Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wisdom Penalty" data-source="post: 1700530" data-attributes="member: 13287">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.</blockquote>

Verification