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I myself favor fluff over crunch. Sure, crunch is important, but optimizing characters, to me, just kills some of the feel of an organic, real thing. Sure, that optimized fighter will kick a little more ass than an un-optimized, fluffed up one, but the fluffed up one will be much more fun, because he will have flaws, and be different.
When somebody brings me a lvl10 character, perfectly optimized in every way, and i ask him about the character's name, and he is silent for ten minutes, that character, to me is not a character but a bunch of numbers on a piece of paper.
What is your opinion>? What do you favor? Fluff or crunch?
I am rather fond of when both come together seamlessly, each supporting the other.
It's all in the story and character background! Those "rules" some speak of are merely guidelines, adjusted as seems fit to tell a compelling tale of passion and heroism.
Rules are everything. I'd prefer to replace my GM (who consistently attempts to use his "discretion" to violate our God-given player rights) with some semi-decent A.I. All it needs is to calculate the attack routine of my Abjurant Champion/Shadowsworn Stormblade/Frenzied Berserker promptly.
Both. In my opinion one is almost useless without the other.
However if asked which I 'need' or 'want' more from the developer I would answer Crunch. After all it's just the system and mechanics -- I can refluff it however is needed to fit the character.
I like both, as long as it is not cheese, but I don't like when one is used at the expense of the other, as both can be abused.
This is a false dilemma. Fluff and crunch are not mutually exclusive. I usually find a character concept and then optimize it. If I want to play a gnome barbarian with a cool background story and personality, I will still optimize it to make it as mechanically effective as possible.
If I had to choose between an interesting and ineffective character and a boring but effective character, though, I'd go for the former. It can lead to interesting and often hilarious scenarios. I rarely enjoy playing characters with dull personalities.
I dont really distinguish between the two in terms of priority. I optimize and I like interesting characters with detailed backgrounds and that are tied to the world I am playing in. Without one the other doesnt mean alot to me.
Both. In my opinion one is almost useless without the other.
However if asked which I 'need' or 'want' more from the developer I would answer Crunch. After all it's just the system and mechanics -- I can refluff it however is needed to fit the character.
This.
There is no reason you can't have a beautifully optimized character that is also beautifully roleplayed. They are not mutually exclusive.
I tend to think of the game as a pact between the players and the GM to forge a gripping story in which the players are the heroes. The rules are the bones of the pact and the fluff is the meat. Neither functions properly without the other.
I also think that the game is at its best when the players are being challenged, and for that reason I'm not a big fan of optimization that takes advantages of RAW rules wrinkles to allow a player character to have a power level inappropriate to the challenges they face. There's something very unfun about a party with a L5 character who regularly has an AC in the 40s (and excellent saves on top of it). The fights at that point are just an exercise in rolling the dice for a few rounds on the way to redetermined victory unless the GM throws really level-inappropriate stuff at you and then the first thing that penetrates your AC turns your L5 hit points into squishy goo.
Having said that, I'm a big fan of level appropriate optimization. Being good at what you do within the RAI (as opposed to abusing the RAW) is something I consider worthy of striving towards.
From published material, I prefer fluff. The more crunch a book has the less useful it is to me since I usually prefer a single, universal system. Often times, in my opinion, the crunch often fails to match the fluff as written.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Really, it depends on what I'm looking for in the product.
From stuff like the APB, UM, UC, etc. I prefer Crunch, with a bit of fluff.
For Campaign Settings, I prefer fluff. (With Crunch to match the fluff.)
To use UM as an example... The Ice Teleport spell is nice crunch, but I'd be perfectly happy to have seen it in Magic of Golarion instead (since I first read fo it in Winter Witch).
The reflavoured Gargoyles in Classic Horrors however, I'd not want to see taking up space in a bestiary. Assume I'm going to take the numbers and put my own fluff 'round them. (and don't blink.)
As a GM, fluff is extremely taxing on me -- especially if I am homebrewing everything. Drawing maps/city grids, filling said cities with NPCs and landmarks/districts/etc, creating words in languages, defining cultures, defining cultural folklore or mythology, drawing up NPC backstories. . . I just feel a bit overwhelmed when I go to the business of actually trying to make all of my own stuff. So I think in terms of buying things for the purpose of GMing, I prefer mostly fluff combined with a bit of crunch.
As a player, the goal is to fit fluff and crunch as closely together as I can. I prefer to start with crunch because hard game mechanics give me ideas for where I can take a character's personality, dreams, and perspective. It's also harder to make *balanced* crunchy game mechanics than it is for me to bend a story to match those mechanics.
