If You Were Loremaster (im not resigning)

[Rusty Shackleford]

HOLD THE FUCK UP

WHEN DID THE FUCKING LIZARDS START BUILDING DEATH STARS

SERIOUSLY JACKBOOT WHAT THE FUCK

[UnknownMurder]

Question for you Jack, about your feelings on this. I'm not going to call you out for being salty, because you are not.

Anyways. Do you feel your overall work from your start as lore noob to lore master is not cared for?

[Jboy2000000]

HOLD THE FUCK UP

WHEN DID THE FUCKING LIZARDS START BUILDING DEATH STARS

SERIOUSLY JACKBOOT WHAT THE FUCK

 

Since February 13th, 2458. Do you even lore, bro?

[Guest]

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.

 

It can blow up or cripple entire fleets. That is what has been OOCly bragged about by you and the Unathi-centric playerbase. You effectively resorted to giving your pet project race a Super Star Destroyer as a reward to antagonist hoo-ah that a rare few of people were paying attention to and that you were too caught up in other things to keep going. You have said yourself that the Unathi are the most way behind in technology in comparison to the other races. Are they still advanced? Yes, sure. Are they advanced enough to warrant constructing Super Star Destroyers on a whim, pretending that the Skrellian Federation or Sol Alliance wouldn't take notice of it and try to crack down on the Hegemony's impudence?

I just find it really surprising that none of the major factions had an actual response to an Unathi Super Star Destroyer popping up in the universe. Especially considering that now, the current Unathi fleet (sans Super Star Destroyer) got shitcanned and thrown into the dumpster by a makeshift Colonial fleet in the Mid-Outer Rim colonies. Especially since the SD is now in a state of disrepair and Moghes is at its most vulnerable to a fleet incursion and retaliatory strike. Considering that right now, the Unathi could be blown the fuck off the map and no one could care, it makes you wonder what their priorities were in the first place. From an IC point of view, the Unathi are incredibly embarrassed, politically and militaristically weak, and waning in relevance. I've read what's happening with the monarchial chain succession with the extremely young Lord Regent (which is a redundant title that any real diplomat would be seen looking into orbit for their sides) struggling to find acceptance from the Hegemony's elite. I honestly like that this is a reference to Sultan Bayezid II's rule and the politics going down regarding his next successor (split between Ahmet and Selim, wherein Ahmet was the favored choice of succession but struggled to gain respect from the elite Janissaries who had massive political pull and fear/respect throughout the Ottoman nation, wherein Bayezid II ended up being forced to abdicate to Selim because the latter had the backing of the standard Turk armies in addition to the Janissaries, wherein Ahmet had nothing but diplomatic promises from nobles). But, not even the Ottoman Empire was built to last with these circumstances. More Unathi are leaving the Hegemony because it's a sinking ship, and they're heading to the core worlds to integrate with modern society so they can actually survive.

I mean, it's pretty clear nobody in the lore team has any idea how diplomats are supposed to act, nor how nations react in response to foreign policy and rival nation developments in technological, political or military structure. There are very few experts on these matters in real life, I will not claim to be one of them, but I do my best to research and educate myself on these topics, whether they be historical or current.

It is very important for writers to have an idea of what they're writing about, they need to have a particular savvy with their writing material (in addition to knowing how well to execute the portrayal of that reality) or it's going to get laughed at and made fun of by educated people.

[Xelnagahunter]

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".

You got uncannily close to my real name there. >.> Just had to throw that out there.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Question for you Jack, about your feelings on this. I'm not going to call you out for being salty, because you are not.

Anyways. Do you feel your overall work from your start as lore noob to lore master is not cared for?

 

There's a history of players (past and still present) that come to me with excited ideas that expand on something ive written or encouraged a loredev to write; I'm satisfied where we are now. Obviously my work isn't perfect and there are many ways I can improve. As a whole satisfaction seems to be pretty above average. Since it's impossible to please everyone and criticism will be present no matter what you do or how broad (or extremely precise and specific) a brush you stroke I've found it's better to find a working plan, stick with it, and adapt what's created to fit under this plan or adapt the plan itself where needed. This is working so far, if the level of feedback im getting across the board for awhile can be trusted.I even had a surprisingly supportive response from the r/ss13 subreddit when I talked about my work for aurora, which is another thing that surprised me given their disposition to HRP and Aurora specifically. The admins have also all been supportive of the 2nd antag contest we have in the works, so that keeps me going too. It'll be a more cooperative effort among staff so I shouldn't get burnt out!

