"Wargaming Fluff - Do we need it and how can we do it better" Topic

I've been doing some thinking about wargaming fluff and how to do it better (I'm a writer – so these odd thoughts hit me often).

Do we need it? Is it essential?

I put my thoughts (and some tips) here: link

A good fluffy article

Spray it green and add it to the terrain……..

I could never see the point of fluff. Made no difference to the games I've played.

But, at the risk of starting wild howls of derision, I always thought the WH40K background, especially the Horus Heresey stuff, was fantastically well realised. Really, I did!

John

That's a really god article – thoughtful and well written.

It's been said that GW's fluff is excellent for its target audience, drawing them into a rich and vibrant imaginary universe to the point that they don't notice how clunky and tedious the actual rules are.

I really like the Warhammer 40K fluff. It seems to have captured a lot of things that I was trying to create as a teen in D&D, although taking them a lot further than I would have done or wanted to do at the time.

"I could never see the point of fluff. Made no difference to the games I've played."

I disagree with this statement for myself. Fluff is probably the single most important thing to me. If Infinity had better fluff I'd probably play it all the time.

As a historical gamer the fluff is the most important part. I don't really play periods that I'm not interested in as it is difficult to get the motivation to paint all the figures without reading about the history.

I think this is true for sci-fi stuff for me as well. If you have a well crafted story I want to game it just like if there is an interesting story in history I want to game it.

Wargaming "Fluff" is all there is that is going to be around after the game is long gone. If you don't write battle reports and write the fluff you will never remember the game.

Besides, I run a whole Yahoo Group, Society of Daisy devoted to Fluff in war games. That is creating all the wonderful back stories to Imagi-nations. In fact, our quarterly newsletter is devoted to this and how to do it, how to create it, and how to write it,

The game is over in a few hours. The stories you leave behind and read and re-read, write and re-write is the really interesting part of the game. Princess Trixie of Sax-Burlap und Schleswig-Beerstein, The Prince of Zweibak, The Prince of Sax-Hillbilliehausen, Grand Admiral Louis von Battenhatch, and the Grand Duke of the Grand Duch of Gorgonzola are all characters that I have come to know and love, and the battle reports and reports of intrigue are the substance we use to remember the great deeds of these persons.

In my fantasy games, fluff makes it fun. Otherwise, it is just pushing toy figures across a table, rolling dice, and eating chips while drinking soda. It gives a reason, and mostivation, to the game. I also use the results in my RPG sessions, to give direction for the ongoing campaign. Without the fluff, I would see it as just pushing pawns in a glorified checkers game (actually, it would be more like a game of "Go"). YMMV. Cheers!

OSchmidt – I applied to join Society of Daisy – sounds like huge fun.

For me fluff is very important. It puts things in to perspective – keeps the game flowing and gives me a reason to play.

Like Sgt Slag said – otherwise it would just be Go or Chess.

But I do so hate bad fluff. Of fluff done for the sake of fluff.

And like others – I think WH40K does SOME fluff well (and some really bad)

Yeah … I'm with Sgt Slag …

I agree with everything Pictors Studio said, except the part about liking 40K.
But he is absolutely correct about needing the back story to truly appreciate the game.

I played extensively in a play by mail Diplomacy game called "Slobbovia". The "strakh" (fluff) was totally the point of the game, while the game itself was deliberately designed to be unwinnable in the traditional Diplomacy way of acquiring the majority of supply centers. When you came close, your "empire" simply broke up in a revolt.

Now, of course this brings up the GM who refuses to allow the gamer to act in a way he considers un-historical. That annoys me, but he is guarding HIS fluff. Sometimes a bit too zealously, but still… That deserves a little respect, even when he is wrong.

