D&D 5E The Mainstreaming of D&D

[MGibster]

I agree completely.

DnD is pop music. It's vanilla.

That's nothing new though. As the 400 pound gorilla in the room, D&D has always been vanilla when it comes to the RPG scene.

 

[Steampunkette]

That's nothing new though. As the 400 pound gorilla in the room, D&D has always been vanilla when it comes to the RPG scene.

This always boggles my mind, this use of the word vanilla.

Vanilla is the fruit of a flowering orchid found only in mesoamerica, which traveled around the world at great freaking expense and was exotic by nature to everyone from kings in England to the Chinese emperors. Wars were fought over spices and peoples crushed conquered and enslaved in order to get a hold of countless flowering plants.

And now one of the most rare and wondrous of them all is considered the most basic, unimpressive, and bland flavor.

That blows my mind! Throughout history there were thousands upon thousands of people, possibly millions, who would have killed to add the tiniest amount of vanilla extract to their diets. To one meal before they died. People did!

Vanilla is delicious.

 

[BookTenTiger]

This always boggles my mind, this use of the word vanilla.

Vanilla is the fruit of a flowering orchid found only in mesoamerica, which traveled around the world at great freaking expense and was exotic by nature to everyone from kings in England to the Chinese emperors. Wars were fought over spices and peoples crushed conquered and enslaved in order to get a hold of countless flowering plants.

And now one of the most rare and wondrous of them all is considered the most basic, unimpressive, and bland flavor.

That blows my mind! Throughout history there were thousands upon thousands of people, possibly millions, who would have killed to add the tiniest amount of vanilla extract to their diets. To one meal before they died. People did!

Vanilla is delicious.

D&D is so almond extract.

 

[MGibster]

Vanilla is the fruit of a flowering orchid found only in mesoamerica, which traveled around the world at great freaking expense and was exotic by nature to everyone from kings and England to the Chinese emperors. Wars were fought over spices and peoples crushed conquered and enslaved in order to get a hold of countless flowering plants.

It just goes to show you how much things can change over time. I don't know how old you are, but I can remember a time when Red Lobster was a semi-fancy place you'd dine at on special occasions like your birthday. The premise of Smoky and the Bandit (1977) is that some bootleggers are trying to transport Coors beer from Texas to Georgia. Can you imagine anyone thinking Coors was worth smuggling? When I was a kid, parmigiano cheese came in a green can in powder form not in a hard block you could grate yourself at home. Oh, and chicken wings, skirt steak, brisket, and ribs were fairly inexpensive because they were considered poor people's food but now they're all fairly expensive.

Vanilla is delicious.

Vanilla is delicious and I prefer it to chocolate ice cream. But it's common as dirt these days.

 

[Steampunkette]

It just goes to show you how much things can change over time. I don't know how old you are, but I can remember a time when Red Lobster was a semi-fancy place you'd dine at on special occasions like your birthday. The premise of Smoky and the Bandit (1977) is that some bootleggers are trying to transport Coors beer from Texas to Georgia. Can you imagine anyone thinking Coors was worth smuggling? When I was a kid, parmigiano cheese came in a green can in powder form not in a hard block you could grate yourself at home. Oh, and chicken wings, skirt steak, brisket, and ribs were fairly inexpensive because they were considered poor people's food but now they're all fairly expensive.

Vanilla is delicious and I prefer it to chocolate ice cream. But it's common as dirt these days.

Oh, I don't disagree that it's very common at this point in time. It just blows my mind because of what it was. And no one calls basic anything Red Lobster. You know?

That's just weird that vanilla got that one label.

And it's probably because of ice cream, as you note.

 

[Malmuria]

Oh, I don't disagree that it's very common at this point in time. It just blows my mind because of what it was. And no one calls basic anything Red Lobster. You know?

That's just weird that vanilla got that one label.

And it's probably because of ice cream, as you note.

Common, but I don't think real vanilla bean is a thing a lot of people experience. Rather, they get a vanilla flavor of something else, usually ice cream, which is further made to be white because of the milk and sugar added. So people think vanilla is blank slate and nothing special.

Also, per the earlier post, pop music has tremendous variety and takes skill, so also should not be used as a synonym of generic, imo.

 

[Gnarlo]

Common, but I don't think real vanilla bean is a thing a lot of people experience. Rather, they get a vanilla flavor of something else, usually ice cream, which is further made to be white because of the milk and sugar added. So people think vanilla is blank slate and nothing special.

James Hoffman, the coffee guy on YT, got a local creamery to make him an artisanal vanilla ice cream with 8 crushed beans in his quest for the perfect affogato; he remarks in the video “you don’t know how good, and expensive, this is”

 

[Shair-afiyun]

I live under a room temperature rock I guess. I always thought D&D was more mainstream. Especially when Vin Diesel, Stephen Colbert, Dwayne Johnson, and (maybe but likely) Stephen King played it.

 

[MGibster]

I live under a room temperature rock I guess. I always thought D&D was more mainstream. Especially when Vin Diesel, Stephen Colbert, Dwayne Johnson, and (maybe but likely) Stephen King played it.

In a way it's always been mainstream in that it's the one role playing game almost everyone has heard of. If I told my mother I was going to play some Gamma World she wouldn't have known what the hell that was but she knew what AD&D was. The only other game I can think of that garnered that kind of mainstream attention was Vampire back in the 1990s. The property was turned into a prime time television show called Kindred: The Embraced airing on Fox and I remember the game featured prominently in an episode of Real Stories of the Highway Patrol. (If I recall correctly, they pulled over a driver who had a large knife in the door of his vehicle and happened to have the game in his car.)

 

[Shair-afiyun]

In a way it's always been mainstream in that it's the one role playing game almost everyone has heard of. If I told my mother I was going to play some Gamma World she wouldn't have known what the hell that was but she knew what AD&D was. The only other game I can think of that garnered that kind of mainstream attention was Vampire back in the 1990s. The property was turned into a prime time television show called Kindred: The Embraced airing on Fox and I remember the game featured prominently in an episode of Real Stories of the Highway Patrol. (If I recall correctly, they pulled over a driver who had a large knife in the door of his vehicle and happened to have the game in his car.)

Yeah definitely in that sense, also Kindred the Embraced haven't heard that for a long while. I think a better way to put it, the mainstreaming part of it, is just how much more open and postitive people are about the subject matter than they were prior. Also a simpler edition that is fairly rules-lite goes a long a way to attracting potential players.