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Points of Light approach to setting
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<blockquote data-quote="FourthBear" data-source="post: 4122359" data-attributes="member: 55846"><p>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. </p><p></p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="FourthBear, post: 4122359, member: 55846"] 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. [/QUOTE]
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Points of Light approach to setting
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