2e.... more flavor than 3e?

[BSF]

The 2e monster books are already out there in the desert with the bludgeoned body of the 3e monster books, already putting them in the ground. To continue to use the shovel analogy here.

Really, some of the best flavor text in the various monster manuals in 3e are very nearly a cut and paste job from the 2e material on the same monster. The Slasrath in the 3e Fiend Folio is almost a word for word cut & paste from its 2e source, but the 3e version is shorter and without the in character account of the creature's creation in the laboratory of an Ultroloth.

3e monster books have ecology information and pure flavor text as a seeming afterthought to the rules and listing of abilities. Compare that to the incredibly detailed and much longer and much more in depth ecology information in the 2e monster manuals (especially the later PSMC books, and for the sake of allowing the 3e books light in their shallow grave, we'll keep 'Faces of Evil' out of this for the moment).

3e rules work fine for me, I like them, and from what I understand, 2e rules weren't as balanced etc and the current edition is an upgrade for the most part. But the pendulum has swung too far towards the rules and we're missing out on the soul of the material when the best we're getting of description and flavor text, with rare exception, is a watered down and less detailed version of what we had in 2e.

Part of the issue though is that I am the equivelant of a blasphemer to you Shemeska. I never wanted to play planescape. So all that flavor text just made it harder for me to integrate into my homebrew settings.

There was more flavor in many portions of 2E. Assuming you wanted to use that flavor, everything was cool. But if you were creating your own unique flavor, the included flavor was useless. Or at least less useful.

The complete book of Elves was kind of funny when it wraps up all the elvish races in a massive family tree across multiple game worlds. The "Elven Tree of Evolution". Here is where the nomadic high elves expanded across multiple gaming universes than evolved in the racial subtypes that exist. What's amusing about it, for me, is that the Dark Elves didn't exist in Greyhawk at that point. Despite the fact that they were first introduced in the G series of modules, in the Greyhawk world. So if I want to maintain the 'flavor' of the Complete Book of Elves, I am supposed to retcon that Drow don't exist? Of course not. Nor does the book explicitly say that.

The problem is that a lot of the flavor was being dictated by a game designer that knew nothing about what you wanted to play. It got to the point where some people would buy the books simply to rip the mechanics out and ignore the fluff. Then they would criticize the fluff as being useless and unnecessary padding to up the price of the book. (TSR is just trying to rip us off!)

The question is, where do you draw the line? When do you have too much fluff and too little fluff? I see 3E taking a bit more of a toolkit approach. The fluff is light. Looking back on what sells, it becomes obvious in the 3E world that fluff sourcebooks are less popular. Take a look at Sean K Reynolds' allegory to see what the 'theoretical' pressures are in producing books.

Fluff is a good thing. Some of it can be taken within a setting context just fine. Some of it can be lifted and borrowed across settings. Some of it can't. But when you are talking profits for a business, the fact is people are not buying fluff over crunch, so fluff loses.

 

[BroccoliRage]

This is a comment that comes up a lot and one that I'm very curious about...

When I first started playing D&D, I started at the very tail-end of 2e, so I never really got much exposure to it until many years later and that was only to plunder it's settings. So... I never really read many of the 'Player's Options...' or 'Complete Shrub Elf' styled books or... really any of the setting generic material released during 2e. Most of what I was exposed to was setting material.

I'm curious to know if the generic setting 2e books really had more flavor than the generic setting 3e books. I'm sure if we included the campaign settings, 2e would beat 3e down with a shovel, considering that there were, what, 6 settings going at once during the reign of 2e?

as far as flavor goes, thats all dependent on how good the players and dm are and how hard they try.

as far as a better system goes, well, my opinions arent exactly a secret. i consider 3e too complex and a rules lawyers game. 3e deserves its praises, however. the books have lots of great concepts, the campaign settings (except faerun, forgotten realms is so generic to me) are pretty decent, and the book's artwork is dynamite. and if you get ahold of a 3e to 1e or 2e coversion book (which i have) than there is a constant flow of material, not just the coast wizards, but all sorts of groups have made great stuff (the open game liscence is the greatest thing 3e has ever acheived!). do i think 2e beats 3e with a shovel? hell yeah you had to work a lot harder to build you character up, particularly if your old school like my group and levels are awarded by the DM. but i dig the amount of new material coming out.

 

[Ranger REG]

Fluff is a good thing. Some of it can be taken within a setting context just fine. Some of it can be lifted and borrowed across settings. Some of it can't. But when you are talking profits for a business, the fact is people are not buying fluff over crunch, so fluff loses.

Maybe, but fluff is what make the books more enjoyable to read. Otherwise, it sounds like a legal textbook. What you're basically telling every publishers out there is to can the fluff, just base crunch. It's colorless. One cannot exist with the other in a roleplaying game. It got to the point where the session is overwhelmed by gamespeak ("My 19 attack roll beat your 15 AC for 15 points of damage") rather than storyspeak ("I swing my sword from left to right and caught you on your side between the rings in your mail armor! You may need to have that repaired, if you live, orc!").

 

[krunchyfrogg]

I disagree that 2e's flavor was wasted fluff. They're very useful in fueling the imaginations of both DMs and players, which we sorely needed now since the only ones are more interested in crunch are the aging veterans, with no aid in recruiting more newbies into the game. 2e and fluff remind us that the game is not mechanical but dynamic and interactive. That's what roleplaying is about.

I go through my 3e products and they reads more like engineering student's textbooks than game books. They're great as toolkit but a toolkit is good for those who already know how to use them. We need to teach newbies how to be pen-n-paper gamers, but it will be difficult when videogames and mmorpgs are much easier to learn.

Right on!

