D&D 4E "Point of Light" 4e, Is there a list of all relevant lore?

[Abstruse]

The number of posts across forums asking for maps, information and details about the Nentir / PoL setting must be indicative of a hunger for the content.

WotC may have intended for PoL to be generic, but ppaladin123's point is correct: as they've added more subtle hints, it's become more interesting.

Maybe it's the general lack of content that makes it more interesting and exotic. Is there a way to translate that hunger for information to players as a DM?

It's really reminding me of Shadowrun back in the day, only not quite as good. Shadowrun used to have this amazing metaplot that you had to read every sourcebook and most of the novels to get the full scope of, even if it was just a couple of paragraphs in a book. So while everything was self-contained for gaming, there was an amazing puzzle when you put it together. It was great if you actually had all the books, but sucked if you didn't and were missing a few pieces.

Personally, I'd rather have a Nentir Vale Gazetteer or something so I can have it all together in one place. The wiki is great, but it's just not the same. I always feel uncomfortable running a game in a set world because, while it's great when a player can grab a book and learn stuff, I'm always afraid I'm going to contradict something and have someone call me out on it. Even if it is just a sort of bare-bones setting and it's not supposed to have a massive canon, it does thanks to all the adventures set in it. It's not a lot of information, but it's there...and it's spread all over a bunch of different books which is inconvenient at best.

 

[pemerton]

I think points of light is a philosophy as well as a setting: don't be beholden to any of this information; use what you want; reveal what you want to players; feel free to improvise; discard stuff that doesn't feel right; throw in as much fog of war as is appropriate for the adventure.

I agree with this. I started a PoL game just with the core 3 books, and my players had no trouble building interesting PCs that hooked on to key bits of the PoL (like The Raven Queen, the Feywild etc).

The later books - especially Demonomicon, The Plane Above and the Underdark - flesh out the mythic history a bit more, and I've been able to incorporate some of that stuff into my game. But because so much of it is about mythic rather than present-day history, you can easily ignore it if you want to, or decide how relevant it is, and control the way that it comes to the attention of the players.

I'm always afraid I'm going to contradict something and have someone call me out on it.

The Plane Above has a sidebar about the Scales of War AP telling GMs to ignore metaplot and canon unless they actually want to include it in their games. I find this a very good sign in a published book from a big commercial games publisher.