My Life As A Gamer: The Pundit Talks About Making Setting History Useful In Play

The Pundit talks about incorporating the history of a setting for your games.

To no one's surprise, the TLDR is "Does this matter in actual play? No? TOSS IT!" The more nuanced take is "Make it relevant to the situation here and now."

This is how you make this work: have current events be spoken of in terms of references to analogous historical events. In our everyday lives, this is commonplace and not just in the form of crude propaganda. Depending upon the media environment of the setting, certain historical events can maintain mdinshare in a populace generations after the fact and become a form of popular mythology that explains the world and that people's place in it to themselves.

Don't think so? Who's the go-to boogeyman for any head of state that isn't to the West's liking, and what regime is a guilt-free punching bag? To whom is that figure and his regime applied to here and now in Western media? That's popular mythogizing of historical events in action, and just the most obvious; in China everything relates, ultimately, to Mao and other cultures have their own referents.

That's how you can easily start using that massive lore dump; make things explainable and therefore understandable in comparison to what went before- or, what is belived to have gone before. This can, and should, go both ways; the opposition likewise will have their own historical referents to frame current events by, and savvy players can learn what these are to further their own ends- fair or foul.

Now the players will care about the history of the setting because it directly impacts what they do at the table. Good job.