PoL & population density

[JohnSnow]

You're right. The 18,000 figure is for the 1100's though. By the 1300s London was crammed with 100,000 people, although it was spilling outside the walls. That kind of crowding is partly what made the Plague so bad when it hit.

The other thing is, historically over-crowded cities are (IMHO) more consistent aesthetically with the implied dark fantasy of a POL setting. I personally prefer to have the "safe" areas be just as nasty as the "dangerous" ones, just in different ways. I think it creates more adventuring opportunities.

That's true (my sources say 80,000, but I'm not going to quibble), but IMO early medieval Europe is generally far more consistent with the "Points of Light" conceit than Europe of the 1300s. Large populations are a result of reasonably stable and settled societies. Moreover, as you so elegantly point out, when cities get too large, plague strikes and the population levels drop. London lost about one-third of its population of 80,000 when the Black Death hit.

I don't honestly see the POL conceit as being particularly "dark" fantasy. What it implies to me isn't dark - it's "dark-ish." In other words, it's a society where civilization is constantly in a struggle with wilderness. That's largely consistent with, for example, Europe up until sometime in the middle ages. By the 14th or 15th century, most of Europe was starting to become "civilized," but up until 1200 or so, most kingdoms were pretty small. Post-Roman Empire Europe dominated the society from about 400 until about 1000. For six hundred years, not a whole lot changed. Kingdoms rose and fell, and villagers and townspeople grappled with the wilderness. Forests were filled with the very real dangers of bandits and wild animals, and the imagined dangers of monsters, fey, and spirits.

To me, that period, and the pre-Roman iron age, is the best representative of what a D&D world ought to look like. PoL just allows us to keep that even after we start to get some merchants. It's, to me, a way of explaining why most D&D worlds haven't progressed past a civilization level consistent with medieval Europe. Whenever they're about to, some internal struggle or outside force causes them to collapse. Yes, it's a stretch to extrapolate, but it explains how your D&D worlds could have histories that go back thousands of years.

Honestly, it's no more (and no less) "dark fantasy" than is Middle Earth. Which was essentially Tolkien taking iron age Europe and making it endure for thousands of years. Is that realistic? Probably not, but it sure is fun.

There's a wonderful book on iron age and dark age Europe called The Real Middle Earth, which details the societies on which Tolkien primarily based his story. It's worth checking out, even if it talks more about hill forts and villages than actual towns and cities.

 

[Irda Ranger]

It's, to me, a way of explaining why most D&D worlds haven't progressed past a civilization level consistent with medieval Europe. Whenever they're about to, some internal struggle or outside force causes them to collapse. Yes, it's a stretch to extrapolate, but it explains how your D&D worlds could have histories that go back thousands of years.

I assume that advanced technology is too fragile to survive a world of magic and monsters. A steam engine could be dangerously over-heated (to the point of exploding) by a Fireball, Fire Elemental, Dragon's breath weapon, etc. etc. That goes triple for any real amount of gunpowder or gasoline. Steel armor and weapons are rugged in ways that "better" technology is not. And if they're Sundered at least they don't kill everyone standing too close to them when they go.

 

[JohnSnow]

I assume that advanced technology is too fragile to survive a world of magic and monsters. A steam engine could be dangerously over-heated (to the point of exploding) by a Fireball, Fire Elemental, Dragon's breath weapon, etc. etc. That goes triple for any real amount of gunpowder or gasoline. Steel armor and weapons are rugged in ways that "better" technology is not. And if they're Sundered at least they don't kill everyone standing too close to them when they go.

That explains the technological level of the D&D world, but NOT the civilization level.

Eberron is an excellent example of what happens when you suppress the technology and let the society itself evolve. In a D&D world, magic is reliable enough that it should serve as the basis for industry and social development. You can limit the implications by deciding that not everyone can use magic, but that only limits the alterations, rather than stopping them. In Eberron, they make the world work by setting it in the aftermath of a great war. Essentially, it's similar to the late 19th or early 20th century in the "real world."

