I wanted to discuss this in a separate thread rather than the last one because of how charged the last one was already getting. I've seen a general misunderstanding as to what lore breaking is before, and I've been seeing it in this server as well. This misunderstanding indeed serves no one and can drive a community apart, so I started this thread to share my thoughts on what lore breaking is and is not, and to invite constructive discussion - discussion which I ask that we keep civil.
Two Extremes
Once when I was just starting out, I had a character who wanted to seek out the house of nobles. A human and a gnome politely informed me that the house of nobles had been swept away, and proceeded to go into the politics of this other ruling body which had its hands in everything called the Imperium. I learned about this council, the nuances of their politics, etc., all the while thinking that I had somehow missed this gigantic piece of Warcraft lore, frantically searching WoWwiki (there was no wowpedia at the time) to find it.
Obviously, I couldn't, because the Imperium didn't exist in Warcraft's lore.
Creative license like that is the place of fanfiction, but in RP, we all have to play within the same world to avoid confusion and to prevent barriers from being put up to RP. Of course, some take it to such an extreme that legitimate concepts are tossed out because they're odd. I saw this occur on another server in Darnassus, quite frequently, where it was argued that there is no way, at all, that a Night Elf could become an accountant. I conceded to them that it was odd, but I figure that if in my state, you can become a CPA in as little as five years, there's no reason why a Night Elf shouldn't be able to learn Azeroth's undeveloped version of the profession in the span of 10.
That's the other side of the problem. We are given license with extreme possibility. It IS possible to be a half human, quarter orc, quarter draenei. We even have one in the lore! But as you probably inferred from the heading, this is the other extreme.
Our understanding of what is and what isn't lore breaking must avoid both.
Materiality
You weren't getting out of this thread without an accounting discussion.
A set of general purpose financial statements exists to give stakeholders an honest view as to what's going on financially inside the company. It gives them enough to calculate ratios, understand how the segments are doing, and has a small book's worth of notes, analyses, and tables. I've seen 10-Ks that got to over a hundred pages long. There's even a website called "Footnoted", which finds quirky little facts that companies tried to bury in the notes to the financial statements. With new disclosure requirements and FASB pronouncements coming out each year, expect even more disclosure, but know that they will still provide only a bird's eye view.
General purpose financial statements cannot hope to tell you about every transaction that GE engaged in over the year. They can't even list all of GE's subsidiaries without leaving investors lost and confused in the mire. You're not going to learn about every event, every middle management shakeup, and every hire. Instead you're looking down from space, seeing amounts like "Cost of Goods Sold" and "Short Term Debt" mostly in aggregates. Some amounts are even left out so long as they don't exceed a certain threshold in aggregate.
The concept behind this is materiality, and we use it because it would be silly to go down to that level of detail. It's the same concept that any writer of a large world has to face. Blizzard can't tell us about every small organization, every deviant individual, or every interaction that goes on in the ordinary lives of citizens, they give us a bird's eye view instead.
The Big DM
Blizzard's realm of operation is important because they are as much of a party in this as any of us, albeit a somewhat passive one. They have the sole power to change material facts, and might be seen as a big DM. They created the sandbox, picked the equipment, chose the sand, and gave us this environment to work with. If they decide to move the monkey bars to the other side, so be it. But we as RPers can't do that. We have control of the immaterial. Not exclusive control, but control. We can create our characters, we can create side characters and "NPC" support characters. We can do heroic deeds and run organizations. I could open a bakery somewhere in Stormwind, befriend a gnome and name him bubbles. So long as I'm not altering material facts.
<continued.... the thing hit submit before I wanted to.>
Two Extremes
Once when I was just starting out, I had a character who wanted to seek out the house of nobles. A human and a gnome politely informed me that the house of nobles had been swept away, and proceeded to go into the politics of this other ruling body which had its hands in everything called the Imperium. I learned about this council, the nuances of their politics, etc., all the while thinking that I had somehow missed this gigantic piece of Warcraft lore, frantically searching WoWwiki (there was no wowpedia at the time) to find it.
Obviously, I couldn't, because the Imperium didn't exist in Warcraft's lore.
Creative license like that is the place of fanfiction, but in RP, we all have to play within the same world to avoid confusion and to prevent barriers from being put up to RP. Of course, some take it to such an extreme that legitimate concepts are tossed out because they're odd. I saw this occur on another server in Darnassus, quite frequently, where it was argued that there is no way, at all, that a Night Elf could become an accountant. I conceded to them that it was odd, but I figure that if in my state, you can become a CPA in as little as five years, there's no reason why a Night Elf shouldn't be able to learn Azeroth's undeveloped version of the profession in the span of 10.
That's the other side of the problem. We are given license with extreme possibility. It IS possible to be a half human, quarter orc, quarter draenei. We even have one in the lore! But as you probably inferred from the heading, this is the other extreme.
Our understanding of what is and what isn't lore breaking must avoid both.
Materiality
You weren't getting out of this thread without an accounting discussion.
A set of general purpose financial statements exists to give stakeholders an honest view as to what's going on financially inside the company. It gives them enough to calculate ratios, understand how the segments are doing, and has a small book's worth of notes, analyses, and tables. I've seen 10-Ks that got to over a hundred pages long. There's even a website called "Footnoted", which finds quirky little facts that companies tried to bury in the notes to the financial statements. With new disclosure requirements and FASB pronouncements coming out each year, expect even more disclosure, but know that they will still provide only a bird's eye view.
General purpose financial statements cannot hope to tell you about every transaction that GE engaged in over the year. They can't even list all of GE's subsidiaries without leaving investors lost and confused in the mire. You're not going to learn about every event, every middle management shakeup, and every hire. Instead you're looking down from space, seeing amounts like "Cost of Goods Sold" and "Short Term Debt" mostly in aggregates. Some amounts are even left out so long as they don't exceed a certain threshold in aggregate.
The concept behind this is materiality, and we use it because it would be silly to go down to that level of detail. It's the same concept that any writer of a large world has to face. Blizzard can't tell us about every small organization, every deviant individual, or every interaction that goes on in the ordinary lives of citizens, they give us a bird's eye view instead.
The Big DM
Blizzard's realm of operation is important because they are as much of a party in this as any of us, albeit a somewhat passive one. They have the sole power to change material facts, and might be seen as a big DM. They created the sandbox, picked the equipment, chose the sand, and gave us this environment to work with. If they decide to move the monkey bars to the other side, so be it. But we as RPers can't do that. We have control of the immaterial. Not exclusive control, but control. We can create our characters, we can create side characters and "NPC" support characters. We can do heroic deeds and run organizations. I could open a bakery somewhere in Stormwind, befriend a gnome and name him bubbles. So long as I'm not altering material facts.
<continued.... the thing hit submit before I wanted to.>
Edited by Kyalin on 12/29/2012 3:54 PM PST
