Thursday, May 08, 2025

We're working on lore for Fragpunk, and as we refine the lore pieces, one thing I keep asking the writers for is translucency. My book (now out from Routledge!) talks about "translucent liars," where you know an NPC is lying, and their lies tell you something about them. But they don't have to be lying. They can be telling the truth -- but telling it from their distinctive point of view.

That way, there's two layers of lore. One is the facts that they are presenting -- oh, there are lizard people in the hills, no one knows where they came from, don't go there or they'll eat you. The other is who the NPC is:  a cranky old blacksmith who's a little hard of hearing, who isn't getting along with his second wife, and now you know that in this culture a man can have two wives.

(They say that France is the only country where you can complain to your wife that your mistress just doesn't understand you.)

Every bit of lore should have attitude. Even if it's meant to be from an encyclopedia, who wrote it? Who was the encyclopediarian? In Samuel Johnson's dictionary, you will find this definition:

Lexicographer. n. s. A writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge...

Which defines lexicographers, but also tells you what Samuel Johnson thought of himself. 

Every bit of text in our world has an attitude. We are so used to some of them that we think they are "neutral," but the New York Times is not really neutral, and neither is the Encyclopedia Brittanica. 

So give your lore attitude, and tell us who wrote it. 

1:07 PM

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