Lore Forum Guidelines

Basics.

1. As always, the main forum rules and guidelines apply.
2. Keep the discussions here to a sensible and mature level. Sometimes topics will be discussing topics easily made into jokes – such posts will be edited or deleted.
3. Try to keep topics reasonable – people of all ages, faith, and views can see these topics.
4. Referring to the above, as the things discussed here may often be very intellectual and arguable topics, it is unacceptable to flame others or try to impose that your opinion is entirely correct. Everybody has the right to their opinion and the right to express it.

Principles of Lore.

1. Never assume anything is certain.
2. Avoid stating information as fact without supporting evidence or cited sources.
3. If you're presenting information in a thread, please, link to your source information, or, if it's image-related, attach or link to the image.
4. Always argue a point intellectually, and provide your own evidence to the contrary of another person's opinion.
5. Never assume someone is always correct, always doubt what they're telling you, no matter how much evidence they may present.*
6. Keep an open mind, and be willing to learn. This is a place of speculation, debate, and learning. As long as something has legitimate evidence to back it up, no matter how absurd it initially sounds, it might be viable.
7. Always remain uncertain of the information you are about to present. Try to find holes in it before you post so that you won't be ridiculed, and so that you'll double-check your sources and evidence.
8. Avoid basing an idea on circumstantial evidence. In short, anything that is highly dependent on precise circumstances for it to occur.

*Amount of evidence is never confirmation or firm support for a theory. The evidence must be legitimate, capable of being tested or observed by others, and not based in circumstances created by, or exclusive to, the researcher. The latter meaning that the circumstances were set up by the researcher, (luring of monsters or creatures to a site to make it appear as though they are connected) or they were bizarre, once in a lifetime, experiences by the researcher that are impossible to reproduce.

Game Mechanics vs. Lore

1. It is very important to tell the difference between the game’s lore and the game’s mechanics.
2. Levels, attributes, and other like topics have no place here. They are game mechanics pure and simple.
3. Be careful when discussing the following topics, for it is hard to tell the difference between lore and mechanics between them: resurrection, map travel, consumables, scale/size, and other like topics.

Spoilers.

1. This forum will be full of spoilers. If you hate them with a passion, avoid this forum until you’ve played through the games and read through the books.
2. Use the [spoil] tags to mark major spoilers.
3. When a book or game just comes out, anything from them will be considered spoilers for a few months, as such when discussing something from then, use the [spoil] tag and denote what it is a spoiler from.
4. If you’re making a thread that revolves around spoilers, make a warning in the thread title.

On the Definition of a Theory and Hypothesis:
Theory:
In science, an explanation or model that covers a substantial group of occurrences in nature and has been confirmed by a substantial number of experiments and observations. A theory is more general and better verified than a hypothesis.

Hypothesis:
In science, a statement of a possible explanation for some natural phenomenon. A hypothesis is tested by drawing conclusions from it; if observation and experimentation show a conclusion to be false, the hypothesis must be false.

In short, keep this in mind:

Threads and Their Topics.

1. Make sure any discussion topics always relate to lore as a general term.
2. Before you create a new thread, make sure you search and check over previous threads to see if the topic has already been covered. If your topic is relevant to a previous thread, post in that thread - no matter how old. Failure to do so will see the thread either merged or closed (depending on the amount of posts in the thread already when a moderator gets to it).
3. Never hesitate to a post a new thread for the discussion of a new topic, and never be hesitant to express your opinion and knowledge in discussions.
4. If your thread is not a big topic or is a simple question, post it in the stickied Thread of No Topic thread instead.
5. Do not try to come out as superior to others in intellect.
6. This is the lore forum, do not respond to other people's theories with posts such as 'You're going into too much detail, it's just a piece of scenery'. This forum is to go into “too much detail.”
7. Discuss and research things that you hold an interest in.
8. Images from in-game and from websites are fine here, but just make sure that they are relevant as evidence or information in a discussion.

“Quote Wars”
Please refrain from quoting a single post multiple times. This will often result in lines of posts that are split up by several quote boxes. If a post you’re responding to is directly above your post, there is no need to quote. Likewise, if the post you’re responding to is on the same page as your post, merely typing “@<username>” would be enough designation for who you’re responding to.

Thanks for reading.