DESIGN DIARY - 10.27.00 The Audience "You're just in time." I usually take off on my reporting spree at 11 A.M. every day. Good thing I didn't leave my office any later than that this morning. "We're about to have our meeting regarding lore for the Jedi Knights cards," says Designer Tom Lischke. "Why don't you join us?" I was very happy to sit down with the designers, for three main reasons. First, you're never bored around members of the Product Development team. Second, there's nothing like such an audience with the core team of designers responsible for making Jedi Knights a reality (it makes my job much easier to have them all in one spot, for one thing). Third, the meeting was about lore. Let me explain. The meeting wasn't about card layout, game mechanics or printing issues. It was about lore - which reinforced what Tom had told me yesterday. [rewind, full stop, play] "We're now leaving the design phase to enter the refinement phase of the project." To me, that's very exciting. And, well, lore is about telling stories, and I write for a living - how could I not be drawn to the process through which card lore is created? * * * "So what would you like the lore to be like?" asks Designer Tim Ellington. Tom takes a second go gather his thoughts while Designers Bill Martinson and Chuck Kallenbach ask me with mock nervousness if I'm going to write down every single thing they say. (Of course not :) Some lore has already been taken care of. But the bulk of the work remains to be done. "I'd like it to say something we don't know about what's on the card," answers Tom. "The lore should go a bit beyond the established storyline in the movies; but not a lot. Just expand the horizon a little." The five of us then proceed to dissect the concept of card lore and examine its various organs. Should it be written in the present tense or in the past tense? Would the style be different between lore for a character and lore for a ship? How about a verb? [sub] For those who might not be familiar with the Decipher PD lingo, cards have been divided (a long time ago, by Bill Martinson) in two categories for easy reference: "nouns" and "verbs." Nouns are cards that represent persons and objects: characters, ships, weapons, vehicles, and so on. Verbs are, well, everything else; they include Events and Incidents for Star Trek CCG, Objectives and Interrupts for Star Wars CCG, and Effects and Battle cards for Young Jedi. [end sub] The conversation drifts off to The Lord of the Rings - but that's a story for a different series of Diary entries. Bill suggests that we might sometimes want to expand lore to encompass some long-established facts outside of the classic movie trilogy (like the fact that Han Solo is a Corellian, for instance). Chuck says we should look at actual cards and determine what we like and what we don't as far as lore goes. A short moment later the conference table is littered with Star Wars CCG reference binders and "straight" Star Wars trading cards. And wrappers. Wrappers always get all over the place. After looking at some trading cards based on characters from the Star Wars novels, Chuck says that if he were a clone, his name would be Chuuck. (He did try to prevent me from writing that one down, but it was too funny to pass up.) Chuck remarks that many of the lore examples the group seemed to like were judgmental; in other words, people seemed more attracted to lore that put forth an opinion ("Boba Fett never feels pity for his target") rather than lore that just offers facts ("Boba Fett wears Mandalorian armor"), in part because judgmental lore is debatable - and that makes reading the lore more involving for the fans. In the end it is decided that beyond the basic guideline of sticking to the movie storyline while carefully exploring new territory, the lore would be whatever fits a particular card. No rule - just a lot of special cases. Elected to write most of the lore for Jedi Knights, Tim leaves the meeting with a collection of mental notes on his mind and a twinkling in his eye. As for me, I get out of the conference room telling Tom that I will probably have some free time, should he need an additional hand writing lore. Tom says he will definitely draft me for the task. And I've just found the perfect topic for a future Diary entry. Francis K. Lalumiere The Juggler