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King of the Mushan

Thoughts: Not Custom Lore, -Expanded- Lore

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Aight, so, I'm curious as to what y'all think about a certain little thing I like to call Expanded Lore.

So, basically, instead of having Custom Lore (I.E. "The Fal'dorei have put aside their barbaric ways and joined the Horde"), you have Expanded Lore (I.E. "The City of Stormwind is governed by a tiered system of administrative government.)

To define them, Custom Lore is to completely invent a new part of the Lore or change an existing piece of the Lore, whereas Expanded Lore is to define a part of Lore that has never actually been expanded upon by Blizzard themselves. So, if something is up in the air, or vague, or obscure, you'd generally create an Expanded Lore reason to connect the dots.

I am personally very guilty of using Expanded Lore in a lot of my characters or phases, so I'm curious as to everyone's opinions on it and its use.

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Expanded Lore is not a new term. 

 

It is basically as you've done it so far in your examples, setting headcanons for how things work. 

The matter is how far you can stretch that and still make it viable within current Warcraft setting. 

 

And the perspective on how far you can bend the ruler before it breaks and becomes custom lore will always be a subjective evaluation from person to person. One person may not think elaborating on the political nature of Stormwind to be custom lore, but other people might find that to be. 

 

What matters is just to surround yourself with people that considers your lore friendly to what they know about Warcraft and enjoy your storytelling as it is.

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You as a roleplayer has a responsibility to respect the craft that you're roleplaying in, but that doesn't mean that you have to sit glued to wowpedia and do exactly what it says all day. What would roleplay be if that was the case? No improvisation, no creativity, no mystery or nothing new. Going up there into the light and defining and categorizing expanded lore as something one can look down upon is not how you should approach this. Expanded lore is just a word and I find the word creativity to fit better, a defining and categorizing word that instead of demoralizing players to not try new things, forces them into the scene of creating something additional to the world you're already in.

Sure I love the lore about Duskwood, but if someone would shit out a new branch of Darkshire witch hunters working under their regime somehow, I'd find that interesting. If whoever created this piece didn't use 'expanded lore' (creativity), it would just be "my character is good at killing undead because he's part of the night watch of darkshire", when it with just a glimpse of one's mind and fun and personal interest can shape it into something that is beautiful, fun to roleplay with, and respects the craft. What moron goes out and pushes down an original idea that is entirely possible in the setting of warcraft?

 

Expanded lore isn't some taboo or different, straying-from-real-lore topic, it is simply that extra amounts and lengths of passion a roleplayer wants to give to the roleplay they're in or the world they want to build.

TL;DR use it

Edited by Romeo

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Many people, especially more experienced ones, don't have a problem with "custom" or "expanded" lore. They are by definition the same thing - a creative expansion on the canon lore, which is needed for some rp concepts, if not most.

In its most broad way, every player character is essentially part of "custom lore", the problem is that some unspecified people take their concepts too far from the main canon, putting a very bad light upon any custom lore.

 

Basically, whatever those peeps above said. Don't take it too far and it will be fine.

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