So a lot of people regard the lore of a game or novel or film to be almost a decoration; nice but not really necessary or important. How true is that? I mean really, do the writers need to know who the nasty king's uncle was, or what the dashing hero did before he took up the sword and saved the world. Well, in my humble (actually I get called arrogant quite a lot, so maybe my wish-I-was-a-little-more-humble) opinion they do. To me lore and world building are not things that we add to a finished piece to make it nicer to look at, they are what we use to build our foundations, a rich lore and a realistic well made world nurture and help a story grow.
Currently I am writing a novel (The Shadow Hunt, can be found on authonomy.com), this novel is high fantasy. There are not other races, no dragons, there are things that call themselves gods, but really are just very powerful sorcerers who clung to life after their bodies were destroyed. Now, when I started the story I wrote a paragraph, that's all. This paragraph introduced one of the main characters to me, I got a very brief feel for him. And through him the world around him. Next I drew a map. Maps are fantastic, I can't really draw, but even if you can only just manage to do stick men you should be throwing out maps for what ever work you are writing about or creating - they help make the fantastical real.
So after the geography I sculpted the history - an Empire ruled by mages with tremendous power, men who could raise the dead, alter the weather and even see the future. Then came a schism, a civil war broke out. The mages killed one another and those that survived locked themselves away from the world, and shut away their most dangerous knowledge underground. Now, 1200 years later, the Magi at the time of the book are a pale comparison to their ancestors, but once again they are the lords of all they see.
Huge amounts of time went into the cultures, the religions, working out how the cultures and religions interact with one another. The technological level of the different societies. All this before I really started the story. When I started the story I found it progressing in ways that I had not expected. It turned at points where I had planed to go strait and plowed right over some of my original ideas. And this is why one must build their foundations - their world and lore - first. Because fitting lore to a story will result in an ill fitting lore and a misshapen world. Whereas letting your story grow from the lore and world will give you an element of natural realism that will help fix your reader or gamer firmly in your world.
