D&D 5E Points of Light setting and current cross-over strategy: Round peg in the square hole.

[happyhermit]

They didn't want to do "Generic" this time, they wanted "story" but they wanted it to be easy enough to move. FR is "generic" enough, and interesting enough, and also happened to have the most recognition. Using it was a good move IMO, as much as older players quibble about it.

I don't love FR, and I like the PoL idea in ways (it is closer to how I start sandbox settings in some ways, different in others).

Non D&D players have heard of things in the Realms though, especially in the table top gaming community, which is a much larger market than RPGs.

 

[Remathilis]

My feelings on PoL/Nentir is very similar to my general feelings of 4e: It tries hard to be a fresh take on D&D lore, but it just ends up dancing around wearing D&D's clothes.

Specifically, PoL had a nasty of habit of absorbing every other settings "unique elements" and dumping them in there. It stole people (Mordenkainen, Strahd), places (Tomb of Horrors Isle of Dread), things (Hand of Vecna, Blackrazor), cultures (Vistani), races (warforged, shifters) and monsters (draconians) from all over D&D's history and smashed them into one setting without much rhyme or reason, and often ignoring its connections to the settings that spawned them.

While most of the modules have been Realms-based, at least the 5e paradigm is to acknowledge where these things come from (such referencing Mordenkainen is form Oerth or warforged come from Eberron) rather than jamming them all into one setting.

 

[Parmandur]

My feelings on PoL/Nentir is very similar to my general feelings of 4e: It tries hard to be a fresh take on D&D lore, but it just ends up dancing around wearing D&D's clothes.

Specifically, PoL had a nasty of habit of absorbing every other settings "unique elements" and dumping them in there. It stole people (Mordenkainen, Strahd), places (Tomb of Horrors Isle of Dread), things (Hand of Vecna, Blackrazor), cultures (Vistani), races (warforged, shifters) and monsters (draconians) from all over D&D's history and smashed them into one setting without much rhyme or reason, and often ignoring its connections to the settings that spawned them.

While most of the modules have been Realms-based, at least the 5e paradigm is to acknowledge where these things come from (such referencing Mordenkainen is form Oerth or warforged come from Eberron) rather than jamming them all into one setting.

I think what it was, was then trying to make a default setting that reflected how a lot of people play in practice.

My college group was essentially in a PoL setting with Greyhawk gods, and whatever classes and races people felt were kewl...

 

[pemerton]

Wizards would have been better off using the Points of Light setting as a nexus between the different rules.

<snip>

It appears they just use the popularity, and notoriety of the Realms to attract people but turn it into something else that just doesn't fit the history of the world.

Whether or not the stuff they're doing "fits" FR I leave for others to judge.

But how would they have been "better off" doing otherwise? WotC is a commercial publisher. What is good for them is to sell lots of stuff. Which they seem to be doing. If labelling stuff FR helps sell it, that seems like a good commercial strategy to me.

I never picked up 4e. I have heard good things about the setting and have never had trouble stealing good ideas and reskinning.

Where is a good place to get decent detail of the setting? Online and/or book?

I think the actual Nentir Vale setting is nothing special - it's a very generic low-ish level D&D setting, with a forest for the elves and goblins, hills/mountains for the dwarves and orcs, some villages and a town, a baron with a castle, etc.

It is summarised in the DMG, and also one of the Essentials books (I think the DM book).

What is distinctive about 4e, I think, is the history and cosmology that is presented in the core books (especially the race backgrounds in the PHB and in the MM) and elaborated in some of the supplements (I think the Plane Above is probably the best of these, followed by Demonomicon). It is your pretty basic "gods/order" vs "primoridals/chaos" set up - so the default is that the PC heroes are on the side of the gods trying to ensure the primordials don't dissolve the world back into the raw elements of creation. But it has some nice subtlety mixed into that (eg some of the gods make for ambiguous allies at best) and there is also a largely distinct Feywild to handle fey-type story elements. And the history of the mortal world ties into the order/dissolution theme, being a history of fallen empires (of which the most recent is the fallen human empire of Nerath).

Another good introduction, which also has good GMing advice for how to use the story elements, is Worlds & Monsters.

PoL had a nasty of habit of absorbing every other settings "unique elements" and dumping them in there. It stole people (Mordenkainen, Strahd), places (Tomb of Horrors Isle of Dread), things (Hand of Vecna, Blackrazor), cultures (Vistani), races (warforged, shifters) and monsters (draconians) from all over D&D's history and smashed them into one setting without much rhyme or reason, and often ignoring its connections to the settings that spawned them.

it's not like PoL was the first time D&D had a vaguely-described quasi-generic setting. That's how Greyhawk and Blackmoor started out.

My experience is more like what Tony Vargas describes than what Remathilis describes. My default 4e campaign has featured dwarves from mountain fastnesses, goblins in the forests, gelatinous cubes in an underground maze in a ruined city/fortress (a REH-style trope), Vecna (including his Eye), Orcus, Asmodeus, Demogorgon, Pazuzu, the Rod of Seven Parts (including the Queen of Chaos and the Rod of Seven Parts), the Crystal of the Ebon Flame, and recently the Codex of the Infinite Planes (which in this campaign is the same thing as the Book of Vile Darkness).

