You know what the Lore section here needs? A LORE board.

[Lord Nord in Gravis Armour]

I was looking around for some discussion on the Rift War campaign book from a lore perspective rather than a rules standpoint.

 

Where would this magical wonderland of discussion be?

It seems like it should be part of the LORE section.

 

Yet that section is broken down into the following:

 

• The Liber (A discussion of "homegrown" organizations.
• The Black Library (official fiction)
• Fan Fiction

Where in that selection does one begin to talk about actual lore? One MIGHT be tempted to think that such discussion would be at home in the Black Library section, but there doesn't seem to be discussion there of anything that's not specifically story-form content published by Black Library.

 

Am I just missing something obvious? Or is there just not enough interest to warrant such a discussion forum? If the latter, I'm curious how that decision was arrived at and if it's been re-considered lately.

 

Thanks.

 

[Scribe]

I'm pretty sure I asked for this previously and was shot down. You are supposed to just go silo in one of the specific faction forums.

[Brother Tyler]

Under our current construct, content is placed in the appropriate (sub-)forum. The more specific the content, the further down the structure it goes. To illustrate, a discussion about a specific Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes would go into the relevant sub-forum. For example, a discussion about the Executioners, a successor of the Imperial Fists Legion, would go in the Imperial Fists sub-forum. A more general discussion about the Adeptus Astartes would go in a "higher" forum, in this case the Space Marines forum. Similarly, a discussion about a topic that covers both the Adeptus Astartes and Heretic Astartes would go in the Adeptus Astartes forum (the general principle is that an issue relevant to both the loyalist and traitor versions of factions such as the Adeptus Astartes/Heretic Astartes, Imperial Knights/Chaos Knights, etc. goes in the loyalist forum). A discussion about the Imperium would go in the Agents of the Imperium forum. This applies to basic lore issues, too, with Amicus Aedes serving as the forum for broad lore issues that can't be narrowed down to a lower forum (i.e., Amicus Aedes sits at the top of our content filter, taking anything that doesn't fit elsewhere).

 

The problem with having a forum specifically for "all" lore is that it takes away from discussion of lore in other forums, narrowing audiences down both too much and inappropriately. This is part of a problem we have in the Liber forums, where people ask questions about factions therein instead of in the (sub-)forums dedicated to those factions. Such an arrangement, whether for lore in general or just for Liber, removes a large segment of the community from the discussion because many of those with knowledge on the subject aren't participating in the Lore/Liber forum. If someone has a question about subject X, the largest group of experts on subject X are in (sub-)forum X. Asking in forum Y excludes all of those experts (except those that are in forum Y, which tends to be only a small percentage).

 

That's not to say that there isn't room for the suggestion, but there would have to be mechanisms in place for disciplining the system. Would it be possible (and necessary) to have such an overarching lore discussion forum as a replacement for the Amicus Aedes forum? Would members understand the structure well enough to start discussions in the appropriate (sub-)forum without forcing additional work on the moderators? Realistically, would there be sufficient discussion of broad lore issues to warrant a separate forum?

 

There is definitely room for improvement in our current structure, and we are looking into a variety of improvements that we might make. This is an idea that we need to take on board for consideration. We want the structure to support the community's needs without being overly bloated.

[Lord Nord in Gravis Armour]

I appreciate the response, but that is definitely a sub-optimal solution. Most of the campaign books cover at least two different factions and in the case of the Vigilus/Nachmund books, MANY more. The Vigilus conflict actually touched on every major army in the game aside from Grey Knights (and they might have even sneaked in somewhere that I missed).

 

Are we just supposed to confine our discussions to the one faction that is most featured in one specific snippet of lore and then not engage in ANY of the natural discussion that will arise from that lest we incur the wrath of the OT Hammer since the discussion - while still 100% true to the original conversation - is now off-topic in the faction-specific forum it was originally crowbarred into?

 

It just seems like the current setup was devised by someone who sees 40K as a game first and as a narrative setting tenth. It would be like not having a general location to discuss the major battles in Star Wars, but instead having to post everything in either Jedi Knights, Clone Army, Sith, Separatists, Agents of the Republic, Bounty Hunters, or (coming soon) the Leagues of Watto.

[Brother Tyler]

Note that my answer wasn't a "no" response. As I said, we're taking it on board.

