Pants said:
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