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

[MechaTarrasque]

I found many interesting things in the PoL settings, and I look forward to it's return in the 5th or 6th Hasbro D&D movie

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I liked the Points of Light setting, mostly for the history and the way it could be used to inform the present. I liked that I was mostly homebrewing the world, but it still had the universal connection with the setting’s base assumptions. The core thematic elements often helped me when I was stuck on an idea. My first 5e campaign was set in the same world that I had developed for 4e, albeit advanced a few centuries.

That being said, Forgotten Realms feels a lot like home for me. It’s nice to again be running around the setting that I’ve been playing in and running since the grey box.

 

[dagger]

Grey Box Forgotten Realms feels PoL to me, and that's what I use.

 

[Mad_Jack]

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?

The PoL page on wikia...


In a nutshell, the Ponts of Light "setting" was the world of Nerath, of which only a small portion, the Nentir Vale was really mapped out officially. However, one of the D&D boardgames came with a full map of the world.
Historically, there were three empires in the area: the latest being the human empire of Nerath which had fallen and separated into the various "points of light", i.e., pockets of civilization, and the ancient empires of the Dragonborn and the humans who would end up becoming the Tieflings, which ended up destroying each other in a huge war.
Cosmologically, the setting was very simplified - there was the Material Plane, The Plane Above and the Plane Below. All areas that had been their own planes or parts of planes in previous editions had been refluffed as just specific areas of one of the two overarching planes. Then there was the Feywild, the place where all the Fey came from and the original home of the elves and eladrin. It was somewhat analogous to the Material Plane, as it also had its own version of the Underdark, called the Feydark.
Outside of the standard cosmology of 4E and separated from it by a mostly-impassable barrier was a place known as the Far Realm, inhabited by the Great Old Ones and other alien creatures, the origin of all Aberrations and theoretically the source of all psionic power.
On a racial level, as mentioned, the Dragonborn were a race unto themselves who had once had a thriving empire rather than being created as individuals, as were the Tieflings (who had been an empire of humans before their ruling class had made a bargain with Asmodeus for power). 4E split the elves into two races, the elves (the typical nature-ish "wood" elf) and eladrin (the magicky "high" elves). They also wrote up several new character races - Shardminds who were made of living crystal (and were actually fragments of the barrier that separated the Far Realm from ours), and the Wilden who were hybrid plant/animal Fey nature spirits, as well as playable versions of pixies, minotaurs and the two Gith races...

Although most weren't particularly tied into the setting, 4E also introduced quite a number of new classes - the warden (nature-powered fighter type), three psionic classes (psion, ardent and battlemind), the invoker and the runepriest (different variations on the cleric), the seeker (mystical archer) and the warlord (a martial support class who could do things like non-magical in-combat healing and buffing, trading their chance to attack to allow others to attack ("The barbarian swings a sword. The warlord swings the barbarian."), and do clever tricks that rearranged the tactical positioning of both party members and enemies).

 

[ninjayeti]

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.

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

Well its your campaign, so the hole and the peg are whatever shapes you decide they are. If the adventure doesn't fit the FR, then modify the adventure. Or change the setting - it is your campaign world not Ed Greenwood's.

 

[Tony Vargas]

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

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).

Very like how settings were first painted in the early days of the game.

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!

Ultimately, as a generic suggestion of a setting (really almost more a sub-genre), PoL didn't 'steal' things from other settings (the Ebberon might have been said to, since it did intentionally 'make a place' for all extant D&D races &c), it's just that the game didn't fail to present all those things. Of course, some of 'em, like Strahd or Vecna, were not to be found in a specific setting (even if their origin might have been in one), since they're the lord of a pocket-dimension and a god, respecitive, and thus in touch with many worlds.

Although most weren't particularly tied into the setting, 4E also introduced quite a number of new classes - the warden (nature-powered fighter type), three psionic classes (psion, ardent and battlemind), the invoker and the runepriest (different variations on the cleric), the seeker (mystical archer) and the warlord (a martial support class who could do things like non-magical in-combat healing and buffing, trading their chance to attack to allow others to attack ("The barbarian swings a sword. The warlord swings the barbarian."), and do clever tricks that rearranged the tactical positioning of both party members and enemies).

