The False Dichotomy of "Fluff" and "Crunch"

[Calico_Jack73]

Crunch & Fluff are purely a perspective thing. One person may view a book as havinging too little Crunch while another thinks it is enough. I view Fluff as inspiration. Some people are inspired by story, others by rules. In the case of rules providing inspiration you could say that the rules are Crunchy Fluff or Fluffy Crunch.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

The awe that many people hold for published crunch, and their contempt for published fluff, is utterly alien to me.

There are, as I'm sure you know, other possibilities.

Personally, I'm in the opposite end of the boat from you. I'm not going to claim that I can come up with better fluff (which I prefer to call flavour) than the professional writers at any given game company, but I can certainly write flavourful material to my own satisfaction.

I am, however, not talented at designing mechanics - I know imbalance when I see it, but I'm not adept at identifying holes or opportunities in a game system and coming up with rules or options to fill them.

Still, I don't live in awe of crunchy material. I quite enjoy new rules, classes, feats, spells, whatever, but I also like flavour - if I had to choose, however, between a book which was mostly flavour and a book which was mostly rules, I get more value out of rules (even if I have to adjust them) than I do out of someone else's flavour ideas, which aren't going to fit neatly into my games.

 

[S'mon]

There are, as I'm sure you know, other possibilities.

Sure - I'm just giving my personal perspective; I happen to be very good at understanding the in-play dynamics of rules (partly this is from 20 years of play); lots of other very good GMs aren't comfortable with tweaking rules and creating (or eliminating) rules the way I am; for them their attitude to crunch will be different. I do dislike the plethora of make-a-quick-buck crunchy splatbooks aimed mostly at players though, they seem not only so cynical, but the crunch is usually so poor also! I make a slight exception for Mongoose's Quintessential series in that although their sense of rules balance is pretty appalling, I do like their style & verve - the fluffiness around the crunch, I guess.

 

[S'mon]

This left me oddly dissatisfied with Grim Tales when I bought it recently - GT's crunch is very good, far better than Mongoose's efforts (aside from some Ian Sturrock work) but this book on running 'pulp fantasy' book has an almost complete lack of any 'fluff' at all - no advice on how to run pulp games, no definition of its genres & tropes... it's all 'just' crunch - and I can do crunch myself. For someone else though, it could be excellent.

 

[3catcircus]

It depends upon the specific game...

Whether fluff or crunch is better or worse or indifferent is really a function of the game itself.

What I mean by this is that games such as D&D (all versions) are designed such that the crunch and the fluff can be separated with no ill effects to the game itself. That is - you don't *need* the fluff contained in Forgotten Realms to play D&D. You don't *need* a prestige class to describe a Purple Dragon Knight. Because of this, there will be a dichotomy (real or imagined).

Games such as TORG or Twilight:2000, by their very nature, *require* close cooperation between fluff and crunch, while other games require very little.

For example, TORG has rules for stelae, possibility storms, and hardpoints *because* the fluff describing these items *needs* rules to implement them in the game.

In a different way, Twilight:2000 intertwines fluff and crunch - an Order of Battle is both fluff *and* crunch because of the way the rules are written in this game. Yes - it is great to know that 5th Infantry Division included 256th Mech Bde as it's round-out Bde (fluff), when you decide that your character will be a tanker from 256th Mech Bde, but its also great to know that 256th Mech Bde was an ARNG Bde that used M60 tanks instead of M1 tanks, which have different stats in the game (crunch).

My point is this - a game's design determines to what extent the fluff and crunch need and support each other. For D&D, you can get away with minimal fluff if desired. For TORG and TW2K, they rely heavily upon each other. For something like Vampire, you can get away with never rolling a single die during a game session.

 

[Wisdom Penalty]

Crunch is easy, fluff is hard.

Say it with me: Crunch is easy, fluff is hard.

Let me explain myself. The majority of d20 books on the marketplace are written by guys with Engineering degrees and one semester of required English Literature under their belts. In short – these folks can’t write. Pick up one the campaign settings mentioned in this very thread. Look for the italicized “flavor” text. Read.

Yep. You can take the needles out of your eyes, now.

It’s easy, folks, to make up a feat or a spell or a prestige class. Don’t believe me? Go check out the House Rules forum. Pick up a recent Dragon magazine. Go flip through any one of the d20 books at your hobby shop. It’s easy, and it’s been done to death. I’m tired of seeing books advertised by numbers, e.g. “This setting offers 4,312 new feats! We have 17 new races! 62 new classes!” Blah, blah, blah. Insert needle. Again.

