I'm just curious why you call it "vanilla". Where do you get that term from?
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I think that "vanilla" is intended for a setting without specific rules that more or less override those of the core rulebooks or that require specific add-ons to fully function as a whole.
Because otherwise, calling Golarion "vanilla" would be a rather embarassing mistake. :)
I tend to prefer vanilla-oriented setting (Golarion, the Scarred Lands) where minimal adjustements are needed - mostly regarding the gods/pantheon.
At the same time, I often (always) apply house rules to my games, from extra skills to radical changes to combat, to vetoed feats/spells/class options. This requires the infamous 10 pages of custom rules to be provided to the players.
Sometimes, I also apply changes to the setting, sometimes just in geographical features, sometimes greater ones to get a better fit for my adventures.
Having the adventure presented in the "here's the dungeon door, go kill something" was acceptable 20 years ago or so, but right now doesn't cut it anylonger...
To get the adventure/campaign started there's the need of a greater framework in which to fit the characters, the places, the monsters, the BBEG's plots, etc.
So vanilla setting, but no vanilla rules or adventures, so to speak.
Depends on the game and on what you are trying to accomplish. I think it is important one way or another to have some depth to a world. Without it there is less context for roleplay. You dont behave the same in a Feudal Mideval world and one that is more or less like the modern world without technology. The setting also gives players material to draw on for backgrounds as well as giving the dm ideas for adventures. The setting should inspire players and dm alike, otherwise it isnt serving it's purpose.
I have done the homebrew, the published, and the 'vanilla', and I prefer a mix of homebrew and published. Basically taking a published setting like golarion where there are lots of resources to get information, and mix that with things the dm wants to change for his or her adventure. Kind of the best of bost worlds, the dm shouldn't be handcuffed to specifics, but there is still the depth of an established setting.
We like to mix it up. One of the other GMs in our group has his own very cool homebrew world. I'm currently running Kingmaker in Golarion, and am enjoying exploring at least one corner of that vast, vividly created and very diverse world. I'll probably stick with that for a while. Sooner or later, though, I'll get an urge to create a new campaign and setting completely from scratch again, hopefully when I have the time to actually do it well.
I think by vanilla settting he's receding tonthe travesty that befell greyhawk under 3.x. straight from the book with no additional support or information.
We're enjoying Golarian. It's ready-made with lots of great flavor. No one in the group really has the time or inclination to come up with a *Homebrew setting.
*side question - in Kingmaker, you're essentially creating your own kingdom. Conceivably, after the campaign is over, new PC's could go adventuring in this new realm. Is that Homebrew?
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Never played in an established setting. (Scratch that, Kirth runs his games in Aviona, his own setting. See next sentence however.) All the games I've run and played in have established the setting in play. Occasionally there would be handouts with a little extra detail. (Kirth's Aviona map, module handouts.)
I don't mind houserules, I do it myself all the time. (As some on the forums can attest!) However, I realize that most players don't have time to read another books worth of rules and so keep it to a minimum. (I've mostly been reading Kirthfinder as the need comes up. I haven't actually read them indepth. Sorry Kirth!)
I prefer what strikes a chord with me. Whether it be a vanilla version, massive published and revised version and/or home grown or a unique setting. Overall I would say my most memorable campaigns were unique settings.
I've been playing and GMing since the early 80's AD&D days and I loved Greyhawk and I liked Forgotten Realms even more, but I also played and developed unique campaign settings that were just as good if not better than anything published. I enjoy designing campaign settings and adventures to this day.
Usually a home grown unique campaign setting will be much more detailed and fleshed out from the fact that the GM is wholly invested in the project and already has some vision in his head for each and every country, town and city. It's a shame more people aren't doing this sort of thing anymore, however if everyone else is like me they hardly have the time to play let alone design campaign settings.
I've got two home-brew worlds which I alternate between. Don't think I've ever GM'd using a published setting except for Blackmoor, and that I've bolted on to one of my own.
I'd be lucky if my players cracked a book open to find out how Armor Class works, much less would they ever read enough of any published setting to be familiar with it.
They expect me to be the sole writer of the campaign and creator of the setting, and that suits me just fine.
I don't generally monkey with the rules, though I do run a loose game and ad hocking happens (with zero complaints, thank you very much), and I do create a lot of monsters and magic items from scratch. But they are always built per creation rules. So nobody gets handed ten pages of anything.
While I enjoy the published settings, I kinda like designing my own worlds too.
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I honestly was always a fan of home-brewed settings but to be quite honest the setting that I really enjoyed in recent history was World's Largest Dungeon back in 3.5 and there is very little deviation (always open to GM interpretation of course ^_^) and is pretty much just a hack and slash. However as of late we have been playing Kingmaker and I find myself completely at home playing a skill driven character who is not always on the front lines of the battles swinging away with multiple D10's or a caster class dropping a handful of D6's with every offensive spell. But i would be lying if I said I wasn't at least a little envious every time we hear the fated words "Roll for initiative...."
Eh, I had a nice idea for the world in general and with a few set pieces, like the Metal Mountain:, the home of the dwarves which has been over-mined until all that's left is armor plating and the supports between homes. Next to them was the forests of the elves, Deep within them was a city in a huge hole, held together by rope, chains, magic, and just the tiniest bit of bubble gum, there was also the human lands that ironically were ruled by a powerful and much beloved Minotaur king. Just a few places that I created. I started with the Elven city as it was originally supposed to be the entirety of the world my players knew. It's based of the city of Deepgate from The Deepgate Codex.
