Crunch time?

[Psychic Warrior]

I would love for there to be so-called 'fluff' descriptions in the sourcebooks I buy. Books that are meant to describe a setting should not have 75% of their page count used up in Prestige Classes, Races, Spells etc. I want to know things about the world I'm reading about. A new spell just doesn't tell me much.

If there a growing amount of 'fluff' in new books I have yet to see it (maybe I'm reading the wrong ones).

 

[Romnipotent]

WotC playtest? man I thought they gave the rules to monkeys and a set of dice
if the paper was all ripped up and the dice chewed on it meant it was good...

Not attacking any WotC playtesters but the glaring faults of Darkness creating light in pitch black and such....

 

[diaglo]

My hat of do2 knows no limit!

you said it, mang.

 

[Kanegrundar]

I tend to be more crunch oriented, since I tend to do most of my own fluff, but I may change my mind some once I get hold of my copy of the IKWG. Overall, I would like to see more of everything and in good quality.

Kane

 

[qstor]

More fluff, Mr. Ryan please

Mike

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

I like to see about a 70/30 fluff/crunch balance in a campaign setting book, particularly one for a setting that didn't have a 2e incarnation.

In a 'generic' D&D or d20 book, however, I want at most 30/70 fluff/crunch, preferrably something like 20/80. I'll rewrite any fluff Wizards gives me. Although I enjoy Privateer Press's fluff, I'll rewrite that, too.

'Generic fantasy fluff' - by which I mean 3e Greyhawk - is no more useful, because it's not generic and it's totally inappropriate to any setting I'd be running.

The only fluff that's of any use to me is Eberron (or Spelljammer), because I might concievably run a version of the former tied in to the latter. For what it's worth, I might run the IK and Dragonlance tied into Spelljammer, too, but those aren't natural fits and I'd be changing a good portion of their settings to make them work.

 

[Wombat]

I'm in an odd position.

On the one hand, I'm not a huge crunchmeister; OTOH, I'm not taken with the WotC settings, so the fluff does little for me. If I am looking for one or the other out of WotC currently, it would probably be crunch, but then again I never made the switch to 3.5, so again, it doesn't do much for me. I haven't picked up any WotC books since UA, and I didn't much care for that one. Since that time I've only picked up 3rd party (and Ars Magica) material, primarily Green Ronin and Malhavoc Press.

In general, I think I have finally reached, or nearly so, the gamebook saturation point. I don't think I need any more of either for a while.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Sometimes you feel like a nut.
Sometimes you don't.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALMOND joy's got nuts.
Mound's dont....

anyway, it depends on the book. Something like Complete Adventurer or Races of Splat or Monsterwhateverbook, I pick up mostly *for* crunch. I don't need you telling me about the dream sequences of elves, I need to know how they do that whole shield-surfboard thing. I want to add dimension to my character or campaign, fill in the gaps, and be able to run a game more smoothly.

But something more like a campaign setting, or a genre thing, I need more fluff. I need it to inspire a certain feel, a certain style, a definate world apart. I can do that on my own, sure, but when I pick up something about running a horror campaign, you're going to need to make me feel like I'm running a horror campaign, and not a campaign with a Scary Pale D00d PrC.

 

[Ravellion]

Fluff just requires imagination, true.

However, crunch doesn't even require that. Hence, I generally find crunch to be useless, unless it is in the very wide "Campaign toolkit" variety like Grim Tales and Unearthed Arcana. Coming up with a Prestige Class once an organization or archetype is already there I find incredibly easy to do. The other way around? Sometimes not so easy, depending on the prestige class. Feats? Pick something you want that character to be better at/use a resouce the chracter already has in a new way. Make the feat improve that ability by a great deal. Then hit it with the nerfstick until you can imagin some character taking it, but not all.

Rav

 

[NewJeffCT]

I would prefer books to be almost all FLUFF, or flavor text. I despise crunch beyond what is in the 3 core books. I don't have enough time to decide which prestige classes are appropriate or not, or if this feat or skill or that is balanced, or which strange monster class from the 'XYZ Tome of Monsters, Volume 136', to allow or not. We used a lot of "kits" back in 2E days, but there is such an overwhelming number of prestige classes out there in so many different books that nobody in our group has any interest. In our first 3E campaign, we had one guy use a prestige class for his PC, but nobody has since.

What I want are ideas that I can use, steal or easily modify. Sometimes, just a few seemingly simple lines of background is all it takes for me to get the gears in my imagination turning and then coming up with several sessions of ideas.