All a matter of the direction the game is taking.
After playing/GMing through a few APs, let me tell you that crunch is not just recommended but needed to avoid TPKs. Since the direction the story is taking can become pretty linear, you can fluff all you want but you're still gonna have to go to that place and defeat that dude.
Homebrewed adventures change that aspect in that challenges ARE tailored with the actual characters in mind and will naturally give more place for fluff imo as everything is more flexible.
I think they're both equally important. Fluff sells, but crunch is a necessary infrastructure to the game.
If something has bad fluff, I ain't gonna buy it, regardless of how good the crunch is. Unless I know someone who is already invested and they talk me into it. Basically I gotta be sold on it, and even then I still want fluff, but I've got to add that myself.
If something has bad crunch, I might still buy something on fluff alone, but I'll be really frustrated with the crunch. Even if I got friends to play, it wouldn't last long. That doesn't lead to return purchases.
So, really, they both have to be present, accounted for, and high quality.
I have to agree with the earlier comments - that you really need both.
A beautiful, rich world with poor mechanics falls apart, while an amazing set of mechanics that doesn't get to show-off in a useful world is equally undesirable.
(I won't say useless because someone else can add the skin and re-fluff it -- but that just shows that fluff is important. Plus, you're doing those mechanics a disservice by not showing how they could be used to make a wonderful world.)
As such, I like both.
For my own sensibilities, I'll take good fluff over bad crunch any day.
I tend to think of the game as a pact between the players and the GM to forge a gripping story in which the players are the heroes. The rules are the bones of the pact and the fluff is the meat. Neither functions properly without the other.
I also think that the game is at its best when the players are being challenged, and for that reason I'm not a big fan of optimization that takes advantages of RAW rules wrinkles to allow a player character to have a power level inappropriate to the challenges they face. There's something very unfun about a party with a L5 character who regularly has an AC in the 40s (and excellent saves on top of it). The fights at that point are just an exercise in rolling the dice for a few rounds on the way to redetermined victory unless the GM throws really level-inappropriate stuff at you and then the first thing that penetrates your AC turns your L5 hit points into squishy goo.
Having said that, I'm a big fan of level appropriate optimization. Being good at what you do within the RAI (as opposed to abusing the RAW) is something I consider worthy of striving towards.
I these forum had a "like" button, I would have used it for your post.
In order to make a fun and somewhat believable story, I think you need to think about your characters' personalities and the situation (fluff) not just tactics (crunch). I had a player who was questioning the actions of my NPCs. When I explained the NPC was acting that way because it's how she'd actually react, as she wasn't a tactician, he basically said she was stupid. Now, I've seen enough movies and read enough books to know that every character does not react "optimally" all the time, nor do they all place priority on "smart" combat. It's best, especially in a combat oriented campaign, if people consider how the rules are going to affect their actions, but if you ignore the fluff, you get a really complicated game of chess, rather than an RPG.
Crunch without Fluff is insipid, Fluff without Crunch is unappealing. For me, the best content is that which combines both.
Now, what I think people often confuse for a dilema of Crunch vs Fluff is really a conflict between Fluffless Crunch vs Fluffy Crunch. It is not a problem when a book is filled with rules; it's a problem when all these rules seem to have no meaning at all.
For me, the ideal book falls somewhere along the lines of things like "The Complete Something" series from the AD&D 2e days, where you had lots of rules for expanding the game (regardless of how balanced or not they were) filled to the brim with explanations, background, advices, and a general understanding that rules by themselves really have no room in a roleplaying game.
The rest is juts personal nitpicking and has mostly relation to the type of fluff I like. For instance, I love Pathfinder, but sometimes I feel almost all the fluff instilled in the rules is pigeonholed into combat (yes, I know the game is combat-centric, but still), with very flavourful mechanics that, however, mostly give flavour when you are fighting, without much thought put into the rest of the world (I'd love to see a book entirely dedicated to mundane stuff like building castles, growing crops, scamming merchants, and magic dealing with that kind of stuff).
Optimization, to me, means nothing more or less than taking the concept you want to play and making it as effective as you possibly can. It is using the crunch to support your fluff. Because anyone can say their fighter is a mighty warrior and a scourge of armies, but if their disdain for mechanical concerns leads them to, say, take Weapon Finesse despite wielding a Greatsword (to pick an extreme example), and generally be incapable of combat, then they're not playing their role properly. And if it's part of their character concept to be weak and incompetent...well, maybe I'm overreacting, but that feels a bit like trolling the game to me. Like making a CE demon-worshiping, baby-eating necromancer as your character after hearing the other player is gonna be a paladin.
