Help me out. PoL. Why don't small towns get overrun?

[Wisdom Penalty]

So, I love the idea of a PoL setting. I'm pilfering maps and themes from various campaign settings, and adding a dash of my own stuff. But a question keeps nagging me during this process, and it's this:

If the world is filled with big, bad, evil things in the wilderness that separates scattered settlements, why haven't these towns been overrun?

Does every community have to be a reinforced settlement with walls, a strong militia, etc.? Is there no room for simple hamlets with a couple run-down cottages?

Anyone had this concern or tackled this issue?

Wis

 

[Mercule]

I'd guess that there are just enough adventurer types to ward them off -- or maybe not quite enough.

Really, though, I see it as an opportunity to set some tone to your game. Want a dark and foreboding setting? All the farmers lock their doors and bar the windows at night. Want heavy politics? Various lords have cut deals with border states or gray powers (faerie?) to protect them or the monsters themselves to leave the lord's subjects alone. Something martial? Then there are marches and border guards. You could even do psuedo-post-apocalyptic by having every surviving town be walled and even put the farmland inside the wall.

 

[Firevalkyrie]

So, I love the idea of a PoL setting. I'm pilfering maps and themes from various campaign settings, and adding a dash of my own stuff. But a question keeps nagging me during this process, and it's this:

If the world is filled with big, bad, evil things in the wilderness that separates scattered settlements, why haven't these towns been overrun?

Does every community have to be a reinforced settlement with walls, a strong militia, etc.? Is there no room for simple hamlets with a couple run-down cottages?

Anyone had this concern or tackled this issue?

Wis

Sometimes, communities simply die and there's nobody to tell anyone else about it until the adventurers come through and find a ghost town. Sometimes they have enough militia to fight back. It all depends.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Well there are various ways this can be handled:

-The things in the wilderness simply do not wish to deal with the village. Especially given the fact that the majority of monsters in 4e are Unaligned so they have no real major compulsion to harm a village.

-Many monsters in D&D are intelligent, so they would realize that if they harm too many villages they will have militias, heroes maybe even whole armies chasing them down.

-Agreements or pacts have been made between the village and the creatures of the wilderness.

-A unknown benevolent force protects the village.

-The villages aren't protected in any manner and there are incursions, just at a small degree so the village can survive on, ie: a couple people are found mauled and left gutted in the fields each year.

 

[Goobermunch]

Ever played Okami? Maybe the town is located near a shrine to a benevolent outsider.

--G

 

[hong]

There are no simple hamlets with a couple run-down cottages, yes, if they're all alone in the wilderness.

The best way to think of a "point of light" is a city-state. It controls the surrounding territory within a radius of maybe a few dozen miles. Within that territory, you can have farming hamlets and villages. But you shouldn't have hamlets outside, because the point of a PoL setting is that civilisation is scarce.

 

[HeinorNY]

Probably the big, bad, evil things don't care about hamlets and small towns.
The small, bad, evil things do care, but level 1 heroes and the militia/guard can handle them.
Maybe some small communities are not even known to monsters, or have some natural defenses as rivers, mountains, etc.

Think about all the nasty things in Middle-earth, but the shire stands there. Bree too. Beyound their gates it's no-mans land.
What about Rivendell? A couple of miles form there lies a mountain full with orcs and goblins.
Not that ME holds all the answers, but it has some nice POL examples we can use on our POL settings.

 

[Wiman]

I've made all five of my points of light places where ancient heroes of good have fallen in the fight against the darkness. The great forces of evil stay away from these places due to superstitions or fear of triggering chains of events which may bring back the hero's spirit in the form of a child.

Yeah it's lame I know, but having POL is a good way to set a fantasy game in my opinion. I have had the same thoughts as you when I started making my campaign and have had to fight the urge to post a large army for good here or a order of paladins there....that's for the player's to do when they get unleashed on the land, they form the turning point for good vs. evil.

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

If the world is filled with big, bad, evil things in the wilderness that separates scattered settlements, why haven't these towns been overrun?

Because the big, bad, evil things isn't a monolithic empire and because the settlement's defense are good enough to turn away raiders.

From the point of view of gnolls, humans are no more an intrinsically tempting target than hobgoblins, orcs or kobolds. They're raiders and they'll attack the most vulnerable communities they can find and avoid the walled ones or those within strinking distance of an armed force. If humans are strong enough not to be the most tempting target, than the 'Monsters' will remember that just because they are in the 'Monster Manual' doesn't mean they can only make a living by attacking PC races.

Does every community have to be a reinforced settlement with walls, a strong militia, etc.? Is there no room for simple hamlets with a couple run-down cottages?

If you are going to play PoL theory to the hilt, than no, Hamlets make no sense. You'd get city states and small village villages and reinforced farms (built for three or more families) within striking distance of the states armed forces. Sometime you'll get villages and farms built justa bit too far from the city state by daring souls. It's human nature to try. But inevitably these will be razed or they will successfully force/convince the city state to build nearby forts to extend the reach of its armed force. Statu quo is impossible.

Of course, you can play with less rampaging monsters in the countryside. But if you assume that there are really roving band of giants and gnolls, that orc barbarians try to push back civilization, that wild drakes dive on lone humans just like hawks dive on rabbits... Then no. No hamlets.

 

[tomtill]

I only have to run faster than you...

Well, some BAD THINGS lie in wait in forgotten ruins, deep jungles, etc. They don't go looking for isolated villages.

Other BAD THINGS are hunting, but that village is only a speck in a vast wilderness. If the BAD THING is finding plenty of food/victims in the wild (in the form of other creatures), then the village is not particularly special. Most predators prefer to fight things that can't really hurt them.

Villages get wiped out on occasion by BAD THINGS, but not so often that people don't live in villages. (Much like people used to live in isolated frontier lands with weather, unpredictable natives, criminals, animals and disease. Or like they still live in war zones, even though it makes their life unpredictably dangerous.)

At least that's one way of looking at it.