Lores
Overview
Lores determine what your character knows about the greater World of Darkness at character generation. Once you get approved, whatever you learn IC is whatever you learn IC: you don't have to pay XP to raise your Lore score. If a storyteller asks you to prove it (“Hey, Billy Brujah, how come you are explaining the Prime sphere to this person?”), then you can use the pose logs to point out where you learned the information. If you can’t provide evidence for having learned IC, then we will judge that your character does not know and cannot propagate that information. So, make sure any instance of learning stuff IC gets documented.
When you learn information IC, you don’t need to purchase more Lores. Lores just determines what you know in the beginning and you keep all your IC discoveries. If you do want to raise Lores in order to upgrade your knowledge in general, you can buy them as a Background, but it requires a staff run plot to uncover the Lore. If you feel that you have undergone plot that justifies uncovering the Lore already, then by all means: provide the logs for review!
Using Lores
When questioned by another player or staffer as to why Billy Brujah knows about Alamut or what a Revenant is, you can handily-dandily point out your Lore dots and go, "nyeh".
When a storyteller is dropping a clue that suggests a specific organization, Craft, Clan, et cetera is at work, they may prompt you to roll the appropriate Lore to properly interpret that clue. Alternatively, when you OOCly suspect that perhaps the Syndicate, the Sabbat, or whatever is to blame and wish to flex your Lores, you can pre-emptively ask the storyteller to roll and confirm your educated guess(es).
When a storyteller is introducing a new NPC, then you can roll dots of Lore to see if you recognize this person or have heard of them (granted that the lore is of the appropriate type).
Lore Levels & Knowledge
The Lores descriptions (where they exist in specific detail) will sometimes prescribe that you know about a certain concept or superpower, like explaining what Rotschreck is or Paradox. This is because the Lore descriptions are written as if the one who has that lore rating is an outsider. If you belong to whatever classification a Lore is about, you do not require that Lore in order to know about it.
You are entrusted to play whatever level of knowledge about your own character's affiliations you have chosen, whether it is someone who barely knows what the hell is going on or a cultured historian. Please be advised this is specific to your Craft or Clan and the society you belong to (e.g. the Camarilla, the Sabbat, etc). Your Nosferatu in the Camarilla can be very well-versed about the Camarilla and the Nosferatu, but if you want 'em to know about Alamut, you're gonna need some Assamite Lore.
Being the subject of a lore does not give you the mechanical benefit of buying the lore. To recognize clues and individuals directly relevant to that lore, you do need to buy the dot ratings.
So, say Benny Brujah has Brujah Lore 1 from his freebie in character generation but that's it. He can run around telling everyone about his clan, what it can do, and he can give them a decent history course! When the ST brings in an NPC who is actually a Brujah that Benny could potentially know about, Benny gets to roll Intelligence + Brujah Lore to recognize this guy. Benny has Intelligence 2 and Brujah Lore 1. Although his IC knowledge is extensive since he's been role playing that way, his dice pool is a straight up 3 (2 + 1) since he only bought 1 dot of Brujah Lore.
Lore Points
Lore points are determined by how long your character has been aware of the supernatural world. You get a set of lores determined by your splat and how long your character has been around for free. Then you get 1 additional point of lore to spend in any way you wish for every 10 years you’ve been aware of the supernatural world. Lores about your own splat can be purchased at a 1:1 ratio (1 dot for 1 point). Lores about other splats can be purchased at a 1:5 ratio (1 dot for 5 points) except for the 1st level, which can be bought 1:1.
There is Splat Lore (Vampire Lore, Mage Lore, Werewolf Lore, etc.) for each game line. There is Class Lore (Mage Traditions, Vampire Clans, Werewolf Tribes, Changeling Kiths, etc.) There is lastly Society Lore (Camarilla, Sabbat, Technocracy etc., the secret societies) Your character automatically gets 1 dots of Splat Lore, 1 dot of Class Lore, and 1 dots of Society Lore for any groups that correspond to their character. The exception to this is if your character concept is deliberately a Brand New Babby Mage/Vampire. Then you'd get 1/1/1.
They then get additional dots of each for every 5 years you’ve been These are granted at character generation when you are +approved. So, your Sabbat Brujah starts with Sabbat Lore 1, Brujah Lore 1, and Vampire Lore 1. If, at character generation, your character has Necromancy, thus inherently interacts with wraiths, then you get a dot of Wraith Lore.
Then your character gets additional points to spend on whatever you like, determined as follows:
Vampires and Psychics: 1 point for every 10 years they’ve been supernaturally aware. Mages: 1 point for every 5 years they’ve been Awakened + 1 dot per Arete. Hedge Witches: 1 point for every 5 years they’ve been supernaturally aware. You will get an @mail explaining how many dots you have to spend so you can send in a request to staff for the stat adjustments.
You may purchase Lore ratings up to 5 in your own Splat Lore, Class Lore, and Society Lore without question.
When purchasing Lore Ratings of 3, 4 and 5 on lores that represent antagonists, you need to supply an IC backstory reason for learning this information and couple it with points of flaws equal to the amount of points of Lores you took. So if you are a Mage and take "Technocracy Lore 5" you'd need to come up with 5 points of flaws that represent the story of how you came to know about this, like Enemy, Hit List, and/or Under Surveillance.
When purchasing Lore Ratings of 4 and 5 on lores that represent outsider, you also need to supply an IC backstory reason for learning this information and couple it with points of flaws equal to the amount of points of Lores you took. So if you are a Vampire and take "Order Of Hermes Lore 5," you'd need to come up with 5 points of flaws that represent the story of how you came to know about this, like Curse or Enemy.
Splat Lore
Society Lore
Class Lore
Clan Lores
- Assamite Lore
- Brujah Lore
- Caitiff Lore
- Followers of Set Lore
- Giovanni Lore
- Gangrel Lore
- Harbingers of Skulls Lore
- Lasombra Lore
- Malkavian Lore
- Nosferatu Lore
- Ravnos Lore
- Serpents of the Light Lore
- Toreador Lore
- Tremere Lore
- Tzimisce Lore
- Ventrue Lore
Craft Lores
- Ahl-i-Batin Lore
- Akashic Brotherhood Lore
- Bata'a Lore
- Celestial Chorus Lore
- Chakravanti Lore
- Hippolytoi Lore
- Hollow Ones Lore
- Kha'vadi Lore
- Kopa Loei Lore
- Ngoma Lore
- Order of Hermes Lore
- Orphan Lore
- Sahajiya Lore
- Society of Ether Lore
- Taftani Lore
- Templar Knights Lore
- True Solificati Lore
- Verbena Lore
- Virtual Adepts Lore
- Wu Lung Lore
