If it isn’t explicitly laid out in the fluff, some GM’s brains go into comatose. So lack of fluff means room for creativity.

Jonathan Drain’s D&D Blog’s last post: 7 Habits of a Successful Dungeon Master

Mea: I’d actually forgotten about the lore checks, I love those as a way to read information because it really gives you a progression of detail based on what DC the characters can reach with their skill. Also something just reads nicely about the monsters going from general to specifics, like a natural process of education even for the DM.

Where does most of the fluff actually come in in my oppinion? Read those Lore Checks.

I think the people might be making a real point if they said that this reduced fluff put the new DM at a disadvantage. Without a rich back history they might not easily be able to define what they want drow to be in “their world”. But really.. how many of us DM the first time we ever play D&D. There’s a smaller portion of the small. And, still more importantly, at least the DM reading the book shouldn’t be mind boggled at the mechanics like previous editions. And the Fresh off the printing rom floor DM would probably have fresh players too.

Besides, many DMs rewrite the fluff to fit their own worlds anyways, so by not including it in the PHB and MM, they just saved space.

Looking forward to the campaign settings for some good fluff. (And shifty shifters shifting while shifted).

Now, if you’re going to create an interesting monster, I’d like to know a little bit about how it fights, etc. But that’s about it.

Mearls said specifically in the talks that they were trying to leverage D&D’s main strength: that you can make stuff up, and tried to limit barriers to that (like his example about creating a new Abyssal layer for Orcus’s Zombie Closet instead of having to worry that it already existed.)

Its also worth mentioning that the Dramicon (dragon book… however you spell it) will most likely contain tons of Dragonborn fluff.

I find Earthdawn’s step system of dice rolling brilliant and easy to use. However, too many character abilities seem to be focused on one aspect of the game fluff (Horrors). It would be a lot of trouble to come up with useful equivalents for all the abilities you’d have to strip out of the game if you decided to use the rules as a generic D&D dungeon-crawl or if you wanted to re-create a setting like Dragonlance or Middle Earth.

Having said that, I really do enjoy fluff. Over on You Meet In A Tavern (http://www.ymiat.com/index.php?topic=1222.20), I’ve even pulled fluff from Earthdawn into my Worldbuilding in 10 Easy Steps post. Heck, I buy Warhammer & 40K game books and codices just for the fluff. But fluff should be kept seperate from the mechanics, and this is where 4E is succeeding.

Rather than come out with a million setting-specific splatbooks, WotC is limiting how many books are released for each setting. Each setting gets a player’s guide, campaign book, and an adventure. That’s it. Everything else gets added to the basic rule set that any DM can use without having to buy a campaign setting.

Now, we all know that this is going to go out the window when Eberron is released in 2009. But I have hopes for the system, because WotC is splitting their book types into crunch and fluff, with fluff books being “editionless”. Their goal with this is that when 5E rolls around in 5 – 8 years, people can continue using fluff books without worrying about invalidating half of it’s contents. So additional setting books may just end up being fluff updates.

For example a random turn to page 136 tells us that “Bugbears often decapitate their foes to honour their greatest hero, Hruggek, who is known to decapitate his enemies”.

Now, it might not be world-class fluff, but it’s there, and there’s lots of it – each one is a potential clue or adventure hook. Good stuff.

In contrast, the PHB feels like we’re only getting half a story. There’s Races that reference Planes and ancient Empires. There’s Gods who have worshippers, but no central fluffy world to tie it all together. “Points of Light” is a great campaign concept, but it was a mistake to treat it like it’s the entire gameworld. PoL-style gaming would work in Greyhawk, the Realms, Sigil, or wherever – it’s a technique, not a setting. It would have helped new players (and new gaming groups as a whole) if the was some easy-to-revise-or-revoke starting setting outlined in the PHB. Both Shadowfell & Fallcrest and The Nentir Vale (from the DMG) fix that though, so it’s all good

Marcel Beaudoin’s last post: Long Weekends

I’m sure they’ll release more lore & info eventually, I’m in no huge rush.