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Nerdarchy > Dungeons & Dragons  > D&D Fluff and Mechanics Make the RPG Go ‘Round

D&D Fluff and Mechanics Make the RPG Go ‘Round

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D&D fluff and mechanicsDebates swirl around the various forums and subreddits in the Dungeons & Dragons community; they’re chief among the interactions we have with each other. These debates often vary in their complexity, but a lot of the disagreement with how to even proceed with the debate itself is based on a misunderstanding some have about what the debate is even about. Is this a ‘flavour’ issue or a ‘rules’ issue? What’s the difference? Does it matter?

In this article, we’ll be delving into what ‘mechanics’ are, what ‘fluff’ is and how changing either can change your D&D game, for good or ill. The hope is that after reading, you should feel a bit more confident in your ability to discuss things, possibly even change things, in your games.

Mechanics move the game along

Mechanics are what we call the ‘meat’ of the game, the thing that makes a game a game. They’re the Hit Dice, damage dice and class features of D&D. Darkvision as a racial trait provides a mechanical benefit: it allows a character to ‘see’ in an area of darkness. What this means usually is that a character can see an enemy or an object just as they could if they were in dim lighting conditions.

Each of these things affects the gameplay, changing what can be achieved as per the rules of the game and what can’t. In games like Settlers of Catan, the mechanics are the dice rolls every turn, the resource spending to increase points and the physical placement of game elements like settlements and roads. These are the things that let you know how to play the game. These things are fairly boring on their own, though.

With purely the mechanics, a game would be Characters AAA, AAB and AAC encountering Challenge 001; AAA rolls 1d6 for his Generic Weapon Attack Damage and deals 5 damage to Target X, after rolling his 1d20 Overcome Challenge die and succeeding.
It’s dry, emotionless and, if taken far enough, confusing. There’s no meaning attached to actions since there’s no setting, no feeling and no context. This is where fluff comes in.

Fluff is imaginative flavour

D&D fluffFluff is the narrative component, the hooks to hang your interest onto. It’s calling the race with darkvision and a bonus to Dexterity an elf. It’s making the wizard’s source of spells a leather bound book. It’s in the differentiation between a grick and a grell.

All of these things are taken for granted with D&D and they form an important part of the culture and the general narrative that most of us take part in. Yes, there are nuances. We have high elves and wood elves and sun elves and so forth, but that’s all within the broader context of the elf, which already comes with cultural contexts – what is known in most circles as semiotics.

We all have an idea of what an elf or a wizard is meant to be (depending on how far back you go in fantasy wargaming and the history of D&D, they used to be one and the same), and this goes into why we name things what we do.

Wizards of the Coast wants to encourage imagination being used, and to encourage it they tap into the collective thoughts of our fantasy media consumption be they books, TV, films, computer games or other tabletop games. Elves are fairly ubiquitous, especially the Tolkienian fantasy elves that are simply supernatural humanoids that are either slightly taller or slightly shorter than Humans. It is in calling these lithe, handsome creatures elves that we begin forming ideas about the game we’re going to play and the world and story around about it. But does calling an elf an elf have anything to do with the mechanics at all?

Interpreting the symbols and signs of D&D

In a way, the semiotics of what an elf is informs some of the mechanics used to describe them in the first place. This fluff provides context for the game mechanics, letting you know what to expect from the mechanics but also letting you understand some of how the mechanics are meant to be used. The elf is a character race, so you’re likely to be portraying all the things described in the elf section if you choose an elf including the mechanics.

The ideas we have about elves tell us that they should be like people but with certain differences like supernatural senses and an affinity for magic. The mechanics tell us that the elven race has supernatural senses in the form of darkvision, and the high elves as a subrace hold this magical affinity we commonly associated with them. There we have it: context for the mechanics. We have a reason for them being there, and we have an idea in our heads that informs the rest of the world.

If there are elves, there’s likely dwarves and wizards – a full fantasy world ready for the adventuring. It sparks the imagination and gets people ready for the game ahead. Differences can occur, and they’re fun, but often because they’re a difference from the expected norms, an exaggeration or adaptation that plays with expectations. Of course, playing with these expectations isn’t simply something reserved for the campaign settings and game systems of the world. Anyone can give it a try, but the questions about what to change and how can be hard to answer. Truly, it depends upon the aim.

Narrative fluff, meet nuts-and-bolts mechanics

The game system Mutants & Masterminds taught me well the key difference between mechanics and fluff. The game system, for those unfamiliar, was a d20 system game in its second edition and had a process for determining the powers and abilities of a character. It made clear that the word ‘powers’ referred primarily to the game mechanic, not the general idea of superpowers, and so could cover more mundane features such as martial arts ability, tools and even natural effects of a species if a sci-fi or fantasy setting was chosen.