And playtesting is a myth. Playtesting doesn’t mean you sat down with your kid sister, your mom, and the kid down the street you used to play Star Frontiers with. You cannot convince me that the majority of these so-called rules supplements have been adequately playtested. Some, by their author’s own admission on these boards, haven’t been playtested at all. Why pay for that drivel?

You think writing fluff is easy? It ain’t. Go check out the Story Hour forum. There are a couple exceptions (very few) in there, but for the most part those stories prove my point: Writing well is difficult. Still uncertain? Read the flavor introduction to a prestige class in any book you’ve got. Read the italicized header before many Dragon articles.

I ask you: Do people really think these vignettes are inspiring?

Sweetbabyjames. Crunch is easy, fluff is hard.

I think some of you new-to-the-hobby folks love your hundreds of new feats and prestige classes. I think older gamers enjoy writing that’s evocative and imaginative. I think the majority, the intellectual middle, like both. There are exceptions, certainly, but those seem to be the norms. D&D is not a video game.

You show me an adventure with a visceral punch-in-the-gut plot hook, and I’ll take it any day over a module with 32 new monsters and 17 templates. You show me a campaign setting that makes me want to dive in and live it, I’ll take it any day over one that offers 14 prestige classes, 32 races, and 11 heroic paths/truebloods/half-feats yada yada yada.

I wonder – is there a campaign setting on the market that offers a blend of great prose with sensible crunch? I’ve read the “popular” settings, and I’ve yet to find it.

The bottom line:

Crunch makes me want to generate a character, fluff makes me want to play one.

W.P.

 

[nothing to see here]

Just out of curiosity, isn't there a "World Builder's Guide" book?

An excellent point DarkLord. While normally I'm a crunch fan -- this is an example of a little examined point. Crunch ages quickly. Good fluff never ages at all...

I never was big into 2nd Edition though a few books still crept up here and there. However the one -- and only -- 2nd edition product that still sees regular use from me -- is the 2nd edition World Builders Guide Bookd...one of the most outstanding books ever produced by TSR/WOTC...

...and, interestingly enough, it's all fluff.

 

[MonsterMash]

Generally I prefer to avoid stuff that is crunch without any context, e.g. the Quintessential books come to mind here, but I do like the things in context, e.g. the variant humans and other races in the Players Guide to the Wilderlands and the extra feats and skills in that book as they fit to the setting.

My main count against crunch is the sheer volume of rules just using the 3 core books gives you, it just seems scary to see how many possible variations there are. I tend to allow very few PrC's IMC and they have to fit the setting and the character. Good fluff to be honest comes to me more from elsewhere than gaming books (e.g. novels, history books, etc) and gives me ideas to incorporate. In my reviews I do try and comment on how I found the writing style and how well stuff fits together.

Personally I don't tend to buy huge amounts of stuff full stop as I like to come up with my own things, but I've only been playing 3/3.5 for about 18 months now so I don't claim to be that sure of the rules and prefer to simplify things by limiting the numbers of options a bit. I have been gaming for a long while (off and on, starting with OD&D in 1977) so its not necessarily a lack of rules understanding.

 

[Psion]

I never was big into 2nd Edition though a few books still crept up here and there. However the one -- and only -- 2nd edition product that still sees regular use from me -- is the 2nd edition World Builders Guide Bookd...one of the most outstanding books ever produced by TSR/WOTC...

...and, interestingly enough, it's all fluff.

It's one of my favorite books too. But it doesn't fit my definition of fluff. Its got tables. And techniques for drawing maps. And ditributions of shops. And things you plug in to make fluff (like the history generation). Very little fluff per se.

 

[Janx]

WotC designed 3.x to be modular and crunchable. Consider it this way, in 2e, it was very clumsy for WotC to introduce new classes (kits, which didn't exist until the first splat book) and new powers.

Then comes 3.x, with its Prestige Class, Feats, and Skills. Now WotC has built in a nice easy way to tack on crunch, and sell you some more books. It's all got a standard interface to develop to. The system was built to be modified by WotC with add-ons.

So that leads us to the over production of Prestige Classes and the like.

Now do I like Crunch or Fluff? Beats me. I play 3e with only the original splat books. I do my own homebrew world. I find myself writing 3-4 page fluff pieces on various classes, and races to introduce them into my campaign and fit them to my world. That includes a wizard's organization, a monk school, and a religion. I had enough crunch from the rules, but I needed my own custom fluff to make it fit my game. Perhaps that's what WotC expects?

Janx