Points of Darkness

[Starfox]

A problem with Points of Darkness is that once the players have gained a few levels by confronting darkness, it is often tempting for them to simply throw their weight around in the normal areas, where opposition is quite light compared to the dark areas.

Of course, this only is a problem if you object to it.

My main objection is that both PCs and their "points of darkness" environment feels like it is removed from the main world - the PCs become strangers in their own world, governed by their own rules and gauged on a power level normal people cannot achieve. Of course, this is always so in DnD with it's explosive power development over levels. This is somewhat less glaring in a points of light setting because the "lab environment" is so ubiquitous there - all the player ever really encounter are monsters.

 

[Li Shenron]

A problem with Points of Darkness is that once the players have gained a few levels by confronting darkness, it is often tempting for them to simply throw their weight around in the normal areas, where opposition is quite light compared to the dark areas.

Of course, this only is a problem if you object to it.

Uhm... does "throw their weight around" mean they try to become rulers or dominating the common folks or something like that? (sorry, not native English speaker here)

This has never been a problem in our games.

 

[Starfox]

Mostly, it means they bully people, ignore justice, and generally behave like biker gangs in a small town.

And actually, this hasn't happened much. It is just that it could easily happen. So I am more vary of a possible problem than really complaining about an actual problem.

 

[Li Shenron]

Mostly, it means they bully people, ignore justice, and generally behave like biker gangs in a small town.

And actually, this hasn't happened much. It is just that it could easily happen. So I am more vary of a possible problem than really complaining about an actual problem.

Yeah, it never happened to us because all players I played with were concerned with adventures, solving quests, exploring dangerous locales, fighting off threats to the good people, finding treasures...

Anyway, why are players playing the game? I know the obvious answer is "to have fun", but what does it mean in a RPG? To me it means to face challenges. Therefore if the players decide they want to be the bullies in the small town, as the DM I'll just make sure that it will be challenging.

And PoD doesn't prevent that... actually PoD might make it even simpler than PoL, because in PoD you generally have a whole civilized world around you, if you want to go against it, you'll have a world against you, chances are that you'll have to hide yourself somewhere for safety, which is exactly what the mad-evil-wizards and other BBEG do. Your hiding place may be a real hideout far away, or may be a cover identity in the middle of society, but they can't really be bullies in the open for long.

 

[Starfox]

Well, if most people in a points-of-darkness setting is level 1 - including the police and military - and the heroes are level 10, there is precious little the law can do.

 

[MarkB]

Well, if most people in a points-of-darkness setting is level 1 - including the police and military - and the heroes are level 10, there is precious little the law can do.

That's a big assumption, though. PoD doesn't have to mean that everyone is 1st level - it can simply mean that most people grow in competence by means other than hitting things.

 

[Starfox]

I agree it does not have to be so, but it is a common assumption. To quote the first post:

The 99% of the world population is made of non-adventurers who've never seen a monster in first person, even tho they probably "know" that monsters exist because of tales. The 1% is made of adventurers who usually seek out those dangers, for glory and treasure.

I find that it is a common assumption, especially among the players in a points of darkness campaign that the 99% of the population that do not confront darkness would be less capable that the 1% who does. Not only on average (most people have no practice fighting) but also in their peak abilities (soldiers fight a lot less that adventurers do). A man-at-arms in 1ed was level zero. It is also very much the assumption in adventures like the Village of Homlet.

It also skewers military assumptions a lot if one country could field a company of soldiers who are 10th level... Such a company could defeat a basically unlimited number of normal level 1-2 soldiers. They would seem to belong in the same lab environment as the players, not in the normal world of medieval politics. So unless you allow soldiers to routinely be level 5 or so, you cannot allow any unit of soldiers to be level 10. If soldiers are routinely level 5, it makes level 1 characters unskilled kids who confront dangers they really ought to leave to the adults. If soldiers are routinely level 1, they do not pose credible opposition to characters of level 10+. Neither option really works out.

At the same time we do want our heroes to feel heroic, so they should be given some lassitude and be allowed to feel more powerful than the masses at higher levels.

Overall, it does put strain on the continuity of the world.

A literary example of this is when the hobbits return to the Shire at the end of the Lord of the Rings - and more or less single-handedly defeat Saruman's cronies and free their country. Very cool as the finale of a grand adventure, less cool if they players had been the bullies themselves.

 

[MarkB]

I guess that's a good thing about 5e's bounded-accuracy concept. Without AC/attack inflation, even a high-level group of adventurers could still be defeated by sheer force of numbers if it became necessary.

 

[Li Shenron]

Well, if most people in a points-of-darkness setting is level 1 - including the police and military - and the heroes are level 10, there is precious little the law can do.

You're taking the PoD concept to an extreme that doesn't exist, if you assume things such as that the PCs are the only lv10 around (which they aren't), that the mechanics makes them safe against a mob of 1000 angry peasants armed with stones (which it doesn't), that there is no one who can or want to stop them (which is nonsense)...

There is no problem with players wanting to play the bullies, this is basically one "evil campaign" option. The problem which you are trying to create by raising all possible objections, is to prove that in this type of settings there is no way to stop them. This is utterly ridiculous...

But on a general level, you are forgetting the simple fact that if you play in a PoD setting, it is because the players want to play in such a setting. A PoD setting is supposed to have PCs looking for those dark areas, e.g. following a treasure map or going investigate an old dungeon. If the players at some point change their mind and want to play an evil campaign because it will be so easy now that they're lv20 to go back and rule the world, and you don't have any idea on how to make that challenging, you should better fold the campaign and start another, with a more suitable setting. But this isn't really needed just because it's PoD, you can easily design challenges that still makes sense within the setting.

I am in no way theorizing a supposed superiority of a PoD against others, I merely asked if others use the same type of setting, because I noticed that this "automatically" happens in my games when I start a campaign from scattered adventures (i.e. when I actually don't explicitly used a pre-defined setting).

 

[Li Shenron]

Overall, it does put strain on the continuity of the world.

What strains continuity, is assuming that the PCs are the best in the world. After raiding a dozen dungeon and getting to lv10? You can bet there's someone somewhere who's raid two dozen and is lv 20, and will gladly come there and kick the PCs asses just to give them a lesson (which is what good PC do all the time to the BBEG).