D&D 5E Legend Lore says 'story not rules' (3/4)

[Sunseeker]

I could never stand the overly prose-ish writing of earlier editions. Having to attempt to translate the effects of a spell out of the colorful language was a pain in the toucas. It was also dreadfully page consuming, with a single spell capable of spanning whole pages. But did this unnecessary verbosity lead to a reduction in splat? NO! We just needed more and more books!

I certainly don't think WOTC simply won't create new rules material or modules for the game, instead I read this as them looking for a way not to produce less splat, but to spread it out over MORE books! We will spend novels with describing in detail some variant of Rapid Shot, only to finish reading the book and find out we need to buy half a dozen Drizzt novels because each one contains a secret code for a new spell.

Break out your decoder rings kids and keep buying those cracker jacks!

 

[Blackwarder]

Break out your decoder rings kids and keep buying those cracker jacks!

And don't forget your tinfoil hat!

Warder

 

[Bedrockgames]

I could never stand the overly prose-ish writing of earlier editions. Having to attempt to translate the effects of a spell out of the colorful language was a pain in the toucas. It was also dreadfully page consuming, with a single spell capable of spanning whole pages. But did this unnecessary verbosity lead to a reduction in splat? NO! We just needed more and more books!

I certainly don't think WOTC simply won't create new rules material or modules for the game, instead I read this as them looking for a way not to produce less splat, but to spread it out over MORE books! We will spend novels with describing in detail some variant of Rapid Shot, only to finish reading the book and find out we need to buy half a dozen Drizzt novels because each one contains a secret code for a new spell.

Break out your decoder rings kids and keep buying those cracker jacks!

All I know is neither 3E nor 4E satisfied my need for flavor. Key words for me do nothing. Too much crunch, is also a problem. I like nice and easy rules, with a good deal of inspirational flavor that makes me want to play the game and gives me ideas. I am not thinking of 3 page spells so much as the Van Richten guidebooks, many of the old historical sourcebooks and kit information from the complete books. The Complete Bard for example greatly enhanced the adventure and rp content of my 2E campaigns. I didn't get that from the later complete books. And nothing like Van Richten was ever released for 3E that I could find (at least not by WOTC).

 

[Ratskinner]

Dungeon World has a lot of really great ideas. I'm looking forward to running it this weekend.

That said, the tactical depth is certainly on a different plane altogether. There's up and downsides to this, of course.

Sure, but you wouldn't have to import the entire DW system. For example, start with 4e. Then take out the half-level progression for skills, attacks, defenses - i.e. give it some bounded accuracy. Now for each class, create 10 representative powers for each 5-level subtier. The powers would stay in 4e format. Would that not retain the tactical depth?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

All I know is neither 3E nor 4E satisfied my need for flavor. Key words for me do nothing. Too much crunch, is also a problem. I like nice and easy rules, with a good deal of inspirational flavor that makes me want to play the game and gives me ideas. I am not thinking of 3 page spells so much as the Van Richten guidebooks, many of the old historical sourcebooks and kit information from the complete books. The Complete Bard for example greatly enhanced the adventure and rp content of my 2E campaigns. I didn't get that from the later complete books. And nothing like Van Richten was ever released for 3E that I could find (at least not by WOTC).

Well, I won't disagree that little in the way of 4e material has the sheer verbosity of things like the Complete Fighter or Complete Thief books (I don't have the others around so I can't comment, but I assume they are similar from what I recall). Still, a lot of it IS crunch. I mean its VERBOSE, and there are certainly pages and pages of fluff, but there are pages and pages of crunch too, often pages long simply because it has to explain everything in detail since 2e lacks a lot of 'hooks' for things like maneuvers or standard ways of doing things. It seems like the fluff factor could have been higher if the rules had been more clear.

If you look at the core 4e books and the core 2e books, the 4e books have actually about the same amount of fluff as 2e does. I do see quite a lot of story ideas, background, and other fluff in the 4e supplements too. I don't know why people insist that 4e is bereft of this stuff, it really is not. There are also 4e books that are very much like the complete books, though organized differently. For instance the Tiefling and Dragonborn books. Notice that WotC discontinued making those sorts of books because presumably they sold poorly.

So, yeah, I would agree that few 4e supplements have the fluff to crunch of the Complete books. There are 2 questions I'd ask though. 1) Did TSR actually sell those things in enough numbers to make money? I remember them sitting on book and game store shelves for literally 10 or more years. My FLGS literally STILL HAS a small section of shelf in the back of the store with a full selection of 2e supplements, new stock. 2) Could WotC make money selling that kind of supplement? Note that it is not going to really matter what rules are currently in vogue, 4e, DDN, whatever, such books are going to be largely the same either way, right? Its hard to see how if they didn't sell 2 years ago they will sell next year or the year after.