 

HOLD THE FUCK UP

WHEN DID THE FUCKING LIZARDS START BUILDING DEATH STARS

SERIOUSLY JACKBOOT WHAT THE FUCK

 

It's not a death star. People that use that term are over exaggerating, with some individuals doing it intentionally. Given that it hasn't affected your playstyle or anything since you're just now finding out about it I don't know why you're being so dramatic. It was a reward for the unathi for getting so far into the antag contest. Other factions had more abstract rewards but they didn't reach them because the contest was overwhelming me since I ended up working on it alone and I had to cut it early, and the other factions didn't get good enough. It has very impressive stats; it's meant to be the Yamato for the Unathi. They decommissioned an entire fleet to get the men to work it, and they diverted a lot of resources and money that could have otherwise gone to rebuilding the slowly dying Moghes to pay for it, utilizing the orbital industry Haesphestus Industries is helping kickstart. Because investing in developing economies is established IRL to make MAD BANK, just ask China. So far its service record has seen it crippled on its maiden voyage by sabotage, fight militiamen in the frontier of human space, then sit over Moghes housing a government in exile and ignoring the moghean authorities who could do little more than glare at it angrily. Hardly a "death star" that can blow up earth. And how it was used in the whole "decapitating the terrorists" in the frontier space is definitely coming to bite them in the ass.

That's where I suppose one of the problems is. Our setting as I've fostered it rewards intrigue over brute force. There are going to be consequences for the hegemony (the unathi government) for just steamrolling over all the frontier human nations they got mad at. But if I just throw the book at them now all at once that goes against the complaining that the lore developments unravel too fast. You can't have your cake and eat it too - that's why I've said above that it's impossible to please everyone. Even when I'm following their advice I'm still wrong, lol!

 

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 can definitely start that lore log again.

[Guest]

Even when I'm following their advice I'm still wrong, lol!

 

you haven't followed anyone's advice but your own

that's why you're wrong

come on dude.

[hivefleetchicken]

Even when I'm following their advice I'm still wrong, lol!

 

you haven't followed anyone's advice but your own

that's why you're wrong

come on dude.

 

opblaas

[Dreamix]

(...)

opblaas

 

Dutch; Wiktionary:

Verb:

opblaas:

1. first-person singular present indicative of opblazen (when using a subclause)

Verb

opblazen ‎(past singular blies op, past participle opgeblazen):

1. to blow up, to inflate, to upblow

2. to explode, to set off

It seems, I'm not the only one who thinks 2249, also known as Charlie, should probably calm down. Just a little.

Also, it's not like that one particular powergaming/just robust lizard-player made the lizards win the antag spy contest, just by himself. I mean, yeah, totally legit and fair. But another contest this summer would be nice, with lots of players, and stuff.

[Bokaza]

I've actually went over my laziness and read the posts again. Now, I believe in artistic principles and wouldn't step out of it to call anything written as objectively shit. You know that is true because my opinion has been ignored so many times and I've swallowed the fact and accepted it just as many. However, I think you are wrong in that post, Jackboot, on several points. A criticism you always ignore and will likely ignore it even now until the day you aren't a loremaster anymore.

While I can't claim to have done the same, I do not think the effects of some of the lore events you've listed are having the effect you think they are. Regardless of the actual opinions or interests of players, the stuff you've listed was actively being imposed by the game itself. You could push a million things like that and say people are being engaged then pat yourself on the back then give us platitudes. It does not mean anything other than that you are willing to push stuff without consulting or listening to the rest of your team.

That brings me to the next point. Antags being engaging and lore friendly. Well, are they? Can I canonize meeting a wizard round? Can I canonize spending the entire shift fighting the lings or terrorists? Can I canonize a cultist round, and give my character a backstory that makes them a loose member of the Nar'sie cult? The answer to all of these is no. Absolutely no outside the freak canon event round, such as the ambassadors you mentioned. Even then you've had open conflict with rest of the staff for trying to push them through. As a result, I state that antags being part of our lore is almost a blatant lie. The average player still plays an average person that is not effected in the slightest by vast majority of things you've listed on that page.

