The terms 'fluff' and 'crunch'

[Raven Crowking]

Got some octopi and worms and elephant trunks that're gonna disagree with you. So, clearly, meat without bones is functional, if wierd; bones without meat just lie there.

Of course, using that analogy/terminology, we can expand it in some interesting ways.

• "octopus gaming" is the quest to remove all but the vistigial elements of the "bones", while still having an RPG (rather than a storytelling exercise)
• you could distinguish between "endoskeletonal" and "exoskeletonal" RPGs--the former start with rules and wrap a setting around them, the latter start with a setting and wrap some rules around them
• a "compound fracture" describes an element of the rules of a game that breaks the setting.
• truly radical innovations (perhaps De Profundis qualifies?) might be the equivalent of plants, where the means of movement is completely different, and neither meat nor bones are present
• i want to do something with "transplants" and/or "organs" here, but i'm not sure what that analogizes to
• similarly, seems like hamburger or butchering ought to fit in here somehow...

Your octopi and worms might have a case; your elephant trunk is anchored to a magnificent specimen of bone.

While your extention of the analogy might have been in jest, I think that it demonstrates the relative usefulness of the terms I suggested. I would assume that a "compound fracture" would be more "setting materials that break the rules" like some of the Forgotten Realms material did in 2nd Ed. Elminister gets this power because he's Elminster. Spellfire would be another compound fracture.

There's even a disease in which injured muscle is converted to bone. (To be honest, that one scared the beejebus out of me!)


RC

 

[tetsujin28]

Got some octopi

*ahem* [pedant]octopodes [/pedant]

 

[fanboy2000]

It is if you define it as so--which i thought the terms "fluff" and "crunch" implicitly did.

Ok. I'll give you that. Of course, putting everything in an RPG book into two categories, while obvious, isn't useful for more specific discussions about a book's contents.

Sense Psion is a reviewer, I imagine he runs into that problem more than most of us.

 

[Gez]

Rules and background.
Mechanics and description.
Options and information.

I never use crunch and fluff anyway, since I see them only on messageboards. It would be like saying "lol" or "woot" instead of typing them up in chatrooms.

 

[fusangite]

And "crunch" implies dry, uninteresting, complexity.

Funny, I'd always associated it with chocolate bar and breakfast cereal ads on TV. It never once crossed my mind that people generally associated "crunch" with complexity, dryness or lack of interest.

Of course "fluff" is derogatory. So's "crunch". That's the whole point.

I have heard people insult novels, comedy routines, movies, self-help books, modern philosophies -- basically any literary work on the grounds that it is "fluff." I have never heard anyone use "crunch" or "crunchy" as an insult for anything other than food that is supposed to be soft. Have you?

Can you articulate how the terms "fluff" and "crunch", applied as an absolute dichotomy, implies/enshrines/promotes one playstyle, and what that playstyle is? It's not obvious to me, and it hadn't occurred to me prior to the above-quoted post of yours. And it's not clear to me what you mean--perhaps a specific example and/or counter-example?

When I generate a campaign world, the rules represent the physics of the world. If the rules have four terrestrial elements, then, of course, the universe has four terrestrial elements. If the rules break and become incoherent when inflation takes place, then value must inhere in objects, not in transactions. If the rules give people souls separate from their bodies, then the world must be one in which the soul and body are separate and different.

The idea that the actual description of the world is somehow and insubstantial and highly malleable thing that can simply be superimposed on top of any remotely compatible set of rules, then the assumption is that the rules are not the physics of the world. This is a real problem because essentially the kind of world in which the game takes place is like the modern world in that there is a jarring disjunction between physics and metaphysics that will lead to a certain kind of relationship to divinities, philosophy and cognition as a whole.

For a world to have credibility for me, the rules should represent the physical laws of the universe. When we treat all explanatory texts for the universe's physics and "fluff" and we treat the physics themselves as "crunch" then, what we are saying is that conformity between how the world is and how the world is explained/understood aren't expected to conform to one another.

 

[jasper]

Different? .... Is a table for randomly generating weight/height for a fantasy race rules or flavor text? ...flavor text. ..."rules" ....

--what an elf looks like isn't "flavor text" because it's a definite, defined element of the setting being described. ..."--flavor text already has a defined meaning in literature circles, which doesn't seem to be immediately useful in RPGs.

