Short Background: After a few sessions of 4th Edition D&D, my group stopped gaming until we decided to go the OSR route. We are happier for it. So, I never read more than the 4e PHB and no official D&D product since.

I remember the long and often tedious debates on crunch vs. fluff on ENWorld many years ago. I also remember people telling me certain later editions were objectively superior to previous editions. I really don't want to get into the debate. What I do wonder is, what is your opinion of where D&D is in general in regards to fluff vs. crunch? Let's say 3e was 80% Crunch vs. 20% Fluff when we include settings, supplements, splat books, etc.. Where was 4e? Where is 5e? Do you think the pendulum is swinging back the other direction? In regards to OSR in general, I get the feeling there is a greater focus on fluff. We see lots of setting material and even some games, whose mechanics aren't massively different, seem more focused on setting than rules. What are your impressions?

My impression: You are a glutton for punishment asking these questions. LOL


Edit - I'll try to give my opinion later tonight after my commute and nightly rituals.

From what little I have seen of 5e, neither the crunch nor the fluff are to my taste. Remember that 0D&D was almost all crunch as first published.

I do think the pendulum is swinging back towards fluff rather than crunch. Setting and description seem to be gaining some ascendence of endless pages of mechanics.

Ive made no attempt to conceal just how much I HATE 5e's fluff text. Though most of it is confined to the Monster Manual which is page after page of not just fluff, but probably 75% or more useless wasted fluff. I just ignore it all and focus on the actual game stats and mechanics. Its rather pathetic that older editions got across more useful data in a freaking paragraph than the 5e MM does with sometimes whole pages of prose.

The PHB has a little in the race and class section. but its nowhere near as bad as the MM. Overall useful.

The DMG is near pure data aside from some fluffing of that big outer planes chapter. But even there its at least a little descriptive and useful.

YMMV of course.

The Adventurers Guide to the Forgotten Realms is like 90% prose. Not even fluff. Its travelogues and accounts. Short stories. Its not till the back of the book you get some game mechanics. Od sau overall though the prose gets across the feel of the setting. But its often so information starved that you can walk away after reading it and have gained nearly no new knowledge other than maybee some shifts in the political makeup of areas.

D&D is un-necessary abstracted crunch in most editions. People love it though.

Are "fluff" and "crunch" mutually exclusive categories? Anything I consider to be any good contains both. Anything that is strictly one or the other I consider crap.

Quote from: Lunamancer;915521Are "fluff" and "crunch" mutually exclusive categories? Anything I consider to be any good contains both. Anything that is strictly one or the other I consider crap.

I think that depends on what you like. I think Pundit, for example, based on his comments about designing settings, likes fluff and crunch that are integrated. The crunch rules are based on, work with, reinforce, and depend on the fluff, and vice versa. Lots of people like this.

I don't want different rules for wild west and fantasy and modern and sci-fi. So I like fluff and crunch as mutually exclusive. The closest I get to mixing them is what magic/psionic spells exist. (In my homebrew, in the basic rules, I have 5 spells.)

YMMV

PS - Commas rule!

I think there's a problem with trying to label games based on how much space the rule books devote to crunch vs. fluff. You need to know what kind of fluff and what kind of crunch. There are three levels of fluff (no game effect, game effect without mechanical effect, and tied to mechanical effect,) and multiple degrees of crunch (based on how many steps there are to the crunch and how much synergy there is between different subsystems.)

For example, OD&D is a fairly low-degree crunch, even if it devotes a substantial amount of space to crunch. And there's practically no synergy effects. But it seems high crunch if all you are doing is counting paragraphs to figure out percentage of crunch.

5E is the mechanically the least complex edition of D&D since 2E. I'd suggest it's even lighter than 1E AD&D rules as written.

I disagree with the premise that crunch and fluff are mutually exclusive. The AD&D DMG is chock full of mechanics and sub-systems. It's also full of miscellaneous setting stuff like gem types, herbs, and tables of craftsmen. It has more of both than B/X D&D.

Quote from: Lunamancer;915521Are "fluff" and "crunch" mutually exclusive categories? Anything I consider to be any good contains both. Anything that is strictly one or the other I consider crap.

As I intended the question, they are not mutually exclusive. As a for instance: a new campaign setting book comes out and it contains feats, skill and classes based on geography, locales, and new rules for weather and say ship to ship combat.

I see the trend towards lighter, fewer rules in general and the money being made by the fluff department.

