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

[PeterWeller]

We are talking about races. 4e PoL is not based on alignment anymore. And d&d is not build on Good versus Evil. There is Neutrality that keeps the balance.

Pol isn't a frikking racewar. It's a battle between the forces of civilization, "good," and the forces of darkness, "evil." Just because Good and Evil aren't "forces" anymore and more like the metaphysical concepts of good and evil in the real world doesn't make PoL any less about the struggle between good and evil. Also, D&D is built on Good versus Evil. Just because there's a third force, Neutral, that tries to keep the balance doesn't mean that traditional D&D hasn't focused on the struggle between good and evil, with or without capital letters.

 

[Hussar]

So I guess each campaign will have to be a one-shot campaign. When it ends we re-create these protagonists and just replay.

Well, to be fair, the vast majority of players out there do exactly that now. Groups generally only last a couple of years at best. The idea of designing the game for the minority of groups that continue to play in the same shared world for longer than that is bad business sense. If you're designing a product, you should design for how the game is being played, not for the outliers.

Most campaigns last about a year and a half and most groups not much longer than that. Why not start with baseline assumptions that cover that.

If you want to play in a lengthy, established world where your players play the grandchildren of their last PC's, then don't use the PoL assumptions and use your own. Too easy. The PoL assumptions aren't terribly hardwired into the mechanics apparently (I'm not sure how they could be) so, creating your homebrew to resemble, say, Forgotten Realms, with scads of shared history within your group, is not a problem.

And it's most certainly not prevented by the DMG guidelines.

However, the point of PoL guidelines is to tell NEW PLAYERS (all caps because people seem to have trouble remembering this) that they don't have to spend hundreds of hours crafting this huge campaign setting before they start playing. Currently, every DM advice column says roughly the same thing - either top down or bottom up, but, in any case, you MUST HAVE these huge campaign settings complete with history and background for every nook and cranny - in order to have a "good" campaign.

It's utter ballocks. Now, the DMG is telling new DM's, "Screw lengthy history, start with this and that and get to playing". Fantastic IMO.

 

[Cbas_10]

Okay.....so Monte Cook made a modern World of Darkness by using D&D rules....

....and WotC is turning D&D into a fantasy-era World of Darkness?

Maybe that is a bit snarky, but have I really read the one thing abut 4E I like....totally incorrectly? So the default setting for any game is supposed to be this dark, evil-ridden, world...of...points of light separated by...darkness?


hold on.....doing some reading and research....


Okay....I have to admit....Reading some of Rich Baker's thoughts, I can see the whole darkness thing. I can also see the "PoL as a tool instead of a theme" described elsewhere. Therefore.....PoL rocks even more! It means options, variety, and not being "told how to run our game" by WotC.

 

[PeterWeller]

I probably mean that PoL does not make any good sense with epic heroes and another idea should be established.

Or, you just can't think of a way that is does make sense. You keep ignoring the fact that there aren't just epic forces for good, there are epic forces for evil, and that the world of PoL doesn't contain a finite amount of either.

 

[xechnao]

Pol isn't a frikking racewar. It's a battle between the forces of civilization, "good," and the forces of darkness, "evil." Just because Good and Evil aren't "forces" anymore and more like the metaphysical concepts of good and evil in the real world doesn't make PoL any less about the struggle between good and evil. Also, D&D is built on Good versus Evil. Just because there's a third force, Neutral, that tries to keep the balance doesn't mean that traditional D&D hasn't focused on the struggle between good and evil, with or without capital letters.

A conflict of two forces such as forces of civilization versus darkness or good versus evil or law versus chaos or whatever is not viable in the long term when we are talking about high power levels.

Or, you just can't think of a way that is does make sense. You keep ignoring the fact that there aren't just epic forces for good, there are epic forces for evil, and that the world of PoL doesn't contain a finite amount of either.

After this adventure ends planet Earth will be about five minutes away from being enveloped by the expansion of our Sun unless your DM has a fricking -tiny- cosmos.

And when it does?

Presuming you have escaped to another planet, your DM can just say "100 years pass, and things are all gone to hell again. Time to live up to your deific grandma's legacy.

Yes, my point again is that this does not make sense. Life can't be PoL more than some number of genrations. Because it is a high power game humans have to either expand or perish. They live in a world of probabilities so to survive against threats they have to eventually secure their safety -especially for the reason of the high power level. There can be no constant threat. But if they expand it will be PoL no more.

 

[ThirdWizard]

I don't understand. If other settings don't have this problem, why must a PoL setting?

 

[Xyl]

The implicit campaign setting is not static. Right now it's points of light... but in the past there have been huge empires of tieflings, of dragonborn, and most recently of humans. Those empires eventually fell and plunged the world into darkness. But the PCs are heroes, who might be able to bring the world out of darkness and forge a new empire... until eventually, that empire too falls, and the stage is set for new heroes.

 

[Cbas_10]

I don't understand. If other settings don't have this problem, why must a PoL setting?

He shoots....and Scores!

 

[xechnao]

Sorry double post.

 

[xechnao]

The implicit campaign setting is not static. Right now it's points of light... but in the past there have been huge empires of tieflings, of dragonborn, and most recently of humans. Those empires eventually fell and plunged the world into darkness. But the PCs are heroes, who might be able to bring the world out of darkness and forge a new empire... until eventually, that empire too falls, and the stage is set for new heroes.

But when heroes bring peace heroes will be without a job while it lasts. In Good, Neutral, Evil adventurers never stayed without a job though.