I never said it had to be completionist, I said it needed an internally consistent system for determining where Lores fit for the game as is . It doesn't say that the type of Lore is subjective either, it just presents them as is. We are in the Rogue Trader forum, so I'm referring to those lores as they should appear in RT.

So if I wanted to put a lore in about manufacturing, would it be a common or scholastic lore based on the RT rules? Consider that Imperial Creed and Navis Nobilite shows up in both of them but none of the others do. How do I know if Manufacturing is close in concept to Imperial Creed and Navis Nobilite or beasts/adeptus arbites to determine if it is a common lore, scholastic lore, or both? Posters have already said that not everything needs to be in all lores, yet I've yet to see a method for ascertaining what lore(s) are worthy to fit in 1, 2, or 3 Lore skills and what aren't, beyond personal opinion (I'm right and you are wrong). Personal opinion is a bad way to run game mechanics.

I bet if you created a list of new Lores spread across common, scholastic, and forbidden and posted them up others would disagree because it's being based on opinion rather than a concrete guideline.

And thus we come around in a circle yet again. The rulebook does not list its Lores in a consistent fashion because the same types of lores fill both common and scholastic. So what's the difference between them if they both possess the same spread of lore types?

Hellebore

Circles indeed. I wish I was a better communicator....

Let's use Manufacturing as an example. The question here is: do we have civil engineers in 40K, or is manufacturing run by on-the-floor bossmen with a more intuitive understanding of what to do and how it works. I would say the latter: Manufacturing isn't an advanced discipline, it's something you pick up from working in the giant, automated factories on most Hive Worlds. There is no Science of Manufacturing: it's just a trade, a profession

And yes, this is my personal opinion: or rather my personal interpretation of the 40k world. At the end of the day that is what runs RPG:s - rules are rough indicators at best, they have to be interpreted and put into practice.

Apparently Navigators can both be learnt about while serving on board ship, or through reading cheap fictionalizations or hearsay or what have you, or on the other hand through serious academical research. The reason why this has been specified for Navis Nobilite and not for manufacturing is because Navis Nobilite has an actual impact on the game as envisaged by the game designers. Manufacturign hasn't (in the same way). Each and every one of these skills is the GM:s call based on his understanding of the 40k universe. To be honest, I don't see a problem here.

Thanks for perservering.

I can see why they would make the navis a scholastic lore as well, due to the career path and importance of them to shipping. However you'd think they'd do that for admech as well, considering the explorator.

So your seperation of common lore and scholastic lore is based on how we percieve that knowledge to be picked up. If it's the kind of knowledge you can simply absorb in the right atmosphere then it's common, if it requires training and research it's scholastic. This is similar to the description in the rulebook although not put as succinctly.

Now assuming that the knowledges given are just a sample, would you, using the above parameters create a Common Lore: Beasts? People working the beast pits et al would probably pick up knowledge about their charges, I highly doubt they'd be able to do it ignorant of the animals especially as some will have very finicky requirements. In my opinion that would be a perfectly legitimate Lore.

I think that you could have a Scolastic Lore: Manufacturing as well, because the techpriests that oversee such operations would have extensive libraries of techniques and litanies required for proper manufacture.

This is where it starts to get sticky because the width of focus for the knowledges as given in the book vary so much. Should there be a scholastic lore: Arbites? Well, SL Judgement is pretty much a subset of adeptus arbites.

See, if the lores followed a more easily definable theme then it would be easier (imo) to see the pattern. For example taking arbitration:

Common Lores cover a wide swath of topics shallowly. Thus Common Lore: Adeptus Arbites. Then when you get to scholastic Lore you don't get scholastic lore Adeptus Arbites because SLs are far more specific. Instead you get subsets of Arbites like Scholastic Lore: Judgement. Only when you collected all the subset lores would you have a scholastic grasp of the whole organistion.

So let's make a tree:

Common Lore

Adeptus Arbites

|

|

|

Scholastic Lore

_ Judgement

_ Forensics

_Criminals

This would make some sense as the step from common to scholastic is denoted by a narrowing of field. However you get scholastic lores like navis and creed, which are very wide topics. From an objective point of view Imperial Creed has far more utility than Chymistry or Beasts because it covers such a huge area whilst the latter are very narrow fields.

Now, some could make an arguement that 'Criminals' should be a common lore because anyone that hangs out in the underground long enough will pick up some knowledge about them.

Ok, a different example now.

Common Lore: Imperium

Well, this is about as big a lore as you can get, covering the entirety of the Imperium. Technically this should mean you'd have some knowledge of the astartes, arbites, navis, admech, guard, Laws etc. Because these all help to make up the Imperium.

But it shouldn't have as much knowledge about the Arbites as Common Lore: ARbites does. It also shouldn't know that much about Judgement, but as law is part of the Imperium then they would know something about it.

