Argh, I swear I am going to do Part 3 of the Balance discussion. I have been busy lately, and yadda yadda yadda it's not a good excuse, but it is blocked out in my head. I know where I want to go with it and I have been having conversations lately that really have helped flesh the idea out in my head.
But today is not that day. Because today we talk about fluff.
"Fluff," to the non-gamers among my readers (lol "readers") is the backstory of a game. It consists of both the setting-- the world in which the game takes place-- as well as any ongoing narrative involving the characters. Fluff is an interesting thing: in some games, it's incidental, while in others it is integrated into the game itself. And of course, in some games it doesn't really exist: Flames of War is based on history and thus doesn't really have a lot of fluff.
I'm not going to get into the etymology or connotations of the word at this point. Let's just accept it for what it is. Let's talk about the fluff community. Lots and lots of people care about it: some don't, and I think you'll find more gamers who don't care about the fluff than there are fluff nuts who don't care about the game, but it is still important. It's also very divisive and you get endless arguments about it. Go figure. We're gamers on the internet: it's an unholy fusion of two of the most argumentative demographics in existence. Many fluff arguments (at least the most tiresome ones) are driven by patriotism. MY FACTION RULES. YOUR FACTION SUCKS. Whenever I see a thread on a forum asking "Who is the most powerful _____ in the setting?" or "Whose gods are the most powerful?" or "Which faction do you think is weakest in the fluff?" I just shake my head and sigh. You are never going to convince a Space Marine player that an Aspect Warrior should be able to kill a Space Marine, so stop trying. (Personally, I'd side with the Space Marine on that score). You are never going to convince a die-hard Protectorate player that Stryker is awesome. It's just a thing.
Another subset of fluff friction is the idea of continuity. Warhammer 40k in particular gets lambasted a lot for this, mostly due to the massive and sprawling backstory that has undergone many, many, many major revisions and retcons. Privateer has had relatively minor continuity gaffes and in any event most gamers are mature enough to handle the concept of a retcon and understand its necessity. I think more of the criticism of 40k's fluff comes from the abrupt tonal shifts between the melancholy tragedy of the Eldar book, the ultra-jingoism of the Space Marine book and the cartoonish violence of the Ork and Dark Eldar books. Expecting a setting with as much printed material as 40k (not to mention as many authors) to maintain a constant tone throughout is not only preposterous but also unnecessary, given the diversity of points of view within the universe.
The one kind of fluff criticism or argument that I find valid pivots on the inescapable fact that fluff is meant to accompany a game. Certain things can't happen: for example, in backgrounds like PP's (with an ongoing narrative) some characters will not die. Expecting them to is silly. Some of this is the aforementioned faction patriotism; if anyone actually expected Stryker to die in the Legends fluff, they clearly weren't really familiar with the setting yet. But drama requires conflicts, and sometimes narrow escapes grow tiresome when they're repeated over and over and over again. PP has done a good job of mostly evading this, and several characters that can't show up on the tabletop have been killed, exiled or otherwise incapacitated. But sometimes characters have to hold the Stupid Stick so the plot can advance. This is something that fantasy fans (and I assume many gamers are also fantasy fans, which I do not think is an unreasonable assumption to make) should be used to, as it shows up in movies and books all the time.
Somehow it's harder to accept for some people when the characters in question are not only favorites but also your representatives on the table. "Caine should be smarter than that!" you think, and maybe next time you pull Caine out of the case you narrow your eyes a little at him. "Don't screw this up like you did last time," you mutter, and maybe you see a tiny flash of shame in his painted eyes. Caine didn't screw it up. Caine did what he had to do so there'd still be a game. But it's a mark of how invested you are in the setting that you can picture it going the other way, and you can have a wistful moment of regret that he didn't quite manage the finishing blow.
Lastly, if you link to TVTropes in the comments of this or any other post I will IP ban you as soon as I figure out how. Keep that garbage off my blog. Ye been warned.
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