Craving Vanilla

With the end of my House of Worms Empire of the Petal Throne campaign looming on the horizon, I’ve found myself increasingly entertaining thoughts about what I might referee next. This is, I suspect, a familiar experience for any long-term referee. When one campaign winds down, the imagination inevitably drifts toward the next one. What's perhaps less familiar – or at least less commonly admitted – is what my imagination is drifting toward right now. After nearly a decade refereeing a campaign set in one of the most distinctive and idiosyncratic settings in all of fantasy gaming, my thoughts are now turning toward something simpler and more familiar. 

A few years ago, I wrote a post in defense of “vanilla fantasy,” that oft-maligned category of fantasy assembled from a plethora of well-worn elements ripped bleeding from a wide variety of pop cultural sources. It's the sort of fantasy that offers elves and dwarves, orcs and dragons, populating a comfortable backdrop of castles, taverns, and ruined keeps to explore. In my original post, I argued that familiarity is not, in itself, a vice and that, much like vanilla ice cream, this style of fantasy can be delightful, provided it's well made.

I’ve been thinking about that post again recently, not in the abstract but in a more immediate sense. Refereeing Tékumel has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my gaming life. The world is rich and strange, filled with a secret history, believable cultures, and cosmic mysteries that continue to engage my players and me even after more than a decade of continuous play. But Tékumel is, undeniably, a demanding setting. Refereeing it requires a certain level of commitment, not just from me, but also from the players. There are fewer familiar touchstones. Every temple, every clan, every creature has to be introduced carefully (and often repeatedly) until everyone involved can differentiate the Golden Bough clan from the Golden Dawn clan and distinguish a Mrúr from a Shédra. Doing so has been a joyful labor, yes, but a labor nonetheless.

After so many years of that, I find myself looking at my large library of RPGs and thinking fondly of simpler pleasures. I don’t mean simple in the sense of dull or uninspired; I mean something that requires less instruction, less orientation – a world where the players already know what an elf is, what orcs are, and where a sword +1 is a treasured find. Something like The World of Greyhawk might fit the bill or even an original setting that proudly embraces the classical tropes of the genre. I'm thinking of a setting where there's no need to consult pronunciation guides or encyclopedic sourcebooks, because everyone already knows and understands it.

I suppose what I might be seeking is a kind of fantasy palate cleanser. After a long and satisfying feast of intricate, exotic fare, my appetite turns to something more basic – not because it’s better, but because it’s different, maybe even a little more easily digestible. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Just as you can grow weary of overly dense worldbuilding or settings so unique that they require a glossary, you can also find yourself longing for something familiar, something one can settle into without having to decode it first. There’s a reason so many of us fondly remember playing The Keep on the Borderlands or The Village of Hommlet: those were places you could walk into and start playing immediately, no lore dump required. There’s real value to that kind of immediacy.

The funny thing is that, after spending so long championing the offbeat and the obscure, I find myself needing to re-learn how to embrace the obvious. It’s actually surprisingly hard. I must admit to feeling a certain guilt about even pondering this, as if, by considering a campaign filled with orcs and magic swords, I might somehow regressed in my tastes or skills as a referee. That's nonsense, of course, but I feel it nonetheless. Vanilla isn’t bad; vanilla is foundational. It's the baseline against which everything else is judged. Like any flavor, it can be bland or brilliant depending on who’s mixing the ingredients.

To reiterate a point I've made before, I remind you of something a friend of mine said to me at Gamehole Con a few years ago. He and I were enjoying some locally made ice cream – Wisconsin takes these things seriously – and he remarked, “People think vanilla is plain, but that’s only because they’ve never had good vanilla.” I’ve never forgotten that. Sometimes, after wandering far and wide in the world of fantasy, what you really want is something straightforward, something honest, something that reminds you of why you fell in love with the genre in the first place.

I can't yet be certain what game I'll referee after the conclusion of House of Worms. The group has bandied around some ideas, but we haven't settled on anything just yet. Up until this week, I was pretty sure that, whatever it was, it'd something quirky, idiosyncratic, or otherwise off the beaten path. Now, I'm not so sure. Maybe instead it’ll be something with goblins in caves, mysterious towers in the swamp, and a one-eyed bandit lord menacing the kingdom from his hilltop fastness – because maybe, after all these years of luxuriating in the baroque splendors of ancient empires and alien, unknowable gods, I just want to spend a little time in a world where swords are swords, wizards wear pointy hats, and the map has a corner labeled “Here Be Dragons.”

I guess we'll see.