 

A problem, however, is in thinking that the only place for "lore" discussions is in the Lore category. That's not how things have been set up. Discussion of lore takes place in Amicus Aedes and the (sub-)faction (sub-)forums, too. Lore has been discussed in the Amicus Aedes forum since the ezBoard days, but our scope was much narrower back then. As our scope has broadened things have become more complicated so we've had to balance covering the full scope of the hobby with keeping the level of complexity down.

[Xenith]

I think this:

 

I appreciate the response, but that is definitely a sub-optimal solution. Most of the campaign books cover at least two different factions and in the case of the Vigilus/Nachmund books, MANY more. 

 

Is covered by this (emphasis mine):

The more specific the content, the further down the structure it goes. To illustrate, a discussion about a specific Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes would go into the relevant sub-forum. For example, a discussion about the Executioners, a successor of the Imperial Fists Legion, would go in the Imperial Fists sub-forum. A more general discussion about the Adeptus Astartes would go in a "higher" forum, in this case the Space Marines forum.

 

This applies to basic lore issues, too, with Amicus Aedes serving as the forum for broad lore issues that can't be narrowed down to a lower forum (i.e., Amicus Aedes sits at the top of our content filter, taking anything that doesn't fit elsewhere).

 

If the discussion, eg, galactic implications of the nachmund campaign on all races, is too specific for a single forum, it moves up the chain. If the discussion is about what happened to Chapter X as they run the gauntlet, then into the Adeptus Astartes section it goes. 

 

I do understand the frustration.

Edited May 19, 2022 by Xenith

[Son of Sacrifice]

Not sure if adding my two cents is worth anything, but I too was surprised and a bit disappointed. I went searching for a lore section to peruse a while ago.

 

Dakkadakka does have a lore section but most of us stay well away from that site, with good reason

[TheVoidDragon]

I'm new here and just went searching for a lore section to see if there were any interesting topics being discussed, so it's a bit of a surprise to me that there isn't one. I feel like the decision to put lore in their "relevant" sub-forums is something that sort of complicates things, as not only does that mean it then get mixed in with all the other non-lore discussions for that topic, but it also means you sort of have to specifically have a topic in mind and then go to find it in the first place. You'd have to think "I'll see what topics about the Imperial Fists are being discussed" and then look there, and then figure out which are lore, and then decide, rather than just checking a lore forum and stumbling across a discussion to contribute to. It's an extra barrier that makes it a bit more difficult rather than being able to just go "Lore section" then "is this topic interesting to me?" and taking part if it is.

Edited May 22, 2022 by TheVoidDragon

[Felix Antipodes]

While I’m not too phased by the lack of a Lore forum, I can see where my fellow fraters are coming from.  Since the sub-forums within the Liber contains most of the activity within that forum, could that be utilised as a generic lore discussion centre with anything specifically related to an existing topic be moved to its specific forum?

[Halandaar]

I absolutely understand the logic of "most Drukhari lore enthusiasts are in the Drukhari section and not the liber", but as it is lore discussions are buried in amongst the gameplay and hobby threads which make up the majority of content l.

 

And if you only play/collect a couple of armies but you're interested in the entire lore of the setting, then you're effectively being asked to sift through 20-odd different sub-fora of content that isn't relevant to you in order to find that lore.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

I absolutely understand the logic of "most Drukhari lore enthusiasts are in the Drukhari section and not the liber", but as it is lore discussions are buried in amongst the gameplay and hobby threads which make up the majority of content l.

 

And if you only play/collect a couple of armies but you're interested in the entire lore of the setting, then you're effectively being asked to sift through 20-odd different sub-fora of content that isn't relevant to you in order to find that lore.

one way to get the best of both worlds would be to just move all lore discussions in the factional forums to a specified liber sub, so that way the topic still shows up in the factional forums, but people just looking for lore information can also see it just by going to the liber

[Brother Tyler]

Practically speaking, a significant percentage of our members (I would wager it's a majority, but we haven't conducted a statistical analysis so I can't say that reliably) focuses their attentions on a limited number of forums, especially on those forums covering the factions in which they are most interested. The faction forums, then, become a focal point for all things about each faction. The greatest concentration of expertise on any given faction is generally within that faction's forum (which isn't to say that other people aren't as knowledgeable on the faction). So the Dark Angels forum covers everything about the Dark Angels and their successors - rules, modeling, painting, lore, gaming, etc. If someone wants to discuss some aspect, any aspect, of the Dark Angels, the best place to do that is in the Dark Angels forum. There are some areas where this isn't 100% true, such as issues of modeling/painting and rules interpretations. Painting green, for example, is painting green and the Forge offers a great place to discuss a variety of ways to paint a variety of greens (or blacks, or bone whites, or whatever). In addition, expertise on the painting/modeling aspect isn't concentrated by faction, so the nature of painting and modeling means that a dedicated category (faction-agnostic) is beneficial. Similarly, while individual factions have bespoke rules, the Official Rules forum can be (but isn't always) a better place for discussion. Often, members will post in both the faction forum and the specialist forum to cast a wider net. In both cases, fellow devotees of the faction can provide insight, but the subject matter benefits more from the non-faction forums.
 
