I'm interested to see the discussion around this post, though I suppose I can predict some of that and what's more important about the post is if pick up these games and try them.
i'm in the long process of developing a ttrpg that is based on eco-horror, animism & wuxia - and i really am crafting the principles of play to generate this kind of thing. the mechanical scaffolding is cairn by way of liminal horror, but by the time i'm satisfied might have been warped beyond its origin.
emergent lore is a great phrase, among many other great terms to research.
Most excellent post! I love Dark Souls and Elden Ring for what they are, but nothing, and I mean nothing, beats the feeling of envisioning the world your character lives in. I have an ongoing Ironsworn campaign (see my profile if you’re interested), and in that game, Shawn offers you some truths to choose from to create your world, but of course, you’re free to modify or rewrite them as you wish. So one of them is, that there’s huge unbreakable Iron pillars strewn across the land. And another truth is about what settlements look like. I asked myself one simple question - ”what if the settlements were built around these Iron pillars?” and boom, it made way for Iron Priests who worship the pillars and rule the villages. From there, the next logical question was, what happens to people who don’t believe in these priests? Well, obviously they’re heretics and are exiled. And so on.
And don’t even get me started on the ”Connecting the Dots”….
Oh man, I gotta say, probably doing the Truths Workbooks for Starforged were like, the single game experience that rewired my brain the hardest. You’re so right.
I think some of the charm of Elden Ring's setting is not that the lore emerges through play, but that it is both sufficiently bizzare to make you interested, sufficiently obscure to keep it mysterious - yet sufficiently coherent that you keep thinking "there has to be a meaning behind all this madness!" - and knowing that there is a (somewhat) established canon makes it into a kind of challenge to reveal it.
I am still not sure I understand how Emergent Lore is different from lore "just made up by the player". If i play in a traditional mystery game and gather some different, seemingly unrelated clues but end up figuring out that they *could* be connected in a sufficiently reasonable way, I would find that quite exciting, similarly to the players deciding that their character species hail from the same planet. But both can be right or wrong depending on whether the GM has fleshed out those aspects of the mystery or the setting.
You write "Emergent lore isn’t simply the “Yes, and” compilation of additional parts, but a natural way fragments of fiction begin to form a complete picture, sometimes in a way that feels out of our ability to control or manipulate". I firmly believe, and have experienced with my own players, that you can get the same feeling of epiphanic discovery when piecing together the lore of an already established setting or mystery - the only diffrence to me seems that with emergent lore, players can't be wrong? Whereas in other instances, players might still believe "this HAS to be it! There is no other way these things could be connected" and still be wrong because of some oversight. What am I missing here? :)
You also write that Ben Robbin's games does not rely on emergent lore, as well as relying on it in two different places, which confused me a bit. It seems to me that Microscope is a game made for Emergent Lore.
> the only diffrence to me seems that with emergent lore, players can't be wrong?
It's more like: with emergent lore, the ONLY source of the lore is mutual agreement and realization -- it's lore that firmly did NOT come from somewhere else. You might go "Well, it's all equally legitimate," and I agree! What's interesting is that something that arrived among us so seriously, not recorded or pre-determined in any outside source, can take on such veracity.
> Whereas in other instances, players might still believe "this HAS to be it! There is no other way these things could be connected" and still be wrong because of some oversight.
I think in that case, this changes game by game! In a traditional game, it isn't emergent lore if they're just certain about something and the text contradicts them. It's important that the game you're using hands authority to the players, and the players understand the bounds of their authority. In Brindlewood Bay, the rules go: "The players generate emergent lore, but they can get it wrong if the dice tell them it's wrong. This is part of play!"
Yea I think so. If I understand it correctly, its the same feeling when creating a setting mostly through random tables, and whereas the results in the beginning might seem random and disconnected, natural and logical relations start to emerge once content is generated, which is quite satisfying.
There is the classic “Spout Lore” move in Dungeon World where the player asks a question about the world, and the GM answers based on established fiction or invents something new on the spot
I like the variation in Freebooters on the Frontier — “Recall Lore”. On a hit, the GM asks: “What is a useful or interesting detail you have heard about this?” and the PLAYER answers.
Interesting article. My game in development is predicated on collaborative world-building, with the milieu created by the players the ultimate shared character. My two major influences are Universalis by Ralph Mazza and Mike Holmes from Rams Head publishing. And more recently Arium by Adept Icarus. which are specifically built on the idea of collaborative world-building layer laying the foundation for the roleplaying layer. I also include grand narrative roleplaying layer, similar to Interactive History in the old Aria: Canticle Of The Monomyth game (It's detailed 'hard' world building mechanics are a major influence in my game) or The winter phase in Ars Magica or in Pendragon, but for entire nations. THese are more roleplayign oriented than Ben Robins Microscope and Kingdom. Great article. COllaborative World building is starting to see more acceptance.
