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ratio of rules to background, what should or is the right balance?
- Thread starter Jackcarter
- Start date
"Crunchy bits", by their nature, are pretty terse. I wouldn't expect a game supplement to present nothing but rules; they'd be unmanageable.
The line between rules and setting info can get fuzzy though. Spells, magic items, monsters, they're all rules (stats) and setting info.
The line between rules and setting info can get fuzzy though. Spells, magic items, monsters, they're all rules (stats) and setting info.
I like it split into two books so you could just get the part you want and not have to pay for the part you don't want. For example, if you buy the FRCS just for the new rules you're paying a ton of money for the accompanying setting info, which is useless to you if you don't intend to use it. On the other hand, if you buy the upcoming Kalamar Player's Guide most of it is useful to you and you only end up paying for the Kalamar Setting stuff if you want to buy it (because it's in a separate book). What if FR had been done that way? All setting info in the FRCS and rules info kept in the supplements - magic of faerun, monsters of faerun, and a player's guide to faerun. This would have been more useful for non-FR folks. It also would have been more useful to FR folks because then the players don't need to get the setting book, which leads to them reading all of the background setting info so that the DM can't use any of the secrets.
I like them in seperate books. It makes it easier for people to get exactly what they want and not get snuckered into buy extra stuff that they don't want.
I like them in seperate books. It makes it easier for people to get exactly what they want and not get snuckered into buy extra stuff that they don't want.
kenjib said:
First, you're assuming that setting info can't be transplanted from Faerun to elsewhere. While some info is tied to that particular setting, other stuff is sufficiently generic that it could be used anywhere -- the drow, for instance, who don't even come from Faerun in the first place.
Second, the assumption that players won't read background setting info is highly dubious. For many groups, DMing is a shared responsibility, so the other players may have quite legit reasons to read up on the setting. Besides, it's hardly the sort of thing that you can enforce.
Third, Robin Laws made the point in his DMing book that you may actually _want_ players to read this sort of stuff, whether or not it's meant to be "secret". Why? Because often, one of the hardest things to do when DMing is to produce a sense of "place" -- the feeling of being immersed in a setting, as opposed to merely pushing counters around. It's easy to describe a wizard as being undead, powerful and wearing red robes, but it's hard to provoke a gut, emotional reaction with just words alone. However, if you say "it's Szass Tam", it's a fair bet that your players will feel appropriately terrified. The more the players immerse themselves in the setting, the better it is for evoking the feel of the place.
Hong,
Granted that a given DM may or may not want to transplant setting content as well as rules content and that a DM similarly may or may not want the players to have integrated access to setting material along with the rules they need to create their characters, I still don't think that this invalidates the benefit of allowing the DM to make these choices himself by seperating the content into two books.
You make some great points and I agree that these are excellent alternate viewpoints to my own. However, by having the rules in one book and the setting in another book both DMs can be accomodated.
Granted that a given DM may or may not want to transplant setting content as well as rules content and that a DM similarly may or may not want the players to have integrated access to setting material along with the rules they need to create their characters, I still don't think that this invalidates the benefit of allowing the DM to make these choices himself by seperating the content into two books.
You make some great points and I agree that these are excellent alternate viewpoints to my own. However, by having the rules in one book and the setting in another book both DMs can be accomodated.
kenjib said:
Oh, I agree that ideally, there should be a distinction between rules content and setting information. I think it just comes down to quibbling over how fine-grained we want to be in distinguishing between the two.
Personally, I think the way the FR information is organised at the moment is about right. You have the core rules in three rulebooks -- the DMG, PHB and MM (yes, I consider these to be the "rules" side of gaming in the Realms -- what other ruleset are you going to use, GURPS?
). Then you have setting-specific info in the FRCS, and some supplementary stuff in Magic of Faerun and Monsters of Faerun. There's crunchy bits in FRCS, but that's basically just regional feats and prestige classes -- things that have a stronger connection to the setting than what's in the DMG and PHB. If you wanted to be 100% correct and formal, then perhaps you might want these things in a separate book, but I think the extra cost involved (to the publisher and the customer) outweighs any real benefit to be gained.An advantage about having all the information in one book is that it provides a context for things like PrCs, which by their nature need to have their existence justified. This isn't so much a problem for the core classes, which are broad enough to have application anywhere, but PrCs really need a backstory to explain why they should exist, and fit them into the world. One thing that bugged me about the class splatbooks is that often, the crunchy bits there were presented without any broader context or background. It was hard to get any sense of flavour or feel to them, and this wasn't made easier by the way the books often revolved around dungeoneering to the exclusion of everything else (eg a divine oracle who gets uncanny dodge -- huh?).
This is one reason I liked OA, and AEG's Rokugan book, so much. It's much easier to see how a class like an iaijutsu master could fit into a campaign, when it's presented in the context of a campaign world where it has a natural role. Splitting up the crunchy bits and setting info into separate books would not help in this regard, although it might be more "correct".
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