D&D General A Taxonomy of D&D and other FRPG Settings

[Snarf Zagyg]

I would start by saying that I don't really agree with the taxonomy. I think it has some, but limited, usefulness.

I tend to view settings along the following axes, and I don't really think it's helpful to bring in non-D&D settings because they can vary widely (and most non-D&D FRPGs tend to have "default" and "everything else" so it's not really helpful either):

A. Settings that reify standard D&D tropes.

This is the big ol' category, and it also includes those settings that "typify" an edition. These are the settings that make for the standard "D&D" experience. D&D is its own fantasy category, with its own tropes, and these are the settings that have largely defined what D&D is in various editions. This largely, but not completely, maps on to the idea of the "kitchen sink" setting.

Examples: Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Nentir Vale, Mystara, various incarnations of Blackmoor, Invincible Overlord/Wilderlands, Ravenloft

Notes- Some people might wonder why, for example, Ravenloft and Dragonlance are included here. While they made slight alterations in style of play (gothic horror, romantic fantasy) and changed a few things (steel, kender), these are additions and reified standard D&D tropes. This also includes "twists" and "flavorings" such as Kara Tur, Maztica, and Al Qadim, which just end up in Forgotten Realms anyway.


B. Settings that subvert, modify, or play with standard D&D tropes.

These are settings that explicitly play with the standard D&D tropes, often with a strong authorial vision, and subvert those tropes or modify them in theme, rules, or both in order to make a different play experience.

Examples: Eberron, Dark Sun, Birthright, Ghostwalk

Notes- these should self-explanatory. While Eberron might be considered a "kitchen sink" setting, the strong thematic elements that undercut typical D&D tropes do not really put it in the same category as a standard D&D campaign setting.


C. Meta-settings.

Ever since D&D was released, there were planes, and the idea of traveling between various settings (or even different games). Meta-settings make the connective tissue explicit, and provide that the area of travel can, itself, be a setting.

Example: Planescape, Manual of the Planes, Spelljammer

 

[Voadam]

Most everything falls under Kitchen sink fairly readily. It is pretty rare for something to be so specific it does not. Dark Sun culturally kept fairly not kitchen sink, but even that had stuff like the Meso-American and Mesopotamian themes that crept into characterizing certain sorcerer-kings' city states.
Ravenloft, Planescape, and Spelljammer are pretty kitchen sink as well. They each provide easy built in rationales for including anything from D&D as a player element or as a DM element.

Ravenloft has a strong gothic horror aspect but its different domains from different worlds makes it very kitchen sink. It has two ancient Egypt lands, a dark sun land, the only mythic india land I can think of in official D&D, part of Thay, a mind-flayer land, standard D&D in Darkon, lots of kitchen sink aspects. Also the mists drawing from different worlds means the party can have PCs from different worlds together so you could have a Rashemon witch from the Realms next to a Knight of Veluna from Greyhawk.

Planescape is all the planes and all the game worlds, connected by a planar city of gates that can connect anywhere so you can have people from any world in concept.

Spelljammer is similar but through physically getting from one world to another through magic space.

Hyboria was definitely a kitchen sink, just not for D&D mechanics. It is made up of a lot of analogue lands (ancient Egypt land, ancient Greece land, Spain, Pict wilderness, ancient Afghanistan, Africa, East Asia, Germany, Norse scandinavia, Celtic areas, etc.)

Birthright had the European domains, the viking domains, the Arab domains, the slavic domains, the dwarf domains, and the elf domains. It added domain rules but felt like a kitchen sink setting with the added element of divine descended rulers.

Most everything falls under Kitchen sink fairly readily. It is pretty rare for something to be so specific it does not. Dark Sun culturally kept fairly not kitchen sink, but even that had stuff like the Meso-American and Mesopotamian themes that crept into characterizing certain sorcerer-kings' city states.

 

[Lem23]

Harn is definitely not A (Tieflings, dragonborn etc aren't a presence there at all). I'd say either B (low magic medieval as the theme) or more likely, D (especially if you include Talislnta and EPT in that category), a fully realised art /boutique world with a specific mythology present.

 

[squibbles]

Category A - Kitchen-sink Settings:
Examples (with root edition): Greyhawk (OD&D), Forgotten Realms (1E-2E), Mystara (BECMI), Golarion (Pathfinder), Exandria (5E/Critical Role), Kingdoms of Kalamar (OGL), Midgard (OGL).

Category B - Thematic Settings (Style/flavor-focused):
Examples: Dark Sun, Dragonlance, Eberron, Ravenloft, Scarred Lands, most Magic: the Gathering worlds.

Category C - Thematic Settings (Rules-focused):
Examples (with thematic focus): Planescape (the Planes), Spelljammer (spelljammers and the crystal spheres), Birthright (kingdom-building), Ghostwalk (ghost PCs), Council of Wyrms (dragon PCs).