PERSONALLY I'm happy to read some fluffy books. OTOH I have read my 2e fighter, priest, and thief books, and a couple others, through a couple years ago and the fluff is still just as useful now as it was then. I'm not sure these need to be system books. I can see why WotC would want to tie them to an edition, but OTOH I'd prefer to have good high quality material that is system neutral. Honestly, while I found good game ideas in the TSR stuff, I think you can today find VASTLY more accurate, complete, and interesting material on cities, castles, ancient civilizations, Medieval Europe, etc etc etc in non-RPG focused resources. For instance I ran a fanciful game of knights and maidens in distress etc a year or two ago and I found a vast amount of material about medieval romances, as well as translations of all the source material. It was great, and no RPG guide on the subject would come close to providing the same level of material.

 

[Sunseeker]

All I know is neither 3E nor 4E satisfied my need for flavor. Key words for me do nothing. Too much crunch, is also a problem. I like nice and easy rules, with a good deal of inspirational flavor that makes me want to play the game and gives me ideas. I am not thinking of 3 page spells so much as the Van Richten guidebooks, many of the old historical sourcebooks and kit information from the complete books. The Complete Bard for example greatly enhanced the adventure and rp content of my 2E campaigns. I didn't get that from the later complete books. And nothing like Van Richten was ever released for 3E that I could find (at least not by WOTC).

All I really want is clarity. Fluff can go a lot of ways, but I believe in KISS when it comes to every aspect of a spell or ability. Light, evocative fluff can do far more for a spell than a huge novella on how the power looks and feels and so on. I think D&D could learn from the flavor text developed for their MTG lines. Sweet, simple, evocative.

 

[Pour]

All I really want is clarity. Fluff can go a lot of ways, but I believe in KISS when it comes to every aspect of a spell or ability. Light, evocative fluff can do far more for a spell than a huge novella on how the power looks and feels and so on. I think D&D could learn from the flavor text developed for their MTG lines. Sweet, simple, evocative.

Love the flavor text myself. Yeah, lets try the name of the power, the flavor text, and a brief, clean, clear explanation with the idea of multiple applications coming from the player and supported by the DM, not a laundry list codifying everything the designer could think of at the time.

 

[Bedrockgames]

All I really want is clarity. Fluff can go a lot of ways, but I believe in KISS when it comes to every aspect of a spell or ability. Light, evocative fluff can do far more for a spell than a huge novella on how the power looks and feels and so on. I think D&D could learn from the flavor text developed for their MTG lines. Sweet, simple, evocative.

Again I wasnt thinking so much of spells, but magic cards are the opposite of what I am looking for in game prose.

 

[Bedrockgames]

PERSONALLY I'm happy to read some fluffy books. OTOH I have read my 2e fighter, priest, and thief books, and a couple others, through a couple years ago and the fluff is still just as useful now as it was then. I'm not sure these need to be system books. I can see why WotC would want to tie them to an edition, but OTOH I'd prefer to have good high quality material that is system neutral. Honestly, while I found good game ideas in the TSR stuff, I think you can today find VASTLY more accurate, complete, and interesting material on cities, castles, ancient civilizations, Medieval Europe, etc etc etc in non-RPG focused resources. For instance I ran a fanciful game of knights and maidens in distress etc a year or two ago and I found a vast amount of material about medieval romances, as well as translations of all the source material. It was great, and no RPG guide on the subject would come close to providing the same level of material.

Absolutely, I majored in history, so I love reading history books and primary sources, getting more ideas from those than anything else. But the needs of historians (or readers of romances) are not the same as a GM. So I mayhave to read 10-15 books, a bunch of articles and go to a load of primary sources to get the kind of useable game info I could find in a GURPS history supplement or one of the old AD&D blue books. The advantage of RPG flavor books is they are meant for the gm and player. But certainly you shouldnt limit your inspiration and research to them.

 

[Sunseeker]

Again I wasnt thinking so much of spells, but magic cards are the opposite of what I am looking for in game prose.

I'm not saying they need to explicitly duplicate MTG cards, only that there is an important distinction between "prose" and "textbook". I don't want the specific details of how a fireball flies off your fingertips, the fact that it does is clear enough. The fireball flies off your fingertips. That's some pretty specific imagery right there. It doesn't jump off your fingers, or drip off your fingers, it flies. It implies speed, trajectory, even a hint of life. I mean, if we could get something in one or two sentences per item that are explicit and evocative, I think we'll be doing well.

Fireball:
S,M,(whatever the letter is for wiggling your fingers)
"You draw mana into a superheated ball that flies from your fingers and explodes upon impact, damaging everything within it's fiery blast."

It's short, it's sweet, and it's to the point. I'm certain it could use a little work, but the idea is that we can say a lot while writing a little, I think this is something that MTG flavor text writers have had to learn the hard way from the limited space on the cards. Say a lot while writing a little. I don't believe that D&D has ever succeeded at this. Either saying little and writing little, leading to drab or plain uninformative flavor; or saying very little by writing too much, creating drab, uninformative walls of text that the reader has to slog through to pull anything useful out of, and rarely anything interesting or evocative.

Shortly: WOTC flavor needs to do more with less. That's the lesson I want them to learn from MTG flavor. Write a lot if necessary but make it USEFUL. Write a little if it's not needed. We don't need buckets of prose that add nothing just to make them seem more prosey.