Which brings me to the last point. Consistency and realism. I like how you always invoke the Hard Sci-fi as the bogeyman when people criticize the current quality of the lore, as if removal equates to actual merit of adding something to the lore. It does not. I don't even know many people that argue that things have to be extremely realistic and even then I disagree. If we went the hard sci-fi route we would still be earthbound and NSS Aurora would be a station in Sol. Taking the softer route, you have more leeway to implement handwaves and unobtainium to explain the scientific problems. It's unrealistic, it's not grounded in reality. Consistency is a different thing. It requires that the universe is truthful to whatever it states about itself and remains uncompromising with a goal to establish predictability. A lack of predictability makes players constantly challenge what they know about the universe, not in the sense that they are discovering something new, but that the established lore does not invalidate itself constantly. It sets a premise of what is realistic within the bounds of the universe.

My argument about the 'Super dreadnought' wasn't that it was impossible to build, but that a bunch of backwards assholes living in ruined cities and mud huts, developed required infrastructure almost over night. It is not realistic if we take into account that Taj have just recently started to develop FTL travel, while being in better state than Unathi. I argue that this is not consistent. Hell, maybe I'm wrong, and they've always been capable of it, and I'm just an ass that didn't educate myself on the topic. But whose failing it is that me and most of the playerbase seem to have the wrong notion of how developed Unathi really are?

On the brigther side, the Unathi stuff is engaging, but part of me feels it's because you've been excessively focused on Unathi lore and events. To detriment of everything else.

[Bedshaped]

I'd like to see the more basic aspects of the lore better implemented and maintained. It's great that we know what colour the insects are on Qerrbalak, but if you were to do a random server poll today on the name of the current space station; I would guess not a lot of people know the answer isn't "Aurora".

Finding a way to inject the whole player-base with basic lore would be a positive step in my eyes.

[NebulaFlare]

How the lore stands as now, I have little qualms over. I usually do not wish to be vocal over the internet, because it is going to cause tensions in the process. I just want to avoid conflict altogether. But since you asked for it...

 

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

Oooh that's a toughie. Our species lore is pretty diverse and complex, and I love it (at least the species I care enough to read about anyway) Nut you know what could use some work? The political relations lore. A brand new player wouldn't know the finer intricacies of lore bits, (Like a tajaran sleeping 24 hours, but that's another example of species-based lore) but we get very, VERY little information of the government systems and political relations. If you were to ask me 'What is ATLAS' right now, I'll have to honestly reply, "I don't have a clue".

We need a way to get lore more exposure on the station. Everybody has to read their species for whitelist, so by default, players already know their background lore - and humans can just be ignorant about it. Human ignorance is a useful excuse to play off lack of exposure, but it's still an excuse - and I would expect NanoTrasen to higher intelligent people to work on their state-of-the-art stations. It would be swell to host more events that deals with the Sol system - this is after all, human dominant space. The same can be true for other species. We got Unathi dignitaries visiting, and that added spice into the arpee. (The crippled prince won a battle using a mech with high-tech medical life support - Karima showed them a state-of-the-art Odysseus with high-tech medical life support. I AM SO CALLING CLAIMS TO THAT. -insert happy face here- ) Not only that, but can we please have our newscasters back to give our own lore more recognition? Reading up the random stories and arpeeing them into the shift was always a fun outlet. And it gave more exposure of the lore! It made people interested to go out and research the species we got on the wiki!

The current political drama is great - tricky to keep track of, but it's so much fun. I'm hoping this will present some real volatile change in the lore of Biesel (Don't let me down!) instead of cascading back to a casual, "Oh yeah. We had a political campaign. Nothing's change" sort of deal. I wanna see conflict. I wanna see action. I wanna see things that will filter over to the station and make it HELL for our poor innocent sweet characters.

 

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

The two parts I'd love to take a part of are either Synthetic Lore or Antag Lore.

Synthetics...they're just cool. Spawned as human's need for tireless workers, they're finding their way in a society with no real place to call their own. They're just on a helpless drift, like leaves in a wind. With the way synthetic lore is going, it's great. I love it. If we need something, it'd be a stronger 'base' to develop our synthetic characters. We need to answer these hazy questions: Why can't Synthetics repair themselves? How much does a chassis cost? What are the steps necessary for a station-bound to become IPC? What is Synthetic life like in other parts of the galaxies? How is a property synthetic's rights different from a free synthetic? Etc etc etc. Perhaps the only thing we would need is to define a 'snowflake' meter for Synthetics.

This ties in to another issue: you wanna keep it free and flowing to allow a many possible ideas all the leverage they need, but I get the impression that most people are wary to play around in that given room - either in fear of being it 'Too Snowflake' or 'not in line with the lore'. Having a more definitive representation of the Do's and Don'ts can clear up a lot of confusion there.