Category D - Boutique Settings:
Examples (with author): Middle-earth (JRR Tolkien), Talislanta (Stephen Michael Sechi), Tekumel (MAR Barker), the Hyborian Age (RE Howard).

I think there's a question that precedes your premise. What do you want the taxonomy to do? Why is authorial originality / degree of kitchen sink-ness the primary axis of distinction?

The way I organize my setting books is by genre and degree of magic, i.e. high fantasy/high magic, sword and sorcery/low magic, sword and planet, etc., since those differences reflected my interests at the time I created the typology.

Admittedly, your taxonomy makes sense to me. I think the reason for that, though, is that Category A - kitchen sinks - are an ideal type. Kitchen sinks share a set of similar elements: D&Disms like armored Catholic-esque henotheists and swashbuckling magic lutists have inexplicable cultural niches, the middle region is a medieval Europe pastiche, north-ish of it is a viking pastiche, south-ish of it is an arabian pastiche, east-ish of it is an orientalist pastiche. They have different place names and particularities, but the standard components are there.

The other parts of the taxonomy are different varieties of departure from the ideal type.

• Category B - Departures for deliberate thematic reasons
• Category C - Departures for deliberate rules reasons--though I'd put all of these except Birthright in Category B (and add Ptolus to C)
• Category D - Departures because they predate the solidification of the standard D&D world (I'd put Talislanta in B too)

I tend to view settings along the following axes, and I don't really think it's helpful to bring in non-D&D settings because they can vary widely (and most non-D&D FRPGs tend to have "default" and "everything else" so it's not really helpful either):

A. Settings that reify standard D&D tropes.
Examples: Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Nentir Vale, Mystara, various incarnations of Blackmoor, Invincible Overlord/Wilderlands, Ravenloft

B. Settings that subvert, modify, or play with standard D&D tropes.
Examples: Eberron, Dark Sun, Birthright, Ghostwalk

C. Meta-settings.
Example: Planescape, Manual of the Planes, Spelljammer

This makes a lot of sense to me too, though I'm not clear which of these would be the 'axes.'

Is it:

reifyin' like a boss
^
I
meta <------------------> not meta
I
I
subversive AF
​

Also, I think lots of non-D&D settings would be appropriate to include. D&Disms are prevalent enough in the fantasy zeitgeist that many people with no knowledge of icosahedrons could tell you the proper noun for an armored Catholic-esque henotheist. Also, LotR and Hyboria are--maybe--essential enough to the D&D canon that they ought to be included in the typology.

 

[Mercurius]

I would start by saying that I don't really agree with the taxonomy. I think it has some, but limited, usefulness.

I tend to view settings along the following axes, and I don't really think it's helpful to bring in non-D&D settings because they can vary widely (and most non-D&D FRPGs tend to have "default" and "everything else" so it's not really helpful either): SNIP

Those are probably more clearly defined, and thus easier to categorize. That said, I don't think category C is necessary or is of the same type as A and B and is actually a sub-group of B, as they are inherently an alteration of classic D&D tropes. So your taxonomy, while clear, only really includes two categories: settings that reify D&D tropes and settings that subvert or modify them.

 

[Mercurius]

I think there's a question that precedes your premise. What do you want the taxonomy to do? Why is authorial originality / degree of kitchen sink-ness the primary axis of distinction?

The way I organize my setting books is by genre and degree of magic, i.e. high fantasy/high magic, sword and sorcery/low magic, sword and planet, etc., since those differences reflected my interests at the time I created the typology.

Admittedly, your taxonomy makes sense to me. I think the reason for that, though, is that Category A - kitchen sinks - are an ideal type. Kitchen sinks share a set of similar elements: D&Disms like armored Catholic-esque henotheists and swashbuckling magic lutists have inexplicable cultural niches, the middle region is a medieval Europe pastiche, north-ish of it is a viking pastiche, south-ish of it is an arabian pastiche, east-ish of it is an orientalist pastiche. They have different place names and particularities, but the standard components are there.

The other parts of the taxonomy are different varieties of departure from the ideal type.

• Category B - Departures for deliberate thematic reasons
• Category C - Departures for deliberate rules reasons--though I'd put all of these except Birthright in Category B (and add Ptolus to C)
• Category D - Departures because they predate the solidification of the standard D&D world (I'd put Talislanta in B too)

This makes a lot of sense to me too, though I'm not clear which of these would be the 'axes.'

Is it:

reifyin' like a boss
^
I
meta <------------------> not meta
I
I
subversive AF
​

Also, I think lots of non-D&D settings would be appropriate to include. D&Disms are prevalent enough in the fantasy zeitgeist that many people with no knowledge of icosahedrons could tell you the proper noun for an armored Catholic-esque henotheist. Also, LotR and Hyboria are--maybe--essential enough to the D&D canon that they ought to be included in the typology.

