Vignettes

I read the core nWoD book on my iPad a lot during my recent vacation. There are tons of little story bits throughout the text. That is standard for White Wolf, as anyone familiar with their work can tell you.

In the past, I have felt like I can take or leave these vignettes, but I realized that was more from the game-learning perspective. I wasn't reading the nWoD book to learn the game, I was reading it for fun. And those vignettes were really important to creating the emotional feel of the game world, despite my criticisms of nWoD as having bland mechanics that don't reinforce that.

I think that adding fictional elements into the text may not serve the person learning the game for the first time, but it doesn't hurt them. It does reinforce the immersion of the game world though.

I have not included these elements in my writing in the past, focusing instead on all the functional bits. But I think I am going to be including vignettes and fictional text in most of my books going forward so that the emotive context is preserved more strongly.

What do you think?