Developing a "points of light" campaign setting

[Irda Ranger]

What are the "standard tropes" of this style of play?

Do you have Worlds & Monsters? They have whole essays on this sort of thing. The Wizards site also does a good job of explaining it.

But for me I guess som standard tropes are NPCs being generally ignorant/misinformed of goings-on outside their pol; travel between pols being primarily an affair of large, well-armed caravans (safety in numbers); randomly divergent forms of social organization and government from one pol to the next; lots of ruins/old roads from Empires whose names are long forgotten; a high turnover rate of pols (towns succumbing to monsters; new territories being settled by adventurers; etc.); any point on the map that isn't a pol is a potentially monster infested wilderness; etc.

Are we talking "Lord of the Rings", or even darker?

That's a matter of taste. Note that Rohan and Gondor are kingdoms with some form of territorial integrity. They suffer raiders, but they also have armed patrols and rule of law. Pol as WotC has presented it is more like The Fellowship of the Ring, with long stretches of "the Wild" between Hobbiton and Bree, between Bree and Rivendell, &c.

One of the "dials" on the campaign setting generator is the size of your "points." Some have indicated that they would prefer a "blobs" of light setting where small kingdoms (like Cormyr or the Grand Duchy of Karameikos) with relatively safe intra-kingdom travel are the norm, rather than city-states and lonely burghs.

How do you explain why 1st-level characters are so powerful?

That's a metaphysical question which is probably best answered in a way that makes sense to you. I like to think that there's a little bit of Astral spirit, Primal power and Worldly magic in every living thing, and that some are simply born with a greater ability (or simply have better opportunities) to develop these powers.

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?

Watch Spiderman I and II.

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)?

Describe the transition from open fields to overgrown paths. Describe how the snapping sound of the flag waiving from the last watchtower slowly fades into the distance is and overcome by the sounds of the woods.

When the PCs ask an NPC "What's over that hill?" answer with "I have no idea."

Move things around. When the PCs return to a town, a halfling caravan has set up its tents outside, or the mill has been burned down by Bugbear raiders and rebuilt (in stone).

When PCs ask why NPCs call the nearby monastery "the new monastery", explain "Oh, because the old monastery was further up in the hills but got sacked about 50 years ago now by a clutch of frost wights that wandered down off the glacier. They ate every monk they caught while they lived, and the old monk's ghosts still haunt the hills up there."

Encounter an ancient barrow, wherein a King of ancient lineage is buried. No one knows his name, as no one can read the language the headstones are written in. And an owlbear has been nesting in there for the past year anyway.

Two towns at opposite ends of a valley are largely ignorant of each other even though they can see each other from the highest towers of their respective castle fortresses. The center of the valley has a deep, craggy ravine running through it with impassible river rapids and a nasty ogre infestation. Although the two towns were founded by two brothers almost four centuries ago, years of separation mean that the one has become a constitutional monarchy ruled by an elected council in consultation with the descendant King of Brother A, while the descendants of Brother B succumbed to a religious coup some two centuries ago and are living as Kings in Exile in the mountains to the North while the city is ruled by a "Church" whose Circle of Bishops are all Infernal Warlocks.

 

[EATherrian]

I'm personally using a world I built a while back but never used. Basically it was a long-lived kingdom of various sorts, reaching its golden-aged zenith centuries before the game starts. Something (that's for the DM to know ) caused massive armies of fiends and humanoids to boil forth and basically destroy the kingdom. Only a small area that was geographically isolated and well-defended remained. Although it was originally just the human / halfling area, other groups moved there for safety. Now the small kingdom is reaching out, exploring, and slowly expanding. The area I'm starting the game is a small town / large village that has recently (about 20 - 30 years before) been reconquered by the kingdom. This way I have the starting town itself mostly isolated, there are reasons for monsters and treasures, there's a larger mystery, and there is still a somewhat larger polity if my players want intrigue. The only question is whether I include Dragonborn. I've figured out Tieflings, but not Dragonborn. I'd like to keep it as close to a Core world as possible.

 

[jollyninja]

I picture the POL ideal as european countries after Rome left them to their own devices. Sure some of them held together to an extent but what was happening in germany had little or no bearing on the life of someone in Brittian. For the vast majority of people on the southern end of a country, what was happening on the northern end had no effect. Roads fell in to disuse, they were there but nobody used them because they were dangerous to travel. Even if you have a nation state with barons and such running smaller parts, it remains POL compliant if the Barons are left to their own devices getting more visits from tax collectors then Knights to keep the peace. If the barons behave the same way toward their underlings, leaving villiages to themselves for the most part, even better. Now add monsters to that.

The American West is my planned inspiration for my first game, the aspect of not knowing what's around the next bend in the river, the lawlessness of the settlers, the duels, the whole thing. If my players want law and order, they're going to have to create it. Of course I'll add ruins and treasure that does not have to be panned from a river.