Or maybe this is just me because every single one of my character is a freaking snowflake.

Yeah, probably just me. Ahem..

Anyway, on to Antags! Out of all the antags, Syndicate is best. I would enjoy defining it, and adding more fluff to it. The setup we got now for antag is pretty sweet, and impressive. You know what would be cool? Writing up an illegal pirate newsletter for the Syndicate propaganda, or a list of intelligence that only Heads of Staff would know.

I've been told that people tend to be confused with where the Syndicate stand in our lore. That it's been shifted from, 'No one knows a thing' to 'It's just sort of out there' or 'They're like the mafia - something to be afraid of and you don't mess with'. It'd be interesting to see Syndicate not only be a big fear hanging over the heads of every day citizens, but to have some conspiracy around them. We need to explain how they get all their tech and their gear, why they hate NT so much, and for what reasons are they spending so much on resources to send in a couple sleeper agents.

Thirdly, bluespace. Can we have an IC explanation of how magic works in this game? Sci-fi games having magic is just...eh. It clashes. I'd politely ask we back it up with some cold-hard scientific facts, so a scientist can pull up info and explain why a wizard can do what they can, in regards of bluespace. Heck, we can even give xenoarcheologists more leeway in defining what it is, since this stuff is right up their alley.

 

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

Clean it up. Organize it. Add in OUR own specialized guides instead of borrowing it off of Bay. Make it truly Aurora and make it PROUD to be so. If we could have a concise, single page that can give all the information a specific job slot needs (Or at least provide the further links) that would be so wonderful. Our species pages look great - don't touch it. Everything else? Good love, they need some cleanup.

I've started writing a research paper on Synthetics (Yes, I'm actually doing that. I'm tossing in a few college-level psychology stuff from my one and only textbook of psychology) and I gotta say, I'm enjoying it like a true nerd. But the information for one single topic is spread out everywhere. I'm afraid I'm missing stuff I could add in because I won't be able to find it. I don't even know how many people know about EMPIRE coding, and I only found that page by a lucky fluke. We really need to organize the Wiki. Once it's organized, we can then see what holes are present in the lore, and fill em up.

A list of 'Dos and Don'ts' for certain antag shenanigangs could clean up so much confusion. And for newer players, even a 'newbie friendly' guide that gives acceptable ideas and suggestions, to give them the chance to break the ice. I got so much HATE for the first time I went as a Heister, and I wasn't even responsible for it. The person leading the heist was new, and I handed the reigns over to them since I was unable to participate in a great deal of it.

Less on lore, more on technicality.

 

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

Hmm...I did not like the war on Adohmai. I don't have any qualms against the decision and where it's going, but it changed the Tajaran identity so drastically. I miss the species who were underdogs, lost in the chaos of Space and trying to find their place (Rhyme not intended). Now everyone's a war vet. Too many snowflake war vets.

Yeah, I got nothing else to add to this. It's early in the morning, and I'm done shitposting.

[XChrisUnknownX]

(TLDR AT BOTTOM) (major edit added)

I would update the lore summary to have a top-most section with mandatory RP knowledge, like the year and current events, so that people can feel connected to the current universe and be aware. The game is centered in Tau Ceti, so I really feel like what's important in terms of lore is really continuing to develop Tau Ceti, make it feel alive, perhaps introduce a big bad of some kind that people think about or comment on constantly during shift. Quite frankly, I was away from Aurora a long time and have generally pieced together some of what I have missed, and I find that generally the key to good RP is to have some overarching and coherent storyline. For example, our RP takes place over static rounds, and some of the occurrences in those rounds cannot be canon, and that's fine, but it doesn't reduce the viability of some overarching narrative, something we're researching for, some crisis our work might stop. Right now the story tends to be Nanotrasen is God, which as a concept I get, but makes for a relatively boring story. 2457's entry in the timeline states the future is uncertain, which is supposed to arch into potential plot, but almost every storyline I see, Nanotrasen remains without any major enemy in Tau Ceti. The syndicate is an almost nameless, faceless thing that people are hardly afraid of, and

I think the solution to that might be introducing specific cells in the syndicate that can be named and fought against or feared, etc. For example, I introduce in the personal stories of most of my characters the concept of Ross's Raiders, they're a raider group from the Ross 128 system, they dislike NT, and they've got operations in Tau Ceti. Where this'll manifest itself in-game is if I get syndicate or nuke ops, I can name the character Nelson Ross or Victor Ross (Father & son, leaders.), and RP out whatever they're about to do or how they're doing it, or whatever. How this could theoretically be carried over is if someone does a particularly outstanding job, maybe it makes its way into the canon, not by saying Aurora was destroyed, but by renaming it. Oh, Station Flannigan was attacked and severely damaged, they found the captain clinging to a piece of debris, and this was the first major attack in x months. Or if someone does really well on a defense or research, maybe The Commander of Station Rodriguez defended against an infiltration unit after top researcher was murdered.

