D&D 5E What is your definition of a Vanilla setting

[Seramus]

Vanilla would probably be Greyhawk.
FR is also Vanilla, but buried under a mountain of sprinkles.

 

[Minigiant]

The main relevant area of the FR, for D&D product purposes, is the Sword Coast: if you look carefully at the map, and do the math, most of the territory is dangerous wilderness chock full of random encounters (as seen in the Adventure books). The "safe" or "civilized" areas are the exception, not the rule.

Dangerous wilderness does not neccesarily mean untamed.

Someone could argue that the people of the civilized places of the Forgotten Realms know of the inhabitants of the wilderness too much for it to be considered unknown. And the inhabitants of the wilderness are often too intelligent or civilized themselves to consider it untamed. If every dang "wild place" is littered with warring known "barbarians", how untamed is it?

Greyhawk's magical distribution matches the core rulebooks, which is what matters for the question at hand. The DMG discusses lower and higher magic Settings, but Greyhawk is not low magic.

The DMG suggest a default where evidence of magic is spread out.

Someone could argue that Greyhawk's magic is too concentrated into the hands of few and to few places of note to be the baseline. And due to the static inactive nature of thos individuals, Greyhawk has a lot of magic but it's barely magical.

 

[Parmandur]

Dangerous wilderness does not neccesarily mean untamed.

Someone could argue that the people of the civilized places of the Forgotten Realms know of the inhabitants of the wilderness too much for it to be considered unknown. And the inhabitants of the wilderness are often too intelligent or civilized themselves to consider it untamed. If every dang "wild place" is littered with warring known "barbarians", how untamed is it?




The DMG suggest a default where evidence of magic is spread out.

Someone could argue that Greyhawk's magic is too concentrated into the hands of few and to few places of note to be the baseline. And due to the static inactive nature of thos individuals, Greyhawk has a lot of magic but it's barely magical.

One could argue that, if one wished, but those are the guidelines laid out in the Dungeon Master's Guide, where Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk are also cited as primary examples of these assumptions at work.

 

[Minigiant]

One could argue that, if one wished, but those are the guidelines laid out in the Dungeon Master's Guide, where Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk are also cited as primary examples of these assumptions at work.

FR and GH are given as examples of D&D, not as vanilla D&D or any synonym of the word.

If it were, there would be no point to this discussion as someone would have pointed to the page and line in a book on the first few posts.

 

[Gradine]

For me it's definitely Greyhawk. The Forgotten Realms have been expanded upon as nauseum; I don't think you can really be a kitchen sink setting and vanilla. You can find basically anything under the sun somewhere in the Realms. That's not vanilla

Meanwhile, the the greatest arbiters of Greyhawk (or at least its loudest gatekeepers) have argued to keep it as pure and close to the original as possible

DL doesn't really belong on this list. It's off doing its own thing. It might be incredibly tropey (or dare a day, cliche) but it's certainly not vanilla

 

[Parmandur]

FR and GH are given as examples of D&D, not as vanilla D&D or any synonym of the word.

If it were, there would be no point to this discussion as someone would have pointed to the page and line in a book on the first few posts.

Lo and behold, someone did, and you quoted me. Forgotten Realms is repeatedly cited in the first chapter as the prime example of the core rulebook assumptions, which is the "vanilla" flavoring of D&D Fantasy.

 

[Parmandur]

For me it's definitely Greyhawk. The Forgotten Realms have been expanded upon as nauseum; I don't think you can really be a kitchen sink setting and vanilla. You can find basically anything under the sun somewhere in the Realms. That's not vanilla

Meanwhile, the the greatest arbiters of Greyhawk (or at least its loudest gatekeepers) have argued to keep it as pure and close to the original as possible

DL doesn't really belong on this list. It's off doing its own thing. It might be incredibly tropey (or dare a day, cliche) but it's certainly not vanilla

On the other hand, 3.x Greyhawk and all that was thrown in the mix there.

The Forgotten Realms is popular precisely because it can be a basis for any dish...like Vanilla ice cream. IT can be anything and everything, and repurposed for parts in other recipes.

 

[Minigiant]

Lo and behold, someone did, and you quoted me. Forgotten Realms is repeatedly cited in the first chapter as the prime example of the core rulebook assumptions, which is the "vanilla" flavoring of D&D Fantasy.

It says FR, GH, DL, and Mystara don't stray very far from the default assumptions. That doesn't state any are the base assumption nor the vanilla.

French Vanilla and Vanilla Bean are not very far Vanilla but neither is Regular Vanilla. I don't really think any published setting is raw based vanilla D&D. Some are very close and come down to preferences.

 

[pemerton]

I dunno about Prince Valiant, does that have a pantheon? I think having a really dumb pantheon is a big part of being Vanilla. I always assumed Prince Valiant was set in a Christianised setting.

Pendragon definitely not because it is post-Christian and has multiple separate religions and there's no "dumb pantheon". Religions are actually treated with a degree of respect.

I was going through your criteria step-by-step and winnowing out FRPGs.

I agree that both Pendragon and Prince Valiant don't meet the Pantheon criterion and (depending how you define it) perhaps the Adventurer criterion.

 

[Parmandur]

It says FR, GH, DL, and Mystara don't stray very far from the default assumptions. That doesn't state any are the base assumption nor the vanilla.

French Vanilla and Vanilla Bean are not very far Vanilla but neither is Regular Vanilla. I don't really think any published setting is raw based vanilla D&D. Some are very close and come down to preferences.

The Forgotten Realms have the double factor of following the five base assumptions of the rulebooks, and hewing to the default Heroic Fantasy genre tropes the rules also assume as the baseline.

If you want to phrase it as "assumed baseline," "vanilla" or "what the writers aim for when making material" it's the same result in the end. And it is notable that the rules aren't the way they are because they use the Forgotten Realms as the baseline, but that during the Next playtest they figured out the baseline most people wanted and found the Forgotten Realms fit like a glove: the popularity of Forgotten Realms material is more with homebrewers who repurpose Forgotten Realms material for their hoe games, because they can use that vanilla base than with hardcore fans.