ZAK: FLUFF AND CRUNCH



Gene asked me to take a look at a copy of Eberron - the new campaign setting of the D&D game. I guess he wanted to see how salable the ideas found within the book are and on whether there are stuff that can be useful in the other project.



For one thing I think Eberron in a well thought of world. Umm… let me kinda reword that – Eberron is made up of stuff from a jumble of thoughts. I think it was made to clearly resell the D&D/d20 system and try to gain more sales on the existing books that WotC came up with. The book is riddled with tons of different stuff which touches on different books that have been published by WotC for the last three years. One would need to have a complete collection of the said books in order to fully make use of the stuff located in the Eberron books. It’s like one person said “why don’t we put this idea in” “cool!” and they place the idea there. Then later “how about this idea?” – a totally different one” and the reply would be “sweet!” and they place them in so the final product looks like a hodge podge of things. I do have to give credit to Keith Baker (the creator of the setting) for trying to give sense to all the stuff and elements that was put in the setting – regions, houses, intrigue and such. A good DM might be able to find, sort and modify all the stuff he needs in his campaign but otherwise it’s going to be a nightmare for some.



Basically, for me, much of the book was FLUFF. Too many interesting things were described but not enough explanation was given as to how to enable players and DMs to use them in their games. I guess I would fall into those type of players who have more need of CRUNCH (game mechanics) rather than FLUFF coz I think almost 20 years of gaming experience can enable one to easily make up his own setting and storylines and yet, it would take a great game designer to find new ways of using the d20 system to it’s full advantage.