The Crunch vs. Fluff poll

[ForceUser]

I run a homebrew. I want crunch more than anything. Some general, vague fluff is good...maybe I can steal a couple of ideas, generic cities or dungeons, etc. More than that and the book becomes Forgotten Rums, and I lose all interest.

Perfect example: The Seafarer's Handbook by Fantasy Flight Games. This book rules! Lots of crunch for running a campaign on the high seas or underwater, and a couple generic cities (one coastal, one undersea) to drop into my campaign with minimal retooling. Also some generic story plots, generic backgrounds, and generic adventure hooks interspersed between the crunchy bits and used as examples of play. THE BOOK IS EXACTLY WHAT I LOOK FOR AS A DM. Thanks FFG!

 

[Wolfen Priest]

I voted for "mostly fluff." Why? Simply because I have now accumulated more rules than I will EVER use in any game; heck I own more rules that I have ruled out than ones I will actually use.

Point being, as another poster said, I have enough 'crunchy' rules. I would be way more psyched to get something inspiring (a.k.a. fluff) in a product. Something to bring back the magic, so to speak.

There are more than enough rules out there to run a great game (even with just the core set). These days I'm more interested in running something no one's ever played before, something new and exciting.

That's why I've pretty much given up on buying most (if not all)WotC products. They concentrate too much on 'crunch,' and it ends up being all 'crap.' The last books of theirs that I bought (that I thought were good) were the Masters of the Wild, and Manual of the Planes. There was some crunch in MotW, but it was the fluff behind it (namely the legendary animals) that drove it home for me.

I've said it before and I'll say it agin: AFAIC, MotP was all fluff. And that is A Good Thing. But until WotC starts producing more fluff like that, I'll keep spending my money (and I spend a good amount each month) on 3rd party vendors.