I have re-rolled it to the current version. The reasons are: the previous state of the question got closed, and then got a failed re-open. At its current state, it got 4 reopen votes, and I was going to give it the fifth before the rollback, so I think the community agrees that the current state is better, overall.

Would someone care to explain how they understood this question as a game-rec question? Either way, @OP: You may want to clarify that you are not interested in an infinite list of all possible games that make this distinction, but which one is most likely to be the first to introduce such distinction explicitly.

@okeefe It's not a list question in the sense SE closes. A specific list of something is on topic. But don't worry, you are not the only one to make this confusion. We have an entire tag for it in meta because people get confused too often.

Quoting mxyzplk: "Note that a list question is not one where the answer is a short list of items. A question about “which ioun stones will give me a stat bonus?” can yield a correct answer that is a short list of items."

I’m voting to close this question because it's a request for an open-ended list, not a question of any sort, and if edited into the nearest question would be a shopping question

@HellSaint No, this is exactly the sort of open-ended list that is a problem and also why game-recs were banned, separately. Not sure why it got reopened.

@HellSaint No, this is exactly the sort of open-ended list that is a problem and also why game-recs were banned, separately. Not sure why it got reopened.

@Pleasestopbeingevil How? It is very clear on what is the best answer: the earliest. If someone answers with something from 1990 and then another person posts from 1980, it is completely clear which answer is the best answer.

The problem with game rec (and with unbounded lists) is that there is no way to identify a best answer. It is completely clear how to identify the best answer here. Just like a question on what is the first D&D edition to move away from 0 HP = instant death is completely clear, even though more than one edition exists. If someone answered 3.5e, they would be wrong.

Examples. Systems. I

dang formatting

oh, there it goes

I think the pluralization there is important.

Okay, so, if the question changes to singular example, what would be the problem with the question?

What's an example of X game is game-rec and a problem for that reason. "What's the earliest RPG to do X" would be okay, but I don't think that's what the OP wants

From the "history-of-gaming" tag, I do think that that's what the OP wants.

Not sure how to ping them in this room.

Ok. Well, if they edit it to that, I'd vote to reopen. With their new definition of fluff, though, I imagine the first game that officially lets you pick your character's name will work. I don't have a full OD&D set right now, but I'm guessing Supplement I Greyhawk will handle it prolly.

But, yeah, if that's what they want that's fine.

My understanding about this question is that they are interested in the general history of how this distinction came to be in the RPG community, focused on whether there are systems that endorse such distinction

And if there are, which is the earliest that may have made such distinction "more popular".

@Pleasestopbeingevil the character name is not part of the ruleset, so I don't think that works under the question btw :P

It is if there's a pregen, no?

And advice like "If this pregen dude dies, just swap the name and use it again", but I'll need a module for that, it's true.

But in the current form, being like "what are some examples of game systems that do X, but, like, earlyish I guess" is totally closeworthy.

That's my 2 cents anyways.

I'm not sure 4e's explanation of what flavor text is counts as a "rule" in the asker's sense. Is the a game its text? Is all the text a rule? It seems distinct from the "fluff/crunch" distinction ostensibly being sought out.

At best, it's a bad example?

@okeefe 4e explicitly, in the rules, had a section that said that you could ignore anything in italics in an ability description and substitute your own. That's a rule in my book.

And the core of the distinction I'm trying to tease out (not just in this question) is is there even a possible line between fluff and crunch that makes sense in the absence of such a rule. To me, all text is rules in absence of a meta-rule saying otherwise. Just like all of a piece of legislation is law unless it says otherwise, the rulebooks have rules in them, not extraneous pieces written just for show.

I'm pretty sure (even though I've never read those systems in any detail) that GURPS and Hero System (and other such "generic" games) have rules to this effect, or similar enough to make no difference.

But as pedantic and missing-the-point as people are being about this, I don't even care any more. If it closes, I'm not going to put any more effort into trying to reopen it.

Plenty of game books have extraneous pieces written for fiction, or context, or even setting. I'm more inclined to say that game = text = rules for many games that I enjoy, but I wouldn't point to D&D as an example for that.

@Pleasestopbeingevil It is not clear to me why you believe this list to be open-ended. There are finite systems, therefore there are finite systems with fluff/crunch distinction. There may be some debate as to what entails a distinction, but even in the worst case the question is bounded.

@gszavae A bounded list is not used here to mean mathematically bounded. Almost any possible question has a mathematically bounded list, many lists just approach especially large numbers to the point of being infeasible for any answer to determine. There are thousands of systems