In fact, my recollection is that "fluff" and "crunch" arose in part specifically to combat the ambiguity and omissions of a "rules"/"flavor text" dichotomy--since i recall those terms being used earlier.

Call a chart rule or flavor text I won't argue with your view pt. I would add a third word called charts. A chart is either a necessary chart (saving throw) or optional chart to help with game play aka potion mixing chart, treasure chart etc.

Flavor text has been used since I got into the game lot time ago at a high school not so far away. With flavor text being anything which help define the rules or world.
So we swap two words which one has a clear meaning rules and one people can argue over. To two words which are just jargon and sound like advertising words.

Literature has nothing to RPGs. Each hobby, lifestyle, career, etc has words which mean something specfic when talking to others in the same field but mean something else to the general public. The general public knows exactly what you are talking when you say rules.

 

[Desdichado]

Perhaps your history lesson is correct, and perhaps for some crunch implies "dry, uninteresting, complexity". I would imagine, however, that few people who use the term "crunch" see it in that way, whereas the term "fluff" is generally agreed to be derogatory. It is my experience that most people view "crunch" as implying substance and "fluff" as implying a lack thereof.

Well, yeah, if you're a fan of crunch, that's what you do.

And lots of people are, especially in the D&D subset of RPG fandom.

For what it's worth, this topic comes up periodically here. I've never seen it at rpg.net (although, granted, I don't spend as much time there) where fans of fluff are a bit more the norm. I'm not sure what that means, but it could be interpreted to mean that in an environment in which crunch is relatively more valued (i.e., D&D) that fans of fluff are a bit overly sensitive to perceived insult.

But I'm not sure that I'm making that argument, or that I believe that. It is, however, an interesting observation.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Joshua,

Personally, I don't take offense to the terms "fluff" and "crunch," although I do think that the terminology affects how one views the game. Everything that we experience, we tend to filter through language, and language is never exacting. A noun, for example, is defined as a word that describes a person, place, or thing. We tend to think of the nouns we use as objective. In reality, though, the noun describes the subjective relationship between the speaker and the object, and is interpreted through the subjective relationships between the listener and the object, and the speaker and listener.

The terms "fluff" and "crunch" imply a greater value on the "crunch." By extension, leveling up -- acquiring new crunch -- becomes more important than the story through which one levels up. The rapid proliferation of XPs and levels in 3.X is a testimony to the prevelance of this sort of thinking.

Likewise, we find DMs being pressed to allow options (crunch) into their games, whether or not it fits well into their campaign setting (fluff). These boards offer numerous examples of this trend.

"Meat" and "bones" offer a better paradigm for viewing rpg material, I think, because both terms are weighty, and the relationship between the terms themselves mirrors to some degree the relationship between world-building and rules in a well-run rpg.


RC

 

[Desdichado]

Personally, I don't take offense to the terms "fluff" and "crunch," although I do think that the terminology affects how one views the game. Everything that we experience, we tend to filter through language, and language is never exacting. A noun, for example, is defined as a word that describes a person, place, or thing. We tend to think of the nouns we use as objective. In reality, though, the noun describes the subjective relationship between the speaker and the object, and is interpreted through the subjective relationships between the listener and the object, and the speaker and listener.

I do not disagree. Which leads to...

The terms "fluff" and "crunch" imply a greater value on the "crunch." By extension, leveling up -- acquiring new crunch -- becomes more important than the story through which one levels up. The rapid proliferation of XPs and levels in 3.X is a testimony to the prevelance of this sort of thinking.

The evidence on this thread alone to say nothing of the combined evidence of years of Internet discussion of RPGs should quite clearly demonstrate that that implication is not ubiquitously perceived, though. In other words, it's a subjective interpretation based on prior experiences or preconcieved notions. The word fluff or fluffy is not inherently offensive. Many fans of the more "fluffy" products, including myself, are not offended, nor do we perceive this implied slight. Over at rpg.net, which on average seems to value "fluffy" products even moreso than here, the terms are used constantly without offense being given.

I don't know what they do at the Forge, which eschew "crunchy" games like the plague, but then again, they're largely too pretentious to be caught dead using such colloquial terms anyway.

 

[tetsujin28]

The terms "fluff" and "crunch" imply a greater value on the "crunch."

I do place more value on crunch. Fluff I can come up with any day of the week, but I don't have the time to come up with loads of cool rules.