4e's take on the Warden (and other 'primal' classes was tied to the concept of 'Primal Spirits,' that were tied to the World Axis cosmology), Psionics were tied to Dark Sun and to the World Axis take on the Far Realm (and Psion wasn't new to 4e, it was a 3.5 class, and not that different from the 2e psionicist - I suppose the Battlemind could be said to be a 3.5 Phsychic Warrior, too).
The first new class 4e introduced, right in the PH1, the Warlord, was certainly world independent (and virtually genre-independent - the Warlord's schtick would fit as well in a modern action movie as in LotR). The Seeker and the 'Hunter'eRanger (not to be confused with the 4e Ranger Hunter /build/, because Essentials made everything simpler!) both suffered from the same muddy-concept issues as the 5e Ranger, since they were also takes on the concept, whatever it is - and whatever it may be, it's not setting-specific.

 

[Redthistle]

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.

Hi, Remathlis!

This is why I liked PoL/Nentir, because it was a grab-bag of story lines, etc., although I do agree with your concern about ignoring the origins of things. Heck, it's the same reason why I like Shadowrun, too - a toy box full of raw materials for my imagination.

What I did was to make my 4e game-world version of the place a nexus of gates and portals that connected my world to all of those other worlds, and linked the Spellplague issues and the fall of the Nerath Empire to the Planes-wide events wrought by the gods warring amongst themselves, mortals be damned.

The most powerful portals/gates had been constructed at the world's great universities and cities, and when they were were wiped out, the world's greatest minds died with them.

This world was cut off from all the other worlds, but the knowledge of what knowledge and races came from which worlds remained, with many of the survivors mourning being cut off from their home worlds.

Rediscovering and/or recreating all of the lost magical knowledge came after rebuilding more mundane needs, and it took generations of short-lived races such as humans to even begin to approach what their forebears had accomplished.

It's like when 5e came out, and you tweaked a number of races from prior editions that weren't included in the original 5e source books. For my game table, I've included both your versions and the ones in say, Volo's latest offering, as subraces, because I find yours to be comparable in quality.

My only complaint with 4e was when the Nentir board game came out. I took one look at the game map, and spluttered, "But, that's not the way the world looks!"

 

[Corpsetaker]

That's odd, my vast knowledge of the Realms, derived from the extensive catalog of printed products I own for it (I'm not sure it is literally every one of them, but I know it is very close to that), says quite clearly to me that there is literally nothing which doesn't fit within the Realms because it is a huge and incredibly diverse "kitchen-sink" style of setting, and appears to have always been such.

I'm afraid you are incorrect in your assumption about the Realms. Being a "kitchen sink" doesn't mean you get to throw anything into it when the world is constant and has a well documented history. Points of Light doesn't have this so it is a true "kitchen sink". What makes the Realms unique as a setting is it's vast and well documented history. Just "throwing in things that have always been associated with other worlds" doesn't fit unless you are brand new to D&D you don't know any better.

 

[Corpsetaker]

Well its your campaign, so the hole and the peg are whatever shapes you decide they are. If the adventure doesn't fit the FR, then modify the adventure. Or change the setting - it is your campaign world not Ed Greenwood's.

This is responses I hate.

Look I'm not trying to be difficult here but you are telling a veteran gamer of 32+ years that he can just modify a game as he sees fit.

REALLY???? I DIDN'T KNOW THAT AFTER ALL THESE YEARS! (sarcastic response )

My attraction to the Realms is it's consistency and living world vibe. I enjoyed reading the novels and seeing the world change with those novels, well some of them. Using a world that I have vast knowledge of and adding elements to that world, and basing your few and scabby products around, that don't fit the history is very off putting.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

I'm afraid you are incorrect in your assumption about the Realms.

I don't really care what you are "afraid" of - the two of us have equal standing as scholars on the matter, and we disagree. Do you know what that means? It means we both have equally valid opinions. I'm not wrong, you're not wrong - there just isn't a fact to be had about whether something truly "fits" or not.

Being a "kitchen sink" doesn't mean you get to throw anything into it when the world is constant and has a well documented history.

It actually means pretty much just that. Just like prior products out of those "every printed product" added things to the setting which were not even hinted at by prior products before 5th edition, even before 3rd edition, and that was perfectly acceptable for them to be fit in, so it is now.

Just "throwing in things that have always been associated with other worlds" doesn't fit unless you are brand new to D&D you don't know any better.

That's just the thing; you preferring a different course of action doesn't make that course of action objectively better. But your implication that it does do that does have an effect upon how receptive other people will be to your opinion (to be clear, I mean that it causes other people to be even less likely to be receptive to your opinion because most people don't want to agree with someone that sounds like they think they/their opinion is just plain better than anyone else).