I have come up with an idea that could possibly be fun and also spart debates. We could create TES classes to where the more lore educated forum members could teach weekly classes about different subjects obscure and the well known. Even if we all know the information it could be fun. It might also help out newcomers to lore to get the hang of the series Maybe even have a weekly quiz about the subject of the week.

What are yall ideas? worth doing?
any ideas on subjects? might go from the simple stuff like races and geogrophy to the more advanced stuff
who would teach the classes?/write the articles? I know the imperial library is good for this but still this could be more interactive. I'll volunteer to teach if you like.

I'd try to teach the nature of magic, as I have already in previous threads, as it follows the 3(4) laws of thermodynamics and apply it to how it affects the magical arts. Just need to look through spell lists and such for a full account of what I am trying to get across. Then write it down on a word format and post.

Sounds like a good idea, if it is done right.

we just need to get the right people involved. I'm thinking starting with simple concepts at first would be best and work our way into more advanced concepts. maybe have a quiz or something every week just for fun.

I can teach bard classes. (Play the acoustic guitar IRL.)

I think that this would be fun. I got TES IV for my birthday from my son in early January. Currently I am on a quest but tend to solve problems and demolish enemies by hacking them to death with a sword. This works but I am sure that there are better and more appropriate ways to deal with specific challenges and enemies.

I am 64 years old but have been gaming since the very early days of computers when we only had text in 1st person RPGs.

TES is just a great game and I am really enjoying playing it.

Sure, but this would be lore related, as opposed to gameplay. You might get the suggestions you're looking for, in the Oblivion forum.

isnt this basically covered in the http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=195079 FAQ? Basic topics, like geography or most history, can be learned by yourself. More complex topics, such as CHIM, dragon breaks, and the like, are learned best when the student goes through the material and learns it themselves, and then asks questions of the lore masters. Writing up a huge essay on towers or on the Wheel might teach people things, but it wont show the whole picture or give full understanding because it is removed from the primary material. There is also no reason to write up a complex post on Tamriel's geography since looking at a map tells you most of it already.

Furthermore, a rigid structure doesn't work for teaching lore. Unlike math, where you need to know algebra before you can move to calculus, lore does not have a structured pathway. one might start out learning about their favorite guild, then decide to find out about the gods, and then about cosmology. or one could start of with the sermons, move to aldmeric history, and end up at the ascension of Talos. Trying to categorize or prioritize knowledge will lead to boring classes and won't teach everything there is to know.

Deciding what to teach would also be hard. There are those who accept only some of the obscure texts as cannon, and those who accept none of them. Do we take Boring and Therefore Wrong into consideration? What level of importance do we give books and information from early games, especially when it contradicts newer ones? There are many nuances to lore, and they need to be determined by the student, not by a "teacher."

Additionally, once the classes get to frequently discussed topics like CHIM, we will again end up in cyclical discussions which will involve the same arguments and metaphors as the thousands other discussions on the subject. It would be much more efficient to simply go read an old thread (after reading the necessary documents, of course).

The other problem is teachers. There are very few people (most of them Librarians) who are considered real lore "masters." Most of these hyper level folks are very busy, and probably don't have time to teach something like this (however, going through Proweler's or Adanorcil's post is a lesson in itself). No offense, but I wouldn't trust you (redmer) to teach a class, and neither would I trust most people in this forum.

Exactly, read the sticky topics. That's what they're there for. Nigedo didn't do it for [censored] (maybe). I for one couldn't teach, I only dot connector.

Lady Nerevar, I think it's kind of a bad attidude to think that there are a few lore-masters and no one else can teach but them. In my opinion, that kind of elevation can damage a community. My 2 cents.

I think it comes down to those that actually know what they're talking about and can prove it, to those who somewhat get it but are off on a few points (me, hopefully :mellow: ), to those that end up being misleading. What LN would prefer is that the latter category shouldn't attempt, due to the possibility of cause those who are new, ignorant, or just don't get it to get the wrong idea or become more confused. And since there the bar for this is a little...muddled, so to say, those that tend to be in the middle of two of the three basic points above could cause more harm than good.

Yes it is a bit elitist, something I try not to agree with, but I've seen people say something that is incorrect as a complete fact. And I have at times needed correction or had some flaws in my points and arguments. Plus, there's a lot of purposeful misinformation in in-game text and such, that it can be too confusing, or some texts are too abstract. Hell, I couldn't trust myself to teach anything, other than basics, and my theory of magicka as it relates to the 3(4) laws of thermodynamics.

While the idea is filled with good intentions, it also has the potential to lead many classes into giant debates and cause the original point to be warped into why x is wrong and y is better at explaining this, and so on

Not everything is agreed upon, in particular the stuff that neither side can prove or disprove. If we stuck to the cold hard facts, it could probably work.

But as you said, there are parts where neither side can prove or disprove and it's pretty much debate.

If we stuck to cold hard facts, sure I guess. The issue at hand is finding all those cold hard facts, categorizing cold hard from lukewarm, and so on.

Agreed. You don't need to be a loremaster to be capable of making summaries, condensed forms, or expansion from In-Game lore so long as they are cold hard facts, like you said.

(I make such long sentences )

Then again, classes aren't needed for learning the cold, hard facts. Do a search here, at the uesp, or Imperial library, and voila. Or, God forbid, use the faqs page Nigedo made. Seriously, it was one of the first topics I opened, and its better organized than the library or uesp.

