What is good "lore"? - Yay or nay to massive lore dump books?

[Salt Water Taffy]

I've been circling around a lot of different fan communities recently and there's one debate I see cropping up over and over again about works that otherwise would have nothing in common - is the "lore" good? ("lore" in this case being a catch all term for historical events of the story's past, the way that things work that are different to how things work in the real world such as advanced tech or magic systems, and general stuff that shapes the world in ways that differ from our own).

Essentially, the only things I ever hear get called near-unanimously as "good" lore are Middle Earth and A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones. LOTR was supplemented (albeit after Tolkien's death) by The Silmarillion, a massive mythological explanation of the history of Middle Earth. Supplementary ASOIAF materials explain the entire genealogy of all the major characters and explain why, for instance, dragons are nearly non-existent in the present. Despite their stans claiming that both of the above are mind-bogglingly creative and original, neither of them really are - The Silmarillion is heavily based on the mythologies of northern Europe, and ASOIAF's backstory is often lifted directly from the historical dynasties of the British Isles. Should all works (even things that aren't book series, like TV shows, movies, and video games) try to mimic the lore of Middle Earth and ASOIAF? What are some of your favorite works' lore?

 

[CivilianOfTheFandomWars]

If I want to know more, it’s good.
If I don’t give a fuck, it’s bad.

 

[Mnutu]

Good lore doesn’t distract or diminish the story, it should only ever be used to deepen the relationship between plot and theme. Bad lore tends to focus too much on a group of background characters to the point that these background characters feel more like main characters, or provides needlessly complicated details that end up overturning and triviliazing the main conflict.

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

Good lore enriches the plot and characterization, and typically doesn't have to be spelled out in detail. In one bit of The Two Towers, Legolas makes an offhand reference to Queen Beruthiel's Cats, a reference that went right over my head until years later, when I found a YouTube video that explained that little detail. But even not knowing, it gave the sense of an alien culture that had different stories and conventions than ours.

Bad lore is when the author falls so in love with their creation that they need to spell out every autistic detail with alphabet blocks even when it doesn't change anything about what's going on with the plot or characters.

 

[Kosher Dill]

Good lore is the kind that stays in the background.
Bad lore is the kind that just acts as a CONSOOMING multiplier or promotes needless theorycrafting, in-world or out of it.

 

[Wonder Boy]

Bible

 

[DoNotReadTheFinePrint]

Should all works (even things that aren't book series, like TV shows, movies, and video games) try to mimic the lore of Middle Earth and ASOIAF?

I depends. If the lore directly impacts the main plot then yes, but otherwise no.

For example, let's say we have a story, which takes place in one nation, which is at war with another nation. In this case knowing some of the imitate history of both nations is need to understand why there's a war. Perhaps a few historical key events can also be used to find a solution to the war. What we don't need is the complete, detailed history from ancient times to present time of both involved nations or any history of the surrounding nations (especially if they're uninvolved).

I can't speak for ASOIAF since I've just read the first book and watched the TV series, but for Lord of the Rings I can say, you actually don't need to know anything about the Silmarillion to understand the main plot. Melkor (the actual main evil of the world) isn't present any more and iirc not even directly mentioned in LotR. You also don't need to know what a Silmaril is. Sure, the Silmarillion is certainly an interesting read if you're invested into the universe of Middle Earth but it doesn't directly impact LotR.

All the people saying the lore of Middle Earth should be what every write should aspire to don't know about the origin of the whole universe. Tolkien wrote the earliest parts of it for the languages he had made up. He constantly rewrote and changed big and small parts about them since he was very perfectionistic. Another problem is the fact the Silmarillion, as it is today, wasn't curated by him but his son, who had to sort through the mountain of texts Tolkien has left without knowing exactly what his father had planed, so it isn't the final version Tolkien might've actually wanted.
The Hobbit itself was a story for his children, to whom he told it at first as bedtime story but his kids kept noticing the inconsistency of consecutive retellings, forcing him to write the story down.
And last but not least, Lord of the Rings was written because the publisher of the hobbit wanted a sequel. LotR wasn't necessarily planed from the start by Tolkien, which is in part (at least I think so) the reason it can be read without knowing anything of the Silmarillion, beyond the fact that the Silmarillion, as we know it today, didn't existing when LotR was written.

 

[MrTroll]

Good lore is where you have to read a fan-run wiki to understand any of it because its actual presence in the game/movie/book is so minimal.

 

[Just Dont]

Best lore is Fallout New Vegas.

 

[Kosher Dill]

but for Lord of the Rings I can say, you actually don't need to know anything about the Silmarillion to understand the main plot.

In an alternate universe, we got a "bad lore" version of LOTR where the whole thing was about using Silmaril magitech to fight Sauron, and it was a race to see if the race of Men could dredge a Silmaril up from the seafloor, or if the heirs of Feanor could breed a "Chosen One" capable of making new Silmarils.

 

[Large]

The Silmarillion is heavily based

Yeah.

 

[DoNotReadTheFinePrint]

In an alternate universe, we got a "bad lore" version of LOTR where the whole thing was about using Silmaril magitech to fight Sauron, and it was a race to see if the race of Men could dredge a Silmaril up from the seafloor, or if the heirs of Feanor could breed a "Chosen One" capable of making new Silmarils.

