Had a very short Twitter conversation the other day. Inspired this post. The premise is that game designers have a difficult choice when building their systems – the amount of connection between fluff and crunch.

For the uninitiated, “crunch” is the term designers and power gamers use to refer to the hard rules of a game. The +2 from a magic sword, or being “bruised/injured/unconscious”. “Fluff” is the storyline, the roleplaying – the blessed blade of Khadan, or “doubled over with a stinging slice to the gut”.

As Andrew said, “Designers should separate setting/fluff from mechanics, but I know it’s not always possible.” As much as I do agree with that, I think the most devoted, interesting games are going to have those components inextricably intertwined. There are notable exceptions of course, but a game system which does not have fluff injected into its crunch is likely to feel dull and flat.

This is largely dependent upon the players, as observed by some other Tweeps. A group can totally play 4e D&D where every sword swing is described heroically, every spell in intricate detail, every conversation dripping with intrigue. And a Marvel HRPG group can optimize dice and Doom probability while barely touching character development. But at their cores, both of these systems use fluff and crunch to encourage a specific type of play, and in both cases those key elements work in tandem to that end.

I’ll use current best-known system for examples here: 4e D&D. Let’s take the power system. On the surface, and really quite a bit deeper than that, it’s very fluff-less. Remove the title and italic flavor text from a power, and it could be anything to anyone! This is utterly my favorite feature of this system – in fact, it’s what’s driving the reflavored character sheets for my upcoming Avatar: the Last Airbender. But! Let’s also look at themes. All the themes are very heavily fluff-driven, with the mechanics sometimes practically meaningless without the world-building to back it up (Harper Agent, I’m looking at you).

I can think of five systems off the top of my head that all have fluff-free base systems, then build multiple worlds on top of that crunch. White Wolf, FATE, Cortex+, ORC, and Mutants & Masterminds. Let’s take a closer look at M&M. The core system is flavor-less crunch at the extreme. Powers like “Damage” and “Enhanced Ability” say pretty much nothing about your character or the campaign world. But! All the descriptors and reasoning for Hero Points build the fluff around that core. That’s a very flexible central design.

ORC, Cortex+, and WW (I honestly don’t know a lot about FATE) all focus the fluff in character creation. The rules give a framework that becomes familiar in different settings, but the setting defines new rules about how your PC became a part of that world. All White Wolf characters have attributes, skills, and willpower. But only Vampires have Disciplines, only Mages have Arcana, and only Werewolves have Auspices.

I think what I’m saying here is that there’s something for everyone in all of these RPG systems. It’s all in the interpretation. Feel free to ask me questions about the listed systems, in case I can help steer you toward a fluff-driven or crunch-driven roleplaying experience.