I can see that this isn't going to work. I was proposeing it to give the forums some more life and hopefully get more people involved in lore. I wasn't proposeing we teach as in everything we say to be facts but more as in from what we know and infer from the subjects.

@lady nerevar. I know i haven't been the most knowledgable or gramarical person on the forums and have come up with some crazy things in the past but I do get the basics of lore and even some of the more difficult concepts to grasp.

knowing some facts doesn't qualify you to teach. knowing all facts - maybe. the real criteria is not only memorization but also understanding. how event x lead to event y. why it did so. how it would be different if person z was involved. how it shaped the future.

in other words, teaching requires more than just reading an article at UESP or TIL.

I get that and i do understand. I just don't see how to prove that to yall. And also there are different levels of teaching. I thought this would be a good idea but i guess not.

Mostly agreed. The problem is with the sense of authority that a teacher has. If you remove the scholastic trappings, then trying to explain something to other people is the best way to learn yourself. In explanation you'll notice the holes your argument has. This works especially well if the others try to do the same and point out the holes you missed. Basically, argue till you get it right.

One way to approach this, all is to uses sources and be critical off them. For allot of subjects there is enough information that an explanation can be stiched together from the sources. Be critical of yourself, go back and double check. Be critical of others but stick with what you can verify.

Basically, yeah, go for it.

And yes, listen to your Elders.

Thanks for the input guys. I am so new at this that even though I have read a lot of the posts here, I have not yet understood what I have read. I ain't stoopid, it's just that the terminology and conetxt of some words and terms only become clear once you have gotten well into the gaem.

A case is the use of spam to increase lockpicking skills. I read that to unpick a lock beyond one's magic skills, one must spamspamspam. I know what spamming is abut do not know what it means in this context. I'll get there, I just need to get over the initial learning curve and then I'll be just fine.

What a great game this is.

I am currently in my 1st year of college. I plan to minor in art history. I've loved history for as long as i can remember. I've been pretty good at it too: my grades have always been solid (all A's, as far as i can remember), and my AP scores for US and world were both 4s.

And then there is Dr. Zahi Hawas. He got a B.A. in Greek and Roman Archaeology from Alexandria University in '67, and has been working in archeology ever since. He also has a PhD, and has been director of Egyptian antiquities and various other fancy titles. He has written books and appeared on TV as an expert in the field.

Who would you rather have teaching?

is it "elitist?" yes. but is "elitist" bad? no. its used like some sort of curse word around here. knowledge is not some evenly divided commodity, some people have it, others don't. it doesn't mean that those that have it are hoarding it or that you can't get it yourself, but it does mean that some are more qualified than others. It is best to learn from the best, not from someone who is just a student in the field. People like Proweler have studied this stuff forever, and have gone on to write about it (and in some cases contributed to the lore themselves). They go beyond basic facts into an understanding of how everything interconnects and what is important and why. Again: understanding, not memorization.

As has been said before, basic facts are not worth teaching. anyone can read a wiki article or the PGE and figure them out for themselves. The stuff that needs to be taught is less obvious, and almost always at least somewhat controversial (just about everything is, really, given the number of sources to go from).

[edit] to clarify, i would not volunteer to teach.

The other issue I see is that there's potential for "lore" being taken for more than it actually is.

That depends on what you see as good for the community. If your view is that equality is to be strived for in every instance regardless of context, maybe. However if the goal is to facilitate learning and to foster an community where people can rise above the rest and then seek to pull the rest up to their level, not so much.


That said, I agree with prow and LadyN. If somebody wants to learn they can ask a question. If somebody really wants to learn they'll join in discussion and be forced to rationalize their own views for themselves, something which is far more valuable than simply getting an answer from a higher-up...

Maybe the thing is that in ES as in so much in life there may be many right ways. What often counts is learning to think. There is no harm in challenging someone's thinky bits and anyone can do so. Why not? That's teaching past the elementary stages? Well once you get to thinking for yourself you realise that even the most basic stuff can be challenged. So have fun and teach if you want.

Neverar has a point about "elitist", and "knowledge."

This may work if done right.

Like the Lady said, you learn by reading AND understanding. Anyone can read anything, but understanding it is a different story. In the loer buff guide, it tells you to read this and that, it doesn't explain things to you. I believe that is what Redmer wants- a place for people to explain things to others AFTER they read it and possibly still don't understand it.

I mostly understand the things I read. If I don't understand something (which is more than often a term or phrase), I go look it up and see what it is, possibly read a few books about it. After that, I ask people around, possibly snoop around on the lore forum. Snooping on the lore forum helps you quite a lot along with reading and researching.

Sometimes there isn't anymore info though. I had one particular thing I was researching, and there are only two sources that ever mention it. I searched it on the UESP (which has nothing) and I searched it on the Imperial Library (which has one more source besides the one I had found it in).

You could do this, but would it really be necessary for classes? There are quite a few lore masters here, but I would only want certain people teaching this, such as Proweler and the few on his level: And would they want to teach it?

99% of things can be researched through effort. Think about the people who discovered things when there was no one to ask. They found out for themselves. Now sometimes, it is good to ask around; there is nothing wrong with it at all, but is this really necessary?