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

[Ranger REG]

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.

And where do you get inspiration for your homebrewed fluff? When did you get them, while you're a newbie to the hobby or having been around the D&D rules (or any other RPG ruleset) a few times?

 

[Pants]

And where do you get inspiration for your homebrewed fluff? When did you get them, while you're a newbie to the hobby or having been around the D&D rules (or any other RPG ruleset) a few times?

I'm not BardStephenFox, but I can provide my own experiences.

I get inspiration from a variety of sources; novels, video games, movies, RPG books, other people's campaigns, and my own imagination.

There have been times where (for example) I've seen a PrC and I automatically start figuring out how it fits into my world. Does it belong to an organization? Sometimes I don't even read the short paragraph of flavor text, sometimes the abilities it grants, or its picture inspire me to figure out how the PrC or class fits in and what kinds of people take levels in it.

 

[Ranger REG]

I get inspiration from a variety of sources; novels, video games, movies, RPG books, other people's campaigns, and my own imagination.

So, you want a RPG to basically say "For creative fluff, go look somewhere else cuz there ain't here."

 

[BSF]

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.

Part of it is managing player expectations. This is something I have definitely become better at over the years. Part of it is the manner in which crunch and fluff were mixed made it more effort to decouple the two.

I often liked the Ecology articles in dragon magazine because they were very fluffy. But because they were in the magazine, instead of the core rules, it was much easier to incorporate it into the game, or ignore it.

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

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..

If you mean, "Had more useless information that, while cool to know about, ultimately wasn't much help to 99% of DMs." then yeah, commence with the beat down of 2E on 3E.

However, if you mean useful to most DMs, then no, I don't think 2E stands higher than 3E does at all. I'd say at this point they're about equal.

I also completely disagree with Reg's comment that only 'veterans' are interested in fluff. That's pure B.S.

The problem is that some veterans can't seem to grasp how 3E's mechanics make it easier to imagine combat, spellcasting, trap-springing, etc...while also planting player's minds firmly in what's going on in the game world.

All this '3E is just mechanics and not much else' talk is just so much stereotyping.

I think BardStephenFox makes a good point too: I can recall several heated arguments on the WotC forums (back in the day) over the origin of Faerûn's elves where people pointed to fluff-filled non-Realms sourcebooks and said, "This book says all elves came from place A, B or C, so Realms author X is wrong and is a #$%_@! for implying otherwise in her novel/sourcebook!"

While extreme, this example illustrates how too much all encompasing flavor text can bog down even published settings, as well as homebrew games.

J. Grenemyer

 

[BSF]

And where do you get inspiration for your homebrewed fluff? When did you get them, while you're a newbie to the hobby or having been around the D&D rules (or any other RPG ruleset) a few times?

That's a good question. Admittedly I have been playing for 25 years or so. One of the reasons I started homebrewing gameworlds was because I wanted to incorporate elements that the designers didn't. Or worse, that the designers contradicted. Blatant fanboyism brought me to creating gameworlds that included stuff from literature. But over time, you start to have your own ideas. Or you have players that have ideas and you want to help them come to fruition.

Another source of inspiration would be tapping my 6 year old. It is amazing how creative kids can be. They are so unfettered with the expectations of what 'should be' that they just go off on weird tangents. Right now, my wife and I refuse to teach him all the rules for RPGs because he just doesn't need them. My wife will run ad lib "D&D" sessions with him and it is wonderful to hear how he comes up with resolutions to problems. Tonight, I asked him what kind of game he wanted to play in and he laid out an entire campaign idea for me without having any idea that is what he was doing. He can create whole bits of 'fluff' with just his imagination.

It is great and it is fun and it is kind of humbling to realize how caught up I get on the 'realism' of the fantasy when I listen to him. But part of that is an adult perspective. At some point he will also be looking for inspiration from others in the form of literature, games, movies, and even RPG books.

Preformed fluff is great, especially when you understand and share the same vision as the creator. It can be very inspiring to read it. But that fluff can also get in the way of your own vision. When that happens, you need to be clear with the other players that whatever was in the books is no longer canon. I stopped buying 2E stuff because none of it was relevant for me any longer. It was easier to create my own vision from the ground up then it was to break a few pieces out and tell everyone else that one small bit was correct, but the rest was not. Personally, I prefer lighter fluff. I don't mind having it there because others will find it helpful and that is great. But if every monster in the MM had a 3 page ecology overview with it, I would get very tired of it quickly. Other people would love to have that degree of detail available. So where do you strike the balance? There really isn't a right or wrong answer because any answer will be right for some people and wrong for others.

 

[Ranger REG]

That's a good question. Admittedly I have been playing for 25 years or so. One of the reasons I started homebrewing gameworlds was because I wanted to incorporate elements that the designers didn't. Or worse, that the designers contradicted. Blatant fanboyism brought me to creating gameworlds that included stuff from literature. But over time, you start to have your own ideas. Or you have players that have ideas and you want to help them come to fruition.

But what did you do before homebrewing?

Another source of inspiration would be tapping my 6 year old.

Note to other newbie gamers: Reproduce a 6-year-old.

Preformed fluff is great, especially when you understand and share the same vision as the creator.

There was a time when gamers and creators share the same vision ... during the early days of D&D/TSR.

 

[Aaron L]

When it comes to a choice between a flavorful rulebook and a balanced and well designed rulebook, Ill take balanced and well designed any day. 2E books had a bad habit of tacking on any old "flavorful" rule without a thought to how it integrated with the rest. Many times the rules were contradictory, even. Are 3E books as flowery as 2E boks? No. Because they contain more raw data. Ill take raw data over flowery prose in a game book anyday.


Quite often the flavorful text wasnt the kind of flavor I wanted, anyway. That may color my opinions.

EDIT: Im not talking about setting books, which should be flavorful to convey the flavor of the world. And in that instance I see no distinction between 3E and 2E. The FRCS, In fact, I thnk is better at portraying the Realms and letting you know all about it than any 2E book ever was. The Eberron book is as good as anything I ever saw in 2E flavorwise.

 

[BSF]

But what did you do before homebrewing?

Mostly I ran modules as one-off type things. Then I got the greyhawk mapset and started imaging all this cool stuff that could be done with it. Then I go a little frustrated when new bits would be released that would contradict my cool plans. Then I got excited by FR. That would have been 1987 or so right? I tried running that for a while but as a HS student, I couldn't afford to keep up with everything that was coming out. By late 1988 I had dropped it because it wasn't a vision of what I wanted to run. I still didn't know how to homebrew something very well yet, but around the same time my best friend and I were invited to join a game that was completely homebrew. I learned a lot about having the confidence to do my own thing from playing in that campaign. I haven't run a non-homebrew setting since.

 

[Khuxan]

I really liked the flavor in Monstrous Compendium: Planescape III (by the Monte Cook)... but the art was dreadful (for the most part - the Devourer is awesome) and it must have been hell trying to use any of the monsters in an actual game (the monster's abilities are strewn across the entire Combat section ).

On the other hand, 3E books just strike me as more disciplined: 'You'll get that much flavor, and that much mechanics, and that much good art... because MC III's overdose of flavor blewn peoples minds in a good way, but the bizarre magic item creation methods we gave you in Volo's Guide to All Things Magical were flavorful in a boring waste-of-your-time kind of way'.

Just the opinion of an avowed 3E advocate