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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6290262" data-attributes="member: 42582">This isn't at all true in my experience. The relevant abilities included THACO/attack matrix, saving throws, AC, hp and stats. And the official TSR character sheets, which we used, had boxes for all of these on them. And the players had a very good knowledged of the numbers written in those boxes!For me, at least, this was most prominent for fighters in classic D&D - because they have no abilities other than those gained from their items.For example, in the first long-running AD&D game that I GMed, the fighter was distinctive because of his flametongue sword and his cloak of the manta ray.Two responses.First, I think it's worth remembering that magic items as magical powerups were invented by D&D's original designers. When Ggyax invented the +1 sword, I don't think he was expecting the players whose PCs discovered one to be romantically soliloquising about the weapon's eldritch properties. It was a maths boost in a game that uses mathematical techniques for action resolution. To my mind, a call to reduce the players' engagement with action resolution is a call to increase GM-driven railroading as the alternative.Second, there are two types of "fluff" (not a word I really like - it is rather dismissive). There is mere colour, and there is colour (fiction) that actually matters to resolution. If a random table tells me that possessing my dwarven-made armour will, over time, make me more acquisitive, but there is no mechanic to support that, then it is mere colour. My personal view is that mere colour is fine in small doses but it is not where the action of gameplay is at. It would drive me mad to play in a game where, for instance, my fellow players spent hours describing their negotiations for the purchase of a flagon of wine, or their expenditure of gold pieces on wine and food where this is not connected to the resolution of any actual challenge but just freeform description of the PC's life.Then there is fiction that actually matters to resolution. Your example of an Earthquake spell is an instance of this. Gygax's AD&D rules for henchmen loyalty are another - that is a framework in which, for NPCs at least, the acquisitiveness-causing properties of dwarven items can be given mechanical teeth. With the item that increases acquistiveness, make it so that the PC has to make a Will save, or something similar, in order to spend any money or loan anything to another character.I can give examples from my own 4e game, too, that illustrate the contrast between mere colour and fiction that matters. What shade are the PCs' eyes? I don't know - it's never come up, because no point of action resolution has ever turned on it. But I know that the invoker-wizard has markings on his fact that resemble a raven with wings spread, because that was established as part of the resolution of his <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?324018-Wizard-PC-dies-returns-as-Invoker" target="_blank">ressurection in the form of a deva rather than a human</a>.What are the names of the PCs' brothers and sisters? Do they even have any? That's never come up either, but their relationships to various gods, primordials and other cosmological entities are known and are explored in every session in intimate detail, as that is the fiction that is actually driving the game - both the framing of scenes, and their resolution, including via deployment of the action resolution mechanics.</blockquote>

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