The Ballbusch Experience: Approaching Fluff

Let’s talk about that most important and controversial of subjects: fluff.

Doom awaits the unwary

Now, I don’t want to wade into the long-standing, bitter, and let’s face it, sexually charged feud between fluffy bunnies and competitive gamers.  Also, I’m not going to claim that there is some magical right way to handle fluff that was revealed to me from on high by the Great God of Gaming who watches over every tabletop battle and cause those who displease him to only roll 1’s.  Instead, I’m going to talk about the different ways to approach fluff, and the pros and cons of each.  I’ll be honest about my prejudices, but there is no wrong way to play with toy soldiers.  Except for Spanky Peterson’s way, what he does is just plain wrong.      

Before we go any further, what the heck is fluff anyway?  The term fluff itself is dismissive because it implies something superfluous to actual game.  “By definition, fluff is never part of the proper game rules. As such, fluff has no impact on gameplay and can technically be ignored by the players without breaking the game or its rules.”  (Wikipedia).  We’ll save whether or not that’s a fair definition for now, what matters is that this is what ‘fluff’ was first meant.  But, language changes over time and, at least in a wargaming context, ‘fluff’ doesn’t carry any sort of value judgment anymore.  ‘Fluff’ is now more or less synonymous with background/setting.  In fact, people have even started referring to a game’s historical period as ‘fluff’--which annoys more serious minded players no end.  So, FoW’s fluff is the history of the Second World War.  When I say fluff I mean it in this second, neutral sense.  Fluff can be important, it can be unimportant.  It can be good, it can be bad.  But, for the purposes of this article, fluff means background, setting, historical context, fictional canon, etc.            

Within the context of fluff there are three ways to play a wargame (and RPGs for that matter) depending on how you characterize the relationship between the gameplay itself and the fluff: Game as Narrative; Game as Simulation; Game as GAME.  Of course, the boundaries are fuzzy and there is room for overlap.  The same person might play one game one way and another game another way, but for the sake of argument—and because I don’t want to make a Venn diagram—let’s assume that these are self-contained approaches.  

Game as Narrative

 My kind of Fluff Bunnies

This approach is very common in RPGs, but you also see it in wargames.  Here the game is a story.  Rules and dice may influence events (those both can be waved away by a GM), but the story itself still takes pride of place.  Indeed, I’ve seen games where the outcome is predetermined for maximum dramatic value and the game is merely played through like a script.  Fluff is vitally important to this type of game because you’re basically playing the fluff.  Fluff triumphs rules, fluff triumphs everything.  Problems are debated by appealing to what makes a better story.  Not by what makes the most sense, or what the rules say, or what makes for the most balanced game play.

Not that narrative gamers don’t follow the rules, don’t want to win, and don’t build affective characters/lists; though they do tend more towards co-operation than competition.  Ultimately, what they care about their story, and in the end the game is exactly that, their story.  Their epic battle, their heroic narrative.  It’s an action movie or a novel on the tabletop staring the players, or at least their characters. 

The biggest problem with this approach is that it’s really hard for outsiders to understand the unspoken rules.  If a different type of gamer wanders into a narrative game he just gets confused.  If a narrative style player comes into a different type of game he gets frustrated because no one seems to care about the story, to him the best part of the game.  I’ve seen this problem repeatedly over the years in a lot of different games, and that’s why it’s so important to understand everyone’s expectations from the get go.

One of the best things about narrative play is the sheer creativity that it can inspire.  I knew a guy who had a name and background story for every single model in his army—this was back in 2^nd Edition, so there weren’t that many guys, but still.  And after every game he’s write a short story about what happened.  His army have a life all its own, his figures had hopes and dreams, got married, had children, and died.  It was an amazing thing to behold.  You also had to make allowances when you played the guy, because you didn’t just drive your shiny new Armorcast Lung Busta over some generic Farseer for a few easy victory points, you killed an important and noble individual.  It was an emotional moment; it was also awesome because my Orks totally owned.

Game as simulation

 "Research says you guys only get 2,200 calories a day, so you start the game fatigued.  Sorry"

  

Here we have old school gaming.  If we go far enough back the wargames we play today are the intellectual descendants of true wargames that were designed by military officers as tactical exercises.  Yes, the games we play are purely recreational, but for some wargaming is still a primary a military simulation. 

