Why bother with Vanilla?

[Lonely Tylenol]

That's the key there. They seem largely negligible to you. To other people they don't seem largely negligible.

To me, and most I've have discussed this with, vanilla is a bad analogy. These settings are vanilla, chocolate, strawberry and maybe even flavors like butter pecan. The settings you are describing they see as flavors like onion, raw horse flesh, corn, balsamic vinegar, tuna and sardine-brandy ice creams (all real flavors, BTW).

Man, I bet corn ice cream would be super. I've had corn flavoured candy. It seems to be an Asian thing. Fresh sweet corn is such a great flavour to add sugar to.

 

[airwalkrr]

Because chocolate is too overdone?

 

[BigFreekinGoblinoid]

Speaking VERY generally, IMO, RPGers like what they know, like what they can get, and like what others can easily relate to. People ( again, in general ) don't like change, and don't like to be told they don't like it.

 

[BigFreekinGoblinoid]

... I wrote a campaign setting that was a psionic world set on floating islands in the upper atmosphere of a gas giant, in which arcane magic had been purged by the gods ages ago for mysterious backstory reasons, leaving fragments of powerful arcane artifacts scattered around the world. ...

This sounds like a great premise for a game setting!

 

[Doug McCrae]

I misread the thread title as - Why bother with Valhalla?

The answer is, of course, because of the hawt valkyries.

 

[Pbartender]

Vanilla has the property of being able to take any kind of sauce and still taste good. If each player brings their own sauce, then if they've got vanilla to work with, they'll be happy.

Or, for that matter, vanilla is a primary ingredient of so many other recipes...

You can't make a proper banana split, for example, without the vanilla ice cream. And apple pie ala mode just doesn't taste right if you use rocky road instead.

 

[dmccoy1693]

You can't make a proper banana split, for example, without the vanilla ice cream. And apple pie ala mode just doesn't taste right if you use rocky road instead.

True dat, but have you ever tried belgian waffles with cinnamon ice cream? AHHHHH!!!!!

Ohh, wait. We're suppose to be talking about how this relates to D&D. Ummm.... I prefer my apple pie with french vanilla.

 

[hexgrid]

Basically, I want to know why people who prefer Vanilla do so.

...sharing a vast many points of commonality makes Vanilla fantasy setting ideal for many people, as there isn't a great deal to re-learn when you move from one such setting to another. This makes such settings far more accessible than Talislanta or Tekumel, wherein the points of commonality with other settings are so few that you really have to work in order to find them. Settings like that can be a total PITA for the gamers in a time-crunch, hobby newcomers, or any other number of people who would benefit from this familiarity.

...this is why I like Vanilla settings, as tweaking them to suit personal preference is very easy.

You've got this covered all on your own!

 

[Mallus]

Why bother with vanilla? I think it comes down to this: just about anything can be done well, and done well more than once.

In fact, if you consider a 'vanilla' D&D setting to be one that successfully emulates the feel of a classic fantasy work/subgenre, then we still haven't seen one that does it well, the presence of Tolkienesque elves and Conanesque barabrians notwithstanding...

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Just like ice cream. How do companies make strawberry, chocolate, mint chip, vanilla itself or any other flavor? They make huge batches of base vanilla and then add to it.

Actually, they don't.

They make a plain sweet cream base and add vanilla / strawberry / chocolate / Oreos to it.

Vanilla ice cream is only the base for vanilla and vanilla-derivatives.