Basically I think we should consider the possibility of taking regular RP rounds, maybe even end of round reports or whatever, and possibly canonizing them, but changing the names so that it's not forced canon upon the characters involved. Captain Lowe dies in a round? Great, news article says Tau Ceti Captain dies! Never named Lowe. Oh look, Lowe is back in a new round, he wasn't the one that died, but his death contributed to a story. One way I used to do this on an old server, and may do it in the future to see if people like this here, is I would play captain a few consecutive rounds, and I would just gently reference the last round. For example:

Round 1. Captain Blade faces off with nuke ops, everyone is killed. This is obviously not canon.

Round 2. Captain Blade gets on the loudspeaker at the beginning of the round and says something like, listen up, I know you've all heard the rumors, that there are terrorists in Tau Ceti and stations being attacked, but that's not gonna happen on my watch. Do your jobs, perform well, and today'll be another victory for Nanotrasen! Then the AI goes rogue.

Round 3. Captain Blade gets on the loudspeaker: I heard some of you chatting on the transfer shuttle about malfunctioning equipment. Let me assure you, Nanotrasen's AI systems are top of the line, there are no malfunctions. So get to work, and no more discussions about killer cyborgs, it's pure fiction!

Also, just glancing at the timeline, having not really invested a lot of research into it, there are some gentle holes in it which need to be patched. For example, Nanotrasen is supposedly founded when Xavier is 47 and it is 2346, then we have that he dies 2443 at 87 years old. The issue here, unless my math is very wrong, is that 97 years pass between 2346 and 2443. Xavier would have actually been 144. If we do a comb over of what we have now and make it consistent, it'll help going forward.

*major edit

I wanted to add that if I were you I would consider revising the lore to reduce the amount of territory held under the sol alliance. I would literally drop it to sol, and just a couple stars in between sol and tau ceti. The reason is simple. If there are less landmarks or areas, more depth can be added to each one, a higher player base can focus into a specific area or system for lores, backgrounds, and to interests. This would effectively make the frontier unpoliced space as opposed to the edge of sol space. This would make the seemingly equal power dynamic make more sense. One thing that continuously eats at me in our lore is the sol alliance covers such a wide area that it would either fracture into mini nations or it would be the dominant force in the universe, so cutting back and saying sol alliance is 3 major systems and a bunch of frontier claims and biesel is a 4th major system that broke away 4 years ago makes more sense than biesel is a dot inside this huge empire of the sol alliance that somehow maintains sovereignty. Look at Starcraft versus say elite dangerous. Starcraft takes place in a few measly systems in a couple pockets of space, but the story is far more interesting and deep than elite dangerous, because elite dangerous literally is just too large to connect to. This is the same reason mmorpgs have relatively small and recognizable worlds, people can become attached to a region emotionally instead of just oh here is the blank system which looks exactly like the blankx4 system but Kevin wrote this one. I mean, right now, as I recall, the sol alliance is stupidly huge, and while that may have been the intent, it is too vast of a space to really give life to or make matter.

TLDR:

1. Make Tau Ceti the center of the lore and development of events.

2. Consider introducing a solid big bad that is actually scary and less taboo to talk about, be afraid of, or even laugh at (Spess Koopa Troopas.)

3. Connect game rounds to the lore. Do this by renaming the things that happen on Exodus or Aurora as happening on other stations or planetary installations. This prevents character deaths from being canonized but creates a universe with conflict. Think StarCraft. Imagine if StarCraft had ended after Arcturus defeated the confederacy. That's what we're RPing every static round. NT Wins, the end. NT lost? Not recorded. Alternatively, make the lore matter more during rounds by making it accessible and interesting for people to include. This is the thing lore team has least control over, unfortunately.

4. Patch current inconsistencies in the lore.

5. Consider reducing the size of the Sol Alliance to be comparable with Biesel to make it easier for players to interact with the lore.

End. Overall I really like the lore, though I am able to poke holes and offer suggestions, it is no reflection on the team or quality of writing. There is a lot of good here.