That is why I speak up and agitate over mechanics like the UM Vow of Poverty. If the devs had better balanced the currently meager benefit of the Vow with the massive cost of taking it, it could have served as a bridge between fluff and crunch. It would have enabled playing a popular fluff concept, but with mechanics backing it up to make it actually effective. Something for everybody. Instead, it is deliberately underpowered--and the sentiment they use to justify that decision further widens the perceived gap between fluff and crunch.
I myself favor fluff over crunch. Sure, crunch is important, but optimizing characters, to me, just kills some of the feel of an organic, real thing.
Your bias is showing... zip up.
Crunch doesn't necessitate optimization. Say instead that it allows realization.
Without some rules somewhere for me to take to my DM, all the fluff in the world isn't going to get my flying monk concept onto the game table. What I need is crunch. Some feat or racial ability, or magic item, or ki power that I can show my DM and say "here are reasonable and balanced rules that I can apply to my monk to make him fly."
You're turning the classic fluff vs crunch discussion into a Max/Min discussion, which it isn't. Granted you can't use fluff to Max/Min a character, but at the same time you can't use fluff to cast magic missile as a 1st level wizard either. For that, and all your actually DOING SOMETHING needs, you'll be needing crunch.
I myself favor fluff over crunch. Sure, crunch is important, but optimizing characters, to me, just kills some of the feel of an organic, real thing.Your bias is showing... zip up.
Crunch doesn't necessitate optimization. Say instead that it allows realization.
Without some rules somewhere for me to take to my DM, all the fluff in the world isn't going to get my flying monk concept onto the game table. What I need is crunch. Some feat or racial ability, or magic item, or ki power that I can show my DM and say "here are reasonable and balanced rules that I can apply to my monk to make him fly."
You're turning the classic fluff vs crunch discussion into a Max/Min discussion, which it isn't. Granted you can't use fluff to Max/Min a character, but at the same time you can't use fluff to cast magic missile as a 1st level wizard either. For that, and all your actually DOING SOMETHING needs, you'll be needing crunch.
It was about time someone pointed out the Stormwind Fallacy. It's interesting that there seems to be a mild aversion to the idea of crunch in a large portion of the gamer community (as though it were a dark power that corrupts when used), while fluff gets a total pass.
For books im buying I like it to me alot of crunch with a little fluff
You're turning the classic fluff vs crunch discussion into a Max/Min discussion, which it isn't. Granted you can't use fluff to Max/Min a character, but at the same time you can't use fluff to cast magic missile as a 1st level wizard either. For that, and all your actually DOING SOMETHING needs, you'll be needing crunch.
"But the bandits can't attack me! I'm the prince of landupmybum! They wouldn't do so!"
"I don't have to pay, I'm nobility, I'll simply get it through my family riches."
"I'm a noble, why can't I start with a keep, full plate, a magical weapon, and servants to cater to my every need?"
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I myself favor fluff over crunch. Sure, crunch is important, but optimizing characters, to me, just kills some of the feel of an organic, real thing.Your bias is showing... zip up.
Crunch doesn't necessitate optimization. Say instead that it allows realization.
Without some rules somewhere for me to take to my DM, all the fluff in the world isn't going to get my flying monk concept onto the game table. What I need is crunch. Some feat or racial ability, or magic item, or ki power that I can show my DM and say "here are reasonable and balanced rules that I can apply to my monk to make him fly."
You're turning the classic fluff vs crunch discussion into a Max/Min discussion, which it isn't. Granted you can't use fluff to Max/Min a character, but at the same time you can't use fluff to cast magic missile as a 1st level wizard either. For that, and all your actually DOING SOMETHING needs, you'll be needing crunch.
I never said that crunch should be nonexistent. Crunch is important, but focusing too much on it kills the feel of immersion. Sorry, but
"I'm a human fighter" isn't enough of a character background for that character to be approved in my game, no matter how well optimized it is. I'm not against some optimization, of course. After all, a int 12 wizard is pretty much useless past level 4 because he doesn't gain new spell levels. However, by saying that i favor fluff over crunch just means that i find the story element of the game more important than the rules element of the game.And, yes, i am biased. And not afraid to show it. Just as much as i like meat, and presence of vegans/vegetarians at the table will not stop me from ordering meat if i feel like it.