To justify medieval, or earlier, levels of civilization, you have to assume that societies are constantly in a state of upheaval. To prevent developed societies from wiping out all the threats and essentially maklng adventurers obsolete, you have to keep those societies from becoming too developed. To me, that's where the danger of Points of Light comes in. The dangerous world is providing a counterbalance to the stabilizing influence of societies.

Make sense?

 

[Kraydak]

....
To justify medieval, or earlier, levels of civilization, you have to assume that societies are constantly in a state of upheaval. To prevent developed societies from wiping out all the threats and essentially maklng adventurers obsolete, you have to keep those societies from becoming too developed. To me, that's where the danger of Points of Light comes in. The dangerous world is providing a counterbalance to the stabilizing influence of societies.

Make sense?

Actually, I think DnD societies being in dangerous locals makes perfect sense from a militaristic/security point of view (and yes, that sentence does sound weird). While the topic has been debated many times, I come down solidly on the side of HLCs (high level characters) being the true powers. It follows that nations will attempt to recruit and train HLCs. Training HLC involves putting (dangerous) people to beat up in front of them. Wiping out the goblins means you need to find another low level threat for people to grind xp on. If you need to put a book of (somewhat editted) demon-worshipping rituals in peoples hands to generate an adventure for people to level on, you do so.

But that might be a bit Machiavellian for your tastes.

Regardless, and not on quote-topic, if PoL is to mean anything, you are giving up a lot of realism. (the above holds only if both you want to keep standard DnD assumptions, like metal, and glass, and paper, and if you want the *aristocracy* to feel like the world is PoL). For me, you'd give up enough simulationist aspects that the simulationist aspects become gamist: without enough realism, you don't have suspension of disbelief and you stop roleplaying as the world isn't "real" anymore.

I'm not overly worried about that because I don't expect it to last. I don't expect it to last because, even though it isn't a simulationist design choice, it isn't as a result a gamist design choice. PoL feels like a return to 1st edition undetailed town+dungeon to crawl. People have come to expect more from their settings because to run more than a dungeon crawl you need more details and a larger canvas. PoL is subpar for political adventures, and is small for full out, large level spread campaigns. In short, because of the campaign constraints that come with it, PoL fails from a gamist point of view (Blobs of light, on the other hand, do well).

An important thing to realize is that DnD breaks down if PC and (friendly) NPC power levels diverge too much. If the relevant NPCs are too powerful, you wonder why they aren't intervening. Of course, they might have set the whole thing up to train new allies, but lets not continue that. If the relevant NPCs are too weak, you can't have political adventures, and dungeoncrawls are either unmotivated, or you have the World Ending Crisis of the week syndrome. As the PC powerlevel rises fast, you either need to have the NPCs gain levels at PC rates but all start at the same place (which feels *weird*, why should powerful people all start leveling at the same time) or you can change your NPC cast (which generally involves changing the scope or location of the campaign). As changing the location of a campaign can be disruptive, you are best off changing the scope of the campaign. Which is hard if you restrict yourself to small, terrified communities.

 

[Aloïsius]

An important thing to realize is that DnD breaks down if PC and (friendly) NPC power levels diverge too much. If the relevant NPCs are too powerful, you wonder why they aren't intervening. Of course, they might have set the whole thing up to train new allies, but lets not continue that. If the relevant NPCs are too weak, you can't have political adventures, and dungeoncrawls are either unmotivated, or you have the World Ending Crisis of the week syndrome. As the PC powerlevel rises fast, you either need to have the NPCs gain levels at PC rates but all start at the same place (which feels *weird*, why should powerful people all start leveling at the same time) or you can change your NPC cast (which generally involves changing the scope or location of the campaign).

A good solution is to flatten the power curve... And it seems that 4e is doing that, somewhat.

 

[JohnSnow]

Regardless, and not on quote-topic, if PoL is to mean anything, you are giving up a lot of realism. (the above holds only if both you want to keep standard DnD assumptions, like metal, and glass, and paper, and if you want the *aristocracy* to feel like the world is PoL). For me, you'd give up enough simulationist aspects that the simulationist aspects become gamist: without enough realism, you don't have suspension of disbelief and you stop roleplaying as the world isn't "real" anymore.

