{"id":1215,"date":"2011-04-12T11:38:02","date_gmt":"2011-04-12T15:38:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/?p=1215"},"modified":"2011-04-12T11:36:13","modified_gmt":"2011-04-12T15:36:13","slug":"the-lore-keepers-keeping-track-of-who-begat-whom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/?p=1215","title":{"rendered":"The Lore Keepers: Keeping Track of Who Begat Whom"},"content":{"rendered":"

A lot of players care about the histories of the fictive worlds they spend their time in. Case and point, a handful of World of Warcraft books have made it on the New York Times Bestseller list<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As I have been thinking about these game world histories it strikes me that there are two different modes here, and I am curious to see what you guys think. A book about Arthas<\/a> would represent one end, a rich story about a set of characters. On the other end we have things that I think are best exhibited in this kind of video.<\/p>\n

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Here are what I think the important focal points of this video are. In the rapid fire, almost breathless, explanation of the history of this universe we move rapidly from character to character. There is something old testament about this kind of who begat whom sort of thing. To illustrate this history the video presents the history by laying out cards. This brings a real, “my pokemons let me show them<\/a>” to you feel to it. We aren’t deeply exploring characters, we are establishing a lineage.<\/p>\n

The more I think about this the more it seems like a strange kind of storytelling. I mean, yes these are stories, but in a lot of ways they feel more like textual descriptions of a map or a tree. As we watch the noun cards come in and out of view it is a bit like working our way through a set of flash cards, committing a rough outline of events and people to memory. Person 1 fights Person 2 in Place 3. Person 2 wins moving on to meet Person 3.<\/p>\n

When this happens elsewhere<\/strong><\/p>\n

I see this kind of story, this kind of verbal description of a family tree, in all kinds of places. As I already mentioned, there is something very Deuteronomy about it. The contrast between the best selling books about Arthas as an example of a rich character driven kind of narrative and this lore video and the lore video’s family-tree style approach shows up all over the place. Tolkien gave his readers books that had a fair amount of histories in them, (everything from the hobbit on) but he also gave them the Silmarillion<\/a>. The starwars universe includes the epic stories in the films and many books but it also includes the kind of books that chronicle every Jedi ever. In many of these cases, when you give people a rich story filled world a contingent always wants to ask \u201cthen who was the first\u201d or \u201cwhat came before that\u201d and this kind of family tree, ordered list, branching node mode of describing the past comes out.<\/p>\n

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When this happens in history<\/strong><\/p>\n

I can’t help but think Hapsburg succession. The history as ordered list mode does have strong resonance in historical knowledge. I would have loved to have this kind of card based video when I was required to memorize the Hapsburg succession in AP European History.\u00a0 (Yes, I had at one point committed these kinds of charts to memory).<\/p>\n

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As I went on to study history in college I learned to think like a historian. To delve deeply into how context matters in any given case. While we spend a lot of time with these kinds of trees as we commit sets of historical facts to memory students are often bewildered by what history becomes in college, a series of open ended arguments about what counts, about who’s story should be told and what evidence should count for telling that story. With that said, I don’t begrudge my experience committing the Hapsburg succession to memory. That tree served as an invaluable skeleton on which I built out a much richer understanding of particular historical moments and contexts.<\/p>\n

The trees are skeletons, they are abstractions, they can serve as maps. When I committed this tree to memory though, I don’t think I knew history. Every node on the tree becomes a kind of stock character card. Motives for actions become singular. Motives become the most base things we can imagine. Causes are nearly always straightforward and familial.<\/p>\n

Tell me about the Dwarfs, and this time start at the beginning<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don’t know enough about Folklore and Mythology. However, I know some of the bloggers here, and some of the followers here, do.\u00a0 I would be thrilled to hear from some others on this particular genre of past-telling. I would be interested to hear about some other examples, but I would also be interested in hearing about some explanations. What is it about these kinds of family-trees and our imaginations? Does this sort of thing let us quickly generate a feeling of a lineage, a connection to an ancient world? Is this kind of chart like story something we enjoy thinking about and committing to memory?<\/p>\n

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A lot of players care about the histories of the fictive worlds they spend their time in. Case and point, a handful of World of Warcraft books have made it on the New York Times Bestseller list. As I have been thinking about these game world histories it strikes meContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":1285,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[25,84,18,122],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["entry","author-owens","post-1215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-articles","tag-history","tag-mmo","tag-stories","tag-wow"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/wow-cards.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1215"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4314,"href":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1215\/revisions\/4314"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1215"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=1215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}