The short reply:
Yes it's overwhelming AF. Robyn's already commented with what I also believe would be best to focus on: Timeline, Glossary, and Dramatis Personae.
So I think game lore is like levels… Forgive the 5 point format, I'm a WoD player in disguise here. (Anyone can wear the mask. You can wear the mask.)
Lore 0: Maybe watched Heroes TV? Knows there are Evolved and Non-Evolved. Anyway, SUPERPOWERS. (Shiny New Player)
Lore 1: Knows about the 2nd Civil War and its impact on the USA. (Sporadic or Newly Returned Old Player)
Lore 2: You know enough that you could make a character currently and jump into a plot or join a faction that interests you. (Regular Player)
Lore 3: Logs Reader, Theories Page Contributor. (You're Richard/Edward Ray'ing it the best you can and you're pretty good at it.)
Lore 4: You know why people are twitchy around tubas. (You're Eve Mas…)
Lore 5: Plot Manipulator (You're Adam fuckin' Monroe. Or Manhattan.)
Longer Thoughts
My Background ST Experience
My BG with this game is just a few months of play in 2010 and then I got RL Job that kept me busy (the same job that RL is sucking away my soul, but that's something else) and the game shut down shortly after. I got to play in a couple scenes of plots that I had otherwise no idea what impact they were supposed to have. I had fun, made friends, but in the end didn't know what impact if any was made by those storylines.
Grand Reopening
The "finales" of Five Years Gone, Ouroboros, Arkfall were supposed to be that but then they weren't. I remember reading them and ultimately being like, "…Cool." But impacts it did not make very much on my desire to chargen and play. But suddenly as the game reopens, there's a bunch of Aftermath lore. Not all of it makes sense. Still have NO CLUE what's going on 99% of the time.
But there's an advantage in that people were all making characters all at the same time so there were resources to ask questions and get concise explanations or suggestions of what concepts to play, what to include in a BG, who to establish hooks to other chars with.
Mainly, at the start of Aftermath, things were still feeling somewhat manageable even for someone basically without any prior BG with the game.
Volume I, More Like Volume Insanity
You now have the DAUNTING CHALLENGE of explaining whether or not it matters if new players should try to grok the storylines from previous Volume, or if they should be constrained to learning them organically instead of slogging through page after page of info.
Don't get me wrong. All the writing is lovely. Iz very mood/theme. And I'm the type to go digging around and get lost in it.
But, I think the majority of events of Volume I should be IC knowledge gained organically by interacting with PCs in the know. The interactions by RPing with other PCs will also help character development for all the players in scenes. OOCly, players should focus on chargenning a character that can be fun for them to develop along with current events, and not get hyperfocused on knowing/hooking into nitty-gritty of past events.
For example: Forking Paths. OOCly, sure they should be aware of generally what happened on a gameplay level i.e. "Characters opened a wormhole to the multi-verse, so that other characters from other dimensions could come into the current reality. The mechanism for that was complex, and overall successful. See the storylines page for more detail/logs. The end."
If they want a character that's in the know about Forking Paths' events, then they will have to put in the research time/effort to read the things. If they don't want to do that at first, they could RP with characters on grid that were a part of it, find out more that way.
A Kick in the Listicles
Note, the formatting these three categories of Lore (Timeline, Glossary, Dramatis Personae) is a headspinning concept. I can't even imagine the amount of time and effort it will take to gather the data together, either. The Codex alone, gawd.
It will likely be a group effort.
It's my thought that the info could also be organized into lists, bullet points, breakdowns. Maybe there can be some kind of concise FAQ and lists of topics of Lore that is compiled to something easily readable for players who want to know about certain things. Stuff like:
- 10 Things Your SESA Field Agent Would Know (And Were Tested On) About The Evolved
- 7 People Who Have Been Directly Fucked Over By Adam Monroe (This Time Around) and What You Can Do About It
- 12 Comparisons of Evolved Rights Between the USA, Europe, China, and Japan
- 5 Timelines, 5 Major Villains and 5 PC Heroes You Should Know - A SparkNotes of Forking Paths
- But also seriously, who's in charge of mapping the Ray family tree?
Final Thoughts
ST:Aftermath Lore feels to me much like the Star Wars Universe. It is massively hard for an individual to try and understand all the plots, events, terminologies, characters. Yet there are places one can go to learn the basics without having to invest huge amounts of time/effort in watching all the movies/shows, reading all the books (which I guess the pre-Disney ones are ignored now), or shouting into the void and getting a cacophony of links/answers thrown back. You can go watch the new trilogy not knowing who's who and still get the broad strokes and understand the themes. And then it's up to you if have the interest to go dig deeper. And when you do, it's just nice to have Wookiepedia around.
