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Message: <blockquote data-quote="rounser" data-source="post: 376975" data-attributes="member: 1106">I have a theory as to why the "crunch good, fluff bad" situation we're in has arisen.Most crunch is generic, and therefore useful to most people.  Designers haven't mastered the art of producing generic fluff, such as a detailed village with no name and no macro level assumptions about the campaign world, but interesting NPCs, stores to buy stuff, and plot hooks.I suspect that this is because when designers get into "fluff mode", they want to stamp their mark of ownership all over it, and perhaps dictate the use of their creation.  Why else give a city designed to slot into any campaign a name?  That's not the designer's role, they've overstepped the bounds - the DM wants to make that city his or her own, and naming it and making assumptions about the DM's world just get in the way of that....perhaps to the point where they'll just put down the book or magazine because there's too much reworking or ignoring to do to make it fit their world.If Dragon ran a "Village-A-Month" series or a "Lair-A-Month" series, and kept them generic and modular, unnamed (though perhaps with a descriptive name designed to be replaced, such as "Village in the meadows" or "Desert nomad camp") yet interesting at a low level, they might find their audience getting more use out of them than yet another slice of crunch.  (Generic in the sense that it's non-setting specific and doesn't make assumptions about the campaign world, not generic in the sense that it's unimaginative or dull.)  I doubt it would be stepping on Dungeons' toes - the difference is that Dungeon specialises in plotted adventures, whereas like the WotC site's "Map-A-Week" series, these are more like campaign components.  Setting lego blocks, if you will...but still "fluff".Perhaps to make fluff compete with crunch again, the d20 community needs to rethink how it creates fluff.</blockquote>

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