The only setting we played as is was Dark Sun. Couldn't get too into Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance without somebody going off for hours on the novels from those two settings. The longest run adventure I GMed was a homebrew setting where I started with a general idea a few cities and went from there.
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I generally prefer a well thought-out setting, whether published or DM-created. Our first setting in Pathfinder was Forgotten Realms (my favorite), our current one is Greyhawk (also cool), and I'd love to play in Golarion at some point. My GM also has a homebrew setting (heavily influenced by anime like Escaflowne) that looks interesting.
I'd be willing to play in a "vanilla" setting, though; in theory that should open up the toolbox without too many setting-based character restrictions.
I prefer to swipe from a setting and put it into a homebrew. I ran into an issue in the past where a player knew more about a setting than I did and it got really annoying.
Thanks, Helaman for starting this thread. It is giving me ideas. I am thinking of trying my hand at DM'ing for the first time. My approach is probably the opposite of what Diabhol claims to prefer.
I understand the usefulness of running a campaign in a pre-fab setting.....but I just feel like it won't give me the freedom to make something unique and special for the players - and that I would lose the sense of discovery I get when exploring something new. I am not sure if Golarion - with all of its detail - works as a generic setting anymore anyway. I also don't have time to do all the work of inventing my own homebrew from scratch. I am really considering using sandbox play to assist me in the creation of the world. Can it work?
1. Use Golarion deities. Vanilla stuff. Just so everyone has a common starting point. Invent others as I go.
2. Use panorama-style trail maps I have plundered on my trip to Switzerland last year. Or topographical maps and nautical charts from my own adventures here in Ontario and in other wild places. These maps inspired me to adventure in my real life...I can use my memories of those fantastic places to inspire my own campaign setting. I can also insert hexed sections from the Wilderlands of High Fantasy setting and just start inveting as the players move from hex to hex.
3. Plunder old and new modules for adventures, town maps...NPC's etc. I will sprinkle these around the setting liberally. I will totally improvise.
4. Start with a very simple hook. The characters are sent by the village elders to recover a missing flock high up the valley. That's it. Or they are out hunting and find something strange.
5. Sandbox it from there! Use lots of random encounters. Let the dice roll! The game will be a PbP game....how are the players going to know that I am winging it? Eventually an epic will "emerge".....I hope.
6. Player characters will start low level....they are young and come from a remote local town...and none of them are advanced scholars...I don't wish to invent the wide-sweeping history of the Realm before we even start playing!
Am I crazy? Has anyone done it this way? Who likes Rocky Road better than vanilla?
I either use a kitchen sink setting made with parts of several settings (I used to play in a 3.5 one with elements of Forgotten Realms, Oriental Adventures, Greyhawk and Eberron, as well as the "neutral" setting books like Frostburn Sandstorm etc!).
Currently we play our own world with few special rules about planes structure and magic. Is cool make your own fluff, use hitns to fiction and real life, and see the world grow day by day, exspecially if several people cooperate.
Homebrew setting, alternating with Tekumel. As soon as I get everything back on track.
As a GM, I run a homebrew setting, using core PFRPG rules (I will add APG on my next run; it came out too late to incorporate into my current campaign) and minimal house rules. I love world building, so it's fun to use my own setting. However, I designed my world very intentionally not to introduce "new rules"--you should be able to create a character in core and figure out how the character fits in the world. I have started writing up some regional traits and the like for flavor but it's very important for me for my world to be newb friendly and keep my players from having to learn a bunch of new mechanics or house rules on top of a whole new setting. The setting is largely narrative; the rules come straight from the book.
As a player, setting-wise I can dig homebrew or published setting. Of course with the latter... indeed, with both, it depends on the exact details of the setting. I love the Forgotten Realms and Planescape, never got into Eberron even though I did play in an Eberron game (I think Eberron was well written, it just didn't quite grab me for matters of personal taste). Homebrew settings are both easier and yet harder... on one hand, you don't feel like you "have to" study every splatbook on a published setting (I am curious about Golarion, but am utterly overwhelmed by the Chronicles/Companions/WhatHaveYou, and would feel that way about the Forgotten Realms had I not gleaned a bunch of information about the world from video games :) ). On the other hand, the GM either tends to hand the players massive amounts of material... or very little at all, and depending on how GM and players respond, it can be easy to be overwhelmed or not filled in enough.
Rules-wise, whether GM or player, I prefer minimal house rules. I think house ruling is inevitable, and sometimes the GM just needs to be able to make a call on something unclear in the rules--but if I have to learn the game and THEN have to learn a GM's 8 billion exceptions and additions, I just find that frustrating to follow. If you take a game and house rule 90% of it (exaggeration), that's probably a sign that you need to find a better written system, in my personal opinion.
Most of my house rules are fairly minor--adjustments to DCs I felt were too easy or hard, or clarifying rules text that was unclear, or providing more options to the players in minor ways (adjusting how certain equipment works, etc.). I seldom house rule without playing the game through unchanged first: I want to make sure I understand how the rule as written works, as I've found sometimes something that didn't make sense or seem fair to me upon reading it makes total sense once actually played out. In other words, I don't want to fix anything unless I am absolutely sure it is broken. (And often, what does turn out to be broken in my games is something I didn't anticipate or tends not to be discussed in game theory discussions on message boards. :) )
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I don't really think that there's a community standard. People love to mix it up.
I personally like to just take elements from a lot of different sources and mix them up in a blender: first edition modules side by side with historical political scenarios, plot points lifted from old TV shows, and background material cobbled together from old Progressive Rock concept albums. It's fun.