PoL & population density

[Kintara]

Also, random encounter tables are a DM tool, not a simulative element.

 

[the Jester]

It often seems that way, because their are many large cities and the sourcebooks tend to focus on them to the exclusion of wilderness ecologies. In fact, FR is very much a points-of-light setting.

Take a look at the main map. On the trails represented by dotted lines, a day's travel by horse & wagon covers (by my calculation) only two dots. Most of the vast distance in Faerun is unpatrolled and uncontrolled by any civilised force, especially in areas like the Western Heartlands.

The single most enjoyable FR game I've ever played in really emphasized this aspect of things, actually (hi Olgar!). Sadly, I only got to play it once, as a drop-in on a campaign while I was traveling around the country, but it was a blast.

Edit: What made it so cool was that it felt eminently reasonable for there to be tons of monsters out there. There was room for them all.

 

[Kraydak]

If the roads are teeming with monsters such that they're completely and totally impassable, as you state, the world is completely untenable. Trade cannot exist, which means each settlement has to survive on its own natural resources and knowledge. Bronze wouldn't exist because copper and tin don't generally co-exist, steel would be limited to a handful of settlements at best, and most settlements would be using copper or bone/stone weapons. Cities would be absolutely impossible due to lack of food (cities must import food to be viable - if the wilderness is too dangerous to travel through, it's much too dangerous to farm). Settlements without viable weapons and armor - bronze or steel - would be so much chaff to even a single powerful monster such as a troll or manticore, let alone the local tribe of orcs or goblins. We wouldn't have so much "Points of Light" as we would "near-total darkness with maybe one or two pinpricks of light".

What he said. PoL annoys me. It:
a) is purely gamist in that it:
b) works well for low-level dungeon crawling but it is an inferior choice because it:
c) works poorly (not impossible, just poorly) for anything else...

 

[helium3]

I agree, that was unhelpful and insulting, not to mention almost certainly false. And even if Irda Ranger has an advanced degree in population biology, who cares? Fantasy. Roleplaying. Game. 4e has deliberately chosen a 'gamist' approach rather than (IMO) mind-numbing 'simulationsim', and I couldn't be happier.

Look. I like the gamist approach as much as anyone, particularly if "gamist" is defined as "designing the rule-set so that the actual experience of playing the game is fun." The problem with a highly gamist design approach at the expense of "simulation" is that all D&D games are a simulation to some degree.

If there isn't some sort of bedrock of logic that underlays the game world, it becomes very difficult for the players to suspend their disbelief. Believe it or not, players will say things like "wait, if the town is always under siege by goblins how are they able grow food?" I'm sort of with some of the other posters here that the designers seem to be focusing on the "gamist" part of the design and blowing off the "simulationist" side of it. But maybe this is just another case of not having enough details at this point.

 

[helium3]

As long as most folks are ignorant, and scared of, of what happens just over the next hill, you can have a PoL setting.

. . .

I think as long as you have a setting reason why adventurers can walk into a population and have an adventure seed waiting for them to protect [some of] the huddled masses..you have a PoL game.

Yeah, but a setting where the villagers are all cold, ignorant and afraid of stuff that's only one hill away are going to be xenophobic, racist, sexist and not particularly welcoming to outsiders of any stripe, much less Eves, Dwarves, Dragonbourne and Tieflings. Contrary to what appears to be popular opinion, playing in a game where the the villagers are always unfriendly and surly gets to be a real drag after a while.

 

[Kintara]

What he said. PoL annoys me. It:
a) is purely gamist in that it:
b) works well for low-level dungeon crawling but it is an inferior choice because it:
c) works poorly (not impossible, just poorly) for anything else...

Wait. Huh? I don't follow.

I do get the impression that Zurai meant something different than what you took away from it, though.

