The terms 'fluff' and 'crunch'

[Semah G Noj]

(Apologies to Moochava over at RPG.net whose post I am about to blatantly rip off)


I propose the following replacements to both these and other overused gaming terms:

Fluff --> Pludge. "This game positively oozes with setting-pludge."

Crunch --> Chunder. "The rules offer nice, meaty wedges of chunder that stick in my teeth."

Fluff to crunch ratio --> Plu/Chu Dynamic. "The Plu/Chu Dynamic is off! Quick, stabilize with more plot hooks, or only obese 13-year-olds will buy our products!"

Toolkit --> Holistical Game Design Apparatus. "This isn't a game; it's a holistical game design appratus."

Narrative --> Antinonstoryful. "I prefer antinonstoryful games, and prefer to avoid regular nonstoryful games."

Upgrade (and even more obnoxious, "Reboot") --> Enzytification. "Bob the game is smiling because it just got Enzytified with three more inches of pludge and chunder!"

Obsolete (as in "Oh no! They released a new edition of my favorite game! My old books are now obsolete!" As if RPG books are 8-track cassette decks or something.) --> Funky-retro 70s. "My old books are now funky-retro 70s! Nooo!"

Bucket 'o dice --> Hollow hog's skull o' dice. "What other game but Exalted lets me use d10s and a hollow hog's skull o' dice?"

Rules lite --> Chunderphobic. "Stop goosestepping, you chunderphobic cryptofascist!"

Tactical --> Pludgephobic. "Stop goosestepping, you pludgephobic cryptofascist!"

Goodness (as in "This game provides hours of gaming goodness.") --> Rockassitude. "This game provides microfortnights of gaming rockassitude."

There, now all our terms are useful again. Carry on.

 

[Desdichado]

I like 'em well enough. The only problem is that it's occasionally unclear what someone considers fluff vs. crunch in some cases.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

I have gotten into the habit of calling 'Crunch' crunch, and 'Fluff' Flavor.

My Iron Kingdoms World Guide shipped about half an hour ago, 400 pages of flavor and fluff!

The Auld Grump

 

[Doug McCrae]

'Fluff' to mean 'information about fictional worlds, characters and situations' is objectionable because:

It's undescriptive. Such material is not flimsy, feathery, ephemeral, insubstantial, inconsequential, effortlessly changeable -- it's the substance of the fantasy worlds and games we're talking about.

But imaginary worlds are flimsy, feathery, ephemeral, insubstantial, inconsequential and while not quite effortlessly changeable are still pretty amenable to it. They are castles in the air. Fantasies. Changeable with literally a thought.

To see how silly and demeaning it is, all you have to do is imagine going to your favourite novelist and telling them how much you love their latest fluff.

It seems silly because the distinction is pointlessly applied - novelists don't produce crunch. Or do they? A similiar sort of distinction would be that between hard sci-fi and new wave or space opera. We could take crunch applied to sci-fi novels to mean hard sci-fi. In that sense I'd congratulate Stephen Baxter on his crunch. But condemn his fluff. Or lack of it.

 

[Hurtfultater]

I'm not sure of the provenance of 'crunch', but it may be (at least in part) from Robin Laws's 'crunchy bits'. I don't much like the term myself, but it's not objectionable.

'Fluff' to mean 'information about fictional worlds, characters and situations' is objectionable because:

It's undescriptive. Such material is not flimsy, feathery, ephemeral, insubstantial, inconsequential, effortlessly changeable -- it's the substance of the fantasy worlds and games we're talking about.

Insofar as it is the substance of fantasy worlds and games, isn't it inherantly ephemeral and effortlessly changeable?

It affects discussion negatively by casting such material as ephemeral (and the other senses of the word, such as to err, have no more positive connotations). It has this effect even when used by people who don't mean it that way -- it's just linguistically naive not to realize that words affect discourse.

Words do effect discourse, but the history behind the word and the connotations from its daily use outweigh the linguistic roots. For a more mainstream example, the notions and connotations of 'gay' have precious little to do with its traditional meaning and uncommon uses. To the degree to which it devalues what it describes, that devaluation is probably more informed by the attitudes of those who use it than vice versa.

It doesn't have a generally agreed meaning. I've read many online discussions where people have used it in different senses: with more or less derogative connotation, to mean 'fan fiction', to mean certain kinds of background rather than others... It arose in situations where setting and character was clearly subservient to mechanics, such as in parts of the Warhammer community, where it's still used in that sense.

It doesn't have a generally agreed upon single precise meaning. This doesn't mean it isn't useful in communication or that it's frequently an obstacle to getting information across. Linguistic drift is not a bad thing.

It's silly and demeaning, because logically it frames everyone who ever wrote or imagined anything without game mechanics as a dealer in fluff. To see how silly and demeaning it is, all you have to do is imagine going to your favourite novelist and telling them how much you love their latest fluff.

To say that to a novelist is insulting and silly because you're implying that the novelist is writing game fiction. Most novels, as much as we can agree on the value of art, are just plain better than what's referred to as fluff, especially when divorced from its context. Infinite Jest is better in many important ways than the intro to Paranoia 5th edition. David Foster Wallace would be justified in punching me in the crotch if I said that to him.

It paints the communities where some people use it in a bad light to those outside. What kind of people call non-game-mechanical things 'fluff', this person wonders, and damage is done however often we reassure them it's not derogatory.

I'm pretty sure the damage was done when we got together to pretend to kill orcs. If someone understands the fluff/crunch dichotomy, he's already part of our little fraternity.

 

[shilsen]

No problem. Semantics.

 

[FireLance]

Like TheAuldGrump, I prefer "flavor" to "fluff", but the use of "fluff" doesn't bug me.

 

[Psion]

I don't like "fluff" because it is too imprecise. What I think of as fluff isn't necessarily everything that isn't crunch. Things like locations, planes, and the like, are pretty hard, useful game context stuff that isn't really "fluff" to me.

 

[Izerath]

Huh - never thought I'd see this debate!

Strangely, I have used "fluff" since I was a "gaming" teenager and I used it very much in its true context - i.e. useless verbage. I tend to like the "Flavor" comments made here to stress useful story/background details. I always just referred to it as "good detail" but "flavor" is shorter, succinct and implies something positive.

Crunch means crunch. I don't know where I picked it up, but it's easy to relate it to "hard to digest," which rules can definitely be sometimes.

 

[hong]

I'm not sure of the provenance of 'crunch', but it may be (at least in part) from Robin Laws's 'crunchy bits'. I don't much like the term myself, but it's not objectionable.

'Fluff' to mean 'information about fictional worlds, characters and situations' is objectionable because:

It's silly and demeaning, because logically it frames everyone who ever wrote or imagined anything without game mechanics as a dealer in fluff. To see how silly and demeaning it is, all you have to do is imagine going to your favourite novelist and telling them how much you love their latest fluff.

I dunno, mang. Have you ever called your favourite novelist a fluffer? If you haven't, how do you know how they'll react? Perhaps you should try it. Then come back here and report your results.