments from me can be interpreted as orders from the emperor, so I actively try to acknowledge this and it's one of the biggest reasons that I try to be so hands-off. But I'm also plagued with memory issues and i'm really impatient so I imagine working under me can be quite a wild ride. But failing is how we learn if we work on improving, and communication is important in doing better for next time. I will try to open more dialogue with my team and try to figure out where I can improve in management.

I don't mean the Meme Museum. That was cringy, but that was just my opinion. I still joined the lore team after the fact. My problem is with the unrealistic events and actions of various factions just for cool effect. Such as the whole Unathi debacle. The entire faction got a facelift just so they could build a death star. 'Meme paint' was more of a comical term, let's just call it a 'fresh layer of paint', or a 'facelift' every faction in game tends to go through every half a year.

And by 'freeze', I mean stop slapping new bricks onto the pile until they've been sorted out. You could still do stuff, but making sure that it's actually upgrading or clearing things up would be a priority. Besides, the fucking wiki would help with your memory issues.

[Guest]

Besides, the fucking wiki would help with your memory issues.

 

Writing things down takes work, Bokaza. It's totally not that simple!

Stop trying to level with him. He's not going to level with you in return, not unless he's actually in a position to grovel. He can do whatever he wants, and he has been doing whatever he wants. I've spent hours of serious non-meme discussion giving him legitimate suggestions before and I personally can't say I'm surprised that none of it was actually considered. This thread is just one of several others Jackboot has made to excuse himself of any personal responsibility for the content he's solely responsible for overseeing and ensuring is consistent. Blame it on the community because your lore's bad, right?

Nah. I've lost count on how many times this has been done, but it's the same thing every time. "Hey guys, give me feedback on really nondescript things that I've never really discussed with you guys!" <-- This is honestly like asking an uninformed classroom of 6th graders on what they think about the Australian sharemarket crashing recently.

Let's start on how certain lore changes are rarely ever discussed with the community and are simply done on a whim. Glorsh, Diona turned into all-consuming omnivores, Unathi suddenly outgrowing their tribal reputation and structure and developing into a monarchial nation-state juggernaut capable of constructing Death Star-class warships in hardly a year, the Tajara turning from humble, conservative and wise catfolk into liberal rebellious angsty emotional teenager kittens that habitually sleep around with each other and cry wolf if they get told no. Wtf, why are we Polaris lore now? There is literally no originality, there's no creativity, there's no innovation, there's nothing that draws in people. A fair few of people who were denied for cat recently only applied to play out their fursona!

I've never asked the lore team to be a Byzantine sort of organization with exact measurements scaled with rulersticks, the bare minimum expectation I've had of lore writers was that their lore was to be engaging from a reader's standpoint, not too outstanding from a sanity standpoint, and that it shouldn't pressure anyone into roleplaying differently unless their method was unanimously agreed to be unorthodox, RP-breaking and weird.

Remember when I said I didn't give 2 shits though? Surprise, I do care. Because this is an issue that is genuinely affecting how people view the level of roleplay that's performed on the server, and how newfriends and vets alike abide by that standard. This begs the question, "How low can you go?" And that's a scary question to pose.

If the lore is awful non-serious meme garbage, you can expect the quality of roleplay to not be that much better. It's disappointing that Jackboot refuses to outright acknowledge that anything he did or wrote or changed had anything to do with this issue, as if he had anything to lose from changing course from wrong to right and admitting he made the wrong sort of decisions. It would probably hurt his pride too much if he did that. That complaint against me's still up (albeit locked), if that goes to show any indication of what's going on.

[Zundy]

Sans the unnecessary drama I agree with Owlie and Deltie. Seems to have been wacky lore leaps and a lack of wiki updates. Would definitely like to see wiki updates en-mass.

[Guest]

You know! He never did answer my question on whether he felt progress or stability was more important.

I guess that's actually an answer by itself, really. Says a lot.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Sans the unnecessary drama I agree with Owlie and Deltie. Seems to have been wacky lore leaps and a lack of wiki updates. Would definitely like to see wiki updates en-mass.

 

What wiki updates do you want to see? What suggestions do you have, which pages can be improved on, and how can we do better? My last major push was to get all the necessary job guides on the wiki, which is more or less done. What do you feel can be our next big project?

