What exactly is "lore friendly"?

[gengnome]

Coming way late to the discussion, but whatevs.

 

I think the problem is that people use "not lore-friendly" interchangeably with "immersion breaking," especially when commenting on mods. Of course, mods that allow for rifles and anime chicks in Skyrim and whatnot are out there. This is a video game and we are all trying to live our fantasies here, and a player could conceivably use portals or the TARDIS or the CHIM to justify all of it - but as someone who signed on to play a dragon-slaying warrior-mage in a swords-and-sorcery setting, I avoid those like the plague.

 

I am a total immersion player - if anything seems out of place, it pulls me right out of the game. I am going to use MasterBobcat's Grey Haven mod as an example. (MasterBobcat, if you are reading this, you did a wonderful job on this mod - it is just not for me.)

 

I was looking for a mod to relocate my Dragonborn's adopted Hearthfire kids to Winterhold since she became Archmage. Grey Haven is gorgeously and meticulously designed - but I ultimately couldn't go with it as a player, because there was no justification for my Dragonborn suddenly having access to a magical palace complete with swimming pool, conservatory, and greenhouse located in the side of a cliff, and for absolutely free, when she was still scraping septims together to buy Honeyside the week before.

 

There is nothing that is not lore-friendly about the Grey Haven mod. I could easily see it existing in Tamriel - but it was immersion breaking in the extreme for me as a player. Also, Jarl Korir as a character is written to be as touchy as heck, and my Dragonborn doesn't want to be seen as living better than the local Jarl. Grey Haven is fancier than the Blue Palace. Yes, I could say that my Dragonborn is like Shalidor and she Magicked or CHIMed it into existence, but then why wasn't she doing that the week before, instead of dungeoneering for money to buy Honeyside?

 

You could say it was the College's reward for dealing with the whole Eye of Magnus snafu, but they already did reward the Dragonborn - by making them Archmage and giving them Savos Aren's old quarters. A quick look at the state of the college and the town indicates that no one there would have the kind of resources to build something like the Grey Haven, or they'd use it to rebuild the town and make the college look less busted. (I know there are mods that do this. I am looking at them right now.) I can't think of a better way for the mages to make nice with Korir and the townsfolk of Winterhold (all seven of them!) than to do that instead.

 

See, this is exactly why lore freaks and total immersion freaks like me have problems with some mods. Our heads are so completely in the story that we take stuff like that into account, even though this is a make-believe video game. We're not trying to be jerks when we say a mod is not lore-friendly or is immersion-breaking. And there is nothing wrong with ornate magical palace mods and the players who like to use them. Live the dream! It's just that there are some players (like me) who have a hard time just handwaving some mods away as "Of course I get this manor with all the crafting stations, noble furniture, and a dozen npc servants totally for free, I'm the Dragonborn!" when everything else in the game has to be won through gameplay, and this has a huge effect on what mods we end up using and liking.

Edited November 16, 2014 by gengnome

[lofgren]

 

Creeper is actually in Skyrim.

 

Creeper in Morrowind = Clavicus Vile's dog, or at least it's heavily hinted as such in Oblivion.

Actually Creeper was a scamp merchant in Morrowind, he's always been "Barbas" since Daggerfall

 

 

 

I think Inodiv is referring to Barbas' lines in Oblivion where he says he spent some time in the form of a scamp, dealing with orcs.

 

 

Circa 3E 427, Barbas took the form of a musically talented scamp merchant named Creeper.[2] Creeper lived and traded with a group of orcs in Caldera, Morrowind.[3]

Edited November 16, 2014 by lofgren

[Hallgarth]

Lore Friendly is literally anything that doesn't contradict established lore.

 

Only Bethesda can contradict their own Lore. Just because, y'know.

[lofgren]

I think lore-friendly implies that the author can make some positive argument that their content is at least suggested by existing lore. The negative argument that lore does not contradict the mod is almost meaningless. I mean nowhere in the lore does it explicitly say that Batman DOESN'T exist in Tamriel. If you make the claim that your mod is lore friendly, in my opinion you ought to be able to point to some element of canon and explain why the lore implies your mod. An example might be adding people, artifacts, or magical powers that are mentioned in books into the game.

[icecreamassassin]

Well you could add batman and even call him batman but his toys would have to be dwemer tech and his attire would have to look like it fits in at very least. Could be a wealthy merchant and importer and that works, maybe the guy in charge of the east empire trading company?

 

You could t just drop batman as he is in his bat mobile and traditional costume into Tamriel and say it's lore friendly without defending it is my point. I don't think that lore should be required to disprove mod lore viability, I think mods have to justify his they are lore friendly and I think that seamless content can pass as lore friendly without much effort. It's the stuff that stands out as different and out of place that has a hard to being taken as lore friendly

 

I mean say you make a mod that centers around a quest involving discovering proof that helseth, son of barenziah was in fact the love child of Tiber septim and barenziah. Since they did have an affair and she did become pregnant, it is possible and lore friendly because it's completely believable that instead if aborting it she hid the fact she was pregnant, married symmachus, and claimed it was his child (and breathed a breath if fresh air when the kid came our grey and with red eyes lol). This would all be lore friendly unless later Bethesda adds a book to a future game that was a lost volume of the real berenziah for instance that spoke of her terrible sadness at the loss of the child and the small grave in Mournhold where she laid to rest the meager remains of their would be child and secretly went to mourn there in private. THEN that would make the mod lore breaking

[BloodrendX001]

I believe that as it stands now, "lore-friendly" is pretty much a useless term as people mean many different things by it.

