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

[Faolyn]

Kender are just fearless halflings with kleptomania. Just another halfling subrace basically. They're vanilla.

And the ability to taunt and enrage their foes, which I was just reminded about last night while reading something else. In 5e, they'd have the vicious mockery cantrip.

• Gods oversee the world
• The world is ancient

See, now I want a world that is literally new. And I don't mean that in the sense that people just developed toolmaking and the game is called Caves & Fire-Breathing Carnosaurs. I mean that the gods literally created all civilization at most a hundred or so years ago. Your PCs are literally from the third or fourth generation of people ever.

 

[Jaeger]

My Standards for "Vanilla Fantasy":

The Hobbit -The Lord of the Rings.

From a sword and sorcery direction - Robert Howard's Conan stories.

Both are what I would call "vanilla" settings. And while they may have strong fantastical elements, those elements are curated and consistent to the whole.


These are all what I would call: Gonzo Kitchen-Sink Fantasy:

D&D w/
Greyhawk
Forgotten Realms
DragonLance
Pathfinder
DCC Rpg.

Just tons of influences of different monsters, myths, and deities, from many different world cultures, combined with Tolkien, sword and sorcery, weird fantasy and SciFi; all mashed together with a thin explanatory veneer to make it all work.

It's not vanilla fantasy.
That's vanilla D&D.

That's the disconnect. D&D hasn't been a generic fantasy game ever. It's is own set of weirdness that creates a default within it's own subcategory.

This.

D&D has always been its own genre.

And it has been a very influential genre, shaping peoples perceptions of what "Fantasy" is.

 

[Parmandur]

See, now I want a world that is literally new. And I don't mean that in the sense that people just developed toolmaking and the game is called Caves & Fire-Breathing Carnosaurs. I mean that the gods literally created all civilization at most a hundred or so years ago. Your PCs are literally from the third or fourth generation of people ever.

That's discussed in the next section of the DMG, along with other ways to customize the core assumptions of the game, the "vanila" flavor profile.

 

[Minigiant]

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.

Again the arguments are that FR, GH, and DL have something layer on top of it that take away from the vanilla flavor and not everyone agrees that they match the core assumptions.

I mean one reason why many DMs don't run FR is how well charted and known parts of it is.

 

[CleverNickName]

I mean one reason why many DMs don't run FR is how well charted and known parts of it is.

(raises hand)

 

[Faolyn]

I mean one reason why many DMs don't run FR is how well charted and known parts of it is.

That, along with its extensive history. My friend was taking part on a reddit-based "30 Characters in 30 Days" challenge and he got stuck on the Realms because there's simply too much there.

 

[TiwazTyrsfist]

As I recently had pointed out to me, Vanilla is part of an exotic orchid originating in the south american rain-forest that has to be pollinated by hand, was once used only for sacred purposes, and now we treat it as a synonym for basic and boring.

So by that metric, absolutely Forgotten Realms.

 

[Scribe]

See, now I want a world that is literally new. And I don't mean that in the sense that people just developed toolmaking and the game is called Caves & Fire-Breathing Carnosaurs. I mean that the gods literally created all civilization at most a hundred or so years ago. Your PCs are literally from the third or fourth generation of people ever.

Thats a neat idea.

 

[Northern Phoenix]

I voted Forgotten Realms here, but more generally I'd describe it as one that generally follows the assumptions made in the core book without needing a lot of twisting or subversion to fit. Conversely, If all or large parts of a setting are designed to "gatcha" people's basic assumptions, then it's probably not vanilla.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

One could argue that Much of the world you campaign in on the FR is not untamed as there are intelligent societies of humanoids all over.

One could argue that Much of the world you campaign in on Greyhawk isn't magical as its mostly concentrated into a few people and places.



It's not vanilla fantasy.
That's vanilla D&D.

That's the disconnect. D&D hasn't been a generic fantasy game ever. It's is own set of weirdness that creates a default within it's own subcategory.

I’m very, very aware of the difference.

I said what I said in precisely the context of D&D. Not fantasy.

The full PHB for 5e is not vanilla D&D, by default. You have to curate a bit, treat most of the races as very rare if they are present at all, and even then the game will only be vanilla if you build a vanilla world outside the PC options, keep magic items rare and significant, avoid stuff like cities with mile high towers held up by magic or statues that can be woken up to defend the city, and a lot of other stuff that moves you further from the old school milieu. You can have some of that stuff (Barrier Peaks) and stay vanilla, but it has to be a world where stuff like any of the examples here are wild, incredible, stuff that people from other lands have trouble even believing are real.