Flavor text is the name given to text for action figure character backgrounds, playing cards, or within the pages of a role-playing game's rulebook. While appropriate to the product's or game's story concept, it usually has no effect on the mechanics of the game, but instead serves to add realism or characterization to the item in question. Flavor text is often the last text on a card or on the rear of a toy card or package, and is usually printed in italics or written between quotes to distinguish it from game-affecting text.
Flavor text was popularized by the dossiers of 1980s toys, primarily G.I. Joe filecards and Transformers tech-specs, but is now more commonly associated with games such as Magic: The Gathering. Games featuring flavor text include:
- Chez Geek
- Chaotic Trading Card Game
- City of Heroes Collectible Card Game
- The Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game
- Magic: The Gathering
- Munchkin
- Neopets Trading Card Game
- Pokémon Trading Card Game
- Talisman
- Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game (Only on Normal Monsters)
- Arkham Horror
In most cases, the flavor text attempts to add depth or background to the item, providing a form of context. This helps to establish the (often fictional) universe to which the item belongs.
A unique spin on flavor text in a card game can be seen in the long-lived Star Wars Customizable Card Game. Many cards with flavor text also include special keywords (such as Spy, Hologram, or Bounty Hunter) that can be spotted by other cards for bonuses or penalties. The flavor text on character cards is also one of the few ways of distinguishing that character's species (which is an important factor in most decks).
Read more about Flavor Text: Flavor Text in Puzzles
Famous quotes containing the words flavor and/or text:
“All my good reading, you mught say, was done in the toilet.... There are passages in Ulysses which can be read only in the toilet—if one wants to extract the full flavor of their content.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“The power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out.... Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)