On top of that, the powers provided were simple mechanics stripped of most trappings of setting or style; Blast was simply a ranged attack. An attack roll and damage determined by how many points you put into it, that was it, but the fluff was something you provided yourself. It could be a fireball shot from your hand, or a lightning bolt summoned from the sky, or even a mind-controlled enemy punching themselves or one of their allies.

The point is, it’s an instantaneous effect that concludes once the damage is done and regardless of the extras and limitations you place on it, you can drape whatever fluff you want on it. This made me realise that D&D was exactly the same. A shortsword is simply a melee weapon dealing 1d6 damage. If you want to make it deal more damage, you can do. If you want it to deal less, you can do that too. Now, granted, in the more modern incarnations of D&D the shortsword has more to it than those simple rules, and it has other qualities attached, but for the purposes of this article, we’re ignoring that for now. We can add it all in later.

Now, let’s say you want the shortsword to do 1d10. A basic weapon in the game world now does enough to take you from slaughtering badgers to taking out hyenas in a single blow. An increase of 40 percent is significant. It’s now a different game, one where the simple weapon of rogues and elves can do the same damage as a firebolt cantrip. It’s not going to bring down empires anytime soon, but the ability to deal that damage while wielding a shield, or dual-wielding, presents some interesting logistics and is likely to alter some ‘builds’, as some call them.

Of course, more extreme changes to the mechanics can be made, and I’ll likely get into that in a future article, but for now, we’ll leave that there. So… What about the fluff? Can we change that?

Changing the game or world of D&D

Of course we can. I’d recommend starting small before doing anything drastic since we’re messing with the context of the game world and how people approach it and interact with it, but by all means, one can change bits here and there. Of little consequence would be the names and appearances of things. An elf can now be a Vulcan if you like, or you can make up a name for them.

Let’s make up a jackal-faced humanoid and call it an anubite. Already I’ve attached some semiotic significance and hooks that some of you will be using, with Anubis being an Egyptian god with the head of a jackal. As a being of darkness and death, our anubite can see in the dark and has proficiency with Perception. With its Impartial Judge racial attribute, a reworded Fey Ancestry, our new race cannot be put to sleep and has advantage against being charmed. Instead of sleeping, it goes into a trance for 4 hours, and simply reflects on past judgments it has made. From there we can make up some subraces, one of which deals with magic and the other being faster and finds it easy to hide in foliage and mild obscurants. Boom! We have our ‘re-flavoured’ race. It’s an elf mechanically, but one that suits an Egypt-themed mythology and game world. Even with the renamed Impartial Judge ability, it further cements this idea of stoicism and being judgmental, a trait commonly associated with a lot of elves in fantasy.

In the end, you can change mechanics and fluff both. One changes your game, the other changes your world. An anubite dual-wielding d10-dealing shortswords seems like a cool thing to me. Will it upend the game and turn it into an unplayable mess? Only if you think magic weapons doing the same thing would also unbalance things. In short, it won’t. It simply gives you a different game.

So calm your socks, dudes. Do something cool.

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Drew Murray

3 Comments

  • Jim
    August 16, 2017 at 3:30 pm

    Great article!

  • Graham Stewart
    August 23, 2017 at 11:33 am

    Good article and an excellent introduction to the idea of going off the beaten path.

    I’m going to add a little criticism here, and it’s nitpicking because it’s just a case of I think I know what you meant, but what you said is inaccurate.

    “An anubite dual-wielding d10-dealing shortswords seems like a cool thing to me. Will it upend the game and turn it into an unplayable mess? Only if you think magic weapons doing the same thing would also unbalance things. In short, it won’t. It simply gives you a different game.”

    Whether something unbalances the game mechanically is an objective truth rather than a subjective one. It’s perfectly possible for an individual player to think or feel that something is unbalancing the game mechanically, but that doesn’t make it true, and changing the mechanics to account for this could have unfortunate consequences down the line when that player gets a better understanding of the mechanics. So if it’s a feeling of unbalance then the DM needs to deal with the player and how the player is dealing with those mechanics, rather than the mechanics themselves. In essence, a human problem.

    Like I said though, I’m being a nitpicking arsehole and I’m sure you could write an entire article or 5 just on the subject of tweaking mechanics to fit the player group versus tweaking player experience to fit the mechanics.

    Keep up the good work.

    If you are doing a series that continues this theme perhaps a good next subject would be “example pre-made campaigns that do things a little differently from core DnD”, or “an introduction to DnD alternatives that may suit your player group”, or even” converting non-DnD campaigns to DnD for your DnD group”.

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