Developing a "points of light" campaign setting

[Weyland]

I'm not sure if it counts as Points of Light, but I plan to start my first 4e campaign immediately *after* the local chaos cultists have succeeded in unleashing a Lovecraftian horror on the PC's home plane.

This will lead to the PCs escaping into the Astral Sea on a magical, sentient ship, and the campaign will be sort of a Planescape/Spelljammer mash-up using the 4e cosmology. The wacky, Moorecockian aspects of D&D will turned up to at least eleven, and there will be a lot of mind-flayers.

Okay, I guess this description isn't even remotely points of light. Oh well.

It may not be points of light, but I really wish I was closer, because this campaign sounds like it's made of solid awesome.

 

[Cmarco]

I can't really guarantee that my setting is "points of light" friendly, but it is a world of high fantasy, unexplored lands, mysterious places, ancient magic, shattered empires, and powerful villains. The major countries in the setting are recovering from a series of brutal wars, and darkness has crept back into the land. The forces of good had been winning for a long while, but the pendulum has swung back in the other direction. Cabals of evil organizations have sprung up throughout the world like weeds, and the wicked and the corrupt have gained a firm foothold in most of the civilized lands. Most of the heroic figures of history are just that: history. The poor, downtrodden folks are calling out for heroes, and the PCs are the folks who are willing to heed that call.

I know, it sounds a bit like the back cover for a campaign setting guide (mostly because I plan to produce a 200+ page campaign guide), but what does everyone think?

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

I know, it sounds a bit like the back cover for a campaign setting guide (mostly because I plan to produce a 200+ page campaign guide), but what does everyone think?

I say produce the campaign guide

 

[Zaruthustran]

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)?

Most all of my homebrew campaigns have been PoL. Even in the campaigns where we started in a very civilized / well mapped area, we very quickly headed out to the frontier or jumped on a ship and sailed off the map in search of the unknown. Here're some tropes:

1. Civilization is constantly threatened
2. The PCs are stronger than the general populace, they're heroes, and it's up to them to protect (or subjugate) civilization
3. While high-level NPCs may exist, they are never available to bail out the PCs
4. NPCs with great political power/knowledge/wealth are not necesarily high level
5. People are generally petty and selfish, and prone to despair--but they respond powerfully if the heroes give them hope

In a way the PoL setting is like a post-apocalyptic setting like Mad Max or Waterworld, or a Western like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

Adventures are often based around:

1. Resource acquisition (like finding a new water chip for your bunker, from the Fallout computer games)
2. Revenge (bringing raiders to justice / tracking down the goblins that burned down the granary)
3. Exploration (mapping, discovering fate of lost expeditions, discovering current status of towns marked on old maps)
4. Defense (repelling a horde of undead or orcs, or undead orcs)
5. Conquest (think Conquistadors in the New World)
6. Trade (guarding caravans, seeking to discover new mountain pass or shipping route)
7. Colonization (clearing land and establishing a new barony)

Character motivations vary but I've seen them group around the themes from The Magnificent Seven. Cash, glory, duty, "because no one else can do it".

Mortality in the campaigns I've played has been fairly high. Not necessarily among PCs; the campaigns I've played have featured lots of NPC hirelings and retainers. Effectively, minions of the PCs that go down as frequently as Jason's Argonauts, Odysseus's men, or Master Chief's marine allies. For this reason, PoL tends to be fairly grim. But then again, if one of your 0 level, stats-are-all-10's-except-for-his-primary-stat-which-is-a-12 henchmen actually survives the adventure it's cause for celebration (and maybe promotion to better stats, PC class levels, & full NPC status).

 

[MerakSpielman]

By this point, virtually all "general ideas" are cliched. So it becomes an exercise in picking which cliche you mind the least.

I'm going for "The great Empire collapsed a thousand years ago, and civilization is only now starting to rise from the ashes."