Sorry, but "I'm a human fighter" isn't enough of a character background for that character to be approved in my game, no matter how well optimized it is.
Now my question is, if the character hadn't been optimized, do you believe the player would have made a better background for the character? That is, is optimizing stopping the player from focusing on fluff? Or is the player not interested in fluff to begin with?
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Dunno, all i see is no fluff all crunch with super optimized characters who are meant to do one thing and do it good.
Most of my players are role-players, but sometimes they are lazy. And since i saw that they started to optimize more than role-play, i stopped starting campaigns at level higher than 1.
I make a point of saying to all my new players that if they came here to roll dice, they can go home as of now. I take role playing in the name Role Playing Game seriously. if they wanna slaughter stuff, they have nwn, icewind dale, mmos, wargames...i want roleplayers, not rollplayers.
I prefer candy.
I prefer candy.
Yes, but which is better, snickers or three musketeers?
I make a point of saying to all my new players that if they came here to roll dice, they can go home as of now. I take role playing in the name Role Playing Game seriously. if they wanna slaughter stuff, they have nwn, icewind dale, mmos, wargames...i want roleplayers, not rollplayers.
Darn -- I play table top instead of make believe so I can roll dice to handle situations where two people want different things to happen instead of the playground bickering.
Let's talk about Traveller.
Nearly every incarnation of Traveller is big on tables. Take, for instance, the subsector creation tables. With it, in about half an hour, a Ref can roll up a series of letters, numbers, and symbols that wholly represent a large segment of space. Fundamentally, it's all crunch. It's rules and how they interact.
Okay, but it's also the basis for a whole six month campaign, because that crunch completely spells out everything. It provides everything that you might want to know about the framework. The Referee just needs to fill in the gaps.
Alternately, someone could write a whole book describing a subsector in detail. And yeah, it'd be nice for one go, but it would be a pretty long book, and that's assuming that everything in the book fit with the particular Referee's vision. Chances are, it'd take some retrofitting and jumbling about.
Sturgeon's Law hits fluff very hard. Most fluff is tepid. It's not that I can come up with better fluff, it's that we ALL can come up with just as good fluff. We're gamers. That's what gaming is. Fluff gets cliche, or transparently axe-to-grind. There's a lot of bad you can say about fluff.
At its worst, crunch encourages unnecessary or malicious optimizing. But crunch has to almost try to be bad. Most of the time, bad crunch still breaks down into something usable, just because it's only rules and how those rules interact.
Good fluff is priceless, but rare, so I tend to prefer crunch. It does what I need it to do without airs.
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Rules are everything. I'd prefer to replace my GM (who consistently attempts to use his "discretion" to violate our God-given player rights) with some semi-decent A.I. All it needs is to calculate the attack routine of my Abjurant Champion/Shadowsworn Stormblade/Frenzied Berserker promptly.
Cartigan? Is that you?
This again.
I will solve all our problems:
I hereby sentence everyone who thinks fluff is the only thing to leave this place and find an Amber Diceless Game. Or a playground where kids still play Cowboys and Indians instead of sitting around with linked Nintendo DSs playing Mario Cart.
I hereby also sentence everyone who thinks crunch is the only thing to leave this place and find a Warhammer game to compete in. Or Mechwarrior. Any tabletop war game.
The rest, the people who realise that our neat little hobby depends on both concepts working together may stay.
All the other guys have until sundown before we release the dogs. :P
All the other guys have until sundown before we release the dogs. :P
Funny, because the White Wolf guys won't even be awake for another hour or so...
This again.
I will solve all our problems:
I hereby sentence everyone who thinks fluff is the only thing to leave this place and find an Amber Diceless Game. Or a playground where kids still play Cowboys and Indians instead of sitting around with linked Nintendo DSs playing Mario Cart.
I hereby also sentence everyone who thinks crunch is the only thing to leave this place and find a Warhammer game to compete in. Or Mechwarrior. Any tabletop war game.
The rest, the people who realise that our neat little hobby depends on both concepts working together may stay.
All the other guys have until sundown before we release the dogs. :P
How about we start by not using the loaded word Fluff which can imply ephemeral, or unnecessary and use the word Cloud or Flavor or something like that.
Flunch! No, cruff!
The two do not exist in a vacuum and are not enemies so why choose? Embrace both and have a useful and exciting character.
Dunno, all i see is no fluff all crunch with super optimized characters who are meant to do one thing and do it good.