I would actually read this for the absurdity of it. The Silmaril magitech would be extra hilarious, since they're just fancy glowing rocks, with a curse on them so no one unworthy can touch them.

 

[Imperial Citizen]

I would say that in general, Warhammer 40k does good lore. Even though the lore is nonsensical it serves both a narrative and gameplay purpose. It is to represent the events taking place across the 10,000 year history of the Imperium. History is always being forgotten, remembered only as fading scars on a battlefield, outright fabricated or revised so many times as to render fact into myth. Thus you can have massive Apocalypse games with entire Titan Legions because not only has the Imperium forgotten that certain Titan Legions exist, but no records of the battle were sent to be preserved on Terra. You can build an entirely new Space Marine chapter that you can say has been there since the end of the Horus Heresy because the Imperium wrote down the number of post Horus Heresy chapters millennia later, so yours just wasn't found in the records.

40k's lore facilitates the ability for players to create their armies and play games. That is what makes it good lore.

 

[I (Don't) Have A Gun]

Even though the lore is nonsensical it serves both a narrative and gameplay purpose. It is to represent the events taking place across the 10,000 year history of the Imperium. History is always being forgotten, remembered only as fading scars on a battlefield, outright fabricated or revised so many times as to render fact into myth.

The real world explanation for it is just that the people doing the lore couldn't asked to do proper consistency checking and every now and then they'd just arbitrarily retcon stuff. It certainly wasn't some kind of big brain meta-narrative decisions, just them making an excuse for 20 years worth of inconsistent lore. The whole "everything is canon but not everything is true" was an off-handed comment by an author trying to excuse why their books contradict each other.

But somehow it it actually works really well. Mind you I think this is largely due to the 40k community who as a whole have rather gravitated to this notion of unreliability.

 

[whitepumpkin]

I think it depends on the individual person's enjoyment of worldbuilding and lore, especially since our modern age values easy-read books (YA Novels, Pulp Romance, Poorly Written clickbait) and content that is churned out fast and can be consumed on a bus without anything further to be done. A lot of people who read the Hobbit or Lord of the Rings aren't going to read the Silmarillion and probably won't care for the expansive universe Tolkien created. Which is perfectly fine and is why it connects with so many people. But for me, considering Fantasy is becoming so oversaturated with lazy worldbuilding, I want more because that's the entire reason I read fantasy. I want to be immersed in a world and everything in it. I don't want 'generic central europe because I took a vacation there once' type of lore you commonly see in shitty YA - which they shoved in the Fantasy Section to fuck with you.

Of course, like was mentioned, spelling out every autistic detail in a chapter about the size of flowers is probably overkill, but there's some series I think does it right and enriches the experience of reading. It took me about 20 pages to get into The Wheel of Time (Eye of the World) but because it was so immense and well-understood, I bought into that shit. It's a fascinating world. Same with the Stormlight Archive by Sanderson and his practically autistic detail about magic systems, The Witcher to an extent, or even Pern from the Dragonriders of Pern. I'd actually go out and say ASOIAF is pretty weak on the worldbuilding (The Elder Scrolls feels more immense than it), but ASOIAF is more about characters than anything before it. Not like it matters anyways, since it'll never be finished.

Good Lore helps you appreciate an author's dedication to their world and that they really have thought about it. That this is a place they have taken the time to map out, explore, and think about beyond a few sentences.
Bad Lore is when you read a book, close it, and you cannot distinguish any notable place, event, or background. Or worse, it's just Fantasy Europe with maybe a dragon or a gnome thrown in.

 

[Chongqing]

Good lore doesn’t distract or diminish the story, it should only ever be used to deepen the relationship between plot and theme. Bad lore tends to focus too much on a group of background characters to the point that these background characters feel more like main characters, or provides needlessly complicated details that end up overturning and triviliazing the main conflict.

This reminds me of Boba Fet pre-Disney.

 

[From The Uncanny Valley]

When you don't have to know it in order to fully enjoy a work

 

[The Shadow]

Starship Troopers, because I would like to know more.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

When you don't have to know it in order to fully enjoy a work

yep

That and the lore itself makes the setting "feel more real", and is also entertaining.

 

[knightlautrec]

If I want to know more, it’s good.
If I don’t give a fuck, it’s bad.

Good example of a few games, same world (technically):

-Original Thief (1,2,3) Lore : Good. Doesn't Lore dump too much beyond Garret's thoughts about different people and your mission prep, throws you in the deep end and let's you figure how the City works with actual examples and characters living their duties/lives, architecture and style inform the Lore.
-Thief 4 Lore : Bad due to heavy handed Lore dumping in cutscenes (that didn't actually explain much beyond Lore wanking), tells a lot but doesn't show at times, shallow window dressing that was trying to invoke the same feeling of the original but utterly failed, makes stupid concrete statements about how things function in this setting that questions realistically just how this stupid City works on any level. (Cuz once you make a realistic sort of 'such and such runs this way' you are inviting the player to question the logic of that set up instead of keeping it mostly vague like the original does.)