The Lantern Hall
Painting: an ancient lexicon open on a carved lectern in a dark chapel of books, glowing runes and symbols lifting off its pages like fireflies.
TermTabletop term

Crunch and fluff

Gamer shorthand for a book's two kinds of content: crunch is rules and statistics, fluff is setting, story and atmosphere. A crunchy game has heavy, detailed mechanics.

Gamer shorthand for a book's two kinds of content: crunch is rules and statistics, fluff is setting, story and atmosphere. A crunchy game has heavy, detailed mechanics.

Quick answers

What does "Crunch and fluff" mean?
Gamer shorthand for a book's two kinds of content: crunch is rules and statistics, fluff is setting, story and atmosphere. A crunchy game has heavy, detailed mechanics.

Nearby in the archive

Campaign setting

Tabletop term

A fictional world packaged for play, with maps, histories, gods and factions that a group can adventure in over many sessions. Published settings such as Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms and Eberron became franchises that spawned novels and video games.

Rules as written

Tabletop term

Reading a rule strictly by its text (RAW), as opposed to what its designers meant (RAI, rules as intended). D&D designer Jeremy Crawford has written that ideally the two align, but the words on the page do not always communicate the designers' intent.

Universal & Generic RPG Systems

Tabletop genre1980

One set of rules for every world: Chaosium's Basic Role-Playing, Champions and the Hero System, GURPS, the d20 System, Fate and Savage Worlds — the RPG engines built to play fantasy, horror, space opera or anything else.