 

This excerpt from the teslore subreddit FAQ succinctly summarises what I think is lore: "the information and knowledge that a fictional universe consists of." It should be noted that TES lore is not a single, monolithic entity that is presented as Word of God, but rather an amalgamation of subjective and often contradicting interpretations and accounts made by a wide variety of people who may not have all the facts, may be biased, may have an agenda, or may be outright lying.

 

"Lore-breaking" would then mean any new lore introduced by a mod that contradicts the established lore with no appropriate justification and/or is a marked departure from the style of the established lore. Thus, "lore-friendly" would simply mean that the lore introduced by the mod fits with the established lore.

 

But then we're introduced to another problem: how many people really understand the lore? I'd wager that most folk browsing and using Skyrim mods are unfamiliar with concepts like CHIM, or that the TES universe features cyborgs, computers and even spaceships. Ask that average person whether these things are "lore-friendly" and chances are they'll say it is not.

[deathbymanga]

Well you could add batman and even call him batman but his toys would have to be dwemer tech and his attire would have to look like it fits in at very least. Could be a wealthy merchant and importer and that works, maybe the guy in charge of the east empire trading company?

 

You could t just drop batman as he is in his bat mobile and traditional costume into Tamriel and say it's lore friendly without defending it is my point. I don't think that lore should be required to disprove mod lore viability, I think mods have to justify his they are lore friendly and I think that seamless content can pass as lore friendly without much effort. It's the stuff that stands out as different and out of place that has a hard to being taken as lore friendly

Actually, NO

 

This is something i have to point out. Just because you can explain how a suit of body armor could look like the batsuit, or a collection of weapons could act like batman's weapons, that wouldn't be lore friendly, why? because it contradicts with batman's lore

 

Batman acts like Batman because his politics are corrupt and he must act outside the law to protect the innocent.But in skyrim? The entire political system is very different from Gotham. Sellswords come in and out of the place, saving lives and helping people out, that there'd be no need for a vigilante. There's no law to act on the outside of. Any law that is broken is enforced by the city guard, but any law that needs enforcing, but can't be done by the city guard, is just subcontracted to an ordinary sellsword who came through.

 

Batman would be out of a business.

 

Then take into account how batman fights. He fights by jumping from rooftops, gliding on his cape, and such. Skyrim is nothing but wildlife. At best he'd be climbing through trees. But you know what? a cape would be useless in the trees as it would be stuck on branches all over the place. So the cape and the mask are both unnecessary. You could give him a cloak, but he wouldn't be jumping through trees, so he'd loose that agility batman is known for.

 

The amount of changes you'd have to make to make Batman both lore friendly to skyrim, and lore friendly to Batman would just end up with a character who just isn't batman anymore, and you might as well make an original character then.

[LoneWolfEburg]

Skyrim certainly has its share of corrupt authorities. Batman in Skyrim would be definitely lore-unfriendly, although a character inspired by him would not be necessary so.

[icecreamassassin]

Quest becomes then, when you introduce something that is obviously based on something outside of TES, why do you have a responsibility to hold true to the lore of that addition. I think that in general just means that you are basing the addition on batman for instance, because you cannot as you detailed, maintain batman's full purpose. Now if this were oblivion and you lived in the imperial city (especially the better cities one) I could certainly see a TES friendly version of batman jumping from roof top to roof top and fighting crime and government corruption. But would I really consider it lore friendly? no I wouldn't unless I couldn't tell that it was clearly based on batman at first.

 

Take grey fox for instance, some could make the case he's based on robbin hood, and if that is the case, If a batman addition were presented in a similar vein, I would accept it as lore friendly.

 

I do like Bloodrend's quote about what is lore unfriendly and the obvious reversal of it being what is lore friendly, I think that about sums it up for me

[sa547]

Sorry if I necro'd this thread, but I feel that those two words can be quite ambiguous. Fans of this saga (and other works of fiction) tend to have their own personal set of standards rather than a unified "official" set of rules and standards of what constitutes as "lore".

 

Of course, it's a complete violation of "lore" if anachronisms are introduced such as electronics or assault rifles, unless it's for comedic effect or for unusual screenshots. But what about characters, especially followers? Or houses? I find it rather frustrating to try classifying my mods through those "rules", it's becoming frustrating no matter how much I try to put backstory and explanation behind those mods, that I don't bother using the "lore-friendly" tag because end-users, just as I said earlier, have their own stronger definition of "lore" because of mods and more than what Beth defines as "holy writ": their "lore" can be a dark, bloody, cold, and dirty Skyrim. Or a Skyrim with vivid colors, clear skies, and characters in the pink of health.

Edited June 25, 2017 by sa547