Points of Darkness

[Li Shenron]

This started off as some kind of joke while chatting about the Points of Light concept setting in 4e, and whether it might be presented again in 5e... but then I thought about it, and I actually realized this is pretty much what I've always used when DMing adventures without using a published setting!

"Points of Darkness" basically means the characters live in a world that resembles historical middle ages, but with rare and scattered otherwordly threats, most of which are in isolated locations: dungeons, mountain peaks, deep forests, caves, deserts, arctic regions, closed off vales etc. The 99% of the world population is made of non-adventurers who've never seen a monster in first person, even tho they probably "know" that monsters exist because of tales. The 1% is made of adventurers who usually seek out those dangers, for glory and treasure, but this doesn't mean that those dangers never threat the world, only it happens rarely.

This is not so common in D&D... who else has set their D&D adventures and campaigns in such a type of setting?

 

[Razjah]

This seems to work better in a modern game where people have forgotten that things go bump in the night. The World of Darkness books do this, the Dresden Files has most of the world unaware of magic and monsters, the Hellboy films (I can't comment on the comics, I haven't read them yet) have most of the world similarly unaware.

So, I have not run a D&D game with a "Points of Darkness" feel to the world. I like the points of light, I just tend to make my points a little bit larger and in some areas more connected. More like "Overall Points, but Some Larger Areas of Light" feel to the world. However, I do keep the adventurer population to extreme lows and I generally try to keep the NPCs with player class levels to a very low percentage also. I want my PCs to be special, just not immune to danger.

 

[delericho]

That somewhat resembles some of my older (pre-3e) settings. 3e significantly changed that to a more overt fantasy land (though if I were to homebrew a setting now, I would do it differently).

These days, I run Eberron, wher everyone has seen a monster, but most monsters are more or less just people.

 

[Razjah]

That somewhat resembles some of my older (pre-3e) settings. 3e significantly changed that to a more overt fantasy land (though if I were to homebrew a setting now, I would do it differently).

Can you elaborate a bit more on this point? I have never played in a pre-3e game.

These days, I run Eberron, wher everyone has seen a monster, but most monsters are more or less just people.

Awesome, Eberron is my favorite WotC published setting. I don't care for some of the stuff at high levels, but I don't really like high level D&D, so I am a bit biased in opinion.

 

[delericho]

Can you elaborate a bit more on this point? I have never played in a pre-3e game.

In the 2nd Ed books, and also Dragon magazine at the time, there was an awful lot of discussion about Monte Haul campaigns, about controlling access to magic, and so forth. So, when running the game, I basically had the notion that it was amongst the greatest and most deadly of DM sins to include too much treasure. That meant that I was running magic- and treasure-poor campaigns.

3e, for better or worse, had very different assumptions built in, and specifically the assumption that PCs would get treasure and that they could, in general, buy those magic items they wanted. They even went so far as to include the Wealth by Level guidelines, codifying the exact amount of treasure that PCs "should" get. The game also gave fairly extensive guidelines on how common NPCs of various classes and levels were in the setting.

Because these assumptions were different (and I'm not making any value judgement on which is 'better', BTW), I constructed homebrew settings in different ways - whereas in 2nd Ed the PCs would be lucky to find an honest-to-goodness Wizard in any settlement smaller than a city, in 3e there was one in most small towns.

And everything goes from there. More magic items, and more classed NPCs, meant a higher level of fantasy overall, which tended to mean more monsters out there, which meant that most NPCs would have encountered at least some monsters in their lives, and certainly wouldn't react to an Orcish PC with quite the same horror that their 2nd Ed counterparts would have... and so on.

As I said, if I were homebrewing a setting now, I would do things rather differently, including rewriting the WbL guidelines quite extensively, and simply throwing away the demographic guidelines (which are utterly insane anyway).

 

[TerraDave]

For years my campaign was very much this, set in an alternate earth, which for most human inhabitants was not that alternate. Even in someplace like Transylvania, you would have normal human villages and towns, along with pretty big points of darkness.

As I think about that, much more emphasis on veiled dangers, like the noble family that were secretly powerful were-wolves or prominent members of society who were also demon and devil worshipers.

Those were good campaigns.

Currently its somewhat larger and more conspicuous points of darkness, but also with large civilized lands.

 

[Razjah]

And everything goes from there. More magic items, and more classed NPCs, meant a higher level of fantasy overall, which tended to mean more monsters out there, which meant that most NPCs would have encountered at least some monsters in their lives, and certainly wouldn't react to an Orcish PC with quite the same horror that their 2nd Ed counterparts would have... and so on.

Hmm... I got into D&D late (I first played a game of D&D at a 4e demo and a short game right before college) but I hated how much gear there was in the 3.5 games I played in college. I felt like it was "required" to have certain items that I found boring (like all the items of +N). I started running gritty lower-magic games. Then I found Iron Heroes, then E6, then Burning Wheel. Now I run games where magic is... well, magical. When a 3rd level PCs finds a magic sword, it isn't a +1 sword. It is the Sword of Storms formed when the storm-lords formed an alliance to create a balance between their lands. It has been lost since the storm-lords were slain by demons 300 years ago.

I tend to make magic items much more powerful (like a +2 frost and shocking sword for a 3rd level pc that can call down a storm 1/month [depending on season- ice storm in winter, thunderstorm in spring, fire storm in summer, and one hell of a gale in the fall]) but probably the only piece of magical gear that PC will get for that game.

 

[Starfox]

I agree "Points of Darkness" was prettymuch the norm in early DnD settings, like Greyhawk. It was never explictely said, but the impression I got is that 90% of the setting was medevial earth with just a pinch of fantasy elements. The dungeon was the exeption, with a dozen or so notable dungeons in the world, many in isolated locations.

 

[MarkB]

"Points of Darkness" makes better sense to me conceptually. It's cool in a way to have a world where civilisation is always on the brink of being overwhelmed if not for the actions of a few heroes, but you've got to figure that sooner or later there won't be an adventurer around when you need one, and that's another light snuffed out.

PoL just doesn't feel like it could exist on any kind of long term - it puts every civilised area on a constant war footing that no society should be able to support.

 

[Zustiur]

I too run a points of darkness style. I am however moving towards points of light in my current game because I was having trouble justifying the monsters with so much light around.

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