Simple fluff is imagination, imagination is somthing we gamers are endowed with in large amounts. So its all good. How that fluff is used can be a deciding factor though. EE does the worst thing using it to make the gullible buy more expensive merchandise ;-< I loved EE/GW old Rouge Trader as it had all the ingredients to allow you to create your own divergent fluff (unlike today's authorized fluff TM-Reg that they enforce) Tomorrows war are on to a good wicket here with there gritty new worlds of tomorrow, with scope for someone with a little imagination to build up on their version of this fluff. So long-short yes good (and in most genre including historical) now for "fluffing" that's another whole ballgame :-D

Fluff? I write stories that just happen to have grown out of a game! :-D

-Elaine

atomicfloozy.com

aaaahhh Rouge Trader…that dodgy bloke with the fake (?) French accent and lots of make up ..and some for sale….

Fluff can be half the fun in setting the 'universe' ……see Angel Barracks and his 'background' of KR16….all very atmospheric!

I was imagining wars, campaigns, battles from at least 8 or 9 years of age,fueled by exciting books. Reading THE HOBBIT and LOTR moved me from history into fantasy, but even before then I was making up "imaginations" for non-fantasy wars. This was years (2-3 at least) before discovering Avalon Hill's Gettysburg and then Jack Scruby's minis.

I am a gamer and certainly enjoy the competition, but for me it is PRIMARILY about a story, and I enjoy making up my own as well as reading/seeing others'.

Heh, yes, Rouge Trader. I watched STARDUST for the first time (Amazon prime free movie) last week, and that pirate lightning ship is awesome, INCLUDING the cross-dressing captain.

Without Fluff there is only one game: Men A wish to kill Men B. Represent them with plain counters, any form of characterisation is Fluff. Do not care when they are killed, they are only Fluff.
Wargaming is about bringing the imagination to life: that's why people adapt and write their own rules. It's certainly why I wrote mine, and why they are written in the first person.

Society of Daisy sounds a bit dubious to me……..

Dear Wargaming Addict

Thanks for joining.

I don't like bad fluff either. However what's bad fluff to me is perhaps good fluf to others. Besides! VERY few of us make good fluff the first time out. It's writing and like any sort of writing, you're never good at it the first time out. After a few tries you hone it and get it better and produce really primo fluff!

My own style of Fluff had simply gone off the deep edge. I write my stuff as a burlesque and satire of the real world. Think the Marx Brothers in Duck soup and the Three stooges in "I'll never Heil Again!" I'm much less restrictive. If you're writing fluff you're one of the chosen.

For my Imagi-Nation of "Bad Zu-Wurst" the battle reports are always done in a certain style which bulesques's the hostility between Frederick the Great and his brother Prince Henry. It consises of a series of letters back and forth which become more and more insulting and acrimonious as Faustus the Great and his brother Humberto drag in all the dirty laundry of the family in a verbal slanging match including things like Faustus commenting on how hard it was for them to get Humberto out of the womans clothing he wore to one fette and Humberto responding on the over-fondness for Faustus for his whippets, including Fausuts' habits of dressing them in women's clothes as well.

At one level, Karellian Knight is correct. Fluff very rarely makes a difference to the tabletop game. Sometimes it does, since fluff can drive the victory conditions to one side or another. If your victory conditions for both sides are 'who killed the most', there is absolutely no fluff in the game. Simply by subtracting the losses suffered by your side from the amount of the other side you killed, you just introduced fluff into the game. Because now it matters how many troops you have lost, which ONLY matters when you have more than one battle to deal with.

Fluff *ALWAYS* makes a difference in WHY we're fighting on the tabletop.

Infinity's fluff is an evolution of the classics of Cyberpunk and Shadowrun, corporations raiding each other to slow down the development of competing products or even to manipulate the other's share price. Except now it's multination power blocks raiding each other, in addition to fighting the invaders.

Fluff does make a difference to the games we play. In 40K my Tau play very differently from my World Eaters. The Tau will never willingly sacrifice a unit to get some overall advantage, the World Eaters care not a jot about the lives of their warriors giving up objectives even to kill the enemy. What army I'm playing changes how I play.

"The command post was well guarded. It should have been. The hastily constructed, unlovely building was the nerve center for Paneuropean operations along a 700-kilometer section of front – a front pressing steadily toward the largest Combine manufacturing center on the continent."

