Topic: Vanilla is good, but there are countless other good flavors, too.
The 1974 D&D rules have a specific flavor to them, which I will here refer to as "vanilla".
The various versions of A/D&D through the decades (as well as their support products) have not travelled far from 1974 in terms of flavor. Thus we have "French vanilla", "vanilla bean", "vanilla with nuts", "vanilla with chocolate syrup", "vanilla with ______", etc.
Consider: "This setting has crusty dwarves who have wars with goblins who have chests full of gold and elves living in forests with dragons flying overhead while regenerating trolls live in caves and every town has a cleric to heal people and magic-users will zap you with fireballs and etc."
I just described almost every published D&D product. Those that supposedly "innovate" from that merely A) add more stuff to that mix ("...plus laser guns and crashed spaceships and robots!"), and/or B) give the above mix some twists ("In this campaign, elves live in the desert and ride anhkhegs.").
The only two publishers that I know of who are giving us actual innovation are Lamentations of the Flame Princess and Goodman Games (with their forthcoming DDC RPG and with James Raggi's Random Esoteric Creature Generator).
Next post: How we got into this mess.
Last edited by Geoffrey (2011-08-29 21:39:01)