Originally Posted by
Catullus64
I'll see your analogy and raise you another. A cookbook with lots and lots of good recipes is a good cookbook. A cookbook the bulk of which is dedicated to describing ingredients is not.
Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, a book I have myriad problems with, was actually trending in the right direction with its writeups on horror genres, clumsy though many of them were. The 'flavors of fantasy' section in the DMG, which tries something similar, is well due some reinforcement, and I hope it gets new attention in the 2024 re-works of the core rulebook.