This is where it gets tricky because some lores stack like the above. And as Arbites is far narrower than Imperium it is not an equivalent skill in terms of use. But then someone with Imperium shouldn't know as much about the arbites as someone with Arbites, despite them both being common lores.

Do you see what I'm getting at?

If Imperium was a Common Lore and Arbites a Scholastic Lore then it would follow a logical progression, common lore is a wide swath of information, scholastic lore is a narrower one. Unfortunately then Judgment (a subset of Arbites) would have to be in another lore higher than scholastic. But both Imperium and Arbites are common lores, they are equivalent in mechanics terms but wildly different in setting terms.

Someone with Common Lore: Imperium would know of the Arbites and Judgement, someone with COmmon Lore: Arbites would know of Judgement and someone with scholastic lore: judgement wouldn't (necessarily) know either of the previous two. It forms a pyramid with the widest lore at one end and narrowest at the other.

Seperating them by academic level is fine, but it's hard to rationalise that an academic knowledge of judgement is equal in depth to someone studying the entire navis nobilite which includes far more than one field. Basically, it would be like saying that Scholastic Lore: Arbites and Scholastic Lore: Judgement are equivalent despite one being a subcategory of the other. In effect you either have to diminish how much lore the arbites studier actually knows to keep it even, or result in someone with lore abites knowing everything someone with lore judgement does and making judgement a redundant skill. After all, scholastic lore of an entire organisation incorporates far more than scholastic lore of one department of an entire organisation.

Hellebore

Again, I think the keys are to think in terms of academia.

You don't normally study the judicial system of Courts and judges at uni: you study Law. If you've got Common Lore: Arbites, you know what a copper can and can't do, you know how to make arrests and you know what authority the arbites may have in different situation. The companion Scholastic Law would in my mind be Scholastic Lore: Law. With that skill, you can plead in court (or could, if there were courts )

For scholastic lore we would be looking at disciplines, not organisations, as a rule. Admittedly, we have an example of one organisation being the subject of scholastic lore: Navis Nobilite. But that is probably to do with their unique abilities and status, as well as the science of controlling their mutations. They have evolved to become an academic subject in their own right. Most organisations don't do this.

Again, Common Lore: Beast handling would have the companion Scholastic Lore: Zoology (and Xeno-biology), Common Lore: Arbites would have the companion Scholastic Lore: Law, Common Lore: IG would ahve the companion Scholastic Law: Tactica Imperialis etc etc.

Common Lore is general knowledge. For example, Common Lore Imperial Creed would include general history (the emperor is great, did some neat stuff), rituals (the aquila is holy symbol, what rituals pertain to what, which prayers to say, hymns to sing) and facts (we have a local priest to guide us) whle Scholastic Lore is more specific knowledge such as why the aquila has two heads, how the rituals work and why, why we have this bishop over that.

Where Forbidden Lore are things no one knows without experiencing and learning through deep involved research. So knowing information about illegal versions of the creed, knowing facts about the horus heresy and so forth.

I think overall the lores are just better described in Dark Heresy then they are in Rogue Trader as Rogue Trader uses Navigators for the examples while DH uses the Imperial Creed.

I am pretty sure I didnt explain it very well, so Ill try one more time LOL

Common Lore is the level of knowledge on a subject someone would have from day to day common knowledge exposure and early interactions with other people. The basic knowledge some one from the USA would have on say the Revolutionary War, built upon stories told by family, learned in basic school, seen in movies and so forth.

Scholastic Lore is more advanced tutoring. The information a College Graduate with a degree in American History would have on the Revolutionary War.

Well let's break it down to game design theory. Why do skills exist? You can (and I have) run an RPG with just charateristics. It gives you a number to roll agianst. However, games like this can have a problem of too similiar characters. In RT, the Voidmaster and the Arch-Militant both have good Agility. So why is it always the Voidmaster who flys the ship? Because he has the Pilot skill. Skills exist to clearly define the Carrer Paths.

Being as Skills exist to provide this level of detail or flavor, it makes sense to break up the street smarts from the egghead knowledge. This way players know from the onset what kind of education they have. When they roll there lore should they recall their dear Proffesor Sarvius or recall a rumor they heard in some tavern.

As to what skills are listed under each category, I believe you will find that directly related to what skills are in the carrer paths. So could there be a Soclastic Lore (Adeptus Arbites)? Sure. But they didn't give it to any of the current paths so you would have to get it in an elite advance. In that case, you should have a pretty good idea what it means to your character before you pick it, and don't need to read it in the book. (Maybe your charater dropped out of Arbite academy where as most of us space pirates just see them as something to run from.) If they ever come up with an Arbite related Carrer Path (unlikely), they are likely to flesh out those skills more.

Is there an actuall problem that has occured in a game. Or is this all just theoryhammer?