LORE lacking... LORE

[drakogear]

Ok first off I kinda wanna ask... about how long has Layonara been around? About a few years at least I'm assuming.

Second, with Layo being around for so long... even in Pen and Paper form as it supposedly started out as... how then is it LORE is not yet finished... let alone even seeming all that close to being finished?

Was browsing through the LORE pages for some information on towns and other things and about every link I clicked I get "This is a stub for (such and such)".

Not even (what I assume to be) the most famous city (Leringard) has any information.

[Aphel]

Guess there's just not enough time to write all up and fill it in the appropriate articles. Even if you're here some time, it's hard to find information about something that doesn't involve asking the GMs or other players at some point. If I had more time, I'd volunteer, on the other hand, I have more time (than I expect)

[Masterjack]

A lot of Lore had to be rewritten due to some people leaving and they did not want their contributions added. So we had to go back and rewrite a lot of lore I mean a lot of Lore. We now have it so people who contribute to Lore, agree that the Lore they add stays. Secondly they only have a few part time people writing lore and then it needs to get approved before it gets added for the public to see.

Any way that is the simple answer and easy answer. I'm sure if you dig through the forums you will find the detailed reasons as to why Lore is not all available. You are welcome to apply to be a writer and help increase the Lore we have.

[Dorganath]

Layonara's first beginnings were started in the mid 1980's as a D&D campaign setting dreamed up by Leanthar.  He ran this setting with friends of his during a much earlier time period in Layonara's history. In fact, a lot (if not all) of those characters are known as prominent figures in the present era of Layonara.

As an online entity, Layonara has been around almost as long as NWN has been around.  The first version wasn't persistent, but it was there and it grew.

I'll skip the stuff in the middle and get to the key question at hand.

Even though Layonara has existed for 20-some years, the world was far from being fully-defined. Some of that of course is simply a matter of what Leanthar had time and mind to define in the early days.  He came up with the maps and some generalities, but left them (like many home-brew campaigns) to be defined as needed.  

LORE itself, as a site, has existed since...sometime in 2005, I think. It is maintained, like everything else here, by a collection of volunteers.

Fast-forward to now, Layonara is a lot more defined than LORE might reflect.  The simple fact at work here is that there is a lot.  There's a lot that's written up formally, a lot that's in-progress and a lot that needs attention, and that's just on the writer's side of things. The LORE team has its own list of tasks that's independent from the writers. Often times, what is publicly released is not the same as what's really going on in some given place or with a certain individual. Much of what has been written lately is a somewhat painstaking assembly of things that have happened in-game over the last several years woven in with any preexisting history that may exist plus the creativity of writers where some information may not exist. This effort to more fully document Layonara's locations and prominent people is actually only fairly recent.

So basically, it's a big job.

Specifically about Leringard, it's surely not the most famous city in the world. Probably not even close, to be truthful.  I happen to know that Leringard is part of the greater Trelania write-up, and that the in-game layout of Leringard as of the last update more closely resembles (in spirit, anyway) the official but as-yet unreleased write-up for the city.

And to the earlier part of the question...why is LORE not complete? Well, as a site, it's never intended to be "complete".  Hopefully, as Layonara continues, what can be written about it is going to continue to grow.  LORE, or whatever may follow it, will continue to grow and evolve.  As to why it's not more complete than it is? Well, as I said, it's a volunteer effort. If we had a team of people who had this as their full-time jobs, there's no question it would be very complete and constantly evolving.  As it is, this is not (yet) the case.  So, instead, we have to rely on the unreliable charity of free time.  Some on the LORE team (including the lead) are GMs, so when the choice comes down to player interaction or slogging through making some LORE entries, choosing the former would seem (to me) to be the better choice.  This of course doesn't just apply to the LORE team, but to the greater effort of writing and documenting world lore so it can be put up on the LORE site at some point.

And most presently, I'll tease things a bit to say that LORE as you all know it may be seeing the end of its days, but more on that another time. *winks*

[drakogear]

Specifically about Leringard, it's surely not the most famous city in the world. Probably not even close, to be truthful.  I happen to know that Leringard is part of the greater Trelania write-up, and that the in-game layout of Leringard as of the last update more closely resembles (in spirit, anyway) the official but as-yet unreleased write-up for the city.

Ah, well thanks for that clarification. Was thinking it was a famous city... it at least has a somewhat famous tavern that has its own section on the forum. Leringard Arms Inn and Tavern along with The Silver Buckle and Wild Surge Inn though not sure what cities/towns those are from.

[Dorganath]

A lot of Lore had to be rewritten due to some people leaving and they did not want their contributions added. So we had to go back and rewrite a lot of lore I mean a lot of Lore. We now have it so people who contribute to Lore, agree that the Lore they add stays. Secondly they only have a few part time people writing lore and then it needs to get approved before it gets added for the public to see.

Any way that is the simple answer and easy answer. I'm sure if you dig through the forums you will find the detailed reasons as to why Lore is not all available. You are welcome to apply to be a writer and help increase the Lore we have.

This is another very good piece to the overall picture and probably one of the more significant reasons for things being as they are.

When we were first moving toward (eventually) making Layonara a commercial property in its own right, we had to do an end-to-end analysis of what we had and whether or not we could keep it in its present form or if we had to change things.  The most immediate result of this were a lot of name changes.  Many will remember this, and many will not.  For example, we used to use the term "The Weave" when referring to magic as an entity, but since that's part of someone else's intellectual property (and someone with much deeper pockets than us), we had to change it to Al'Noth.  Likewise, Underdark changed to Deep. Many place names changed. It was pretty sweeping and almost nothing was left completely untouched.

But even before that, we had a lot of things written or in the progress of being written by various members of our volunteer staff, but in order to progress towards a commercial property, we would have to secure agreements from these writers to use the material they created.  Many gave their formal, written consent.  Some did not.  For those that did not, we had to throw away all of the lore that they had written and rewrite it from the ground up.

Several NPCs, places, and particularly deities fell under either one or both of these categories, and it has been no small matter to fill in what had to be replaced for one reason or the other.

[miltonyorkcastle]

Dorg and MJ basically covered it. I used to work hard at keeping regular updates going into LORE, but do to a variety of things, I have chosen to focus on other IG work. But no worries, more is always coming.

[Dorganath]

Ah, well thanks for that clarification. Was thinking it was a famous city... it at least has a somewhat famous tavern that has its own section on the forum. Leringard Arms Inn and Tavern along with The Silver Buckle and Wild Surge Inn though not sure what cities/towns those are from.

It is a famed city, just not at the top. It's an important city too, given that it's a port city, so lots of goods pass through there, especially up to the northern islands.

The Leringard Arms (in Leringard, clearly) and the Silver Buckle (in Mariner's Hold) are player-run taverns/inns/boarding houses. They have their own forums because the players that started them and the ones who maintain them now have invested a lot of time and effort into making them social hubs for other players.

The Wild Surge Inn was our original "tavern" forum and harkens back to the time when Hlint was the center of the adventuring universe.

[Masterjack]

Since I got a few PMs about how to get on the writing team. Here is the official link.

http://forums.layonara.com/1550532-post20.html