The False Dichotomy of "Fluff" and "Crunch"

[Nisarg]

The fact is, people don't vote on this with their voices. They vote with their money.

Money votes for crunch...

And that, boys and girls, is how the miracle of Power Creep happens.

Does anyone remember those first five minutes of 3rd edition's existence when Prestige Classes were NOT just "advanced character class with extra kewl powerz"?

Nisarg

 

[mearls]

Fluff should always inform and provide the chrome that makes crunch compelling. Fluff draws interest, crunch engages and keeps it.

The problem is that most designers can produce passable fluff, but good mechanics take a lot more work. Thus, fluff gets a bad rep for low sales. I think it's more a case of bad mechanics killing a book's sales.

Fluff is what gets someone to pick up a book and read it.

Crunch is what gets them to run a game for their friends. When a book generates actual play, that's when it starts to sell really well. All the casual fans who play RPGs but aren't obessive about it start buying the book because they need it for a campaign they're playing or they've heard so many good things about from other gamers.

I think this is why a lot of books that draw tons of praise on the Internet don't sell well - this is a place where people talk about gaming and read a lot of books, but they don't necessarily use the books they talk about.

 

[Nightfall]

Or maybe much like me, Psion, you appreciate a book that gives a player AND a DM more to do than just say "Ooh lookie some planes! Let's got get rich."

Plus the fact I think both you and I feel that the people behind Beyond Countless Portals have FAR more planar experience than the current batch of WotC writers.

Thus they know how to appeal to those that see the planes as more than just a collection of aligned places, Heavens, Hells, and other stuff. Planes are, in essence, worlds and places BEYOND the norm of general D&D.

 

[mearls]

An addendum to my post:

I think good crunch is harder to produce than good fluff, but amazing fluff is rarer and even more difficult than amazing crunch.

A book of mostly background material can be amazing to use a big seller, but that's the hardest sort of book to pull off successfully.

 

[ruleslawyer]

What Mike M said. Also:

I'm tending to think that really, while these terms have meaning, they lack enough meaning to identify the value in products beyond anything but the more extreme buying segments. I mean I appreciate prestige classes that take an interesting concept and convey it into the game, and not just grab bags of cool powers. And I appreciate expositional material that invites itself to be used as the basis for a game, and does not make itself into more of a novel than a game supplement.

Or is it just that you like good fluff and good crunch, Psion?

IMHO, fluff vs. crunch is a perfectly fine dichotomy, for the self-evident reason that substantive rules content and flavor are two different things. "An arcane trickster can perform one of the following class skills at a range of 30 feet: Disable Device, Open Lock, or Sleight of Hand" won't win any Booker Prizes, any more than "vrael olo funeral rites vary from tribe to tribe" is likely to constitute useful rules content. A good d20 supplement probably needs to contain both of these to be worth buying, unless it's a core book alternative. Even then, crunch is always nicer, if only for the sake of readability, when mixed with some fluff (one reason why Arcana Unearthed scores pretty high) and likewise why fluff tends to be more useful when there's some meaningful "crunchy" dimension to it (e.g. Midnight, which could have been written with no rules at all and still been pretty good, but is made all the better by providing some integral, if wonky, new rules options).

The fact that fluff and crunch are best when blended simply serves to highlight the importance of the dichotomy: Namely, that these are two elements that both deserve attention in any game supplement, and that ideally will complement each other well in a supplement.

IOW, what Mike said, I guess!

 

[d20Dwarf]

The problem is that most designers can produce passable fluff, but good mechanics take a lot more work. Thus, fluff gets a bad rep for low sales. I think it's more a case of bad mechanics killing a book's sales.
.

This is precisely what I was going to add to the conversation. Crunch is game design, the hard stuff, the actual *work*. Fluff is just putting imagination to paper, and it takes a lot less time to produce and cannot be easily objectively measured. There is a lot off fluff out there that is popular that completely mystifies me as to its appeal. Game mechanics are either good or bad, and there is an objective measure to decide it.

 

[MerricB]

Good fluff is also not a universal experience. Over the past few years, I've realised how irrelevant Monte Cook's work has become to my campaign. Arcana Unearthed, for all the people who like it, has no bearing on my classic D&D game, and the mini-planar settings of BoEM III - The Nexus are similarly useless. (That's not useless to everybody, but they're not likely to be used in my game).

Meanwhile, I showed my players the Planar Handbook on Sunday, and they were enthralled. They loved the rules mechanics, and they loved the descriptions (fluff) of areas like the planar touchstones and the organisations/prestige classes.

So, would I like Beyond Countless Doorways? I don't know... but given how underwhelmed I've been by Monte Cook's material of late...

Is there a moral to be drawn from this? Yes: There are many paths a gaming supplement may use, and each one attracts a different type of gamer. There is some overlap, but there is not One True Path.

Personally, I feel that the "fluff" content of the Wizards books has been increasing - but because it is always tied to solid game mechanics, people look down on it. (If you want a completely fluffy book, get a Wizards novel - they do a lot of those! )

Cheers!

 

[Urbanmech]

I think the trend has been toward "crunch" because it is usually harder to come up with balanced (sometimes a very relative term) prc's, spells, monsters, and feats. Coming up with a homebrew setting is somewhat easier. Even if you use an established campaign world you are going to make tweaks to it that make it yours. The 3e books are more of a tool set that you can use to build a boat or a house or just about anything you can imagine given the time.

I do think that the Draconominicon is an excellent blending of crunch and fluff. I really hope that Libris Mortis and Codex Anathema are written with the same mixture and high quality. Hopefully Frostburn and the environment books will contain a good mixture of the two elements. Rules to make the environments interesting and tips for descriptions and different exotic locations to get your creative juices flowing.

 

[Psion]

What Mike M said. Also:
Or is it just that you like good fluff and good crunch, Psion?

Mayhaps. But I think I'd put a finer point on it and say that the more they support each other, the better they are. One prestige class that expresses an interesting idea modestly well is better than a dozen that are mechanically pristine but conceptually blah.

 

[Shemeska]

Meanwhile, I showed my players the Planar Handbook on Sunday, and they were enthralled. They loved the rules mechanics, and they loved the descriptions (fluff) of areas like the planar touchstones and the organisations/prestige classes.

I dare say to show them the Planescape material the Planar Handbook was based upon and your players won't be so enthralled with the PlHB; they'll drop it like a rock to devour the yes older, but more detailed and better written material.

PlHB was decent, but it drops to mediocre when compared to the shoes it tried to fill. Some portions are good and I'll use, other portions seriously dropped the ball.