Excited to try some of your recommendations now as creating this in video games is something I love and advocate for, Elden Ring being a perfect example. Citizen Sleeper is another video game with huge potential for emergent lore.
🧪 The Alchemist Arrives — And Your Brother Vanishes
Episode 5 of Murder & Mead drops with a whisper, a warning… and a wandering brother
Why is the Whispering Wall glowing again? And what does the arrival of an unnervingly polished alchemist have to do with Marcus’s sudden disappearance?
Tensions at White Rocks’ most mysterious tavern hit new heights as Laurie faces a stranger who knows too much about her bloodline, her tavern, and the ancient bindings beneath the floorboards. With patrons whispering, herbs rearranging themselves, and secrets pulsing through the cellar walls, the tavern’s mysteries are no longer just atmospheric—they're alive.
And they want something.
👁️ Expect:
A dangerous bargain for something called starlight essence
An impossible map hidden beneath the bar
A choice that could fracture the Murder & Mead team forever
And a sibling bond that may not be what it seems
“The vault is opening, the veil is thinning—and someone wants through.”
✨ Whether you're here for magical politics, knife's-edge loyalties, or enchanted mugs that mutter secrets, this is the one episode you can’t afford to miss.
🕛 The solstice approaches. 💬 Should Laurie trust her brother—or the alchemist? Drop your theory in the comments.
I love using emergent lot in the games I run. I just make stuff up as my players explore. They tie these threads together and whatever is the most interesting or satisfying path ends up being the truth. Idk if my players even know it’s happening, but they always feel satisfied having solved some grand mystery and we all have fun with very minimal prep!
Ahhh, I wonder what your players would think if they knew! One of the toughest things about emergent lore, in my opinion, is the dance of when players know they're contributing -- whether or not they get that same FEELING of veracity. Very cool!
That’s a fair question. I love how smart they feel when they “figure it out”. They always come at it from different perspectives. Some of my friends try to piece together their in-game clues. My wife tries to play the meta-game of figuring out what I would put into the world. They give me great ideas and in turn I give them satisfaction at guessing right.
It’s a way for me to entice them to engage with the world when otherwise they may be stumped. I think the pressure to “create” something out of nothing intimidates them with the sheer expanse of possibilities. When they’re guessing what I would do, they’re creating within parameters.
Maybe I should try to explicitly invite them into that space to see what they come up with!
I've been running Trophy Dark // Gold fairly regularly for about two years now, and I can 100% relate to the experience you’re describing - especially in Gold :)
I actually did a bit of research into this phenomenon. Besides the concept of “implied setting & anticanon,” a few interesting terms worth checking out are:
* the psychological phenomenon of apophenia
* the narrative concept of hyperdiegesis
* Aaron Reed speaks about the wunderkammer (cabinet of curiosities) as a story game narrative design device
* the old antimyth idea, probably going back to The Forge days
PS.1. Games that supposedly replicate a proceduraly similar experience to soulslikes include two solo games by Spencer Campbell from Gila Games: Rune and Reap.
PS. 2. And setting aside emergent lore for a moment - do you have any additional media recommendations that resonate tonally with Elden Ring and Trophy Gold? (The Roots of Old Khaldur especially feels very Elden Ring to me :)
From my end, I HIGHLY recommend the manga Tower Dungeon, the film The Green Knight (though that one is also mentioned in the Gold recs), and the album Tales of the Mad Moon by Old Tower :)
mf I knew you'd show up with a good reading list. This stuff is all so good, now I gotta go chew on it. I also knew that at some point someone would be like "dude there are already words for what you're talking about.
I will look this stuff up!
For Elden Ring vibes, the things that jump to mind most easily are literature!! I'll check out Tower Dungeon. You should check out 'Between Two Fires' by Christopher Beuhlman and 'Hollow' by Brian Catling!
Thanks for the recommendations - adding them to my reading list :) I read a ton of non-fiction, so I really need to get back into reading more fiction…
The concepts I listed aren’t exactly what you’re describing - they’re more like adjacent ideas, circling around the phenomenon and helping explain it from very different angles.
P.S. I’m slowly working my way through your YT videos, one by one - cool channel!
I'm interested to see the discussion around this post, though I suppose I can predict some of that and what's more important about the post is if pick up these games and try them.