The opening paragraph to my favorite piece of wargaming fluff.

Fluff certainly matters. In my opinion it is even more important in historical wargaming. We just don't call it "fluff" we call it "research". But it is the same thing and serves the same purpose.

Why do WW2 Germans get Panzers instead of Fireflies? Fluff. As soon as you write an army list declaring which side can have which units you have written fluff. It might even be argued that unit design is fluff. A man with a musket is not the same as a man with a rock. As soon as you make the distinction on the tabletop you are creating a setting and assumptions about the background of the conflict.

I've never been one to spend much time reading the background for the different rule sets I have played. But I do know that when Warzone 1st Edition was released in the early 90's I really enjoyed reading the background text that was interspersed throughout the rules. It really seemed to give the different models some depth beyond that of just lead or plastic on the table.

Kevin

Without 'fluff' (a misnomer for 'story'… probably the product of some mathematical purist) we all might as well be playing parchisi, chess, checkers, etc…

I suspect the intended question is really 'how MUCH 'fluff' (story) do we need?' …and I am certain the answer will vary by individual.

But once again, without STORY, it's all just marbles, tetrus, backgammon, etc…

"…can it be done better?"

There is a plethora of bad writing and editing out there, and some really daft world concepts and stories (IMHO), so yes, it can be done much better.

Very illuminating how the general opinion regarding the '40K' story is: "Rogue Trader was a triumph of the imagination, but you can go stuff the skull infested self parody marketing-ploy that it has become." I concur.

Rules should fit/reflect the story/universe as well.

"Rules should fit/reflect the story/universe as well." – Bill the Cat for the WIN!

I think we have all encountered rules that did not fit the story. It doesn't matter if it is "Fearsome Orc Warriors" who are killed by anything but a one in combat, or tanks that zip across swampy woodland terrain as if it were an empty parking lot, or laser-guided muskets with a range twice as long as the table is wide. If the rules don't properly elect "period feel" they won't be as much fun.

And this should be borne in mind by the fluff writers as much as by the rule writers. Don't write fluff about killer cyber tanks that munch Panzers like popcorn if the rules make them toothless puppies.

Dear Cerdic

Society of Daisy is now in it's 13th year and is a group dedicated to Imagi-Nations, Whimsy, Humor and good friendship in wargames, and a group which does not take it or the hobby seriously. It began by a casual remark by me on Lace Wars about my Imaginary Countries and a fervent interest soon sprang up by many members and we broke off and formed The Society of Daisy. The rather odd name comes from tht table top of one of our members who has a personage called King Ludwig who whenever he charges off to battle his pet cow, Daisy trots along with him. It's silly and inconsequential but that's sort of emplematic of the grup.

As I said, the gorup is dedicated to the backgrounds of the game and the fleshing out of Imagi-Nations by our imaginations, and the how and why to do it. It's a high-volume group, and up until Yahoo made it much more difficult we can have up to 12 posts a day. These can be on a wide range of topics from book reviews discussion of games, rules, battles etc., as well as discussions of current events and the hobby as well.

We have a quarterly newsletter (usually 16 pages (tabloid size with 8 8 1/2 by 11 inch pages or equivalent in it, full color, with maps charts etc. Frequently reviews of battle are posted, humorous articles, satires of the hobby and sometimes complete games. For two years we published new scenarios adaptions, and updates of Classic Avalon Hill Games like Blitzkrieg, Tactics II, Outdoor Survival, Wizards quest and others. We have published many of these in our quarterly newsletter for 9 years now.

We also sponsor a convention in Lancaster Pennsylvania in Late June which showcase lots of games, and is one rolling 2 day party. We are thinking of adding on a third day. It is a highly social and friendly gathering with free beer, wine, munchies etc. to which all are free to contribute. It is invitational only, but anyone can ask for an invitation and receive it. We do it simply to get all the ugly things like work and record keeping done ahead of time. This years Theme was "When Wars Were Worth it!" and next years is "The Ancient World:Honey I sacraficed the kids!"

