Points of Darkness

[pemerton]

A problem with Points of Darkness is that once the players have gained a few levels by confronting darkness, it is often tempting for them to simply throw their weight around in the normal areas, where opposition is quite light compared to the dark areas.

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the PCs become strangers in their own world, governed by their own rules and gauged on a power level normal people cannot achieve.

I've posted before that I think superhero comics provide a good model for this - heroes like the X-Men or the Avengers are "strangers" in their own world, whose only real peers are the supervillains that they fight. Yet (at least in my case) when I'm reading the X-Men I don't ask myself "Why don't the X-Men just take over the world?".

It's not that the X-Men comics have an answer to this question; it's more that they present the whole situation in a way that presupposes that we're not worried about asking that question. I think D&D - at least, high level D&D - works better if framed in a similar sort of way, just taking it for granted that the PCs and their enemies belong to this strange, non-normal world, where the stakes are higher and the powers greater, and the PC team is not particularly interested in mundane things.

Even when I've GMed "evil" campaigns, the PCs' goals haven't been money and temporal power for its own sake. Their goals have been magical, cosmological power, which once again locates their concerns, activities, enemies etc in the "non-normal" part of the world. The everyday world is largely left behind, in play, except as a backdrop.

 

[Starfox]

Even when I've GMed "evil" campaigns, the PCs' goals haven't been money and temporal power for its own sake. Their goals have been magical, cosmological power, which once again locates their concerns, activities, enemies etc in the "non-normal" part of the world. The everyday world is largely left behind, in play, except as a backdrop.

This is where our experiences differ. My players generally have very "earthly" goals, and like to throw their weight around when they can.

 

[Ironhead]

I think a perfect example of how this should be dealt with can be found in almost all of Glen Cook's fantasy settings. The characters may be badasses but it's a big, ancient world and they don't have a monopoly on the secrets of success. We RPGers tend to think of our feats and dmg output as the attributes that dictate toughness, but in a well structured setting intelligence (the espionage kind), strategy and politics are going to be major factors in the hands of clever adversaries. What do your players do when they return to town expecting to see bowing and scraping from the commoners only to encounter a local populace hostile and afraid of the "foul and dark souled" mage in the party who has been singled out by the town's power hungry and politically motivated priest?

Soldiery in a PoD campaign wouldn't have to be low level - monsters aren't the only foes who yield xp. In fact, in a world with no monsters to restrict frontier troop movements ( i.e.- Europe for the last...oh, let's say 1000 years) there are likely to be many more opportunities for military exploits. Nothing says that a soldier who hasn't had experience fighting demons isn't skilled in street to street tactics he's learned in siege warfare - or that he wouldn't be a little more willing to stick a sword in a PC he was superstitiously afraid of due to the PoD world's legends and myths about magic.

It all comes down to how deep you want to go with the development of your setting and the people you populate it with, imho.