A guide to successful lore
TheUnleashedPiraat
Quick note to any people who might already know me:
No, I probably won't be coming back. For some reason I was just curious to how things were going with Cosmoteer, and decided to check it out. Whilst scrolling down the forums I found myself thinking about writing this post. Idk why.
Another quick note, this time to all readers:
I am not a professional at lore writing, I am just some guy who has done this quite extensively in the past, but failed. There are others who were much more succesful than me. For the best tips and tricks, go to them.
What I will be trying to teach you:
What I have done in the past, what was good, what was bad, and how to avoid my mistakes, hopefully allowing you guys to be better than me.
First of all, let me introduce myself quickly, and show you some of my creations:
1. The Terran Alliance, my very first, and by far, largest endeavor.
2. The ASAP revival project, my latest endeavor. This one contains no lore, but is a great example of good styling of your posts.
3. The ASAP shipyard, my first real sideproject.
4. The Merchants, my first (and last) forum event. I would really advise you to do exactly nothing like what I did here.
5. The Interfaction War, a somewhat organized event between multiple factions. Very interesting to see how different people approached this event.
Keep things interesting for yourself
One of the best reasons you can have to start a faction, or any other kind of activity that involves creating lore is simply because you think you'd find it fun. This was also the case with me, and let me say, it was really fun.
But there are some things that cost so much more energy than they give back in enjoyment. From personal experience, I will talk about some things that were like this. (keep in mind, everyone is different, and you might find these things much more fulfilling than me, and if you are doubting about trying any of them, I would advise you to pursue a "trial and error" mindset, and see if it fits you):
Real time activities
One of the most time consuming things were real time activities. Some simple examples: The TA finances , The Merchants event , The Interfaction War. These were all quite fun when I started them, but each of them got really boring after a while.
The finances are easily my biggest mistake (but also the most easily fixed, just stop doing it). Never, and I mean NEVER obstruct your own fantasy. One of the reasons we all enjoy lore and RP is because it lets us act out our fantasies and play with random internet friends. The last thing you want to do is limit your imagination. Of course, you are playing with others, so don't get ridiculous, but I will adress that matter later on in this guide.
The Merchants event was a pre-planned, partly scripted event which I imagined to be easy to do and a lot of fun for me and others. It was like a game of clues where I had all the answers. Great fun, right? Well, not how I did it. Again, I lacked imagination & fantasy. I made entire drawings and plannings for the event. I had a route I wanted the participants to take. Of course, nearly none of them did. I had to find ways to adapt everybodies actions to my plan. This was not the worst part, the worst part was that there were a lot of people at the same time, and I couldn't keep up. I lost interest. How to avoid this? Don't set too high expectations for yourself, and don't expect other people to act predictable. Enjoy the creativity, and take plenty time to react to everything in your own pace. This means that you can't help everyone as fast as you'd like, and you should accept that. If the participants don't, then they are being unreasonable. Imagine a normal conversation over the forum between 2 people. Replies can take a long time. Now imagine one person conversating with 8 people at once. It is acceptable to take 8 times longer to reply to a person if you have 7 other people in the same event.
The Interfaction war was open for all people who wanted to join. Fun, right? Yes. But it was the reason why the event failed. If you are going to do something like this, Do not make it free to join for everyone. It will become clustered with random people appearing one day and never showing up again. Narratives will become disrupted, just as you were building a story someone randomly comes with some super OP weapon that destroys all your progress, only to have that super OP weapon destroyed by a superduper OP weapon which is later destroyed by a superduper OP+1 weapon.
The point I am trying to make with all of these examples is: Make clear rules about what you're going to do, both with yourself as with the others. But also, don't try to control everything. Everyone is a different person. Everyone has different ideas. Just because the ideas of person X don't fit your style doesn't mean that it is a bad idea. Have a good laugh, enjoy the sillyness. You might not realise it, but while doing RP on the forums, you are creating some memories. Make sure they are good, fun memories. Don't let yourself be blinded by "I gotta win this fake war with this person I have never met". Once they bring out something you don't like, just confront them about it.
Say "Hey man, that's a very cool ship you got there, but do you mind not destroying my entire fleet in one blow, because it's no fun."
You know, I was planning on making a complete guide with multiple sections and stuff, but this is becoming a really large post. I think you all get the true meaning behind this post. Enjoy yourselves, and try to let others enjoy themselves as well. As long as you can truthfully say that both those things are true, you have succeeded.
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While I'm at it, if anyone is reading this who I have played with in the past: Thank you for the fun times. It may not seem like I had fun in the text above, but trust me, the time that I was active I enjoyed very much. Thanks for being a part of it 🙂. And who knows, maybe one day I'll really return to the forums.