Fluff only campaign settings? (Now with a comprehensive list!)

I'm looking for a list of fluff only campaign settings or books that look at a world without rules. I know the new Freeport will be created along these lines. Also, The Ultimate Guide to the World's Most Savage Barbarian is another book like that. Are there any others? Also, what do you feel about books like this? Would you base a D&D campaign around fluff with no rules?

Figured I'd make this a more useful thread and provide links to all the fluff only campaign settings. Here goes:

Fluff Only Settings in Print
• The Living Greyhawk Gazetteer
• The World of Khass
• Freeport
• Titan: The Fighting Fantasy World
• Kingdoms of Kalamar
• HarnWorld
• Scarred Lands: Ghelspad Gazetteer
• The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time
• The World of Shannara
• The World of Warhammer
• Iron Kingdoms World Guide: Full Metal Fantasy, Vol. 2
• Ars Magica: Heirs to Merlin
• Lankhmar
• Glorantha: The Second Age
• Echoes of Heaven
• Talislanta: Hortan's History of the World
• Conan: The Ultimate Guide to the World's Most Savage Barbarian

Fluff Only Online Website Settings
• Lythia.com – Free fluff articles for HarnWorld
• Gwenthia
• Mythosa

It doesn't need rules, but it does need structure - I don't want a novel. And NPCs should be described as precisely as possible - is this knight the kingdom's best warrior, top rank, middling or weak? Is this the kingdom's greatest wizard, a mid-ranker, or Rincewind? Assigning D&D Levels does this very effectively, you don't need a full stat block.

There aren't many. The Living Greyhawk Gazetteer jas exactly two pages of crunch at the very end of the book. The rest is all fluff.

The early days of D20 (D&D 3.0) had a book from Chaosium about Eric Melnibone that was 98% fluff.

I love books that are all fluff but a little guidance is always helpful. All I need is class and level. Perhaps a list of special equipment but that's it.

What precisely do you mean with "no fluff"? No rule mention at all? Or are minor rule references (such as NPC class levels) permissable? And if so, where exactly do you draw the line?

There are few campaign settings out there that have been published entirely without rules. In fact, other than Freeport, the only setting I can think of is Harn...

Jürgen Hubert said:

What precisely do you mean with "no fluff"? No rule mention at all? Or are minor rule references (such as NPC class levels) permissable? And if so, where exactly do you draw the line?

Click to expand...

I said no rules. Correct, no mention of rules. Not sure where the line would be drawn, that's the reason for the post.

The World of Khass from Emperor's Choice is nothing but fluff. It is a rather huge books that details the minutia of the game world with amazing depth. I haven't read it all but it is definitely worth a look if you want to see an extremely detailed setting that is system free (no game rules).

I will be the first in line when Green Ronin finally releases the new Freeport setting. I will likewise be similarly in line for other settings along the same lines.

If I'm not going to use a given system's crunch, it's just in the way. A crunch-free setting book is actually of more use to me than, say, a GURPS book or a Runequest book or what have you.

The new Talislanta 5th edition campaign setting book is rules independant. The actual Talilanta system rules is in another book. If you just get the setting book you can adapt it for any ruleset.

Link is not working for me

if you go to drivethrurpg.com or rpgnow.com and type in
Hotan’s History of the World

you will get the setting book

I definitely don't want a setting book to be largely made up of new 3e feats, skills, prestige classes and monster & NPC stat blocks; or the equivalent in other games, but some kind of framework is good to help discipline the writers' creative process. I'd think that Gygar (F8), Rindim (Wiz3) is shorter than Gygar (powerful warrior), Rindim (mediocre wizard) and helps the GM a lot; whatever D&D/d20 system game they run, or even if they're running Runequest etc, because it gives a useful jumping-off point for the GM. I do own one totally fluff setting book, Titan: The Fighting Fantasy World. It mentions a bunch of NPCs, characters from the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, but in such an unstructured way it'd be very hard to use Titan as a campaign setting. I can tell Balthus Dire is a top-rank Fighter-Wizard, with some thought I can peg a level on him then start to assign levels to Yaztromo, Zanbar Bone and the rest, but if the writers had taken a moment to put Balthus Dire (Skill 10 Stamina 18 Magic 12) or whatever, I'd find it a lot easier to work out a D&D/C&C equivalent for all NPCs than when I have _nothing_ to go on.

Listing the suggested levels would be important to me at least. You could even offer the full stat-blocks of select npcs as a web enhancement, or maybe by fans on your forums. Kinda leaves it open enough for a dm to tinker a bit.

(Assuming we might be talking of Avadnu, here?)