I think this may be where I disagree with the assessment of people (like yourself) who claim that the PoL setting "doesn't make sense" or that it implies a less "sophisticated" world.

We have different definitions of what, precisely, PoL means. I hear many people saying that it implies, as you say, "small, terrified communities." I do not hold to that interpretation of the little we have been told about the "Points of Light" conceit. Near as I can tell, the assumptions (and premises) implied by PoL are as follows:

1) Communities tend to be widely spaced.
2) For ordinary individuals, travel is "dangerous" (more on that below).
3) Large, civilized countries are not conducive to adventure.
4) Ordinary people need "heroes" to protect them.

Does this imply that the PCs are the only heroes in the world? Of course not. They're just the ones that are the focus of their own stories. Of course, other characters comparable to the PCs exist in the world. It's just that they're rare enough that they do not often cross paths with the player characters.

When every nation is run by a large number of high-level characters, you start to wonder how special the PCs are. If the kingdom in which the PCs live has legions of armored knights, why haven't they taken care of all the threats? Answer: no reason, unless the threats are extreme. Without threats that are beyond the capabilities of the local authorities to deal with, there's no room for adventurers in this world.

To me, that's all PoL is. It's a recognition that whatever problems exist in the world, the local authorities are overwhelmed. In one sense, it's similar to comic book reality. Spiderman and Batman aren't needed to combat regular criminals, because ordinary police can handle that just fine. To justify the need for superheroes, you need supervillains.

In D&D, the characters don't start out as superheroes, just heroes. Heroes need villains. And they need those villains to be people that the ordinary authorities either can't deal with or don't know about.

If there are lots of other adventurers, what's the role of the novice hero? It's why most superhero films make their characters unique. For the most part, Superman doesn't show up in Batman's stories, because if Superman exists, what's Batman's role? Similarly, if Elminster exists, what purpose do the PCs serve? In the PoL conceit, if a guy like Elminster is out there, he's got other problems. He's having enough trouble beating back the big darkness to deal with low-level threats. So that's up to the PCs. If adventuring types are common, and the kingdom's relatively safe, the PCs aren't needed to rescue that town, because the king's knights have already taken care of it.

The point of the PoL conceit is that the authorities are overwhelmed and need heroes. That's either because they're not all that powerful, or because for every bit of power they have, there's a counteracting dark influence.

The PCs aren't "unique," they're just "rare." The average citizen isn't a hero. I'm reminded of a 2e article on keeping the fantastic "fantastical." If ordinary citizens react to magic with a "ho hum" or "oh look, another dragon," what's the point of adventurers? The Monte Cook ideal of the bartender with a "no detections" sign is....odd, especially if you want the heroes to be adventurers.

IMO, 3e went too far in making adventurers "an ordinary part of the world." PoL seeks to change that by making ordinary folk more "ordinary." For adventurers, this stuff may be day-to-day, but that's because they're adventurers. It's not because everyone they meet sees magic and monsters on a daily basis. To make that work, you need a sharper differentiation between heroes and "everyday folk."

Why don't most people become adventuers? Because being an adventurer is dangerous! Most sensible people are going to stay home, safely clustered in walled villages and cities. For ordinary people, the wilderness is dangerous - they won't survive. So they travel in larger groups. If you flatten the power curve a bit, enough low-level characters can handle some fairly significant threats. Adventurers, on the other hand, can handle those threats alone, or in small groups.

There's no lack of believability in the PoL conceit. It actually seeks to explain why there are still monsters and dangers that call for the intervention of adventurers. And it seeks to differentiate adventurers from the general populace. However, it follows different assumptions than the "PCs aren't exceptional" premise.

 

[A'koss]

Actually, I think DnD societies being in dangerous locals makes perfect sense from a militaristic/security point of view (and yes, that sentence does sound weird). While the topic has been debated many times, I come down solidly on the side of HLCs (high level characters) being the true powers.

