Vanilla Realms and Strawberry Fields

[I'm A Banana]

Vanilla = Plain

The Realms are something I coulda thought of while on the crapper. Seriously...a Gandalf rip-off, a powerful magic godess, the "weave," and a rebellious good guy from an evil race, an evil cult of dragon-worshipers, a kingdom of evil mages...

Even before I knew what D&D was, these things popped into my head, and were discarded as too...unoriginal.

Then I discovered D&D...and found that FR was a world that embodied everything I had already thought of. It was nothing special...nothing too creative...

Then I found that FR had a massive following of fans, and thought: "Hm...these guys must like re-affirming their own ideas in literature..."

I give the Realms credit for being first, and doing it well. Not everyone could so eminately shape a re-hash of any decent ideas already thought of. It's a lot harder than it is probably made out to be.

But it's nothing special...nothing unique. Greyhawk is that, too. Dragonlance is mostly like that. Kalamar is largely like that.

They all have their own "spins." High magic, questionable morals, great heroes, and a world human-dominated. But they're all basically the same thing, just stubtly different.

Dark Sun, Planescape, Spelljammer, Dragonstar....these things are largely unique and special, something few people would have thought of or pulled together on their own (except maybe Dragonstar, which gets props for getting it right, just like the Realms does). They're significant departures from the norm. They are many things, but plain is not one of them.

The Realms are plain. Uninventive. Unremarkable. Unoriginal. It did these things early, and it did them right, but it did nothing new.

It's plain. It's vanilla.

 

[Thindul the Gnome]

My friend Larry was running a Realms campaign and someone, may have even been me, told him he made a mistake, that was *supposed to be* like this. He said, "I bought this boxed set, I own it, it's mine. It ceased being Ed Greenwood's the moment I purchased it. I will run it however I feel like. If I decide Greyhawk is on the other side of the Spine of the World, then that's what its like." That's the way I have handled my Realms campaign ever since.

As for originality. Dark Sun? Original? Have you ever read Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars series? Planescape? Victorian England, just add a tiefling named the Artful Dodger. Scarred Lands...Hmm, a great battle of Gods vs Titans. That's been done before. Old news.

Reminds me of a young college student that complained Shakespear's Hamlet was just a bunch of cliches tossed together.