Developing a "points of light" campaign setting

I'd like to start planning a 4E campaign setting for this Summer integrating the "points of light" philosophy behind 4E. However, with 3.5 being my first and only experience with D&D, I'm sort of stuck on high-magic, wondrous-item-Wal-marts, and high-level NPC's.

What are the "standard tropes" of this style of play? Are we talking "Lord of the Rings", or even darker? How do you explain why 1st-level characters are so powerful? What are the deleterious effects (on the game world) of players being the most powerful members of their society, and how do you mitigate them? (Sorry for the shotgun-questioning)

If you're developing (or have developed) a "points of light" campaign setting, what did you do to get the right atmosphere (so that I can steal it from you)?

Join...
us...

http://www.thecbg.org/news.php
(for all your homnebrewing/campaign development needs)

Cheers~

Moniker said:

Join...
us...

http://www.thecbg.org/news.php
(for all your homnebrewing/campaign development needs)

Cheers~

Click to expand...

Yoink!

Signed up!

I like "points of light" settings but not as my whole world. So what I do is make up the civilizations of the worlds, then place the setting where the game is played in frontier, unsettled, post-apocalypse, or newly opened area of the world.

There are a couple of historic periods I like to use as reference points. The American old west works well. There are towns that are pretty safe, but travel can be hazardous. There are fortune seekers, settlers, and men on the run from the law in large numbers. Often the only law is your own.

The "pirate age" of the Caribbean works very well too.

So does the colonization period of Africa. Africa wasn't unsettled, of course, and there were significant civilizations there, but Europeans of that age would perceive it as a "points of light" area. They don't understand or interact well with the other cultures, so from their point of view their little settlements are the points of light.

The way I'd do it is as follows:

Start off with a blank piece of A4.
Pass it around the table three times.
Each time a players holds the piece of paper he can add a location (the lost tower of the arcane, the lonely druid, the Temple of the One-Eyed God, etc).
When it's been around three times get the GM to plonk a 'Point of Light' town on it.
Spend a moment relating some of the adventure locations.

Next week, or even in the same session, start playing. If the players need to they can add 'distant locations' they come from. The focus will be on mining the map for all its worth.

That's what we did for our Red Box Hack game (though it was someone else's idea), I highly suspect we'll do something similar-ish if we play 4E.

Halivar said:

I'd like to start planning a 4E campaign setting for this Summer integrating the "points of light" philosophy behind 4E. However, with 3.5 being my first and only experience with D&D, I'm sort of stuck on high-magic, wondrous-item-Wal-marts, and high-level NPC's.

What are the "standard tropes" of this style of play? Are we talking "Lord of the Rings", or even darker? How do you explain why 1st-level characters are so powerful? What are the deleterious effects (on the game world) of players being the most powerful members of their society, and how do you mitigate them? (Sorry for the shotgun-questioning)

If you're developing (or have developed) a "points of light" campaign setting, what did you do to get the right atmosphere (so that I can steal it from you)?

Click to expand...

Ironically, my last 3.5 campaign could have been considered a 'points of light' campaign. It featured large tracts of wilderness that isolated safe havens, most of them city-states.

I've always tried to represent the PC's as heroes, and have always implied that they are simply better than most people around them. I've done that with the rules by giving them action points and maximum hit points instead of rolling (very 4e now that I think about it) but I've also done it by making them well known and respected.

I try to have most NPCs in the world give PC's a bit of respect and/or fear. The PC's are recognized if they've done heroic deeds nearby, despite the isolation of the towns, or perhaps because of it the tales of their daring are inflated. They often enjoy hearing about how they slew an army of ogres when they really just defended the neighboring village from a band of goblins.

Because of my distaste for the powerful NPCs prevalent in Forgotten Realms, I make high level NPC's rare, or at least not necessarily famous. For instance, the overlord of a mighty city might have great political skill, but also might only be a 5th level noble. The guards loyal to him would be much higher level.

Points of Light doesn't automatically exclude magic items for sale or high level NPC's I don't think....it just puts them where they belong. A safe haven might indeed have a magical wal-mart and some high level NPC's, but these stores won't be everywhere. High level NPCs should exist...it only makes sense and they are useful in certain situations. A patron NPC can give out quests and (very rarely) save the PC's from something. I don't see anything wrong with a high level priest coming in and ressurecting the party when there is a total party kill, particularly if the DM made a mistake balancing the encounter or there was a lot of bad luck. You just can't do it often, or it takes away some tension. And if a mysterious wizard is reputed to be able to cast a ritual that changes the weather over the entire world, then perhaps he should be high level. Just don't have people showing up to save them often and do everything you can to make them look powerful. Basically I'm not sure I agree that a 4e campaign needs to make the player characters the most powerful characters in the world...it wouldn't make sense at lower levels anyway. At the highest levels I'm sure I'd still have reason to have a few other 30 level characaters running around.

The way to explain why 1st level characters are powerful is to give them a bit of a backstory or make the players create one. I do the latter, but I tell them "You are not strangers. Despite any disagreements you may have, you can depend on each other for your very lives. You are friends...for the most part you respect and trust each other." Other than that, they're relationship to each other and their lives up to that point is up to them. They can still be very new to adventuring without being completely green, and my proviso's about trust and respect prevents a lot of unnecessary backstabbing. They are still able to disagree and even betray each other, but it starts them off in a relationship that works well to explain why these people are adventuring together.