Lore, meanwhile, is far too broad. There is too much lore for a single forum. If we were to concentrate all lore into a Lore category, we would have to compartmentalize it, effectively duplicating our faction structure within that category. This does two things. First, it increases vertical scrolling (and I'm not at all opposed to doing that when it benefits the majority). Second, creates inefficiencies by forcing people to double the number of forums they need to search to find things. Eventually, we would reach a point where the inefficiencies of this arrangement would lead us to abandon it, consolidating each faction's lore forum with its current forum (which is where we are right now). We want to have as many categories, forums, and sub-forums as are necessary to support the needs of our members, but going too far is not beneficial.
 
Ultimately, this represents a fundamental misconception about the structure of the B&C, and the naming conventions for our forums and categories might be a contributing factor (i.e., we might need to re-name the "Lore" category). When the site was smaller and had a much narrower scope, we didn't need as many categories and forums. As we've grown, we've had to expand the categories and forums. However, our initial structure, which exists today (albeit with some evolutions), covers the principle being suggested here - the Amicus Aedes forum is the place for those issues that are too broad for "lower" forums. The Amicus Aedes forum has always been the place for discussing those general lore issues that are too broad to be covered in more specific forums.
 
The Lore category, meanwhile, isn't about all discussions of lore. The Black Library forum is for discussions of lore as they are presented in official fiction and videos, but is generally intended to be about the actual works of fiction and the videos. The intent is that the actual lore gets covered either in the faction forums. Organically, that doesn't work 100% as intended so the lore [of the fiction/videos] is discussed in the Black Library forum. The Liber forums, meanwhile, are places where players can discuss their DIYs. Liber Astartes isn't the place to discuss issues of the Adeptus Astartes (such as gene-seed mutation, Chapter organization, etc.) - that's what the Space Marines forum is for. Rather, if a hobbyist creates a DIY organization, instead of filling the other forums, they can use the Liber ~ forum. The main Liber forum is for the process of creating DIYs. The alternative would have been to have Liber Astartes as a sub-forum of the Space Marines forum (which would mirror our structure when the forum was first created), Liber Xenos as a forum in the Xenos category, etc. Since we had the overarching Liber forum, though, it seemed better to collect all of the Liber ~ sub-forums under that forum in the Lore category. In our estimation, this provides the best structure for our members (rather than, say, getting rid of the main Liber forum and dispersing the Liber ~ sub-forums around to other categories).

 

Requiring members to create lore discussions in the faction forums and then moving those discussions to the Liber forums is a terrible idea. First, we wouldn't be able to enforce that (i.e., some discussions would be created in the Liber forums and would, therefore, not have links from the faction forums; and many people would be mad about having their discussion about X moved from the forum about X into some other forum). Second, movement links don't bump up when there are replies, so there would be no indicator of popular/active discussions and these links would fall off the first page even if they continue to be active. Third, they create unnecessary work. Fourth, and most important, this violates the intent and scope of both the faction forums and the Liber forums.
 
If we moved all lore to either a [new?] lore forum, an existing forum in the Lore category, or the Liber forums, all we would be doing would be creating an inconvenience for the majority of our members. Many people don't bother to visit the Liber forums and trying to force them to have all lore-based discussions therein would not succeed. A few more people would go to those forums, yes, but most would still refuse. Yes, some people would prefer re-organizing, but only because that reorganization would benefit them. The majority of other members would suffer as a result, however.
 
So I'm seeing three takeaways from this:

• Provide a better explanation of our site structure. This would be a multi-pronged effort. The main effort would be a central explanation, either as part of our forum rules or a new article/explanation. The augmenting efforts would be in each forum, better describing the scope of discussion and possibly providing pointers/links to other forums where related subjects might be discussed. (This is actually something that has come up recently among the mod/admin team, separate from this discussion.)
• Adjust forum descriptions as necessary to align with the explanation and to help members navigate more easily.
• Re-name the Lore category, and maybe the Amicus Aedes forum (or at least that forum's description).