Most of my players are role-players, but sometimes they are lazy. And since i saw that they started to optimize more than role-play, i stopped starting campaigns at level higher than 1.
I make a point of saying to all my new players that if they came here to roll dice, they can go home as of now. I take role playing in the name Role Playing Game seriously. if they wanna slaughter stuff, they have nwn, icewind dale, mmos, wargames...i want roleplayers, not rollplayers.
This is, potentially, a very off-putting attitude. Imagine that you were a player, and your DM posed the reverse scenario to you, saying something along the lines of:
"We're here to play a game. If you came here to engage in amateur method acting, you can go home as of now. I take the 'game' part of the term roleplaying game seriously. If you wanna recite elven poetry and develop love interests, you have community theater, open mic night, a 5 year-old's make believe tea party set, or any Bioware game ever made. I want gamers, not wish-fulfillment-fantasy junkies."
I bet you'd be hard-pressed not to scoff at this. It marginalizes those who enjoy the "acting" part of roleplaying, and provides the impression that they somehow aren't playing the game the way it ought to be played - just like how your bit above treats those who might enjoy the game side of RPGs more.
It's fine for you to have a personal preference. But you have gone beyond expressing a preference to the implication that how you play is how it should be played by everyone (implications that include: those who don't favor roleplaying aren't taking the game seriously; D&D isn't for people who want to play a game, that's what wargames and video games are for; people who play like you deserve to be called roleplayers while people who play differently than you get slapped with the derisive title of "rollplayer"; I could go on).
I said earlier in the thread that there is a large contingent of gamers which doesn't simply prefer fluff, but actually opposes crunch to some degree. This is another side of that same phenomenon. Despite the fact that D&D's most fundamental roots are in wargaming and crunch, and that the whole idea of character development and in-depth NPC interaction and sourcebooks dedicated to fluff didn't show up until significantly later, those who prefer the game side of the roleplaying game are widely marginalized.
In fact, anything that adds more "game-like" elements to a tabletop roleplaying game tends to get labeled as turning the RPG into a board game or video game. Of course, that's totally untrue. Roleplaying games don't become not-roleplaying-games just because you add more dice, cards, poker chips, the Hasbro game Mouse Trap, or anything else. A roleplaying game is still a roleplaying game as long as it is a game in which one plays a role.
Anyone who tells you that the way they play an RPG is how it ought to be played is trying to marginalize others, inadvertently or not, as a hedge against insecurity. Anyone who implies that if you're not playing like them you're doing it wrong is trying to marginalize others, inadvertently or not, as a hedge against insecurity. Anyone who tells you that your roleplaying game of choice isn't a real roleplaying game is trying to marginalize others, inadvertently or not, as a hedge against insecurity.
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Dunno, all i see is no fluff all crunch with super optimized characters who are meant to do one thing and do it good.
Most of my players are role-players, but sometimes they are lazy. And since i saw that they started to optimize more than role-play, i stopped starting campaigns at level higher than 1.
I make a point of saying to all my new players that if they came here to roll dice, they can go home as of now. I take role playing in the name Role Playing Game seriously. if they wanna slaughter stuff, they have nwn, icewind dale, mmos, wargames...i want roleplayers, not rollplayers.
This is, potentially, a very off-putting attitude. Imagine that you were a player, and your DM posed the reverse scenario to you, saying something along the lines of:
"We're here to play a game. If you came here to engage in amateur method acting, you can go home as of now. I take the 'game' part of the term roleplaying game seriously. If you wanna recite elven poetry and develop love interests, you have community theater, open mic night, a 5 year-old's make believe tea party set, or any Bioware game ever made. I want gamers, not wish-fulfillment-fantasy junkies."
I bet you'd be hard-pressed not to scoff at this. It marginalizes those who enjoy the "acting" part of roleplaying, and provides the impression that they somehow aren't playing the game the way it ought to be played - just like how your bit above treats those who might enjoy the game side of RPGs more.
It's fine for you to have a personal preference. But you have gone beyond expressing a preference to the implication that how you play is how it should be played by everyone (implications that include: those who don't favor roleplaying aren't taking the game seriously; D&D isn't for people who want to play a game, that's what wargames and video games are for; people who play like you deserve to be called roleplayers while people who play differently than you get slapped with the derisive title of "rollplayer"; I could go on).
