I think I'm over crunch

[woodelf]

I agree, but even I know that you can’t put a book out there that doesn’t have this. Books of information and fluff don’t sell really.

Oh? What about MMS:WE and MS:E&C? What about Stone to Steel? Sure, there may be fewer of them. But what little evidence i've seen points to them selling quite well, in relation to their exposure. I do wonder how much is that there's less interest in them, and how much is everyone assuming there's less interest so they don't publish them. And don't forget that you can hardly use a crappy book's sales as evidence that people don't want books with that flavor of content.

 

[woodelf]

Yet... when we release products like these (Powers that Be: City Council - detailing a full city council, with plots, intrigues, power blocks, adventure hooks and seeds, a detailed castle location where the city council meets...) we don't see any real sales movement at all - making it so the work that goes into these sourcebooks isn't worth the effort for the writer, artist and layout person.

How much of the content is useful to someone not playing D20 System? What about a group of characters with no political ties/influence? More importantly, how well do you think it'd port to a high-tech setting? I looked at that, and it sounded really interesting. But it sounded like it was too tied to (1) magical pseudo-Medieval setting, (2) court-intrigue adventures, and (3) to a much lesser extent, D20 System. I'm not interested in paying for 10% of the content being statblocks, for any system, much less D20 System (which i'm not likely to run). And i don't forsee myself running anything involving court intrigue or politically-influential characters in the near future, so i figured i could just buy it later. Finally, i'm not likely to run anything lower tech level than Renaissance anytime soon, and even that is a setting without much magic (but with supers).

So, i didn't not buy it because it's a book full of fluff. I didn't buy it because (1) it looked like it might be too much crunch for my tastes and (2) much more importantly, it didn't look useful to my specific situation. Same way a crunch-lover who doesn't use psionics wouldn't buy a book with a bunch of cool new psionic stuff. That's the danger in a relatively narrow topic. (A fleshed-out city council, etc., rather than a book on how to set up governments and generate political intrigue--i bought Dynasties & Demagogues.)

But, then again, it may just be the advertising/reviews i read. I may have horribly misjudged it, so feel free to explain it to me better.

 

[woodelf]

Hmm - I see the definition of "fluff" is become rather broad.

I know that when I see "fluff", I think of the descriptive writing that goes into supplements. Things like "The trees get golden leaves in the winter". Stuff that only really serves a purpose as a possible inspiration for the DM and players.

I see fluff as something complete different to good old-fashioned advice, something that you see quite a lot of in the DMG (thanks, Monte!) and somewhat in other books. (In the Complete Warrior, for instance, there is advice on running a Mercenary/War campaign). Dungeoncraft is an excellent advice column. (Though when Ray Winninger was writing it, the fluff content got quite high towards the end, as his world didn't interest me at all!)

There are also Adventure Seeds, which are more focused than general descriptive writing. "The Zombie Master is missing, lost in a nearby tar pit." [snip]

You can probably categorise further elements of non-rules writing. Where, for instance, does the Magical Medieval Society fall?

The divide is not simply Fluff vs. Crunch, and it is important to keep that in mind.

Cheers!

That's always been the definition of fluff: fluff is, by definition, all that material in an RPG product that is not crunch (with the possible exception of game fiction, which might or might not be a third distinct sort of content). Now, this is not to say it's clear-cut which elements are fluff and which are crunch--far from it. Frex, is that column in Dragon on how to minmax your character crunch or fluff? I say crunch, because it's all about how to use the rules. Others say fluff, because it is not, itself, rules content. And so on. Nonetheless, fluff is everything not-crunch, by definition. You can argue that it's overly-broad and not a useful category, but you can't argue it's an incorrect category.

The whole point is that much of the fluff content is very useful, concrete, specific content, despite not expressing that content in terms of game mechanics. Frex, all the "how to be a good GM" type advice. Here's another way of thinking of it: by definition, a non-RPG book can have no crunch. That doesn't mean it can't convey useful, specific, quantitative information. An excellent example of good fluff would be the book i'm about to buy: Everyday Life in Renaissance Italy. Ditto the Writer's Digest guides which go into excruciating detail on such things as police forensic procedures and so on. A show like CSI or Law & Order is all fluff (again, by definition), but still has lots of detail and specifics.

Oh, to answer the question: IMHO, from what i've heard (buying waits for the next paycheck), MMS:WE is almost all fluff, with a few crunchy bits of application here and there. That's why i want it.

 

[woodelf]

I looked at that, and it looked to be an excellent product. The problem is that perhaps it was too focused. It has so much detail, that it makes it more difficult to include in an ongoing homebrew. Also, there's so much going on, it seems like it functions more as a module than a backdrop for a city.

Something in the middle would be perfect - general ideas for creating your own City Council (along with ideas for various other forms of government) along with some lightly sketched out ideas about the council. Give us DMs some meat to chew, but don't hand feed the whole meal to us. We like to mix 'n match - perhaps a book with many small segments of ideas (arranged by theme), that could be combined in interesting ways.

For exapmle: You could combine "An evil dragon has stolen something of great value" with "a prince has lost the magic sword given to him by his father" and add "there was a sword that possesed the powers to not only take a life, but to bring that life back".

Those 3 snippets make me ask questions. Why has the dragon done this? Has he lost someone close? Were they killed by this sword, and he hopes to bring them back? Is he trying to prevent the resurection of someone else? This seems like a compasionate dragon (at least in some sense!).

But if you replace the middle snippet with "a king is using a powerful magic item to stop a war" then you've got a totally different set of ideas. Is the dragon behind the war? Who does he want to win? What will he do with the sword?

Imagine a book full of those snippets! You could easily and quickly weave in subplots. You could take your story in a direction totally suprising everyone. Even people who have a hard time coming up with campagin ideas would find it a breeze to weave together a fairly complex plot...

