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Message: <blockquote data-quote="InVinoVeritas" data-source="post: 4039454" data-attributes="member: 41485">I said other.Players' supplements should be heavy on crunch. That's new feats, new equipment, new classes, races, etc. It should be big on numbers, light on letters. That way, everyone will know what the rules are up front, the player can ask the DM for use of this or that, and the rules are as setting-free as possible. DM's supplements, on the other hand, should be heavy on fluff. They should talk about new societies, flesh out areas of campaign worlds, and give advice how to take pieces and plunk them into your campaign. Crunch should be limited to thematic elements--a magic system based on chakras, for example.The issue, as I see it, is that most books try to straddle the line. Crunch and fluff try to be presented together, and they end up stepping on each other's toes. Books could be divided into player and DM sections, as they were in the days of yore, or kept in separate books. The long list of poorly received supplements on divine spellcasting is a prime example of crunch and fluff getting in the way of each other. The Player's Guide to Divine Spellcasting should be a book of feats, classes, equipment, and the like. The DM's Guide to Divine Spellcasting should be a book that talks about the role of religion in a campaign, different ways for religion and spells to work together, and how to design a pantheon, along with a few pre-generated pantheons. For example, the Player's Guide could describe a number of different (prestige) classes of cleric/druid/paladin, each one tied to a different aspect of religious life. A Healer acts as a medic, a Chorister melds bardic music and divine magic, an Herbalist is a potionmaker extraordinaire, a Friar enjoys huge social bonuses because of their vow of peace, a Witch Doctor taps into the primal core of a tribe, that sort of thing. New spell lists, new feats, new equipment, all that.The DM's Guide then talks about polytheism, monotheism, animism, and how they intermingle in a campaign. What are pharaohs and gods who walk the earth like? What happens when there are conflicting faiths? Conflicting pantheons? The book would describe a few different religions and religious systems that could be dropped into a campaign world. It would also talk about how to combine elements into a cohesive whole. Finally, it would describe how Healers, Choristers, Herbalists, Friars, and Witch Doctors would appear in the campaign. There may be no Friars of Hextor, for example--not by alignment, there may be Friars of Vecna. The focus of the book would be how to build a framework for a campaign through which the crunch makes sense. That's different from presenting the framework and telling the DM that's what to use. Give the DM ideas.Psion, could you talk more about "good fluff" vs. "bad fluff"? I'd like to hear your thoughts on the subject.</blockquote>

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