As you may know, Martin Rayla of Treasure Table is taking a well deserved month off from writing his daily blog. He’s now slaving away doing NaNoWriMo, writing about whatever it is DMs write about (I suspect Ninjas and Pirates, but that’s just me).
During that time he’s reposting some of his best stuff from the last few years, and I stumbled upon this one this morning:
Applying Stross’s Law (Aug. 2005) – Treasure Tables
In which Martin links to an old Mike Mearls Live Journal entry. There, Mike basically says that a Fluff entry for a Setting element should never go over 2 paragraphs. Not a summary of the fluff, the whole fluff!
Yup, Mike is definitively a Crunch Overlord. That makes me smile… Although I hope there are fluff overlords working on D&D 4e to balance it out…
As much as I tend toward crunch, fluff plays a critical role to make a good game.
Good advice from Mearls.
Two paragraphs for an element should be enough to fully explain something, while still leaving room for it to be expanded on and developed by the players themselves.
Also, I suspect he’s writing Monkey, Ninja, Pirate, Robot: the novel!
Hey that was MY idea!
🙂
2 paragraphs! That’s even more than I write! But I refuse to believe I’m crunchy!
Face it Yax, you’re a Casual Crunch junky…
Come to me ohhh wayward one!
A strong minion, of you, I will make!
Seems that the Crunch Overlords won the 1st round… We’ll see how Settings book look like.