 

[helium3]

If the roads are teeming with monsters such that they're completely and totally impassable, as you state, the world is completely untenable. Trade cannot exist, which means each settlement has to survive on its own natural resources and knowledge. Bronze wouldn't exist because copper and tin don't generally co-exist, steel would be limited to a handful of settlements at best, and most settlements would be using copper or bone/stone weapons. Cities would be absolutely impossible due to lack of food (cities must import food to be viable - if the wilderness is too dangerous to travel through, it's much too dangerous to farm). Settlements without viable weapons and armor - bronze or steel - would be so much chaff to even a single powerful monster such as a troll or manticore, let alone the local tribe of orcs or goblins. We wouldn't have so much "Points of Light" as we would "near-total darkness with maybe one or two pinpricks of light".

This is absolutely true and I cannot express how much I agree with this statement.

 

[ThirdWizard]

What he said. PoL annoys me. It:
a) is purely gamist in that it:
b) works well for low-level dungeon crawling but it is an inferior choice because it:
c) works poorly (not impossible, just poorly) for anything else...

Only because, I think, people are completely misrepresenting what PoL is about.

PoL is one of those things D&D is saying "Yeah, this is how games have worked in practice all these years, so we're going to drop the pretense, embrace it, and work with it." Basically, PoL is what D&D has always, in essence, been about. It is Keep on the Borderlands. It is wild tracks of untamed lands rife with adventure. It is most definitely not "If the PCs go a mile away from town at first level, they're dead dead dead!" which some people seem to be making it out to be. It exists to facilitate adventure, to emphasize danger, not to create a morass of death a mile from town square.

PoL is exactly what it says. It is points of light in a dangerous, unknown, land. It isn't all scared townsfolk huddled together, too terrified of the beasts that lie outside their firelight to look up away from their own feet. It isn't humanity's slow desperate struggle in vain not to be destroyed by the horrors that are daily culling their numbers. Sure, maybe in some places it is. But, this isn't the norm. This isn't what every settlement lives with in their daily lives. People are pushing way too hard on this, going too far. You don't have to go that far.

 

[Kraydak]

Only because, I think, people are completely misrepresenting what PoL is about.

PoL is one of those things D&D is saying "Yeah, this is how games have worked in practice all these years, so we're going to drop the pretense, embrace it, and work with it." Basically, PoL is what D&D has always, in essence, been about. It is Keep on the Borderlands. It is wild tracks of untamed lands rife with adventure. It is most definitely not "If the PCs go a mile away from town at first level, they're dead dead dead!" which some people seem to be making it out to be. It exists to facilitate adventure, to emphasize danger, not to create a morass of death a mile from town square.

PoL is exactly what it says. It is points of light in a dangerous, unknown, land. It isn't all scared townsfolk huddled together, too terrified of the beasts that lie outside their firelight to look up away from their own feet. It isn't humanity's slow desperate struggle in vain not to be destroyed by the horrors that are daily culling their numbers. Sure, maybe in some places it is. But, this isn't the norm. This isn't what every settlement lives with in their daily lives. People are pushing way too hard on this, going too far. You don't have to go that far.

PoL implies pointlike (small) areas surrounding by darkness. This is untenable unless the "points" are actually quite large (large enough to contain all needed resources and a well defended heartland for agriculture needed for the several large cities to support the specialists that the game assumes are there, such as skilled armorers). In which case, the term PoL is misleading. It is also quite bad from a gamist point of view (which is what really confuses me) because it largely cuts out intrigue based adventuring. Small isolated communities can support about 1 intrigue based adventure (if that).

Now, BoL (blobs of light) with a "secure" heartland for intrigue and a well guarded outer perimeter using divination magic to intercept upper heroic/paragon threats, but leaking low heroic threats for nicely non-metagaming level divided dungeoncrawls, that I could get behind. Put a network of them down with well-guarded trade routes to allow for paragon tier (inter-BoL) intriguing and you are set for *any* adventure type all to way to the Epic tier. Not knowing what MM elements will be at that tier, I'll stop for now.

 

[Mirtek]

If the roads are teeming with monsters such that they're completely and totally impassable, as you state, the world is completely untenable.

Indeed. People kept telling it to WotC since their first article about their new PoL concept, WotC just ignores it