Points of Light approach to setting

[Remathilis]

The same reason there were hundreds of little towns, hamlets, and farmsteads across the American West during the late 1800's and early 1900's. You need a place of "civilization" (Eastern USA), A goal far to the west (Free land! Gold!) and enough people willing to cross uncharted land in covered wagons against Midwest weather, desert, wild beasts, hostile native peoples, hills and mountains.

If you rode out and your wagon broke down, and you were to dumb or lazy to fix it, that's were you stayed. (You don't think people set out for Tulsa, do you? ;-) ) Eventually, these places grew into small towns and villages (booming if there was a mine near it, or good fertile land) and larger (forts along Texas, larger cities all around the SW). Technically, they are beholden to the American Government, but in reality, most of them were self-governed and often acted with little oversight and limited connection to neighboring communities.

So, a great, recent example of PoL would be the (romanticized) American West during the Westward Expansion. Small communities (mining towns, cattle ranches, homesteaders), Heroes wandering in to solve problems (cowboys), hostile natives (Indians, Mexicans), the lure of gold, places of mystery (ghost towns, mines), bandits, outlaws, horses, etc.

 

[FourthBear]

While there are indeed many reasonable parallels to the Points of Light setting in the real world, I think what primarily inspires this is the portrayal of world in fantasy fiction. In many of the inspirations for D&D, like Conan, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, the Dying Earth and even Lord of the Rings, the current world is often portrayed with isolated communities and rather weak or ineffective authorities. Even when empires do exist, they tend to be rather distant entities that are little help against any kind of crisis. Even in modern fantasy dramas, there is a distinct tendency to downplay effective authority. How many crime and mystery dramas set in modern day Earth are there in which you have to wonder where the heck the police are? Even science fiction shows such as Star Trek, Star Wars and Doctor Who often have many of their adventures in isolated areas, despite the presence of theoretical galaxy spanning governments. The dramatic reasons for this are obvious: they put the focus more on individual action.

This doesn't mean that D&D in any edition should always gravitate towards PoL settings. I do think they they also provide a potent aid for RPG publishers and worldbuilding DMs: they make it much easier to drop in new material and ideas into the setting when the areas are more isolated and encapsulated. It's much easier for WotC, Paizo or Necromancer to write a module or adventure path around the border town of Hellsgate that can be simply dropped in as "over the next mountain range", rather than having to be fit somewhere into a campaign world that already has the map areas filled in with cities, empires and world-spanning religions.

 

[TrainedMunkee]

My POL

I have already started designing my setting for 4e. I always try to have a picture as my inspiration for design. One of the methods for writing novels is to get a picture of someone you want to use as an inspiration for your protagonist. When I design a setting, I use a landscape for inspiration. I have a poster on my wall done by Rodney Mathews, it is from the nineties. There is a keep on the top of a tall spire. The road to the keep spirals up the spire. I figure that a road like that would be very easy to defend. I envision three gates. One at the foot of the spire, one near the top and one on the wall of the keep. Such a set up could be easily defended by a few individuals. In settings like this nobody had guard as a profession. Everyone had training in the use of weapons and everyone carried weapons. The village folks had to always be on alert and had to always keep a watch. The key to a villages survival is numbers. In agricultural societies large families are a key to survival. A village would have to be in a spot that was was easily defended, had a large amount of harvestable crops, and possibly something unique for trade. I'm using the keep as my Keep on the Borderlands as a tribute to Gygax. I've already designed the village my group of PCs will be from and the whole story arc from lv. 1 to 20. I have yet to decide if I want to go beyond 20th. I'm just waiting until June.

 

[Harshax]

The Old West is a great Points of Light example. You have settlers pushing into the wilderness to carve out their own stake. The Federal Government hasn't got a long and powerful reach, so lawmen tend to be few and far between. Men have to defend their own, instead of waiting for the US Marshalls. The land has changed hands many times, so there are Indians, Mexicans, French, and English in varying degrees who still think of the land as their own. You also have lots of unmapped wilderness, etc.

The Dark Ages is another Points of Light example. Religious intolerance and the Black Plague wipe out most knowledge or the knowledgeable. People still have more of a cultural identity instead of a national identity, so when the top falls off the stack, people go back to thinking of themselves as Huns or Goths. No one knows how to read. No one knows medicine. People are literally walking around trying to recreate the wheel - actually, their barely trying to survive. This is also the time of the mini-iceage, if I remember correctly, so food is *very* hard to come by. You also have a resurgeance of predators like wolves, and since no one really understands what the Black Plague is, you have rashes of different cultists running around telling people how to act, at sword point if necessary.

Post Civil War could also be a Points of Light example. You have a decimated southern economy, pockets of folks who didn't quit the war, just stopped wearing the uniforms, banditry, disease, towns that are wiped out, and carpet baggers from the north.