Good article
i'm in the long process of developing a ttrpg that is based on eco-horror, animism & wuxia - and i really am crafting the principles of play to generate this kind of thing. the mechanical scaffolding is cairn by way of liminal horror, but by the time i'm satisfied might have been warped beyond its origin.
emergent lore is a great phrase, among many other great terms to research.
Most excellent post! I love Dark Souls and Elden Ring for what they are, but nothing, and I mean nothing, beats the feeling of envisioning the world your character lives in. I have an ongoing Ironsworn campaign (see my profile if you’re interested), and in that game, Shawn offers you some truths to choose from to create your world, but of course, you’re free to modify or rewrite them as you wish. So one of them is, that there’s huge unbreakable Iron pillars strewn across the land. And another truth is about what settlements look like. I asked myself one simple question - ”what if the settlements were built around these Iron pillars?” and boom, it made way for Iron Priests who worship the pillars and rule the villages. From there, the next logical question was, what happens to people who don’t believe in these priests? Well, obviously they’re heretics and are exiled. And so on.
And don’t even get me started on the ”Connecting the Dots”….
Oh man, I gotta say, probably doing the Truths Workbooks for Starforged were like, the single game experience that rewired my brain the hardest. You’re so right.
This was a good read!
I think some of the charm of Elden Ring's setting is not that the lore emerges through play, but that it is both sufficiently bizzare to make you interested, sufficiently obscure to keep it mysterious - yet sufficiently coherent that you keep thinking "there has to be a meaning behind all this madness!" - and knowing that there is a (somewhat) established canon makes it into a kind of challenge to reveal it.
I am still not sure I understand how Emergent Lore is different from lore "just made up by the player". If i play in a traditional mystery game and gather some different, seemingly unrelated clues but end up figuring out that they *could* be connected in a sufficiently reasonable way, I would find that quite exciting, similarly to the players deciding that their character species hail from the same planet. But both can be right or wrong depending on whether the GM has fleshed out those aspects of the mystery or the setting.
You write "Emergent lore isn’t simply the “Yes, and” compilation of additional parts, but a natural way fragments of fiction begin to form a complete picture, sometimes in a way that feels out of our ability to control or manipulate". I firmly believe, and have experienced with my own players, that you can get the same feeling of epiphanic discovery when piecing together the lore of an already established setting or mystery - the only diffrence to me seems that with emergent lore, players can't be wrong? Whereas in other instances, players might still believe "this HAS to be it! There is no other way these things could be connected" and still be wrong because of some oversight. What am I missing here? :)
You also write that Ben Robbin's games does not rely on emergent lore, as well as relying on it in two different places, which confused me a bit. It seems to me that Microscope is a game made for Emergent Lore.
You really got me thinking as you can see haha
Best regards, Clint
What a cool comment!!!
> the only diffrence to me seems that with emergent lore, players can't be wrong?
It's more like: with emergent lore, the ONLY source of the lore is mutual agreement and realization -- it's lore that firmly did NOT come from somewhere else. You might go "Well, it's all equally legitimate," and I agree! What's interesting is that something that arrived among us so seriously, not recorded or pre-determined in any outside source, can take on such veracity.
> Whereas in other instances, players might still believe "this HAS to be it! There is no other way these things could be connected" and still be wrong because of some oversight.
I think in that case, this changes game by game! In a traditional game, it isn't emergent lore if they're just certain about something and the text contradicts them. It's important that the game you're using hands authority to the players, and the players understand the bounds of their authority. In Brindlewood Bay, the rules go: "The players generate emergent lore, but they can get it wrong if the dice tell them it's wrong. This is part of play!"
Does that make sense?
Yea I think so. If I understand it correctly, its the same feeling when creating a setting mostly through random tables, and whereas the results in the beginning might seem random and disconnected, natural and logical relations start to emerge once content is generated, which is quite satisfying.
There is the classic “Spout Lore” move in Dungeon World where the player asks a question about the world, and the GM answers based on established fiction or invents something new on the spot
I like the variation in Freebooters on the Frontier — “Recall Lore”. On a hit, the GM asks: “What is a useful or interesting detail you have heard about this?” and the PLAYER answers.
Interesting article. My game in development is predicated on collaborative world-building, with the milieu created by the players the ultimate shared character. My two major influences are Universalis by Ralph Mazza and Mike Holmes from Rams Head publishing. And more recently Arium by Adept Icarus. which are specifically built on the idea of collaborative world-building layer laying the foundation for the roleplaying layer. I also include grand narrative roleplaying layer, similar to Interactive History in the old Aria: Canticle Of The Monomyth game (It's detailed 'hard' world building mechanics are a major influence in my game) or The winter phase in Ars Magica or in Pendragon, but for entire nations. THese are more roleplayign oriented than Ben Robins Microscope and Kingdom. Great article. COllaborative World building is starting to see more acceptance.