A pet peeve of mine however is the practice of slowly leaking out fluff a bit at a time. (aka. FFG Star Wars is terrible about this)
Wherein months may go by before a supplement is offered covering a key part of the game setting. As a GM there is a good chance I have already generated info about the subject of the supplement and now have an official but alternate version conflicting. I know, I know, make it your own but its annoying.

5e, 1e, 2e, 3e, 4e - from Fluffiest to Crunchiest.

To WHAT degree... well to me, most DM's make what they want out of it depending on their tastes. Time matters too. I wouldn't play 1e/2e today the same way I played it back then (I'd make it lighter in many respects). Same is true of 3e. That's a reflection of as much of where I'm at today as a GM as it is of the system.

Quote from: rgrove0172;915555A pet peeve of mine however is the practice of slowly leaking out fluff a bit at a time. (aka. FFG Star Wars is terrible about this)
Wherein months may go by before a supplement is offered covering a key part of the game setting. As a GM there is a good chance I have already generated info about the subject of the supplement and now have an official but alternate version conflicting. I know, I know, make it your own but its annoying.

I would agree with you in premise - only FFG has been cranking out books for it's Star Wars line. Dunno about you - but I've got two full shelves of their product all of which is seeing good use. The only company leaking shit out slowly in this model is Wizards of the Coast.

Quote from: tenbones;9155765e, 1e, 2e, 3e, 4e - from Fluffiest to Crunchiest.

To WHAT degree... well to me, most DM's make what they want out of it depending on their tastes. Time matters too. I wouldn't play 1e/2e today the same way I played it back then (I'd make it lighter in many respects). Same is true of 3e. That's a reflection of as much of where I'm at today as a GM as it is of the system.

Yeah, we all change. When my current group started, I was a much busier man, going back to school for a second career after deciding what I wanted to do when I grew up. And, since no one else wanted to GM, I took the job, but promised only published adventures. Everyone was game. As a kid and all the way through my first round of university, I was all about homebrewing. Now, I can go either way. I like published settings. I like to mine them for ideas. When my current group gets ready for something new, I think I'll run BECMI in The Scarred Lands sand box.

Quote from: Harlock;915544As I intended the question, they are not mutually exclusive. As a for instance: a new campaign setting book comes out and it contains feats, skill and classes based on geography, locales, and new rules for weather and say ship to ship combat.

Ehh... that's not really getting at the heart of what I said. I realize any given book can have both crunch parts and fluff parts. You make that clear when you talk about 3E, for example, being 80% crunch and 20% fluff. I'm not talking about the book. I'm talking about the parts themselves. What I like to see is at least 85% crunch and at least 85% fluff. It adds up to more than 100% because at least 70% of what's in there is simultaneously crunch and fluff.

An example of something that is both, perhaps not the best example, but an example nonetheless, would be sit-mod guidelines. If certain situations happen to arise, whether directly due to the specifics of an action taken by a PC or NPC as described by the controlling player, or just flows organically from the ongoing narrative, then these modifiers happen to apply. So a sit-mod might be "firing at a target that is moving rapidly/erratically, -3 to hit"--if that is what's happening in the game, the GM applies the modifier. I consider this both because it's connecting the narrative fluff to the mechanics crunch.

This is as opposed to the player announcing, "I'm taking the evasive maneuvers action (or using the evasive maneuvers feat)"

So abstract, 1-minute combat rounds where the system only produces bottom-line results, where players/GMs are free to describe the action as they see fit because it doesn't really alter the mechanics, is pretty fluffy. A GM who offers a bonus to the standard mechanics as a reward for especially good description is still a fluff-system--even though the fluff in some sense has mechanical effect, the mechanical effect does not distinguish the content of the fluff. In fact, the mechanical effect merely encourages more fluff.

A more detailed combat system, filled with game-defined options like "smash attack", "sweep", "hold-at-bay", etc is crunchy. These options are selected without necessarily deferring to the narrative at all and require no descriptive element. Some groups can certainly add a bit of flare, as long as it doesn't cross any lines. Nor does it have any mechanical effect. What both fluff and crunch have in common is a disconnect between narrative and mechanics.

A combat system that fits both might have players narrate what their characters are doing and the GM adjudicates the results. The game system supports this by providing solid guidelines (like the aforementioned sit-mods) and also explain character abilities in such a way that it's possible to extrapolate in unusual circumstances why those abilities may be enhanced or hindered. So a character with a +2 magical defense bonus due to supernatural speed might become a +4 bonus when the character is under the influence of a haste, +1 when under the influence of a slow, even if the ability doesn't specifically stipulate that. It follows logically from the ability's definition. This is as opposed to a +2 defense bonus with no specific cause and thus no specific basis to vary according to circumstance.