 

J Jackboot unrestrained

If I could do whatever I want on a whim we'd have very different lore than we do now. We'd have a state religion for humanity, which I didn't implement after community feedback. Here is this specific example.

http://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?p=57517#p57517

 

Skrell

 

I do not think you actually keep up to date with any progress the lore team is making, or even my own post. Half of what you are complaining about you are blaming me for are not my sole responsibility. Glorsh was hinted at by JackFractual, months and months ago. I just fleshed out the situation with the history of the three incidents. I also make a giant feedback thread for the skrell lore, which is how Loow got on the team. Did you ever read it and response? Loow's complaint was on the genophage, not Glorsh. If you feel dissatisfied with Skrell you should speak. To Loow. The guy in charge of Skrell. WHo has been in charge. For months. Who chose to keep it. I said in the op. that i have a light hand on my race overseers. so if you want it all deleted. speak to him.

Here is the community feedback thread.

http://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?p=50065#p50065

 

Unathi

The unathi death star isn't a deathstar. it's a big battleship. It was the success condition of the unathi getting so many points in the antag spy contest. It was crippled by a janitor and out of commission for a week because of a janitor spy because they also had a lot of lose points. It's blown up a bunch of 3rd world factions in the frontier. It can't blow up planets.

I also created a feedback thread detailing everything with my first major reboot of the Unathi and asking for community feedback and adjusted several changes to desires. They were never meant to be tribal primitives. Have you read their wiki page at all? They had a globalized, if highly stratified world, similar to earth, but with a drastically inverted culture. It would shed more light on their situation if you read their wiki page.

http://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?p=17292#p17292

 

Tajara

Have you read anything about Tajara lately? The literal inverse is true. This isn't even insulting, it's bizarre. Who cares if furries apply. They'll apply no matter what. They can make whatever self-insert furry emperor of adhomai they want for their application. That's why it's an application. That's why we can reject them.

The tajara playerbase has matured a lot these past few months imo. Anyway here's their backstory acceptability change.

http://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=6218

Edited June 24, 2016 by Marlon Phoenix

[Xelnagahunter]

A big thing for keeping up with lore, from my perspective, is that I learn a thing and then have to be given links on where to find it because it's so decentralized. I leanred recently (keep in mind I was gone for moths and haven't been back too long) that Taj from the Republic of Adhomai have a legal order to return to Tajaran nameing structure or face legal penalties. My personal grievances with this aside, I had to have someone link me the location for this. It's not in the wiki, where I assume important lore such as that would be, because I did go back over the wiki when I returned and wanted to play my catbeast.

Find some way to centralize lore changes, even if you give each race's lore page a spreadsheet style update document, ei:

Event name, enough details to understand it, date it was applied, date removed if applicable (with a strikeout through it all if it was removed).

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

A big thing for keeping up with lore, from my perspective, is that I learn a thing and then have to be given links on where to find it because it's so decentralized. I leanred recently (keep in mind I was gone for moths and haven't been back too long) that Taj from the Republic of Adhomai have a legal order to return to Tajaran nameing structure or face legal penalties. My personal grievances with this aside, I had to have someone link me the location for this. It's not in the wiki, where I assume important lore such as that would be, because I did go back over the wiki when I returned and wanted to play my catbeast.

Find some way to centralize lore changes, even if you give each race's lore page a spreadsheet style update document, ei:

Event name, enough details to understand it, date it was applied, date removed if applicable (with a strikeout through it all if it was removed).

 

That's something I can improve. With the living lore experiment, where these things can change and evolve in an IC way over a period of time, can cause some issues with this. We can definately improve on tying lore developments in news articles to the wiki or elsewhere. The legal penalties specifically probably won't actually be enforced - it's up to tajara players to really decide that for their own character, outside of little events.

[Dreamix]

(...)

That's something I can improve. With the living lore experiment, where these things can change and evolve in an IC way over a period of time, can cause some issues with this. We can definately improve on tying lore developments in news articles to the wiki or elsewhere. The legal penalties specifically probably won't actually be enforced - it's up to tajara players to really decide that for their own character, outside of little events.

How about a changelog? Not a code one, but a lore changelog? A little blog, just vaguely describing what's changed, ex. "cats are now fags ~jeffbut, 1.1.2017".

I mean, I'd read that. It's better than countless threads on the forums, or this.

[Bokaza]

How about a changelog? Not a code one, but a lore changelog? A little blog, just vaguely describing what's changed, ex. "cats are now fags ~jeffbut, 1.1.2017".

I mean, I'd read that. It's better than countless threads on the forums, or this.

We have that, it was used for a while, but then suddenly everyone stopped, because we dindu nothin.