My biggest problem when the 2e Player's Options and then 3e came out was that it just seemed so powerful. The players could now powergame even more! Sure, that comes down to the player, not the game, but with all of these computer RPG's and other things like it being so popular, it's like munchkinism grows on trees. Heck, I find myself getting sucked in without even realizing it!

 

[BroccoliRage]

Right on!

My biggest problem when the 2e Player's Options and then 3e came out was that it just seemed so powerful. The players could now powergame even more! Sure, that comes down to the player, not the game, but with all of these computer RPG's and other things like it being so popular, it's like munchkinism grows on trees. Heck, I find myself getting sucked in without even realizing it!

i think i agree with you. i always felt personally that 3e was monty haul as all hell, giving low level characters too much power when they are supposed to be experienced. thats the impression i got off this statement. personally, i tend to gravitate towards 1e, but 2e isnt that farr off from 1e so i of course gravitate in the old school direction

 

[krunchyfrogg]

Oh, I'm a big fan of 1e as well (except for the demi-human level limits -- they suck). It's just that the gamers I hooked up with always played 2e, so I did as well. My first gaming group was actually exclusively D&D (now OD&D), but those guys went their seperate ways.

 

[BroccoliRage]

Oh, I'm a big fan of 1e as well (except for the demi-human level limits -- they suck). It's just that the gamers I hooked up with always played 2e, so I did as well. My first gaming group was actually exclusively D&D (now OD&D), but those guys went their seperate ways.

i did away with level limits AND racial adjustments so you can be a weak dwarf of any level in my campaign.

 

[BSF]

Maybe, but fluff is what make the books more enjoyable to read. Otherwise, it sounds like a legal textbook. What you're basically telling every publishers out there is to can the fluff, just base crunch. It's colorless. One cannot exist with the other in a roleplaying game. It got to the point where the session is overwhelmed by gamespeak ("My 19 attack roll beat your 15 AC for 15 points of damage") rather than storyspeak ("I swing my sword from left to right and caught you on your side between the rings in your mail armor! You may need to have that repaired, if you live, orc!").

It's not necessarily what I am saying. It appears to be market pressures. Perhaps the pressures have changed since Sean wrote his allegory? If they haven't, then many people are telling the market that they can build their own fluff.

I encourage my players to use fluff. I build it into the rewards system for the game. I encourage my players to help design my campaign world. I have gods, cultures, academies and even classes designed by players. Then there is the stuff designed by me. I certainly encourage narrative combat styles. We sometimes collaborate on what a particular 'hit' might look like. I have actually run sessions where I told the players up front that if they couldn't describe the attack, it would miss. I encourage my players to use the mechanics of spells and change the visual effect. I had a player using the Shaman's Handbook for his Shaman character. He took the force domain and used a turtle as his totem. All the visual effects of the spells tended to be turtle shells. Sure we kidded him a little for being like Mario, but it was the thematic element he wanted. I recently wrote up a religious zealot for an NPC. He is based around the Barbarian mechanics, but he is definitely not a barbarian. He flies into a religious zeal when he feels his temple is being threatened. His zeal makes him stronger and tougher. He eschews the written word because if it is worth knowing, it is worth knowing from memory.

I think my campaign has a bit of flavor. Homebrewed fluff. Sure a book with more fluff might be more interesting to read. I won't argue with that! But it is also something that I don't necessarily need. For me, a lot of the joy comes from making some of my own stuff.

Still, while I don't necessarily want as much fluff, I do wish there was more fluff for the people that do want it. I'm not better than anybody else. I just have different desires. I think the recent 'Behind the Spells' PDFs written by Brett Boyd (Napftor) and published by Ronin Arts is an excellent bit of drop in fluff. At least, they sound like they are. I haven't actually read one yet.

 

[Glyfair]

I disagree that 2e's flavor was wasted fluff.

I don't believe that fluff is wasted. However, glancing through some of the 2E stuff, I see a lot of what I consider wasted fluff.

One of the complaints I remember about 2E, after the fact, was the amount of useless fluff in products (mostly adventures). Adventures would spend pages and pages discussing something that the players weren't going to deal with, and didn't affect the play value of the adventure.

Sure, it made it more fun to read. However, I don't buy D&D products just for reading material. I also think it's possible to have less fluff, and still be fun to read (the 1E Dungeon Master's Guide had less fluff, but lots of flavor).

Looking at the various lists and discussions of classic adventures for D&D, you don't see a lot of 2E adventures listed. While there are certainly many reasons for this, I think one of them is a lot of 2E adventures focused on the flavor of the product, rather than the game experience of the players.

I think 3E did swing the pendulum the other way too much. However, I think it's coming to rest in a happy medium. Personally, my ideal balance was reached with the MMIII. They had a couple of paragraphs of ecology, etc. for the Forgotten Realms and Ebberon for most monsters in addition to the usual amount in the description. Sure, there is a bit of waste there if you play in one or the other. However, if you don't, then you have a couple of options for approaches for your campaign world. Also, for the most part it isn't a lot of waste if you aren't going to use it.

 

[Pants]

as far as a better system goes,

System isn't the topic of the discussion, flavor-text in the books is the topic.

There was more flavor in many portions of 2E. Assuming you wanted to use that flavor, everything was cool. But if you were creating your own unique flavor, the included flavor was useless. Or at least less useful.

But, what's stopping you from ditching the flavor and using the mechanics only? It seems to work fine with 3e, or were 2e mechanics more intrinsically tied to the flavor-text stuff?

I can see a book of just flavor text being utterly useless for someone who doesn't like the flavor being presented, but that's why I prefer a better balance between flavor and mechanics, that way, if I don't like the flavor presented, I can at least use the mechanics.

That's just me though.