n April this year, we read about Knightmare's recollection of his creation of the Tibia genesis. He let us be part of his thoughts and theories back then. This month, Knightmare fills us in about his ideas of delivering Tibia's lore, the different stories, to you, the Tibians.

...Writing lore is one thing. Presenting it adequately is a very different and difficult job. It is complicated all the more by the fact that you cannot suit everybody's taste. Regardless of what you do, you will never please everybody at the same time.

There have been different approaches to deliver lore to players in online games. It is extremely rare to find a pure form of presentation of the background story in a game. Most games mix and match different styles, which is probably a good thing, as we will see.

The purpose of 'background stories' is shown with the term itself. They serve as a background framework, but they are also stories. The thing is, a story has to be somehow engaging so that it will not be discarded and forgotten by the readers. Making something engaging is more than complicated, and there are no guidelines that will guarantee that your story is perceived as important and immersive, as 'epic' in its original sense.

The word 'epic' has become so massively overused that it has lost its impact in the meantime. Over the years, the shameless overuse has washed down the term from meaning 'significant, moving and game-changing' to simply meaning 'quite nice'. It has become so common to call something epic that it is almost like an admittance of failure to deliver a story without that label.
In reality, it is far more important to deliver a decent and hopefully engaging story, which is then subject to individual tastes. You will not make something epic by simply putting a label on it. Not in the area of storytelling at least, it seems to work well enough when it comes to smartphones and the like. Even by repeatedly stating how epic your story is, it will not get any better by that. If every game is advertised as epic, it remains up to the individual to evaluate the impact the game has on him.
Be it as it may, consumers have embraced the term and added it to their casual vocabulary, all the while washing down the term even more - in their case with a bit more validity though, because if someone really feels deeply engaged in something, the usage of the term makes some sense, at least.

So - you might have an abundance of lore for a game world, whether it is epic or not. The crucial question now is: how do you get the lore to the players? Reading ingame books and milking NPCs for every drop of information is not everybody's style. You cannot really blame people for not reading larger texts in a game. They play the game to play after all. If they wanted to read, they would have chosen to read a book in the first place. A better way than presenting texts might be an online narrator reading books fully voiced while the player continues playing. However, a greater part of the community would probably turn off the voice eventually or blend it out, and thus, would miss a greater part of the story.
In the end, bringing a story to the community depends on two types of players: the curious adventurer, and the curious researcher. Both types invest their time resources into parts of the game that interest them the most.
While the typical adventurer is not really into reading texts ingame or gathering information, he cares about the context of his adventures to some extent. He is curious enough to look certain things up on forum discussions or wiki pages. Here comes the researcher into play. For them, forums and wikis are an ideal place to present their findings to other players. Even the game chat provides them with opportunities to talk about their research. This way, the background stories find their ways to more people, also other types of players, who do not like to read those ingame books or listen to long stories of NPCs.
Of course, this method has its pitfalls. The most common is that a misconception or false information easily becomes a widely accepted fact and finds its way into the mainstream. However, this is usually nothing that could not be corrected by an NPC or a book later on.

Something that would never work for games is forcing stories on the players, or expecting them to know it all. For most people it is most likely more fun to understand the context in which they are acting, but if that is not important to you and not something you want, it is perfectly okay to play just by what you see.
So when background is an optional bonus, it is sometimes a hard decision for developers whether books and NPCs are really necessary or not and how much time is available for them.

Areas that actually tell a story on their own, without the usage of any texts, are quite difficult to implement in Tibia with the given mechanics, so they are quite rare. For example, you might find caverns in Tibia, in which you will know upon entering and from the very first sight - without reading anything - that here, some 'summoning' must have gone wrong. It is very difficult if not impossible to pull something like that off in more complicated cases. Some further help or information is usually necessary to convey a more complex story.

If the background is deeply interwoven with a questline, players are more likely to learn about it. The problem here is that quest texts might become immensely bloated, and therefore, boring in the attempt to deliver the background story with them. If this is the case, people will most likely skip the whole text and just look up what they need to do in the quest log. By skipping the flavour text they might also miss some valuable information, though, that would have helped them during the quest.

NPCs are in general more interactive than books, which should make them a good choice for delivering a story. The problem here is that the presentation of the story is less straight forward than in a book. Keywords might branch into different subtopics, and it is easy to lose track and to miss something important.
The decision whether to use more books or more NPCs is not an easy one, as both might suit the individual tastes of some gamers more than others. I guess, the trick here is to find a good mixture of possible ways to deliver the background stories and to trust in the cooperation of players. I am glad that "lore enthusiasm" is usually not a self sufficient thing, and that when a true researcher digs up some vital information, he or she most likely wants to share it with somebody and might even care to hear a second opinion.
Another less obvious difficulty in deciding which technique you should use, is how the information fits in the context of the world. I am repeating myself, so I will make it short. Imagine some tyrant gains a throne through treachery and kills innocent people, would he really allow books to exist that depict him as the evil tyrant that he is? And would enemies not depict a noble and good ruler as evil? It would be quite bland and boring to present books or other texts in an objective way.

Then there are the mostly dreaded contradictions. To be honest, writing stories for Tibia for over a decade bears the risk of simply forgetting ideas and concepts introduced some time in the past. The coming and going of many different contributors makes it even harder to keep track of the background as a whole.
The concept of the unreliability of Tibian sources really comes in handy if this happens. Contradictions might easily be individual misconceptions or even lies. When I become aware of a contradiction, I usually do not override one concept with another, but rather look for an explanation why both options might be viable and form a bigger picture. So in the best case, a contradiction leads to something greater and better. However, usually they are more of an annoyance than a good thing.
A consistent world is not necessarily what every player is looking for. However, the negative impact of a completely inconsistent world would be felt by everyone.

When I have the time, I read and follow player discussions about Tibia's background stories. Sometimes I feel tempted to point out an error in reasoning or provide an easy to be obtained text passage that is obviously neglected in the discussion. I hold myself back though, since it is probably better to let nature take its course, so to say.
I imagine that when you proudly present an outcome of your research, it is not really fun to be corrected by some know-it-all guy. It is by far more fun when Tibian historians support each other with information or get into amicable disputes about such matters.

Now that the stories are out there, what happens? Well, they are now the stories of the players. Some might name their guild after some ancient order or some important person, others might roleplay some cult, some school of philosophy or belief, yet again others might just brag with their knowledge, calling others who do not know as much 'noobs' ;o)

What about you? Are you interested in Tibia's stories? How do you learn about Tibia's lore? Which is your preferred way to experience background stories? Are there particular stories you like? Have you found some of these 'dreaded' contradictions yourself yet?

Let us know in the feedback thread!
Your Community Managers