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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snoweel" data-source="post: 5045568" data-attributes="member: 4453">No, I think you're crediting me with assumptions I'm not standing on. Of course I may be resting on assumptions neither of us are aware of. Welcome to humanity.I think you see me making a statement of absolutes where I am intending to portray a grey area.I am saying it is possible to both have too much fluff in the core books, as well as to have too little.I tried to illustrate this by saying that while you and others in this thread feel there is not enough fluff in the core books, there are certainly others who feel there is too much. The inference being that WotC can't please everybody.As little fluff as there is, I feel it does crowd out a DM's ability to build his own setting, to the point where I now start with canon and build from there. I genuinely believe it is impractical to overwrite canon too much, so the less canon in the core books the better.However, I do like some fluff in the core books because then, instead of writing a setting guide, I can just say "If it's in D&D it's in the setting." I can then go on to say "But the differences are this, this and this" without having to scour the core books looking for all the ways that my setting might conflict with canon. The more fluff there is, the more I have to account for when world-building.Basically I'm saying there is a happy medium.They certainly do. But you only know to tell the players "Orcs are different" because you know their expectations of orcs - and their expectations of orcs come from the core books (among other places).The more core fluff there is, the more you need to be across it yourself, because your players probably will be. Herein lies the problem with more fluff. Some of us are just not interested in memorising a setting's canon beyond the merest bare bones. The fluff in the core books I'm happy with; the fluff from any 2nd edition setting, forget about it.Well this is all true but it's easy enough to say "All you know is what's in the core books (plus or minus what's on this A4 page)." That immediately does away with LotR and other IP, and innate Western cultural chauvenism is always going to be an issue if the culture of the setting departs from our own too much.But if there were more fluff in the core books that A4 page becomes a 20 page setting bible that can be daunting for some DMs. I'm not interested in doing it, and about eight years ago I had over a hundred pages for my setting.I prefer the term 'hyperbole'.Living in the 21st century is unavoidable (and really does limit players who are unaware of their cultural assumptions); establishing a baseline of more implied setting detail that the DM can meticulously sift through and parse in order to produce his own setting guide is definitely avoidable.Some would say WotC have done it (avoided too much core fluff); others would say they haven't (the theoretical group who believes there is still too much fluff in the core books).Do you believe they're in business to make money?The evidence is that there is a wealth of fluff in Open Grave, the Draconomicons and Dragon magazine.If I, as a DM, don't want to stay current on all of that I can just tell my players "Only what's in books X, Y and Z." Sure the onus is then on the players to 'remember what to forget' but life can be brutal like that. I think 'too expensive' is an incredibly subjective term, is all.</blockquote>

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