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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Voss" data-source="post: 4004259" data-attributes="member: 57593">Huh. I liked Points of Light as a concept... until this.The nonhostile, but separate, communities don't make any sense. No distrust? Its so contrary to human nature that it smacks the suspension of disbelief in the back of the head with a two by four.  If you have an isolated community in the middle of encroaching (or even just passive) danger, you aren't going to welcome strangers who wander out of it with open arms.  Especially in a world with doppelgangers, demons, evil wizards and the entire laundry list of things that want to eat you.Also, reinforcing dungeoneering as the focus of D&D makes me sad.  Haven't we grown beyond inexplicable underground complexes with no apparent purpose?  I'd much rather venture boldly into the wilderness with some specific thwarting on my mind then muck about in a stinky old hole full of random monster and treasure tables.  Clearing the bandits/gnolls/pirates between Point A and Point B seems much more heroic (and interesting) than spelunking after treasure and then retreating to 'Town' to rest between forays.  As does dealing with the local politics and prejudices, and slipping into the Feywild to rescued the captured farmers before the wicked Fey do something unspeakable to them. Like infect them all with lycanthropy and set them loose on the village during the next full moon.  Anyway, back to the point.  This PoL concept doesn't seem useful for integrating parties.  It comes across more (as presented) as just ripping out any potential conflicts between characters and handwaving it all away in the manner of 'and you meet in a tavern and randomly decide to adventure together. So the next morning...' As for alignment, I'm perfectly happy to see it go.  The designers have never managed a consistent or coherent system, and if it came up at all in party relations, it was a divisive force.  If people actually followed their alignment in any meaningful way, someone needed to leave the party.  I'm far more comfortable playing in the big muddy bog of moral relativism anyway.  I'm also not really familiar with the alignment justified foes, either.  We killed orcs and (chromatic) dragons because they were evil, but mostly because they had treasure.  At the bottom  it really was an amoral mercenary bloodfest, because that was the point (particularly back in the old days when you got XP for GP).    So to me, the metagame role isn't really coming into play.  Alignments metagame role was annoyance, and the PoL doesn't really justify any sort of adventuring to me.  It handwaves it all away, and boils it down to a lovely circular argument that adventurers and adventure because they're adventurers.  And no one else can, because they aren't.</blockquote>

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