We have serialized a book in this years and next years issues of the newsletter (Saxe and Violets) on making, creating and supporting Imaginations and how to compose the "fluff" that is the life-blood of the whole thing. We have people who have Imagi-nations in all periods of history.

It's a serious group with lots of GM's and lots of creative people who are dedicated to Gamers, Games, Having fun, food, the good life, and cameraderie.

Otto

Reading all the above it's clear people are very passionate about it.

Really we should call it fiction – and not fluff. Fluff makes it sound irrelevant and it's clearly not.

In theory, you don't need fluff to play a game. Many people will be happy with this because it will not distract them from the strategy or mechanics of the game. Effectively, turning wargaming into chess (a wonderful game enjoyed by millions of people).

However, fluff gives you a back-story that enables you to have some sort of emotional attachment to what is going on in the game. Many people spend hours painting their detailed miniatures and some even put names on the bases. Putting those little characters in to a story setting draws you in and elevates the game from 'Chess' to and adventure in an imaginary world/setting. All of a sudden, your playing piece becomes 'Cpl Jones' who is fighting against tyranny and defending his squad members…

It is all horses for courses.

In video games, even simple fps's the backstory, or story of the world is what draws me in moreso than how cool it looks. The rules/interface can ofcourse make or break it and the fantasy of being in the story.

But even in wargames i pick things, and play things the same way i would in a game. How do i pick a faction i want to play? Part of it is how the models look, alot of it is their story and how well i can click with it so to speak.

Same way with historical games, I pick nations and periods i am in love with. I devour all kinds of stories and other information on them, and even use it to help improve my painting of them. But that is just me :)

FWIW The Hunt for Red October is fluff for a scenario in the naval game Harpoon.

Battletech fluff gave the game such a long-lasting popularity. Still a clunker of a game, and still ticking strongly.

Well-written background that is coherent and useful for scenario generation is pretty essential to me. However, i can also adapt into my own background as well.

Karellian Knight 19 Nov 2013 5:07 a.m. PST:

I could never see the point of fluff. Made no difference to the games I've played

I'm rather in agreement and therefore, at least as per this thread, in a bit of a minority. Unless you of course count even miniature aesthetics as part of the "fiction" which I feel to be a bit of a stretch…

Anyhow, I'm firmly in the "rulez is rulez" camp as a gamer and IMCO most of the miniature games background story material deserves to be called "fluff". Great literature it usually ain't.

Isn't reading books by Cornwell, Scarrow etc. all part of the fluff. Surely it is in the back of our minds when we play?
I agree with ByJohn54 that it is the backstory and books that give WH40K its added interest and also scenarios. It does get samey though the more books you read.

I hate the terminology but – irrespective – I'm a 'fluff all the way' man.

I do prefer my 'fluff' to come before the game, though (novel, film, TV show or just independent writing etc) not the other way around with the fluff spawned post facto by the game itself.

John T

In my opinion, one of the best forms of fluff was what GW did with the Dwarves for the 6th edition army book to introduce the units of the army. It was basically an old dwarf talking about the different units. The same goes for many of the other books of that time. In general, I really don't care which hold is what that much other than casual curiosity. In addition to the history and geography of the faction, which can be amusing, but narrows the scope of the faction at times.

Good Fluff is like a woman's dress. Long enough to cover the basics, but short enough to keep things interesting.

My present "fluff" is a piece for "Saxe N' Violets" about the government of the Principality of Saxe Burlap and Schleswig Beerstein, in which the rather odd and picaresque methods of administration are dealt with.

The second fluff piece will be about how the Princess arranged for the Prince consort (she's the ruler not he) to take up several mistress'. (We're a new dynasty Alois, just starting out-- you have to do your duty and have several ba$tard$ so that we can have collateral branches- Look at Marshall Saxe, we could use a few of them around here you know, so get cracking. I can't do it myself you know that would cause too much trouble!

In the geneology the Princes Katherina, nee trina, nee trixie had 12 children.