I need to belt one more out, just to prove to myself that the 'Points of Light' idea isn't far fetched, but is actually a really exciting concept that doesn't require a huge ramp up on the part of the DM.

Here. I'll take a previously published game world that is a Points of Light campaign: Twilight 2000. In the last great war, every nation is strained to capacity, nukes are exchanged, governments collapse, and the last armies fielded in Europe are told by their perspective nations: 'You're on your own' There isn't a unit out there bigger than a regiment, and those guy's primary task is running around the countryside scrounging fuel, ammunition, and food. Some whole up in a castle and setup martial law around a couple of farming villages. There's half a dozen nation's armies in Poland, and none of them get along. Some guys go completely rogue, and set up black markets in Krakow, some strip the insignias off their uniforms and go mercenary, and others are just trying to find a way home. Most parties are nothing more than the remnants of a squad. Maybe they're lucky to have an APC and a mortar, they have a mix of small arms (whatever they can pickup). Maybe they're unlucky and their is a group over the next hill that has a broken down APC, and they want yours to fix theirs. Some players light up a giger counter because they've ingested so many Rads, and driving into the equivalent of Chernobyl could mean their death.

 

[Gareman]

One thing I would clarify is the PoL model in the design books appear to rely on a collapsed empire, rather than a new world expanded to the fringe. This is important and useful for us because you get ruins, ancient libraries, abandoned structures, and similar adventure fodder. I'm following the model as closely as possible because although I'm doing my own world-building, I want to run WOTC adventures and I'm assuming we'll have those kinds of edifices.

My new campaign is based on ancient Phoenicians. They banded together in isolated communities, built to take advantage of good, safe ports for ocean trade. They were literal points of light within their civilization for thousands of years. Rather than defend themselves with force (they had no armies), they would negotiate as best they could, recover from losses, and if things looked bleak enough, abandon the town for safer harbors, possibly returning later, maybe centuries later.

 

[Ydars]

Whilst I agree that there are parallels with the PoL setting in history, the fact that you have monsters running around makes a serious difference IMHO, and this is something that needs dealing with. I want isolated Inns to be credible in my world. With monsters, this is difficult and needs something more than "the village is well armed". This might be OK against Kobolds but how about big monsters, like a giant?

Now I know that people will say that monsters are rare and that they may not necessarily attack PoLs etc, but the fact remains that, because of the way the game is played, they are NOT that rare. For example, at high level, players could be encountering 4 large groups of monsters in a 24 hour period. If this is extrapolated to the world, this means that there are alot of monsters.

Take for instance, a single adult Dragon. Such a creature, if actively trying to acquire a hoard, could level cities and towns across an area the size of a continent. Villagers, no matter how good in combat are not heros and nor are the town guard. Since one of the conceits of PoLs is that adventurers and levelled classes are rare, this takes away the idea that all settlements are overflowing with spellcasters etc.

So how do we build realistic settings given these constraints?

 

[Kwalish Kid]

The local dragon could be "protecting" the town.

 

[Ydars]

This is certainly true. So design possibility No 1 is that some monsters will be protectors or overlords of some PoLs.

Now what else can we come up with?

 

[Fobok]

For example, at high level, players could be encountering 4 large groups of monsters in a 24 hour period. If this is extrapolated to the world, this means that there are alot of monsters.

At high level, the adventurers will likely be well away from the points of light. At Paragon levels they're facing enemy armies, venturing into the Underdark, travelling into mountain ranges where nobody's tread in centuries, etc. At Epic levels, they'll probably be hopping planes and so on.

Take for instance, a single adult Dragon. Such a creature, if actively trying to acquire a hoard, could level cities and towns across an area the size of a continent. Villagers, no matter how good in combat are not heros and nor are the town guard. Since one of the conceits of PoLs is that adventurers and levelled classes are rare, this takes away the idea that all settlements are overflowing with spellcasters etc.

And why would the dragon bother with tiny villages (the points of light) whose treasure would probably come to a few trinkets, when there's ancient ruins full of treasure all over the place?

And even in the PoL settings there will be big cities. They'd make more tempting targets than little villages as well for, say, the roaming army of orcs or giants. (And, that's where Paragon-level adventures come in.) Sure, some points would be going out all the time, and that'd be part of the story. (Ever see early episodes of Xena? A few times their wanderings would lead them to the smoking husk of a village, and Xena would hunt down the warlord responsible.)

 

[Scipio202]

This is certainly true. So design possibility No 1 is that some monsters will be protectors or overlords of some PoLs.

Now what else can we come up with?

Vestiges of magical wards in the ruins of an ancient empire hold off the "great evils" (i.e. high level monsters) in some areas, but weaker monsters can still slip through. When the PCs get high enough level, you can have the wards start failing, letting in the big bad monsters as new challenges.