When you approach the game as a simulation the fluff is actually very important, not for its dramatic value, but because it’s what informs the simulation.  Gun A is better than Gun B because the fluff says so.  Since the game exists to simulate the events in the fluff on the tabletop the mechanics must accurately reflect the fluff.  Mostly you see this approach with historical wargames, but it pops up in speculative fiction wargames and RPGs too.  The simulation gamer cares about an objective reality, and builds his games round “what happened” either historically or in canon.  If a rule contradicts the fluff the rule is wrong and should be modified, but only because it’s incorrect for the game setting.  Simulations are about plausible outcomes and events, not stories.  So while there might seem to be some similarities between simulation gamers and narrative gamers they really are in two different worlds.          

How can you have a military simulation with dragons, and laser guns, and six-breasted alien women with beehive hairdos?  Very easily.  Simulation doesn’t mean, or even equate to, realism.  When you’re playing 40k running through automatic weapons fire to hit someone with a chainsaw is a viable tactic.  In anything like the real world is that a good idea?  No.  Can I write rules that simulate a world where is it?  Sure.  For the simulation gamer the rules and the fluff are inseparable, physics is another issue altogether. 

Many other gamers look at simulation gamers as knit-picky accountant-types who concern themselves with small unit tactics of the 17th Century, how many rounds are in a cartridge pouch, and the nutritional value day’s worth of iron rations.  An obsession with minor details can certainly turn into a weak point for this approach.  What’s great about taking a simulation approach to a game and its fluff is that it creates a base line everyone can agree on.  This cuts down drastically on shenanigans because saying ‘that makes no sense’ triumphs and other sort of argument.  Because the gameplay and its background are integrated.        

Game as GAME             

"Who cars what it is, just tell me the stats!"

For the Game as GAME player the game is just a game.  It's chess.  It has no story, it’s utterly divorced from reality, and it simulates nothing.  It is a cold set of mechanics, and by the understanding and manipulation of those mechanics you accomplish the goal, which is simple playing the game, as written, for fun or competition.  The fluff is window dressing that makes the game atheistically pleasing.  And some games encourage this.  D&D 4^thEdition is very much an example of Game as GAME design; so is, arguably,  Homachine.  

A few years ago I went through a pretty rough time in my life, and I got very depressed.  One of the ways I dealt with it, or avoided it as the case may be, was to play a lot of WoW.  And I did WoW in a pretty serious way.  Raided Ahn’Qiraj, did the grind to High Warlord, the whole nine yards.  Now, I’m not going to claim that I’m the Zen Master of WoW, but let’s say that I got pretty good at the game.  This is what I know about Warcraft’s fluff:  There’s like a (last?) alliance of men and elves.  Elves are purple and really slutty.  I guess Orcs are from another planet or something.  Why didn’t I learn any of the fluff?  Because it didn’t matter to the game.  I cared about hit boxes and swing timers, the mechanics of the game that would help me do better.  In WoW I was very much a GAME player, and that’s true for many of the video games I play.  A lot of people who approach wargames this way came to wargaming after first being video game players, though this is by no means universal..   

Their concerns are balance and gameplay.  GAME players make arguments to the rules as written, sometimes in very legalistic terms.  Which makes sense to them because the rules exist in isolation, and whether or not they make sense from any other prospective is irrelevant. 

A lot of people assume that people with no interest in the fluff are automatically WAAC douchebags.  This isn't true at all.  Some are, but I'm talking about how people view the fluff, not how they play.  It's perfectly possible for a narrative gamer to also have a WAAC attitude.  Yes, the guy who builds his army around spamming some (according to the fluff) ultra rare unit, or uses a nonsensical ally combination sees the fluff as irrelevant.  But, his approach to the fluff is no different than the guy who lovingly builds an Imperial Guard army with a Star Trek theme.  Star Trek doesn't fit with 40k's fluff any better than Purifier spam does, so very different gamers, similar attitude to the fluff as written.         

No one way of handling the fluff is absolutely better than any other.  Really, it depends on who you're playing with and how the game is designed.  You can approach 40K as simply a game and ignore the fluff altogether.  Likewise, you can treat it as a narrative and act out your own stories on the tabletop.  However, you can't play it as a simulation, the mechanics just aren't there.  So, whenever you take a look at a new game or a new group, it's important to look beyond how you tend to treat fluff and examine how the game and the players approach it.