I like this cliche because it allows for tons of fabulous ruins packed with fascinating and amazing things, fragments of failed civilizations that rose and fell subsequently, nations that feel isolated and are thus able to be doing "their own thing" without the other nations getting upset, and so on.

 

[Cmarco]

I say produce the campaign guide

Heh... working on it. Even if it never gets printed, it will still fill-out my fiction writing nicely (Have written a couple of short stories for the setting, currently working on a novel).

So far, there's a lot of stuff that's all in notebooks, jot-notes, wordpad files, MS office files, and boxes upon boxes of papers... transcribing stuff that's useful and conducive to the feeling of the setting is what I am doing these days, mostly. Soon, though, there will be a lot of other interesting stuff coming up, I think. I would still like to hear what more people think, though.

 

[Aegir]

By this point, virtually all "general ideas" are cliched. So it becomes an exercise in picking which cliche you mind the least.

I'm going for "The great Empire collapsed a thousand years ago, and civilization is only now starting to rise from the ashes."

Hey! You stole my cliche!

In my "world after the fall of civilization" setting, I suppose the most unusual part I've introduced to it is I've been adding huge chunks of published settings to what is otherwise a homebrew setting, mainly because I find it entertaining to explore, for example, what Faerun would look like after 5k years of no magic.

I've also gone pretty hog wild adding different elements. I decided early on that if this was to be a sandbox, that it'd really be a sandbox: the players have found traditional fantasy elements, steampunk, even heard rumblings that what caused the death of magic was a nearby interstellar republic had found a way to refine magic into a fuel to power their spaceships and ended up sucking the source (of all magic) dry.

Alot of it I don't flesh out unless I need to, I just know I have players that enjoy sci-fi and steampunk elements, so I tossed a few hooks in to see where they went with them.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Well my PoL world is this:

The World was artificially created millenniums ago, by some unknown race of beings. Many believe they were the first Gods, as were all other Worlds in the cosmology of the universe.

Each World was governed over by a god-machine keeping it stable and maintained. This World, remained in stasis; animals, trees, grass, the wind, the stars and the moon all frozen in time.

At one time though, the first Angels managed to slip into the World. They using the knowledge they had commanded the god-machine to serve them, it did. They spawned the first sentients of the World and brought the World alive.

However this did not last, soon the god-machine began to malfunction and rebellion grew as the Reality of the World itself broke apart. The Angels fled into the four corners of the World and the Reality of the World decayed.

Beings, the Pandorans arose from this chaos, they knew how to control Reality and created a new Reality, ruling over the other races of the World.

All major cities and towns are ruled by these creatures and maintained by their mortal Aristocracy. It is in the backwoods and border-towns that freedoms grows, some have begun to learn of the true-past have seen evidence not yet covered over by new Reality. Light also grows amongst a few people, those who are Reality Deviants most misstep and do not cause change, but some continue forward (the PCs) and with each step they change the Reality of the World.

This has become especially important in recent years as the Ley-Lines that crisscross the World that give power to the World and its Reality has begun to falter, and crack Reality apart.

The god-machine has also begun to act, sending out messengers and servants to try and manipulate those on the World to its wishes.

The Angels too, some twisted by this new Reality, or the Flux that exists between the Realities have also stricken forth. Building cults and worshippers and armies to their name.

Into this dervish of change steps the newest Reality Deviants those that must find which Reality they shall meld.

This is a World forged by technology and Reality-Flux. Steam-power and locomotives, revolvers and repeating rifles, steel-skyscrapers, telegraphs and electrical lights powered directly from Ley-Lines are common in the cities.

Reality is the weapon of magic, those who have harnessed this have come across it in various ways. The study of Reality and how to manipulate it, making pacts with creatures that know of ways to flex Reality, belief so strong in a greater being that it changes Reality around them.

Reality-Flux has also caused the birth of magical weapons and items, their properties altered by the warping affects of Ley-Lines and Nexuses, like how these conduits of Reality warps the landscape.

I think it is pretty PoL but in a slightly different way.