Makes sense. My original idea was just a bit of fun, mostly around the notion that thematic settings seem to,play with either "fluff" or "crunch" elements (my categories B and C).

I like your notion of the kitchen sink as an ideal type, which goes along with @Snarf Zagyg 's emphasis.

I admit that I fudged Talislanta a bit, and as @Paul Farquhar said, Hyborian Age doesn't really fit my D, although interestingly enough, fits your D--as does Glorantha. Strangely enough, so does the Forgotten Realms in a way, as Ed Greenwood started making it in the 60s as a kid, although I don't think it really took shape until the D&D era, so ultimately belongs in A.

As for your last point, it really depends upon whether we want to center it on D&Disms or not. For the sake of this discussion and forum, I'd say yes. In that sense, originally I disagreed with @Lem23 about Harn, because it is kitchen sink according to its own Medievalistic Harnmaster tropes, but if we recenter the taxonomy on D&Disms, then it fits into your category B, the theme being simulationist Medievalism--along with Ars Magica's Mythic Europe.

So maybe your axes could be:

Y: D&D ideal type to divergence from type.
X: Broad (kitchen sink) to narrow focus.

Or something like that. Not totally happy with that, as the "D&D ideal" is unclear and could be a bit fuzzy.

 

[S'mon]

Wilderlands was created as a kitchen sink setting for OD&D. While it might seem a class B thematic 'gonzo swords & sorcery' setting now, in the mid-70s it was a clear Class A using the common tropes of the day.

Ed Greenwood's Forgotten Realms was actually a Class D world-for-own-sake, whereas RE Howard's Hyborea was created primarily as 'somewhere to set pulp stories from any epoch' and is really closest to a literary Class A.

 

[squibbles]

Makes sense. My original idea was just a bit of fun, mostly around the notion that thematic settings seem to,play with either "fluff" or "crunch" elements (my categories B and C).

Ya, that's a distinction that I've not seen made before. I think there is a meaningful difference between crunch elements that exist to serve novel fluff, i.e. rules to make wizard magic cause environmental collapse, and fluff elements that exist to serve novel crunch, i.e. in-setting backstory to justify the centrality of domain rules. But there probably aren't that many settings that truly belong to the second category--it's a lot easier for a prospective setting designer to reason forward from theme to representative mechanics than to reason backward from mechanics to a verisimilitudinous theme.

I like your notion of the kitchen sink as an ideal type, which goes along with @Snarf Zagyg 's emphasis.

As for your last point, it really depends upon whether we want to center it on D&Disms or not. For the sake of this discussion and forum, I'd say yes. In that sense, originally I disagreed with @Lem23 about Harn, because it is kitchen sink according to its own Medievalistic Harnmaster tropes, but if we recenter the taxonomy on D&Disms, then it fits into your category B, the theme being simulationist Medievalism--along with Ars Magica's Mythic Europe.

So maybe your axes could be:

Y: D&D ideal type to divergence from type.
X: Broad (kitchen sink) to narrow focus.

Or something like that. Not totally happy with that, as the "D&D ideal" is unclear and could be a bit fuzzy.

Ideal types are difficult to fit into broader typologies because they are definitionally a melange of many essential but unrelated characteristics. Like, for example, I think of high magic, kitchen sink-ness, bastard feudalist power structures surviving a civilizationally superior predecessor polity, and gonzo levels of divine intervention as being primary traits of the D&Dism ideal type. None of those traits necessarily has anything to do with the others but, if you remove one of them from a setting, it ceases to fit the ideal type.

I think a taxonomy with less amorphous distinctions would be more insightful.

What do you think of this 3x3 with the dimensions 'faux-medieval-Europe-ness' and 'prevalence of the weird and magical'?

	limited magic and weirdness	traditional magic and weirdness	voluminous or extreme magic and weirdness
faux medieval Europe	1a: Harnworld, Pendragon, Westeros	1b: Ars Magica (I assume), Birthright	1c: ???
faux medieval Europe with exceptions	2a: Lord of the Rings, Ravenloft	2b: Forgotten Realms and its many kitchen-sinky brethren	2c: Lamentations of the Flame Princess and its OSR ilk, Ptolus
not faux medieval Europe	3a: Hyborian Age	3b: Darksun, Talislanta, Tekumel, some Magic the Gathering worlds	3c: Eberron, Planescape, Spelljammer, other Magic the Gathering worlds

It didn't occur to me prior to creating the table, but it seems like there's a lot of clustering around 2b, 3b, and 3c... taxonomies are hard D:>

 

[Mercurius]

Love it, @squibbles - a definite improvement (or evolution).

A couple candidates for, your empty 1c: Warhammer's Old World and the pre-modern versions of Mage, although both might work more in 1b.

Earthdawn and Glorantha belong in 2b, I think, even though they are closer to not-faux than FR and Greyhawk.

I'd put Shadow World, Numenera, and Exalted in 3c, Glorantha probably in 2b.