The terms 'fluff' and 'crunch'

Do you have a problem with the 'fluff' and 'crunch' terminology? And if so, why?

yes. to fluff is to pass gas.
edit: but considering we talk about splatbooks as scatbooks and such i guess. it does make sense to some people. just not me.

Hm, no. I like the terms. They're more colorful than "rules" and "non-rules." I also like "color" "flavor" and most other terms.

Meat & Bones

I prefer the terms "meat" and "bones" because the term "fluff" implies a lack of usefulness.


RC

I agree that the term "fluff" implies a lack of usefulness, but it's a nice short word. "Flavor text" is better and "game fiction" is accurate, but "fluff" is only one syllable and that makes it much more catchy.

The term 'crunch' implies difficulty or heavy going. That's hardly a good thing, surely? Fluff OTOH implies softness, ease, comfort, which I'd say are positive qualities.

It may be just a difference of perspective or maybe even some kind of culture gap. I would never have thought the term crunch to mean heavy going to anyone. And, to me, fluff implies that the text is simply there to increase page count. Obviously, I don't believe that myself.

I'm not sure of the provenance of 'crunch', but it may be (at least in part) from Robin Laws's 'crunchy bits'. I don't much like the term myself, but it's not objectionable.

'Fluff' to mean 'information about fictional worlds, characters and situations' is objectionable because:

It's undescriptive. Such material is not flimsy, feathery, ephemeral, insubstantial, inconsequential, effortlessly changeable -- it's the substance of the fantasy worlds and games we're talking about.

It affects discussion negatively by casting such material as ephemeral (and the other senses of the word, such as to err, have no more positive connotations). It has this effect even when used by people who don't mean it that way -- it's just linguistically naive not to realize that words affect discourse.

It doesn't have a generally agreed meaning. I've read many online discussions where people have used it in different senses: with more or less derogative connotation, to mean 'fan fiction', to mean certain kinds of background rather than others... It arose in situations where setting and character was clearly subservient to mechanics, such as in parts of the Warhammer community, where it's still used in that sense.

It's silly and demeaning, because logically it frames everyone who ever wrote or imagined anything without game mechanics as a dealer in fluff. To see how silly and demeaning it is, all you have to do is imagine going to your favourite novelist and telling them how much you love their latest fluff.

It paints the communities where some people use it in a bad light to those outside. What kind of people call non-game-mechanical things 'fluff', this person wonders, and damage is done however often we reassure them it's not derogatory.

I prefer flavor and mechanics

I like them. Every part of an RPG book seems to easily fit into one of the two categories, and they're terms everybody recognizes.