Anyway, not sure my campaign truly qualified as a points of light campaign in the same way that 4e will be, but it did have safe havens isolated by dangerous wilderness, and powerful PC's at the forefront, so it seems to fit the bill. I'd say for atmosphere, the best thing to do is maintain a lot of mystery. For instance, one town may refer to goblins as "devil men" and the next might call them "beast men". Changing the names of common monsters isn't always great, because it can be confusing, but the idea is that they don't know what they'll be facing. There should be a lot of mystery and some false information about what is out there. It's really up to them to find out, and that bravery is what makes them heroes and separates them from the commoners too afraid to go past the windmill into the forest. Make it so that there are few NPC's like that, and they'll feel special. That's my take on it.

From what I've seen (and I won't claim to be an expert on the matter), creating a PoL campaign should be fairly easy. It's basically a redressing of the original old school approach to wilderness adventure design.

Start small. Create either a small kingdom or sovereign duchy, county, or barony. You will want a principle community, either a large town or city. This should be surrounded by 1-6 small villages/hamlets/thorps, all within 1-2 days travel (on foot or by wagon) of the principle community. Figure most of this area is farmland, lightly habited, and relatively civilized.

And that's it. No more villages. No more communities. The rest is wilderness. If you are going for the "old empires" approach, there may be a single road (in varying stages of disuse) that will link it to the next principle community. The wilderness is mostly inhabited by monsters, isolated (small) communities (that are that way for a reason) and hermits (who are either powerful warriors or spellcasters, enough so to keep the monsters at bay).

There is little communication between the various kingdoms. No ambassadors. If there is an overarching organization, it is highly secretive and likely villainous.

You might go a step further by drawing a large scale map. Don't draw borders, just name the different provinces. Give each about a sentence or two of detail. Keep in mind that the players (and people of the starting location) will probably only have active knowledge of provinces one or two "rings" away (Starting Community > Next Community > Fringe Community), and probably then only if they are attached by the above mentioned road. If you are using the "old empires" approach, they will probably know something of the once great empire, but it will be highly skewed by rumor and legend. (EDIT: Here's a weird idea: If you want to try something weird, scrap the map altogether. Instead, just put the starting town at the center of a piece of paper and draw rings around it. Divide the first ring in three parts, the second in six, etc. Each of these is a different province. You should still write up a really brief description, but now add some idea of the geography. Now, as you develop the map along with your players, you can drop in provinces as necessary.)

Wilderlands of High Fantasy, either the Judges Guild or the Necromancer Games versions, is a great example of this approach!

Now for real fun, track down a 1st ed DMG or a copy of the Expert Rules and use the wilderness adventure rules therein to detail the wilderness as the players explore it.

WotC may be doing something completely different, but this is the impression I've been given about the PoL approach.

Tom

Ian O'Rourke said:

The way I'd do it is as follows:

Start off with a blank piece of A4.
Pass it around the table three times.
Each time a players holds the piece of paper he can add a location (the lost tower of the arcane, the lonely druid, the Temple of the One-Eyed God, etc).
When it's been around three times get the GM to plonk a 'Point of Light' town on it.
Spend a moment relating some of the adventure locations.

Next week, or even in the same session, start playing. If the players need to they can add 'distant locations' they come from. The focus will be on mining the map for all its worth.

That's what we did for our Red Box Hack game (though it was someone else's idea), I highly suspect we'll do something similar-ish if we play 4E.

Click to expand...

Yoink.

Thanks I really like this idea.

Halivar said:

If you're developing (or have developed) a "points of light" campaign setting, what did you do to get the right atmosphere (so that I can steal it from you)?

Click to expand...

One of the things that I'm doing is saying that the fall of The Human Empire happened in some way that distorted space and memory. People don't remember the name of the empire, let alone what actually happened to it. And they don't really think about it that much. They couldn't tell you exactly where it was, either, since parts of the world show up all over the place. (This let's me introduce ruins from Bael Turath or the Dragonborn empire wherever I want them.)

The fracturing of the land separated cities from farms, so the economy there collapsed, sending people to death by starvation or on mass exoduses to find food source. But that was over a 100 years ago, so some people are starting to build small cities.

The points of light are now where civilization sprung up again. Some of them are new villages, some are villages inhabiting old ruins, either parts of Human Empire cities or older ruins. Because there could be odd terrain or dangerous ruins between that habitation and the others, things are fairly isolated. There is some river trade, I'm saying, but little over-land trading.

Points of light just means that areas of safety are small. City states, not nation states. It doesn't really count as a style of play because it says very little about the world. There could be high magic, magic item trade and high level NPCs, or there could not be, it's your choice. The world of Rifts is PoL and it's brimming with magic, super tech and characters with 100 000 hit points.

The big advantage of PoL is it allows bottom up world creation. In fact you don't really create a world, just a few bits. No Tolkien style map, 10 000 year history or guide to the trees of Uarth are needed.