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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3344891" data-attributes="member: 4937">Nothing which doesn't have stats interacts with the game in anything but a superficial way.  Statless things are like the backgrounds in a video game.  They add to the sense of emersion, they may even change the way players play the game thereby, but they don't actually do anything.  Color is important.  But you can only handwave crunch if the color doesn't play a significant part of the game, and so far for all the people holding thier noses around me as if I was some sort of plague carrier, no one is arguing against what I said.But I'll give you an example.  My favorite RPG supplement ever is 'The Book of the Righteous'.  It is the RP supplement I wish to have written.  And its largely a book of color.  In fact, it goes out of its way not to stat the gods of its pantheon in any way whatsoever.  It gets away with this solely because the gods play absolutely no role in the game.  I'll repeat that in case someone thinks I made a typo.  The gods of 'The Book of the Righteousness' play absolutely no role in the game.  Oh sure, almost all of the crunch in the game is flavored liberally with 'Lords of Heaven' flavoring, but thats all it is - flavoring.  Important flavoring, sure.  I wouldn't want to eat food that had no flavor either.  In fact, I'm something of a food snob.  I don't want to waste my time eating food that isn't well flavored.  But if I couldn't taste the food, it would still be the same food.The great innovation of 'The Book of the Righteousness' is that it recognized how important a cosmology was to the flavor of the game.  It recognized just how much a really well thought out cosmology would shape the metagame and change how the players role-played.  But it also recognized that it was pretty pointless to waste time on stats for something that wasn't part of the game, namely the gods themselves.  Instead, it focused on stating out and detailing alot of things which would be a part of the game, most importantly those religions and religious institutions and religious celebrants that would be something that characters interacted with.When you say, "The far realms doesn't have stats", you are saying, "The far realms won't be a part of my game in any significant way.  I might have that as part of the setting.  I might use the color to tie together what I do have in my game.  But I don't really intend to actually have a far realm or anything from it except as color on the sky box."  And that might be fine.  I'm not suggesting that everything needs stats.  I am suggesting that anything that can actually do something and which you intend to be part of your game needs stats.</blockquote>

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