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Message: <blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 953679" data-attributes="member: 10201">Well, part of this may be a matter of tastes: i *love* the Slayers Guide to Gnolls--it's the only one i own, and therefore the onely one i've read cover-to-cover.  But what i saw of the other early ones, at least, looks pretty good.  OTOH, i flipped through the Slayers Guide to Kobolds the other day, and, despite them being one of my favorite races/monsters of all time, it left me merely luke-warm.  'Course, for me, the difference was a lot more crunch than the first few Slayers Guides, rather than an obvious decline in the quality of writing or originality of ideas (i didn't read it closely enough to really judge either of those).That said, maybe we need a baseline here--what's "fluff" and what's "crunch".  As i've generally seen the terms used, if it's not a stat block or game rule, it's fluff.  And i've always used that description because it's how the division feels natural to me.  Frex, something like the Pern Companion (is that the right title?) i'd still consider all fluff, if it were a game book--even though it has detailed move-by-move descriptions of martial arts and fights.  Why?  Because that's the part that isn't tied to the rules.  My definition of fluff is anything that would look the same no matter what ruleset you were nominally writing for.  Is that a reasonable working definition?If so, how about something like Dynasties & Demagogues?  Only a narrow portion of it (1/4?) is crunch--feats, social-combat system, some PrC, a few new spells and magic items.  The rest of the book is info on RL political systems, advice on what they might look like given a fantasy world, and very detailed, rules-like advice on how to run political adventures--but, however rules-like it may be, it's either completely devoid of D20 content, or has so little rules content as to be a non-issue if used for another system (a description of an encounter with a DC for dissuading the count slipped in, perhaps).  As for recommendations: have you looked at the Penumbra line from Atlas?  Atlas has long had good fluff-writers doing their books--long before D20 came along--and i think these mostly keep that up.  From what i've heard, even Three Days to Kill is pretty good on the narrative side.  Anyway, i'm thinking specifically of Touched by the Gods, Splintered Peace, Seven Strongholds, and Seven Cities.  The latter two are of roughly the same premise as Taverns, i gather (haven't seen that one yet).  or, for that matter, i just flipped through the new monster book from Atlas. It's fairly crunchy, but has a lot more fluff than most monster books--most monsters use a 2p spread, with significant sidebars full of fluff to go with the main body which is mostly crunch.what do you think of the Citybooks, by Flying Buffalo?  They're almost crunch-free, and some of the best RPG supplements of all time.  And they definitely have quality writers--many of the authors of the Citybooks have won Nebulas, Hugos, or other literary awards.  They do roughly the same thing Taverns does, but each book is about a theme, rather than a category (i.e., upscale establishments, black-market, everyday goods, etc., rather than foods, services, etc.).  I suspect that, if you like Taverns, and Seven Cities and things like that, you should be finding yourself copies of the Citybooks.</blockquote>

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