Is there anyone else who would buy such a product?

You need to find copies of the CityBooks. Probably the Seven Stronghholds/Seven Cities/Seven Dragons books from Atlas, too. The CityBooks present dozens of ready-to-go locations--mostly places of business--complete with maps, attached characters, and at least 2-3 explicit scenario hooks per setting. There're usually several other scenario seeds buried in the character backgrounds/descriptions, too. And the later books interrelate the individual entries to varying degrees, making it easy to weave them together as much or as little as you like. And, if you want, the material is already there and well fleshed-out, so you don't have to do anything, for those who prefer ready-to-go.

 

[woodelf]

I got oversaturated with rulebooks about a year ago, and sold off most of my "crunch" books (pretty much only kept the core books).

I have, however, started buying Campaign Settings. It's kind of weird, because I know that I am far less likely to actually use them compared to regular supplements.

Are you? You just said you sold off all your crunch because you weren't using it. Seems to me that you're behaving perfectly rationally: you've recognized that you weren't using much or any of the crunch, so you aren't buy it; and you've recognized that the bits you do want to use show up more in fluff, so you're buying things with higher fluff ratios. It sounds like you'll probably end up using more of a campaign setting you don't actually play in, than you do of a crunchy book. Or, in simple mathematical terms: 15% of 300pp > 5% (or 0%) of 120pp.

However, I think that they probably contain the most innovative and imaginative roleplaying material out there, and I quite enjoy reading them.

Imaginative? Certainly. Freeing yourself from the constraint of "how do the rules work for this?" is almost bound to give you more freedom. But maybe not the most innovative. In fairness, the very task of fitting rules to stuff can generate real innovation, and the "stuff" in question doesn't necessarily need to be setting-related stuff. It can be simple what-ifs, such as whatever led to the magic-item-creation system in Artificer's Handbook.

 

[Crothian]

Oh? What about MMS:WE and MS:E&C? What about Stone to Steel? Sure, there may be fewer of them. But what little evidence i've seen points to them selling quite well, in relation to their exposure. I do wonder how much is that there's less interest in them, and how much is everyone assuming there's less interest so they don't publish them. And don't forget that you can hardly use a crappy book's sales as evidence that people don't want books with that flavor of content.

The biggest place to look for fluff over crunch is the Monster books. Last year almost all the monster books were very crunch like the MM. But there was this one darkhorse called the Monsternomicon and it blew people away and won many ENnies. This year there have been a great amount of monster books produced filled with fluff. Many were entered into the ENnies and I was impressed to see this tpye of monster book.

 

[reanjr]

To continue a train of thought I started in another thread, I think I've had it with crunchy rulebooks. I'll round out the "Complete" series because it won't do to have just half a set, but other than that I think I'm done with the generic rulebooks. I have dozens of 3.x rulebooks. I have rules upon rules sprouting out of my ears. Enough already.

This is a shift for me. Traditionally I bought rulebooks for crunch & avoided fluff because I provide my own fluff in my homebrews, thank you very much. So if I don't need fluff and I'm sick of endless feats/spells/prestige classes/whatever, then I guess I'm done. Weird.

How about you?

Hear! Hear!

I am currently looking forward to the environment series (Frostburn, Sandstorm) cause they certainly can't fill those with all rules. Could they...? I hope not.

I like buying books of fluff. Yes I can create my own worlds, but it's alot of work and when something just isn't important to the campaign but still needs to be fleshed out, then fluff books are great. Plus they almost always have unique ideas you would never have thought of.

 

[Crothian]

I am currently looking forward to the environment series (Frostburn, Sandstorm) cause they certainly can't fill those with all rules. Could they...? I hope not.

Don't wait, go get Frost and Fur. Monkey God impressed people with Stone and Steel last year, and Frost and Fur is a book all about the cold enviroments. It is well done and I imagine more useful then the Wizards books.

 

[Son_of_Thunder]

Holy Crap!!!

Yeah. I've found myself in this strange position in which I no longer want crunchy books, and I still don't want creamy books, yet I still have a compulsion to buy roleplaying books. I go into my FLGS, stare at the shelves for a while, & then walk out frustrated.

I've been trying to cope by collecting some of the OOP stuff I didn't buy the first time around. Still may not use much of it, but at least its collectible & less expensive.

Holy Crap!!!

For a second there I thought I had already posted when I didn't. These have been my exact thoughts. I go to my LGS, stare at the shelves and leave empty-handed. I even took back the Planar Handbook, it was, to say the least, not a good book IMO. "Oh look, another couple player races, Oh look more feats, PrC..."

Son of Thunder

 

[reanjr]

Too much staring into rose-coloured glasses will make you go crosseyed.

Complete Fighter's Handbook
Complete Wizard's Handbook
Complete Ranger's Handbook
Complete Paladin's Handbook
Complete Thief's Handbook
Complete Priest's Handbook
Complete Bard's Handbook
Complete Book of Elves
Complete Book of Dwarves
Complete Book of Gnomes and Halflings
Complete Book of Humanoids
Arms and Equipment Guide
Tome of Magic
Player's Option: Skills and Powers
Player's Option: Combat and Tactics

True, but those books all had WAAAAY more fluff than their 3e counterparts. Look at Complete Paladin's Handbook or even Arms and Equipment again and compare them to Defenders of the Faith and the current Arms and Equipment Guide. WORLDS of difference. Even the Player's Option books has rules to support widely new creative ideas (most of which have made their way into the 3e core books and rightly so). Tome of Magic introduced new Spheres for the first time. And they stuck with them. For someone who had never read fantasy, the Complete series was indespensible for role-playing. Now they are just for adding new feats/prestige classes.