I said earlier in the thread that there is a large contingent of gamers which doesn't simply prefer fluff, but actually opposes crunch to some degree. This is another side of that same phenomenon. Despite the fact that D&D's most fundamental roots are in wargaming and crunch, and that the whole idea of character development and in-depth NPC interaction and sourcebooks dedicated to fluff didn't show up until significantly later, those who prefer the game side of the roleplaying game are widely marginalized.
In fact, anything that adds more "game-like" elements to a tabletop roleplaying game tends to get labeled as turning the RPG into a board game or video game. Of course, that's totally untrue. Roleplaying games don't become not-roleplaying-games just because you add more dice, cards, poker chips, the Hasbro game Mouse Trap, or anything else. A roleplaying game is still a roleplaying game as long as it is a game in which one plays a role.
Anyone who tells you that the way they play an RPG is how it ought to be played is trying to marginalize others, inadvertently or not, as a hedge against insecurity. Anyone who implies that if you're not playing like them you're doing it wrong is trying to marginalize others, inadvertently or not, as a hedge against insecurity. Anyone who tells you that your roleplaying game of choice isn't a real roleplaying game is trying to marginalize others, inadvertently or not, as a hedge against insecurity.
Ok, now, i never said that the way i like to play the games is the only way. But if I'm GM, they better roleplay. Or go play warhammer. I hate it when people don't come up with a backstory and a personality for their characters. I don't care if it is cliche and seen a 1000 times. Cliches are cliches because they work. I also hate it when they sit and look at the ceilling, untill it's time to roll the dice.
I have GMed slaughterfests where there was almost no roleplaying. I have GMed campaigns where there was almost no combat to speak of. I GMed something in between. I dislike one-dimensional characters and lazy players who can't be bothered to come up with some kind of story and personality. Now, if a player has a problem with imagination, i'll help. I'll work with that player. But if he doesn't show any enthusiasm whatsoever, and others do show enthusiasm, i would rather sent the player home then let him ruin others' fun by killin immersion.
How about we start by not using the loaded word Fluff which can imply ephemeral, or unnecessary and use the word Cloud or Flavor or something like that.
Well, it's the word for it. We can try teach people use new words for it, but that will be an uphill struggle.
Anyway, it could be worse: They could call the guys who like the ephemeral stuff "fluffers".
Ok, now, i never said that the way i like to play the games is the only way. But if I'm GM, they better roleplay. Or go play warhammer.
Or maybe they can find a GM that is more inline with their goals and likes for a RPG. No reason for a player to stop playing RPGs merely because some GM has their own preferred method.
In fact, I am always sad to learn of an RPG player that is turned off from these games by a over-zealous GM who has their own true way.
Ok, now, i never said that the way i like to play the games is the only way.
No, you didn't. You just implied it.
But if I'm GM, they better roleplay. Or go play warhammer.
Right here. You didn't say "If I'm the GM, they better roleplay or find a different GM." You said "If I'm GM, they better roleplay or play another game entirely."
I hate it when people don't come up with a backstory and a personality for their characters. I don't care if it is cliche and seen a 1000 times. Cliches are cliches because they work. I also hate it when they sit and look at the ceilling, untill it's time to roll the dice.
And that's fine as a personal preference. But you need to understand that your attitude, whether you've noticed it or not, goes well beyond the point of personal preference into One True Way territory.
I have GMed slaughterfests where there was almost no roleplaying. I have GMed campaigns where there was almost no combat to speak of. I GMed something in between. I dislike one-dimensional characters and lazy players who can't be bothered to come up with some kind of story and personality.
This is, of course, another problem that I hadn't even touched on yet. You clearly believe that a player who spends very little time on his background is lazy, no matter how much time he spends working on the mechanical side of his character. I bet, though, that you don't call players lazy when they spend a ton of time on their character's back story but very little time on the mechanical side of the character.
Putting effort into crunch but not into fluff is, to you, lazy. Putting effort into fluff but not into crunch is, to you, probably not lazy. Are you starting to see how calling it "lazy" might not actually be accurate at all, and how you are passing judgment on someone else's personal (and unrelated, apparently) qualities because they have preferences that differ from your own?
Now, if a player has a problem with imagination, i'll help. I'll work with that player. But if he doesn't show any enthusiasm whatsoever, and others do show enthusiasm, i would rather sent the player home then let him ruin others' fun by killin immersion.
The rest of your players' fun will not be killed by a shy player who is more comfortable tweaking his character mechanically than he is deciding exactly which noble lineage his magical elf is descended from. That player's fun, however, will be killed, without a doubt, if you send him packing in a misguided attempt to safeguard an imagined, precious, inviolate immersion.