I don't feel that any rhymes or reasons were harmed as a result of this!

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

I think what it was, was then trying to make a default setting that reflected how a lot of people play in practice.

My college group was essentially in a PoL setting with Greyhawk gods, and whatever classes and races people felt were kewl...

Yeah this. In my game Mordenkainen is a lecturer at the University of Werensburg, in my homebrew world. He has never heard of any Places called "Greyhawk" or "Oerth", and neither has anyone else!

 

[JeffB]

Yeah this. In my game Mordenkainen is a lecturer at the University of Werensburg, in my homebrew world. He has never heard of any Places called "Greyhawk" or "Oerth", and neither has anyone else!

You should post this in the "canon" thread and see how many Strokes/Myocardial Infarctions come as a result.

 

[Jer]

I think what it was, was then trying to make a default setting that reflected how a lot of people play in practice.

My college group was essentially in a PoL setting with Greyhawk gods, and whatever classes and races people felt were kewl...

I think this is exactly right. They tried to do it with Greyhawk in 3rd edition and got a lot of pushback because "Greyhawk isn't generic/Why are you ruining Greyhawk?" So then with 4e they figured "let's just make a new 'default setting' where everything can be put" and people screamed "Why are you stealing all of the special things out of Greyhawk to stick them here?" There's definitely a mismatch between how fans of Greyhawk see materials like Against the Giants, Temple of Elemental Evil, Tomb of Horrors, The slavers series, etc. and how a lot of other people actually used these adventures in practice. Which means that no matter what Wizards does they're going to irritate someone. (I know that I don't consider any of these things to be Greyhawk specific even though they're all set in Greyhawk in the way that I think of a lot of Realms adventures as "Realms specific". Because when I first ran all of them back in my formative days they weren't run in Greyhawk but instead in the Known World. The Temple of Elemental Evil is as much a Known World element to me as it is a Greyhawk one because that's where I experienced it.)

The OP here is basically having the same reaction to 5e's treatment of the Realms that a number of 3e Greyhawk fans had, so I sympathize. The difference is that it's unlikely that the Realms will be dropped as the default setting the way that Greyhawk basically was after the first few years of 3rd edition because the Realms are way too popular and the books sell too well and the Realms is more tightly integrated with the publishing plans for this edition than Greyhawk was for 3e.

(I liked the Nentir Vale setting quite a bit and continue to use it. It was nice to have a setting without a lot of detail surrounding it as it gave us a lot of space to just make stuff up. Sure you can do that in the Realms or Greyhawk or Mystara but there's always a niggling idea that you maybe should be checking to see if there's already a villain who can fill this role or a treasure that can fill that role or whatever. Having less detail means no nagging doubts at all as there's really nothing but the campaign notes to look things up in. It also seems to free up my players to make more setting suggestions when there's less detail - I think either because they feel that they can be more helpful when they're contributing to a basically empty slate or there's less fear about having to do "homework" to read up enough on the setting to participate in providing setting details.)

 

[darkbard]

I never picked up 4e. I have heard good things about the setting and have never had trouble stealing good ideas and reskinning.

Where is a good place to get decent detail of the setting? Online and/or book?

I think the most focused and comprehensive resource for the Nentir Vale is Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale, wherein not only are the monsters placed culturally and with regard to ecosystem in the setting but also there is a kind of primer or gazetteer, as well.

 

[Jester David]

Wizards would have been better off using the Points of Light setting as a nexus between the different rules. Since PoL really hasn't much background info, it is the perfect place that could contain portals to other worlds and still give people a world that is fully generic.

They could have PC's go to the different worlds via their AP's or other material. They could also have the remake dungeons pop up in PoL and nobody would bat an eye.

Unfortunately they decided to make the Realms their dumping ground and when you have vast knowledge of the Realms, as well as every printed product, it becomes blatantly obvious when something just doesn't fit. That's why use the round peg and square hole analogy. You can fit the peg into a square hole but it's just not the right choice.

It appears they just use the popularity, and notoriety of the Realms to attract people but turn it into something else that just doesn't fit the history of the world.

They would have been better off just building on the Points of Light setting.

The catch with the Points of Light setting is that it started as not having lore, but every future product added lore. There's a surprising amount of backstory to the world now, it's just hidden in adventures, magazine articles, and race entries. We probably know more about the Points of Light setting than Greyhawk fans knew about that setting prior to 1988.

The PoL setting made sense as a starting point, but setting adventures and accessories in that setting defeated the purpose of a blank slate that Dungeon Masters could make their own.

 

[Igwilly]

Personally, I use PoL as a base, and add stuff in. And, in the end, the game feels much like Final Fantasy with D&D from most settings. That includes modern firearms, gunblades, buster swords, chocobos, moogles, etc.
I love that crazy setting!