Opinions on codex/journal entries in geymes?

[Shadenuat]

I dislike codices at least how they are made in modern games, like Bioware games (although the technobabble of Mass Effect was suitable for the setting). Information is often irrelevant to what is happening in the game and is done in encyclopedic format, which is a bad way to tell about the setting. I like characters tell me about the setting, because what characters tell me is opinionated, has meaning in their lives and is flavored by their personalities. I'd rather ask Dhall about Dustmen than read a codex entry about them.
And in many good RPGs, the pacing of the game itself helped a lot with learning about the game. In games like Fallout you start as an outsider and travel between communities, starting with simple people and progressing to more complex communities, bigger cities and more dangerous threats. I like that a lot more.
In Morrowind, I've read books more like part of a challenge from gaming community, to know more what people are discussing. But the keyword system was enough for me and told me most of what I wanted to know about the world. Granted there are some amazing and sick stories to read in TES, but then they do repeat every game and books become not as interesting after you played one game.

As a DM I found that overloading players with information far beyond their adventuring domain, thinking history and countries far away, while is very fun, is not very useful. Truth is, nobody likes excess reading. And before you throw rocks at me, I used to think that the quality of an RPG can be judged by an amount of text it has in it. However, since I expanded a bit on what I play and played more and more games, including those that promised "a lot of text, like good old times", yet turned to be not fun to read, I changed my opinion to less radical one - game only requires enough text to support it themes and characters properly, and it can be handled in different manner (dialogue of PST, funny descriptions in Fallout, item descriptions of Dark Souls, rhymes in Child of Light).

 

[J1M]

The success of this stuff is 100% determined by its quality.

 

[TedNugent]

Dune and Lord of the Rings had a glossary in the back of the book. They were provided as reference material. They were not core to the narrative in the book, but in case you wanted to know what "CHOAM" or the "Tlelaxu Facedancers" were, you could read a brief dictionary entry.

I think the key is to keep the glossary section in the back of the book and use it strictly as a reference material. It isn't part of the narrative and the developer shouldn't pretend that it is.

 

[DraQ]

I dislike codices at least how they are made in modern games, like Bioware games (although the technobabble of Mass Effect was suitable for the setting). Information is often irrelevant to what is happening in the game and is done in encyclopedic format, which is a bad way to tell about the setting.

Whether information is relevant is orthogonal to its format.

Morrowind and BG1 don't feature codex, but Morrowind's book and dialogue convey a lot of relevant fluff, while in BG1 you can only read about places way out of game's scope and completely irrelevant to it.

Witcher does feature codex or codex-like info compilation and yet it's all relevant to the game.

I'd rather ask Dhall about Dustmen than read a codex entry about them.

Yeah, but it wouldn't make make sense to ask Dhall about dusties if you weren't a clueless berk.

It's good choice when you can make the character a clueless outsider, but it's not always an option.

In Morrowind, I've read books more like part of a challenge from gaming community, to know more what people are discussing. But the keyword system was enough for me and told me most of what I wanted to know about the world.

Too bad, because some information required you to delve into books.

And I mean information with tangible gameplay benefits, like cartload of daedric gear and arguably the most powerful shield in game (barring self-enchanted daedric tower shield).

As a DM I found that overloading players with information far beyond their adventuring domain, thinking history and countries far away, while is very fun, is not very useful.

Which was the case with BG1 despite its lack of codex.

 

[Shadenuat]

Too bad, because some information required you to delve into books.

And I mean information with tangible gameplay benefits, like cartload of daedric gear and arguably the most powerful shield in game (barring self-enchanted daedric tower shield).

Quests covered it. While serving Tribunal or Imperial Mission you would learn about most of artifacts and places, and many daedric shrines. Books that mentioned 100 skill teachers, you'd have to have particular knowledge about the fact that it is possible to find them by reading at all, and most players won't even remember the name of a NPC they read about.
And since most interesting thing about TES is hiking, eventually you'll find everything anyway. Not that you really need to, since there are places to get end tier equipment with mediocre stealth and a few potions of invisibility, and your own enchanted things would be as good as any artifact.
The best books for me were that enhanced immersion and were relevant to what I was doing. Listing through crazy dwemer books was the funniest part for me.
Edwinna or Ald'Ruhn for best mage waifu.

Don't misunderstand me. Morrowind had excellent collection of books. I just didn't bother with Imperial History I-IX and those alike, aka History of the North from BG. And somebody who played Daggerfall would not bother with many of them either.
I don't think it makes any gameworld more "deep" if you stuff as much of those into it as you can.