Opinion: PoL and high tiers do not fit in the long run

[DandD]

So humanity does not make any progress? Humanity is not developing or expanding?

Nope, only progress in technology, but morally, we're still the dumb apes like we were when we left the trees.

Also, in our real world, we don't have to deal with extradimensional invaders, elemental monsters, raving and mad gods and giant magic monsters the size of a ship. Fortunately.
It's already a wonder that the humans in the D&D-world ever managed to become a sentient race, and not getting exterminated by other fantasy races who can breed even faster, are naturally stronger, smarter, inventive and such, like for example Hobgoblins or so.

 

[S'mon]

If you're interested in how a Points of Light setting works with high level (N)PCs, check out the Wilderlands of High Fantasy. As said above, high level characters lead their realm in an expansionist phase (City State of the Invincible Overlord), or maintain an established power (Viridstan). Without them the realm declines, possibly overthrown by barbarians, monsters etc.

 

[xechnao]

Nope, only progress in technology, but morally, we're still the dumb apes like we were when we left the trees.

PoL is not a moral boundary.

Also, in our real world, we don't have to deal with extradimensional invaders, elemental monsters, raving and mad gods and giant magic monsters the size of a ship. Fortunately.
It's already a wonder that the humans in the D&D-world ever managed to become a sentient race, and not getting exterminated by other fantasy races who can breed even faster, are naturally stronger, smarter, inventive and such, like for example Hobgoblins or so.

It is the same if not worse. In d&d world humans can use all the magic too. They can rise to level 30 and challenge gods.

 

[PeterWeller]

Perhaps. But still PoL is unfitting for extended campaign use in d&d.

Why? Heroes die or fade away, empires crumble from without or within, a new evil is always arising somewhere, and while vigilance can hold back the darkness, content brings complacency and a loss of vigilance. You can save the town, save the kingdom, and then save the world, but that doesn't mean that a new tribe of orcs hasn't started threatening the town, a new dragon isn't holding the kingdom hostage, and an elder evil hasn't awoke after eons to retake his/her/its rightful place as ruler or destroyer of all existence.

E: for clarity.

 

[Cbas_10]

I'm not picking on the person who started this thread; nor am I jabbing at anyone else here....but....I think a lot of people have missed the point of the Points of Light concept.

PoL is not an actual setting - it is a method and tool for DMs and writers to use. Start on a small local level, don't worry about needing the rest of the world in minute detail, and gradually "connect the dots" as your campaign expands. There have been cited examples on boards and in articles; recent traumatic events, cataclysmic magical diseases, or vast political-social shifting....Those were but examples available for DMs to use in justifying to the players (and, thus, the characters) why so little was known about the areas between Point A and Point B (which, as a PoL tool....the DM may literally have no answers for). Heck...why does something bad have to be happening? If these characters are young and just starting out on their travels and adventures....the "darkness" between the "Points of Light" is simply the unknown roads & wilderness. PoL is just a way for generic modules to be made without having to shoehorn them into an established setting and timeline.

As far as how this relates to higher-level characters....of course your PoL maps will fill in and connect, gradually becoming what looks like a "normal" game world map. Your characters have been to all of those places, they know approximately where things are in relation to each other, and they might even have travelled to some places enough to have an almost-exact measurement of distance. But actual maps available to anyone in the game world? Not happening, unless the DM chooses to have teams of explorers, magical mapping GoogleOerth satellites, or other such events happen. Until then....why would all of these vastly different cultures spanning these vast lands need such a thing? Even approximate maps accumulated by globetrotting Bard-Clerics of the God of Travel would be spotty, not all that accurate beyond connecting sets of cities here and there, and would not have much of any detail of various areas of vast wilds (Crystalmist Mountains, Anauroch, the vast area west of the Mississippi before railroads.....)

Even at high-levels, PoL is still a viable tool. While the characters may have a solid idea of everything in the geographic region of a kingdom or two, there would always be "something unknown" out just over the big mountain range or across that endless desert. To say nothing of the magical shifting forests of Krynn....

 

[DandD]

PoL is not a moral boundary.

I didn't respond to moral boundaries for the Point of Lights-game concept, xechnao.

It is the same if not worse. In d&d world humans can use all the magic too. They can rise to level 30 and challenge gods.

Only heroes, aka player characters, get to rise to level 30 and challenge the evil gods. More than 99.9999999% of all the other inhabitants are only lowly commoners who are hoping for heroes to save them. That's D&D, as it always was for 3 and a half editions. Fourth Edition will try to maintain this tradition.

 

[A'koss]

Just as heroes live long enough to rise to prominance in the world, so do villains. Sometimes the heroes win, sometimes the villains win... in the end there's just a lot of high level collateral damage. But sometimes you'll have those who rise high enough above the crowd to build an empire but eventually you have another rise to tear it all down.

 

[xechnao]

Why? Heroes die or fade away, empires crumble from without or within, a new evil is always arising somewhere, and while vigilance can hold back the darkness, content brings complacency and a loss of vigilance. You can save the town, save the kingdom, and then save the world, but that doesn't mean that a new tribe of orcs hasn't started threatening the town, a new dragon isn't holding the kingdom hostage, and an elder evil hasn't awoke after eons to retake his/her/its rightful place as ruler or destroyer of all existence.

E: for clarity.

This condition can't be stagnant without good reason. One side would win over the other eventually. If not a mechanism that maintains this balance of conflict must be invented in the campaign.

 

[The Ubbergeek]

Not forgetting the darkness can come from heroes themselves....

Look at Lodoss by example;






A few of the dark ones, like Karla, were once heroes....

 

[Voss]

Perhaps. But still PoL is unfitting for extended campaign use in d&d.

Not necessarily. There are a lot of reasons why you wouldn't necessarily go back to the peasant villages you were adventuring in at level one. For one thing, when your now epic tier enemies track you down, the ensuing battle is going to wipe the the old homestead off the map. Plus, more and more larger concerns are going to keep people occupied. They can temporarily quell the immediate problems in the area, but without a fairly unrealistic campaign were they clear all the threats in a 250 mile radius, and the adjacent feywild, underdark, and shadowfell, they just aren't going to manage to finish off all the threats, let alone the cultural issues that keep the 'civilized' areas fairly backwards.

Personally, I don't think the high tier characters are going to have the power that they do in 3e. Take the pit fiend as an example. The 18 hd, 3.5 version could show up in a small town and completely wipe it off the map personally, with no fear of anything lower than level 10.

The new pit fiend? Sure, he's very dangerous to low level guys. But the lack of DR and a lot of other abilities means that while he could probably still take out a town, a couple hundred level 1 peasants with ranged weapons could actually kill him. Those natural 20s will add up and wear him down. The place would be gutted and over half the population would probably be killed in the process (which means that probably wouldn't even try), but it looks like the high level critters aren't completely immune to a huge mob or army anymore.