Do you like fiction in your gaming books?

[Psion]

My take is that a little flavor text to help set the tone or give you ideas how to use mechanics is great.

Selling me a novel disguised as a game product is NOT great. I already have my favorite novelists, and chances are that they don't also design games.

 

[Zhure]

I normally try to avoid polls, but when I feel strongly about the subject matter, I'll chime in.

In this case, I often gauge whether to purchase a product based on flavor text.

While I like the occasional piece of flavor fluff to bring a scene to life, a paragraph here or there, what I really detest is long, drawn out, not thought out descriptive passages in an adventure. Particularly paragraphs of laborous descriptions of what the adventurer's see, often describing how they feel...

".. the damp cellar door fills you with dread at the sight of the arcane runes carved into its surface as if by claws."

While that example might be ok in and of itself, there's usually a lot more, and the phrase "fills you with dread" presupposes far too much about the characters. Maybe their hardened adventurers who don't feel dread. Maybe their clueless students who are too baffled to feel dread. Let emotion occur naturally, not forced into an adventure via the accompanying text.

I love the one-liners, the quotes, though. They are humorous and still set a mood, without adding a lot of wasted space. I don't think they're as suitable for an adventure as they are for a splat*book, but quotes from an NPC are often just as useful.

Hope that helps.
Greg

 

[Pielorinho]

My ideal flavor text gives an example of play, and/or describes how a confusing mechanic or spell can be turned into something cinematic.

The BOEM's comments by Malhavoc are cool: they give examples of how an evil wizard might use spells that don't seem so useful. The play examples in Sword & Fist are good as well: they illustrate how to adjudicate complex situations.

Relics & Rituals' spell descriptions are interesting, but not that useful to me: since I don't play in the Scarred Lands setting, the history on each spell has no game effect for me at all, and I invariably skip straight to the stats description. I'm sure it would add a lot to the spells' descriptions if I were playing in Scarred Lands, but as it is, I wish they'd devoted all that space to more spells, feats, or the like.

Daniel

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Re: Shadowrun

FASA does (did? who owns Shadowrun these days??) it all the time, some sourcebooks being writen totally in the form of a story or a NPC yappin away as a guide to this city or that type of magic. Can be interesting but is a royal pain in the @$$ when looking for info or stats between all the babble.

You are so right about that! Shadowrun used the device so extensively in the Seattle Sourcebook that it nearly ruins the book as a source of information. I can see flavor text used to establish mood and give a "behind the scenes" look at some of the places discussed, but sometimes it went too far in Shadowrun. Unsurprisingly, my favorite Shadowrun book was Sprawl Sites, which, although it had flavor text, was much more straightforward with its game material.

 

[Lizard]

As a general rule, I bleep over any flavor text more than a paragraph or two in length. One-liners introducing chapters, short sidebars, and the like, are fine, but the White Wolf "Let's open with a novel" approach REALLY turns me off and makes me feel I've wasted money...

 

[BLACKDIRGE]

I think it is one of the few things White wolf actually does better than D&D. I love the little short stories they put in the front of each of the clan books (Vampire) and the new tribe books (Werewolf). But to answer the poll, yes I like it, when it's well done.

Dirge

 

[Psion]

Good example

For a good example of flavor text (IMO), see Thee Compleat Librum ov Gar'Udok's Necromantic Artes. Each spell, feat, class, or other crunchy bit is led off by a short snippet of flavor text... just enough to set the tone of the book, yet not so long as to bore you with minor details of a campaign setting you won't be using.

 

[BenBrown]

I agree with Lizard. I inevitably skip the novellas at the beginning of my game books. They're not helpful, and some are genuinely atrocious.

I am a voracious reader. I go through several novels a week in most weeks--several novels a day if things are really slow. But novels are novels and games are games.

On the other hand, a little flavor text can set the mood. A page at most. Gives you the little intro that makes you say "I want to play this NOW", and then gets you right into how to play before you get bored of it.

 

[Walter_J]

While I like the occasional piece of flavor fluff to bring a scene to life, a paragraph here or there, what I really detest is long, drawn out, not thought out descriptive passages in an adventure. Particularly paragraphs of laborous descriptions of what the adventurer's see, often describing how they feel...

".. the damp cellar door fills you with dread at the sight of the arcane runes carved into its surface as if by claws."

Greg

Really. Not only are some adventures so strictly and overly written that it takes 32 pages to cover 4 encounters and should state "GM Not requred" on the cover, but they go as far as telling the players what they think and feel. Pick-a-path to adventure, anyone?

OK, before I break into a serious off topic rant, I'll try and say something helpful.

I enjoy short, one page, "stories" in larger works. The little tale in the beginning of the Warhammer fantasy play book is a good example. Well written examples of play in rule-type books are good. Bits of flavor text, especially dialogue, at the beginning of chapters can be fun too if well done.

I have to add that, in all cases, if you don't know how to write, if you write poorly, if you don't know what you are writing about and/or if an author from one of WotC's line of novels is your ideal literary artist please take the time to correct any of the above problem areas. No offense intended. Writing is a skill and like any other takes time, hard work and dedication to learn how to do well.

OK. I'll stop now.

Walter

 

[I'm A Banana]

Examples...

Good examples of snippets of fiction include the splatbook's one-liners (originally seen for me in Planescape products), and the tiny blurbs in some Mongoose stuff.

Bad examples are the things like White Wolf's page(s) long novellas in the books.

Blah, blah, blah, I don't *care*, get me to the crunchy stuff!

But ever since Planescape, I always want to include little pieces of dialouge in the descriptions...just a scentence, a line or two. Not much, but enough to give you a feel for what is happening in-character.