The POL mindset is one of creating mystery and excitement, the things that drew me to the game in the first place.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

A potential idea for a PoL setting would be to have the Home Village / Town / Hamlet have a series of ruins right next to it - as in, the Base has only very recently been recolonized and the inhabitants are looking for brave people of all races to push back the evil to create a larger space.

Very much in the style of the old Pool of Radiance game. It also allows early adventure settings (the goblin tribes encampment from which they launch raids) to become later standpoints of the base (a new village hall built on the site, with sundered goblin shields decorating the outside).

 

[Remathilis]

I resolved PoL as such (see my sig for the campaign guide)

Kingdoms are large areas, but after years of war and outside conflicts (demons, orcs, etc) few kingdoms can effectively police there own. Sure, the Kingdom's capital is mighty, but beyond its walls, the area that is "safe" is relatively small. Instead, each barony is no responsible for guarding its own land and people: no easy task. Some of the smaller ones work in a traditional manner-house method, others form small semi-independent cities (beholden to the king in word, if not deed) but without a strong army, it falls to heroes (read PCs) to solve the problems of the individual baronies (heroic), kingdoms (paragon) and beyond (epic).

 

[Cmarco]

I've been working to update my setting for 4e. I've got almost everything figured out, except what to do with the two most powerful wizards in my setting. Both are very high level, even by the standards of epic characters. One is a neutral evil lich wizard, and has conquered an empire, and has expanded that empire over quite a distance. The other is a neutral good wizard who's prolonged his lifespan with magic (he's essentially the Gandalf, Elminster, Fizban, or Merlin of the setting). Now, my only question is what to do with the two of them? The timeline is going to jump ahead a bit, I think, but I'd really like to hear what anyone thinks would be a good idea for what to do with them.

 

[Aegir]

The thing that defines a PoL setting is exploration, how you arrive at this is entirely up to you. Could be a stone age setting built on the ruins of a fallen civilization, a dark age setting recovering from from an apocalyptic past, or even a high-power setting like FR where the dangers beyond the civilized lands are enough to keep all but the bravest from venturing outside cities, or off heavily patrolled roads. Ultimately all thats needed are mysterious, unexplored sections of the map for the PCs to explore.

My PoL setting was initially based in a fairly stable (a collection of 6 towns who have established an alliance of mutual protection), but isolated area. The PCs are effectively the first humans who have managed to overcome the obstacles and really explore the world beyond alliance-controlled lands, and have begun to fill in the missing pieces of the worlds lost history.

One problem I ran into with my group was they complained about a lack of motivation: there was no great evil to overcome, no artifacts (that they were aware of) to find, and this tends to be one of the potential failings of a PoL setting. You can of course add it in, but I didn't, figuring that each unexplored region would be a motivation in itself. If your players tend to be of the type that like to fight against some major BBEG and his attempts to take over the world, you may want to take this into account.

 

[DeusExMachina]

Well, the PoL idea goe sboth ways of course. It's both spreading mor elight to the dark areas, but also protecting the few PoL's that exist from being snuffed out.
I imagine the BBEG would be someone trying to overrun those border towns or last vestiges of civilization or whatever you want to use in your campaign and that way it would still very much eb a classic battle against evil.

Anyway, I wasn't planning on doing a PoL setting, but the more I think about, the more I actually believe I should change my campaign to fit such a model. It would work well and I think my players would like it. The idea in itself is very evocative and mys etting already has unexplored wild lands, a large flood that destroyed the old civilization forcing most humanoid races into wandering (floating?) for a while until they find a new continent to settle on.

All I need to do is set back the time frame a little from well after they landed and established a new civilization to just after they landed and are busy exploring this continent for its wealth and resources...

 

[Flynn]

I've been working to update my setting for 4e. I've got almost everything figured out, except what to do with the two most powerful wizards in my setting. Both are very high level, even by the standards of epic characters. One is a neutral evil lich wizard, and has conquered an empire, and has expanded that empire over quite a distance. The other is a neutral good wizard who's prolonged his lifespan with magic (he's essentially the Gandalf, Elminster, Fizban, or Merlin of the setting). Now, my only question is what to do with the two of them? The timeline is going to jump ahead a bit, I think, but I'd really like to hear what anyone thinks would be a good idea for what to do with them.

I would suggest that you have them meet in a huge magical battle that ultimately destroys them both, and creates what boils down to a plain of glass where all has been fused by the magic released by their epic battle. (Picture Ground Zero for a magical version of a nuclear explosion.) Equipment and even body parts for each were flung around the setting in the explosion that created the Great Wastes, so you can have holy/unholy relics and other legacies of each in the setting, and thus you can still pay homage to their concepts. Perhaps each had followers that are now secretive societies continuing the desires and goals set forth by their former leaders.

Just some thoughts,
Flynn

 

[hong]

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.

...

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

What BluSponge said.

Although I am STILL not naming a character BluSponge. Good heavens.