Crunch time?

[The Shaman]

Came across this quote in another thread:

Ugh, it's people like this that make people like me lose out on the crunch material :\

There are people who like more crunch than fluff, you know. Fluff is easier to do (all it takes is an imagination) than it is to make crunch (that takes employment at WotC R&D team who playtest, balance out, and edit the new feats, PrC, spells, psionics, etc.).

In case no one's noticed, they've been adding more fluff than crunch a lot lately. Races of the Wild and Sandstorm for example. I'm sorely disappointed with Sandstorm. At a loss of more prestige classes, they added in stupid text with the new prestige class format they've used with Lost Empires of Faerun. As vast as the Wastes can be, only 7 seven prestige classes? Bah, I feel like I'm being ripped off, paying for text telling me what I "could do with it" rather than text saying what I "could have in my game".

Down with fluff-lovers!

Part of me agrees - I'm extremely disappointed in d20 Past as I was looking for a well-stocked tool box, not sixteen pages of adventures in a 96-page book and a bunch of stuff I already got from Polyhedron years ago.

On the other hand, some of the crunch that's been published of late is just awful, IMHO - the never-ending proliferation of feats and PrCs and new actions come to mind.

It's a dilemma, to be sure.

What do you want to see? More crunch? More fluff? More everything?

 

[Jdvn1]

Personally, I tend to like crunch. But so many of the recent books have been crunch lately, that I want excessive fluff to cancel it out.

 

[MonsterMash]

Not really sure I want that much of anything - more crunch oriented though - adventures and one setting (Wilderlands of High Fantasy) and that's me pretty much done.

 

[Seeker95]

I don't mind the crunch, but the bloated proliferation of PrCs is ridiculous. From the comments of my own players to the comments I see on this and the WotC message boards, you'd think that the PrC is a right every player automatically gets.

Seven PrCs in Sandstorm is not enough? I say it's too much.

 

[Henrix]

I like fluff if it's good fluff that adds to the game.
There hasn't been much of that in D&D3+. Possibly in some non-WotC d20 material, I haven't read much of that.


There is good fluff in a lot of non-d20 games. HeroQuest material is for instance mostly fluff, but excellent fluff!

 

[fusangite]

I hate the fluff/crunch distinction. It is non-descriptive and there is a very fuzzy category boundary.

I don't want "crunch" as most people understand it. But I do wish that there were more rules for modeling things like chasing people through complex terrain, using boats, different kinds of bad weather, etc.

 

[X-Marks!]

More / More.

More everything. I'd just like to see larger books from WotC in general. They don't need to be 400+ pages, but 160/180 is just too small.

I was glad to see the extra crunch added in to FR Hc's last year, but then they greatly reduced the fluff quality/quantity to do so, especially in the Regional Books. Those need to get up to 240 to strike the right balance of material to properly supply our campaigns.

I also think they overcompensated in their new PrC entries. Keep the numbers decent, and deliver about half the fluff right-ups. Some of it seems somewhat repetitive and/or unnecessary. I do tend to suspect that's laziness -- being easier to ramble on about background for something you've just invented than it is to design yet another, original prestige class.

 

[jshelky]

Actually, more than Fluff or Crunch what I'd really like to see is more organization. I detest the fact that they re-organize for every single book. At the very least they could keep books with the same theme (such as the complete books) in the same order so you know that feats are chapter 2, spells are chapter 3 etc. Also, what's with throwing a stray feat or bit of crunch in a sidebar off in who knows what chapter. It makes it impossible to track down rules when you need them.

 

[DragonLancer]

Fluff is good. I want to see more "in game" information and background in sourcebooks I buy.
But to an extent, Crunch is good, I just want to see as many new feats, spells, and prestige classes. More specific rules (such as the environment material in Frostburn) is what I want to see.

 

[JoeGKushner]

I prefer the material like that found in the Complete Adventurer where the PrCs are seperate from the organization, but the organization is still there.