User:TetraZeta/sandbox

Guide to Contributing to the Lore

This guide will contain essential information for how contributing to the lore works, standards for lore documents, and more general advice for writing lore. I will choose to assume nothing of the people reading this guide, so let's start from the top. If you haven't already, you should read everything immediately relevant to what you're planning on adding onto.

Essential Information

Lore Leads have final say on all lore submissions. If a lore lead says something isn't fit for the lorebase, it is not fit for the lorebase. The lore leads here are the coolest bitch in town (torimaesua#0479) and the third-coolest bitch in town (TetraZeta#8776). It's also a good idea to consult with them about any changes or additions you want to make to the lore before you start making those changes.

Write lore that fits the setting. Yeah yeah I know, Captain Obvious. You'd be surprised! Read the HackMD and wiki pages (yes i know i need to clean these up ill get to it) for more details on any particular topics, but here's a brief rundown on more general setting specifics.

• Time Period and Tech Level: The setting is intentionally agnostic to our current calendar and series of events. In terms of tech level, it's loose, but generally lower-than-average for Space Station 13. Design accordingly.

• Scale: There's going to be enough room in the galaxy for people to make up OP/SS (Original Planets/Star Systems) for any particular major faction. Explored space only spans part of our Milky Way galaxy.

• Tone: Shiptest as a setting is generally on the brighter side. No grimdark elements, no pointless cruelty thrown in for the sake of making things seem dark or mature, so on. When serious things happen, they can speak for themselves.

• Overall Themes:
  • Rebirth and recovery after disaster and trauma: main setting is handling the destroyed remains of former colonies, many/most species have a singular great disaster in their past they are past to some degree.
  • Balance of a silly world with serious emotions and character development: the old "Futurama and Bojack Horseman" adage of days past.
  • Keeping a close eye on the reasons behind sci-fi and ss13 tropes without fully subverting them for the sake of subversion: SolGov in its form here.

Core Lore Tenets

All submissions must adhere to lore tenets. We have a small set of strict tenets that lore submissions must follow. A lot of these will seem intuitive to most but they're written out explicitly for the sake of brevity.

• No -isms exist institutionally except for classism. Individuals may rarely hold bigotry and bias but this is always on an individual level and is only present because there is always strong variation between people and we don't want to restrict player character-building.
• Factions and culture are never drawn directly across species lines. They may have strong bias due to species often having locational origin points (Many humans are from Earth, and most people from Earth are humans, but SolGov is not "The Human Faction"), but they will never be restricted specifically along these lines.
• Humanocentrism is to be avoided, and to some degree this includes having them be the "generic" species. They have their own gimmicks!
• Leave room for players to write things that are functionally canon. We love headcanon! and OC planets, genelines, factions, etc. Leave plenty of room for players to engage with the lore on their own.

Lore Document Standards

Length: Yes it's the first section. KEEP YOUR PLAYER-FACING LORE SHORT.