Lores

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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.

On the game, you can type +recall/search <string here> to look for things, which should help you pinpoint the scene(s) in which you learned stuff. Naturally, if you RPed somewhere that pose logging was turned off, the poses won't make it into +recall.

When you learn information IC, you don’t need to purchase more Lores to reflect this information. 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".

Lore works like an Occult rating when it comes specifically to that subject. That is, it can be rolled to interpret clues and recognize objects and people where narratively appropriate. When a storyteller is dropping a clue related to a Lore you have, they may prompt you to roll the appropriate Lore to properly interpret that clue. You can also proactively ask to roll lores to confirm your educated guess(es) instead of waiting for a ST to prompt you.

For example, perhaps the ST tells you, "you find a little, red marble that feels strangely slick." You try to figure out what it is. The ST has you roll Intelligence + Tremere Lore (if you have it). So you roll, succeed, and voila, the ST tells you: "You recognize this as a small, enchanted supply of vitae created by the Principle Focus of Vitae Infusion ritual."

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). Maybe you're doing some investigative work and you're camped out looking for the Syndicate on a tip that some corporate bigwigs are showing up at The Fancy Dinnerparty. You tell the ST, "I wanna roll Syndicate lore to see if I recognize anybody in the crowd as my targets." You roll, succeed, and the ST tells you: "You recognize a portly bearded blond man from some dossiers, you're certain that's So-And-So."

Lore is not intended to be used as the one and only way to recognize or understand supernatural things. If you fail a lore roll or don't have it, that doesn't mean investigation on that thread is closed. It pretty much just means you're not gonna get handed the answer.

It is instead intended to be a stat that helps you out. That said, there are situations where your character should have Lore or at least relevant experience in order to know something. In general, you are trusted to know the line between 'reasonable' and 'not reasonable' when it comes to having your character arrive at conclusions concerning supernatural things, people and societies. Here are some examples:

Vinnie Verbena puts in a +request to create a spell specifically for detecting vampires. On investigation, it turns out Vinnie has neither vampire lore nor any IC experience with vampires and no mention of vampires in his backstory. Hell, nobody he RPs with are vampires. Staff tells Vinnie, "Hey, unless there's something I'm missing here, you have no IC basis to be doing this."

Maggie Malkavian has never had any experience with mages and never heard of 'em. No Mage lore, her backstory doesn't mention mages. She's RPing with Henry Hermetic, who has not given her any reason to suspect that he's anything more than human. Maggie reads Henry Hermetic's aura to see if he's lying. When she does, she sees the magickal sparks in Henry's aura. She goes, "Oh! You're a mage!" It's entirely legitimate for Henry's player (or staff) to say, "Hey. Yeah, Henry's aura stands out and Maggie'd find it strange to say the least. But how does Maggie just know this is specifically a mage's aura? She's never seen one before."

Ernie Etherite busts open the doors to the chantry. He tells everyone, "There's a progenitor lab in the hills! We have to go destroy it, right meow!" Everyone listens as Ernie explains a plan. He warns the chantry that we must all be careful, then starts going into detail and essentially regurgitates everything out of the convention book to illustrate the dangers and what they can expect. So Vinnie Verbena stops him, OOCly: "Yo, uh, why does Ernie have a concerningly intimate knowledge of how the Progenitors work in detail, exactly?"

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

You get a set of lores determined by your splat and how long your character has been around for free. Then you get an amount of additional points which is determined by how long your character has been aware of the supernatural world, to a maximum of 40 points (so you can max out 8 subjects). If you want to waive some or all of your Lore points, you can.

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 dot of Society Lore for any groups that correspond to their character. If, at character generation, your character has Necromancy, thus inherently interacts with wraiths, then you get a dot of Wraith Lore. Dots of Spirit or Spirit Manipulation does not confer Spirit Lore. Instead, please purchase the Cosmology ability.

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 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. This also applies for purchasing Lores belonging to other splats (like a Vampire taking Mage lore and vice versa). If you are a Mage and take "Technocracy Lore 5", or "Malkavian 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. It can be a singular, 5-dot flaw or a combination of flaws.

Splat Lore

Society Lore

Class Lore

Clan Lores

Craft Lores

Convention Lores

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