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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BSF" data-source="post: 2805346" data-attributes="member: 13098">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 <a href="http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/gaming/forgottenrumsstory.html" target="_blank">Sean K Reynolds' allegory</a> 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.</blockquote>

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