[Moonshine Fox]

Gotta rant for a moment, it's something I've seen a number of people post before, mostly on Reddit, that Shadowrun books need to kill their fluff and stick to pure numbers, and it just confuses me. Is this a much more common view then I think it is, or is it more just a small but vocal group? I've watched some games over the years slowly kill the fluff in their books, and it's has NEVER ended well. There may be a bit more mechanics, and they may be better done up, but the game always feels like it loses it's vibrancy and life. Shadowrun is one of my favorite settings not because it has awesome rules or the best crunchy mechanics, it was because the books told the player part of a story. They were fun to read and gave you a glimpse into the world from the view of the characters in it! The only game system that's done as good as Shadowrun in this (that I've played) was Deadlands.

What's better, a cold talk about how cybermancy works from a pure rules standpoint, or from the eyes of Hatchetman as he undergoes the process? You want a inventory list of what Doc Wagon services do, or see Slam-0 insert jokes about changing the icon of the nurse while she's explaining it while Netcat glares at him?

In the end, fluff is a good thing, and I want to thank all of you who take the time to write it all out for us!

[Senko]

I'll support that I like the fluff.

[Shadowjack]

I agree. My favorite books are pure fluff and retain their value from edition to edition. When I was a kid I was hooked on Shadowrun but I was mainly interested in how to play the game and getting gear. I had some knowledge of the game world, enough to get my intrigued, but beyond that I bought books for crunch. Now that I'm a bit older I've come to appreciate the writing a great deal and it really helps to enhance my roleplaying and gming skills.

[gradivus]

The problem isn't the fluff.

The problem as seen by many is that a book like Rigger 5 has an inordinate amount of fluff but the actual rules for RCCs we were expecting are none existent. All those vehicles could have been done in a splat book like USED CAR LOT...

Fluff is good.
But I want the Core Book and the books designed around the core concepts (The augmentation book, the rigger book, the decker book, the magic book) to have more functional rules than fluff.
Setting books (London Sourcebook etc) and specialty books (the Assassin's Primer etc) is where I expect more fluff than rules.

[Hobbes]

The fluff is good.  Sets the tone, paints a nice picture of a little piece of the world, overall good.  Where it's bad is when the mechanical examples bleed into fluff.  Or when the gear descriptions mix fluff and crunch.  Or when a paragraph of clarification on a fuzzy mechanic would be helpful and the free lancer writer says something about "..word count..."  drives me batty. 

That said there have been several of the short stories that I have enjoyed.  I do think that the additional fluff is a great change from previous editions.  Its a noticeable and stylistic signature that helps set 5th edition apart and is worth the price of admission.

[AJCarrington]

One of the things that I've always loved about SR is the embedded fluff/setting info within the books. It is one of the "features" that I think sets the game apart from others. I appreciate that comments that some have about the balance (fluff vs  crunch), but I've always erred on the side of fluff.

[Glyph]

I like fluff and crunch, but I don't like it when they bleed into each other.  To be honest, while the fluff has been good in some places, it has been execrable in others.  The metatype "culture" sections in Run Faster were horrible, overly-simplified, and overly-constraining.  The metavariant "mental characteristics" were a gratingly bad attempt to describe game mechanics using fluff ("EQ scores"?  Ugh).  The section in Street Grimoire describing spirit tasks and traditions was a horrible, unworkable mess obviously described by someone with no idea about what the spirit/spell category association is actually used for.

Fluff is good when it complements the mechanics - short stories that show what an actual shadowrun might look like, descriptions of an archetype, examples of using a skill, things like that.  There are places where the fluff is very good.  I like most of the GM advice sections, and the whole Bosses & Betrayers section in Run Faster, especially when it breaks down a typical shadowrun.