Excited to try some of your recommendations now as creating this in video games is something I love and advocate for, Elden Ring being a perfect example. Citizen Sleeper is another video game with huge potential for emergent lore.
Please let me know how my world build is -
🧪 The Alchemist Arrives — And Your Brother Vanishes
Episode 5 of Murder & Mead drops with a whisper, a warning… and a wandering brother
Why is the Whispering Wall glowing again? And what does the arrival of an unnervingly polished alchemist have to do with Marcus’s sudden disappearance?
Tensions at White Rocks’ most mysterious tavern hit new heights as Laurie faces a stranger who knows too much about her bloodline, her tavern, and the ancient bindings beneath the floorboards. With patrons whispering, herbs rearranging themselves, and secrets pulsing through the cellar walls, the tavern’s mysteries are no longer just atmospheric—they're alive.
And they want something.
👁️ Expect:
A dangerous bargain for something called starlight essence
An impossible map hidden beneath the bar
A choice that could fracture the Murder & Mead team forever
And a sibling bond that may not be what it seems
“The vault is opening, the veil is thinning—and someone wants through.”
✨ Whether you're here for magical politics, knife's-edge loyalties, or enchanted mugs that mutter secrets, this is the one episode you can’t afford to miss.
🕛 The solstice approaches. 💬 Should Laurie trust her brother—or the alchemist? Drop your theory in the comments.
https://dbohica.substack.com/p/episode-5-the-alchemists-request
I love using emergent lot in the games I run. I just make stuff up as my players explore. They tie these threads together and whatever is the most interesting or satisfying path ends up being the truth. Idk if my players even know it’s happening, but they always feel satisfied having solved some grand mystery and we all have fun with very minimal prep!
Ahhh, I wonder what your players would think if they knew! One of the toughest things about emergent lore, in my opinion, is the dance of when players know they're contributing -- whether or not they get that same FEELING of veracity. Very cool!
That’s a fair question. I love how smart they feel when they “figure it out”. They always come at it from different perspectives. Some of my friends try to piece together their in-game clues. My wife tries to play the meta-game of figuring out what I would put into the world. They give me great ideas and in turn I give them satisfaction at guessing right.
It’s a way for me to entice them to engage with the world when otherwise they may be stumped. I think the pressure to “create” something out of nothing intimidates them with the sheer expanse of possibilities. When they’re guessing what I would do, they’re creating within parameters.
Maybe I should try to explicitly invite them into that space to see what they come up with!
Great post! :)
I've been running Trophy Dark // Gold fairly regularly for about two years now, and I can 100% relate to the experience you’re describing - especially in Gold :)
I actually did a bit of research into this phenomenon. Besides the concept of “implied setting & anticanon,” a few interesting terms worth checking out are:
* the psychological phenomenon of apophenia
* the narrative concept of hyperdiegesis
* Aaron Reed speaks about the wunderkammer (cabinet of curiosities) as a story game narrative design device
* the old antimyth idea, probably going back to The Forge days
PS.1. Games that supposedly replicate a proceduraly similar experience to soulslikes include two solo games by Spencer Campbell from Gila Games: Rune and Reap.
PS. 2. And setting aside emergent lore for a moment - do you have any additional media recommendations that resonate tonally with Elden Ring and Trophy Gold? (The Roots of Old Khaldur especially feels very Elden Ring to me :)
From my end, I HIGHLY recommend the manga Tower Dungeon, the film The Green Knight (though that one is also mentioned in the Gold recs), and the album Tales of the Mad Moon by Old Tower :)
mf I knew you'd show up with a good reading list. This stuff is all so good, now I gotta go chew on it. I also knew that at some point someone would be like "dude there are already words for what you're talking about.
I will look this stuff up!
For Elden Ring vibes, the things that jump to mind most easily are literature!! I'll check out Tower Dungeon. You should check out 'Between Two Fires' by Christopher Beuhlman and 'Hollow' by Brian Catling!
Thanks for the recommendations - adding them to my reading list :) I read a ton of non-fiction, so I really need to get back into reading more fiction…
The concepts I listed aren’t exactly what you’re describing - they’re more like adjacent ideas, circling around the phenomenon and helping explain it from very different angles.
P.S. I’m slowly working my way through your YT videos, one by one - cool channel!