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How do?

Open question, with only an opinion as an example, certainly not some kind of brash statement of accuracy. And the question is the title - what makes good background?

Popped up in my head because I’ve very recently devoured the background in House of Chains for Necromunda. For more details, see the Thunder Warriors thread, and my thread about HoC in the SG sub forum.

That stuff to me is good background. For a start, it’s largely new to me. Which after 30 odd years of GW takes some doing. It’s also rather intriguing.

See, it goes into a lot of detail about the origin and rise of House Goliath. Being massive muscle Mary’s, I’ve long been wondering for a few years if, just maybe, they’re actually based on Thunder Warriors - either an STC predecessor rediscovered, or a ‘that’s as close as we can get’ descendant.

The book offers.....breadcrumbs, and tidbits. Little things here and there which magnificently to my mind, don’t actually confirm nor deny. That leaves plenty of room for us Nerds to wade into and discuss to death - ideally with citations for others to then go and read.

The actual writing style and prose doesn’t bother me all that much, so long as the information is interesting. You can be the wordiest of wordsmiths, but if you’re too busy showing that off to actually get to the point? I’ll switch off.

But as said, that’s just my opinion on it, and I’m very interested in hearing yours

Largely the same things that make good writing. Like the absence of plot holes so big you could lose a space ship in them.

Complaints about Phoenix Rising aside I'd say the main thing for things like 40k is to have a clear plan from the start on what you want to have. Do you want to leave it mysterious? Do you want to explain everything? Essentially decide where on that spectrum you want to be.

From there give details on the surrounding environments and go into characters. But for me the main thing is a sense that the writers actually know how much mystery they want rather than bouncing between no explanation and explaining everything including the previous mysteries.

I think for me the cornerstones for a good lore background for a game or setting aren't the big things.


To me a lore is like a chocolate chip bun.

The chocolate chips might define what its overall nature is and they are a core sweet part that we expect. However they require binding together with mundane regular cake mixture. Just like a lore requires binding together with the mundane of life and existence.



This is why Lord of the Rings is such a powerful lore setting. It's not because of grand battles to destroy all powerful dark lords - that's the chocolate chip. It's because its a setting where you can imagine the fields, the crops, the peoples, the jobs, the work, the day to day flow of life for the vast majority of the races and peoples of that setting. Where each race has an established network of historical events that bind them together and hold them together and apart.




In contrast something like Age of Sigmar falls down because GW has poured chocolate chips into the mix in such heavy abundance that they become the binding agent. They overpower their own setting and the binding agents, the mundane aspects of life in the realms, gets diluted and lost. As a result there's so little holding it all together that it can crumble and break apart. Plus the "chocolate" of major events is so regular that they stop being special.








So for me its the mundane. You establish where Joe Average lives, works, breeds, dies etc... Then you do that for the whole nations. Once you've got that foundation then you add in your gods and powerful monsters; your wars and demons and everything else. Because with the foundation established it allows the imagination to run free within the setting without getting stalled on really simple background details that, if it were a film, you'd likely see flash by the camera without a thought - but that you'd seriously notice if they were missing.

Good lore to me is allowing for room for the player to be creative. If Space Marines were only the Founding Chapters the room for creativity would be significantly narrower. Horus Heresy/30k gets around this by allowing for distinct variation from the Legions. So you get the Imperial Fist Captains who end up starting the Crimson Fists and Black Templars leading their own soldiers, who while still Imperial Fists are not quite the same as one another.

One thing that I really hate is when something is retroactively rewritten to be prophesied or connected awkwardly. The best example was the Necron's Silent King having a mask of Sanguinius. I don't see why that was necessary. And also, I'm not as upset with this one, Armageddon being Ullanor as it makes Ghaz's fascination with the planet less about how he is trying to have revenge for losing the War for Armageddon 2, but because he's going to reclaim the Ork homeworld. Which may have been more interesting if anyone in universe actually knew Armageddon was Ullanor, because all of the Techpriests who teleported Ullanor away rewrote the logs to make it appear like Armageddon was always a human world.