Balancing Crunch and Fluff as a Player

Unless your GM is completely and totally devoid of fluff in your games, there will be a need for you, as a player, to balance the two.  You must understand the crunch of your character’s abilities, be they called powers, skills, talents, or whatever.  You also should strive to understand the fluff of your character’s backgrounds and motivations.  To me, this seems pretty simple, but it’s come to my attention that some folks aren’t so good with it.

I’ve written plenty about the fluff of a character so far on this blog, but the crunch is missing.  How do you keep all your abilities straight?  How do you know when to use them?

First, don’t sweat it.  Few can remember every single power their character has.  It just isn’t possible in many cases.  Instead, they focus on what each power does, so that when they see it on their list, they can instantly recall what it does and how it works.  There is only one way to do that…homework.  Yep.  You thought that was only in school, right?  Not so.

It’s very important to understand how your characters work.  If you have questions, always defer to your GM.  After all, they are always the final arbitrator of what does and doesn’t work within their games.  A good GM will listen to your questions and try to make the whole concept easier on you.  They will explain the rules and try and make things as painless as possible.

The key is for you to meet them half way at least.  It’s not the their job to make your character successful, it’s yours.  Here are a few tricks I recommend.  This is far from an exhaustive list, and I’m quite sure that many other tricks are out there.

1. Study!  I can’t stress this one enough.  You need to understand your character’s abilities in order to use them effectively.
2. Think ahead.  While other characters are taking their turns, try and think ahead for what you want to do.  Check your character sheets and handbooks if necessary.
3. KISS.  Keep it simple stupid.  Don’t try to get to elaborate until you are comfortable within the game mechanics and you fully understand them.
4. Ask outside of the game.  Now, this one isn’t absolute or anything, but keep questions about your character’s abilities during the game to a minimum and try to keep them as short as possible.

Just a few things to try.  I hope they work