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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 2114785" data-attributes="member: 7240">So much to respond to...1. I never asserted that "fluff" has inherently derogatory connotations. I said that "fluff" has a meaning that indicates lack of substance. There are some situations in which lack of substance is a good or neutral thing; in those situations, "fluff" is not derogatory. However, in situations wherein lack of substance is a bad thing, "fluff" becomes derogatory. I think this is, again, pretty basic in our ideas of language. If I'm talking about a football outfit and I call it "well-padded," I'm complimenting the outfit. If I'm talking about a woman I met on a blind date and I call her "well-padded," I'm not complimenting her. I'm saying something pejorative. This doesn't make "well-padded" inherently derogatory but we can rely on the fact that if one is discussing a potential sexual partner, leaving aside those of us with fat fetishes, "well-padded" is always bad. 2. The term "fluff" is really not old enough to have developed a completely independent definition for gaming situations that is disassociated from its more general meaning. It's been in use for, what, ten years? Leaving aside ebonic slang, how many words can you think of that have developed a new usage context in the past decade whose meaning in this new context is thoroughly or even partially disassociated from the term's more general meaning? I'm sorry but I don't think most people approach "fluff" in gaming discourse as though it's an unrelated homonym of this word "fluff" that means, according to dictionary.com:I don't think that's evidence in the way you're reading it. All we know is that what these people are discussing is important and relevant enough to them that they're not interested in turning the discussion into a lengthy digression about terminology. For instance, if I were involved in such a discussion, I would use the terms even though I don't like them because they are the tools that are readily to hand.I wouldn't play RPGs if these things were mutually exclusive. A good set of rules represents the physical laws of the universe in a way that facilitates game play. In fact, I would argue, if your rules don't represent the physical laws of the game world to a certain degree, they cannot facilitate game play because there would be no sense of simulation.Agreed. They model the physics of the fantasy world in which you are playing, to an okay degree. After all, if the physics of the game world and the real world matched, there would be no magic, etc.Thanks hurfultater. I was making this point a few pages back but it got lost in the shuffle.That's a criticism I have of D&D. And I am often appalled when in both published setting materials and regular campaigns, GMs and writers describe NPCs and events that cannot be modeled in the rules. My latest complaint is that my GM my current D&D campaign had an NPC permanently mutilated in a way that the hit points and healing mechanics don't allow. So, when I run D&D, I try to have as few situations as possible where what is going on can't be modeled in the rules. For the campaign I'm currently running, I'm using self-designed system to avoid that problem. But when I run D&D, I try to make sure the setting is consistent with the rules; doing so helps everybody's suspension of disbelief.You're arguing with me on the cross-gender character thread too so expect the same thing there imminently. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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