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Fluff is better than Crunch
Those Chatty Minions have gotten me thinking about the fluff/crunch debate, and I’ve realized that I believe fluff is far more important than crunch.
For those of you playing along at home, crunch consists of the rules and mechanics of the game, whereas fluff is made up of the flavor, history, and lore of a game.
So why do I think that fluff is more important than crunch? This particular bias goes back to my days in diceless RPGs, where no mechanics existed and we were left with only stories to focus on and fluff to fill the game. But how does that make fluff more important than crunch?
A game of pure fluff can exist, diceless story games like I used to play are proof enough of this. A game of pure crunch, however, cannot exist because the game mechanics are a hollow construct without fluff, and have no content to be applied to them.
Some of you may say, “Wait! BRP is a complete system for play and mechanics without any fluff. And what about RIFTs, GURPs, and HERO?” The system does indeed exist without fluff, and characters can even be generated without touching any element of fluff. Despite this, the moment the game begins, fluff attaches itself, immediately being given form by the setting and game type.
Necessity is one of the greatest markers of importance, and it is one that fluff possesses and crunch does not.
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12 Responses to “Fluff is better than Crunch”
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While I understand your point of view, and while I have absolutely no intention of making this a GNS debate, you must take into account that a portion of players actually like crunch and have started playing RPGs to play with miniatures, dice and the occasional Car Chase mini game.
I myself would die in a diceless, storytelling game…. it actually represents everything I dislike about a RPG.
Granted, fluffed up games are more immersive, and richer in flavour.
I have said time and again on my blog that while I’m a crunch-driven DM/player, my best game featured rich fluff elements.
So I’m an ‘on the fence’ guy. I respect where you come from and I think we’ll agree to disagree on this. But nothing will make me want to shy away from having a game where a player can cry of delight after rolling a critical hit while I entertain the table with my graphic description of the monster’s evisceration…
Peace!
ChattyDm’s last blog post..The Dungeonmaster’s Creed
I didn’t mean to imply I like one more than the other, or even that I prefer one over the other. (Though in specific games and campaigns that may change.)
I meant to say that it seems that fluff is more important to the game itself, as it can’t exist without it. Many games, however, cannot exist without crunch, such as Dungeons and Dragons, or perhaps moreso, Hackmaster.
We’ll get into GNS another time… it’s a model I’ve always perceived as terribly flawed.
Agreed… a game without fluff is Zzzzzz
Actually the Reason I returned to D&D 3.0 was that while I’ve always loved D&Ds fluff, I disliked AD&D 2.0. 3.0’s newer brand of crunch on top of the familiar fluff was like a Super Extra Fudge Sundae with Fluff topings!
ChattyDm’s last blog post..The Dungeonmaster’s Creed
ADnD Second Edition is actually my favorite, with the old boxed sets in a close second. I will admit, however, that the system is entirely too linear to match up with the epic and wide-ranging fluff that the system so desperately wanted to be.
Perhaps its simply that ADnD came out of wargaming, while 3.0/3.5 combined many of the aspects with more roleplaying, shunting much of the extra wargaming aspects of the game to the Miniatures edition of each game.
Planscape, Al-Quadim, Ravenloft… all 2nd Ed Fluff gems! I agree…
I hated the system… and at that time I didn’t care one bit for fluff…
But oddly enough I suffered from that greatly…
I played Gurps Fantasy a lot and hot damn if I didn’t feel like all non-humanoid monsters I created were just rubber suited humans…
I now realized that my games were too crunch oriented and the fluff was so paper thin it bothered even a die-hard crunch junky like myself…
Fell free to link this into the Crunch fluff part of the forum!
ChattyDm’s last blog post..The Dungeonmaster’s Creed
Done. The main text has been copied over to the forum, and can be found here
Planescape was always more than just a setting to me. You can add it onto nearly any other setting (Eberron and Spelljammer being the main exceptions) without any problems or contradictions.
I was somewhat the opposite from you when I started running games - due to my background in gaming I would focus on fluff to nearly the exclusion of all crunchy rules. Fortunately, that’s something which has come into balance since then and I can still tip the scale a little when needed.
I agree. Rules are a useful tool, but play can happen and be rewarding with few to no explicit rules. It is just a bit harder and takes skilled players or people who know each other well.
Tommi Brander’s last blog post..To not railroad
Good point. The fewer the rules, and the more emphasis on fluff, the more trust is required within the party.
Well…
Even diceless story games still have crunch, there must be some rules for the game fiction being accepted - even pure fiat is still crunch.
A RPG must, by definition have both fluff and crunch. Fluff can be made up on the spot but crunch must be agreed upon by all participants.
Cheers
Joe
This comes down to a difference in definitions. To me, crunch is only in place when there are actual mechanics for resolving things. Cooperative story telling or pure fiat don’t fall into this.
Your definition seems to simply be broader than mine. I do not believe than an understanding in and of itself can be truly considered crunch - to me, it seems to ascend above crunch. I can understand why you classify this as crunch, as even in cooperative story telling there is an accepted way of continuing things, even if it is only outlined by the few things which are not allowed.
Does this seem a fair description of our differences?
[…] “RPG Bullshit” Is klar Chekov… […]
“And what about RIFTs, GURPs, and HERO?”
Ironically enough, at least in my case, GURPS is one of the fluffiest games in existence - because I only ever buy the sourcebooks. As we speak, I own about 15 GURPS books - and have never bought or read any of the core rule books.
In my world, GURPS exists solely to provide me coherent setting information all in one place when I don’t feel like raiding Wikipedia for ideas. GURPS Japan helped me run a Sengoku-era Mage (White Wolf) game, and Steampunk was used to run a freeform (ie, no dice, no rules) game a while back.
“I myself would die in a diceless, storytelling game… it actually represents everything I dislike about a RPG.”
I’m the reverse - nearly any game I play, no matter how crunchy, I slowly erode it into fluff. Complicated games get simplified, simple games gradually become diceless, diceless games eventually become freeform.
I’ve always found that if you have skilled players and a GM those players trust to be fair, and all of them are working together to tell an interesting story rather than spending the entire game session trying to one-up each other, the pure-fluff game produced can be incredibly enjoyable. Meanwhile, mechanics-heavy games always bore me, to the point where it might actually turn me off the game entirely. I think TimeLords was a brilliant game, but the system is so complex, I can’t play the game without throwing 99% of the rules out and more or less freeforming the whole damned thing.
You might love a game where a player can cry with delight after rolling a critical hit, but as a player, I was already bored after the third roll of the night. And as a GM, most of my players tended to feel the same.
As trite a cliche as it is, I much prefer “role-playing” over “roll-playing”.
Which is not to say that the crunch > fluff perspective is WRONG, just that it’s never been to my taste. Different strokes, and all.