This is an opinion I've always held as well. HLers hold all the cards in the campaign - they are literally the best at everything. A saying I like to use when 2 nations are in "dispute" - You get your HLers to win the war... then send in the army.

An important thing to realize is that DnD breaks down if PC and (friendly) NPC power levels diverge too much. If the relevant NPCs are too powerful, you wonder why they aren't intervening. Of course, they might have set the whole thing up to train new allies, but lets not continue that. If the relevant NPCs are too weak, you can't have political adventures, and dungeoncrawls are either unmotivated, or you have the World Ending Crisis of the week syndrome. As the PC powerlevel rises fast, you either need to have the NPCs gain levels at PC rates but all start at the same place (which feels *weird*, why should powerful people all start leveling at the same time) or you can change your NPC cast (which generally involves changing the scope or location of the campaign). As changing the location of a campaign can be disruptive, you are best off changing the scope of the campaign. Which is hard if you restrict yourself to small, terrified communities.

When you boil it down, HLers really have just 2 capabilities which can make them a problem on a campaign level. First is divinations - to be able to glean information at a moment's notice, instantly/near-instantly communicate over long distances and see pretty well whereever you wanted, whenever you wanted. The second is long-range teleportation and similar high-speed/instaneous magical travel.

Together they allow HL groups to deal with 99.9% problems anywhere at anytime. Before breakfast. But take those two abilities away (or curb them *significantly*)... and you greatly reduce the impact they can have on your game. This is something I've always done in my 3e games.

If HLers have to rely on traditional spy networks, runners, various outpost reports and so on it greatly limits what they can reliably know is happening in the world around them. Further, if they have cross the intervening distance between points A & B, they will make damn certain it is worth their time to do so (they will be especially wary of traveling long distances which leaves their homes defenseless for extended periods of time).

LL-ML adventurers are all of a sudden a far greater necessity to deal with the myriad "little" problems HLers simply can't put on their plates. They can't deal with what they don't know about and can easily be too far away or too busy to deal with the problem in a timely manner even if they did know about it. This allows you to have a relatively high number of powerful NPCs without fear that they'll steal the PCs thunder.

 

[Graf]

None of them really want to know what the Myconoids do with the "brown gold", and long discourses on its many uses effectively discourages pesky questions of this nature.

Ew. Ew, I say.

Believe it or not, that's still not as crowded as historical towns would get. Figure the same population in about half to 1/3 of that area. Medieval urban populations density was about 30,000 per square mile. Yes, that meant people living on top of each other and essentially in each other's filth.

When I was studying in Tokyo (not recently) I remember hearing in one of my history classes that, while population had increased tremendously in the last few hundred years (I want to say 7 times?) population density (vis vie available floor space) was virtually unchanged.
[For the avoidance of doubt I'm talking about the Tokyo-as-the-23-wards not Tokyo the current political entity.]

 

[hamishspence]

Points of light as a network

If world was colour coded according to threat level, the safest places should be the bright "points of light" with darker lines between them (roads, rivers, etc) and very dark areas between lines (monster territory)

Just cos kingdom holds together, in the sense that central city exerts some political control over outlying villages, does not mean that the kingdom is monster free. I get the impression that the concept is drawing from Baldur's gate type games: the monsters are around, but not constantly attacking the city walls.

similarly, most FR novels suggest that the further you go from villages, the more likely you are to run into trouble.

also, it could be that communities tend to be smallish: a person up a tall tower in a town should be able to see the edge of the point of light, the danger zones should be within a day's riding distance. Very traditional: Warhammer's Bretonnia (last edition) seemed very points of light-ish: there are monsters out there, and it is the presence of the knights (equivalent of D&D PCs) that keep them in check.

A POL can shrink a lot at night, or only apply on the surface. You could have monster-ridden sewers, a la Baldur's Gate, without having to worry about them on the surface. Or have villagers stay indoors at night, wary of howling beasties.

 

[Clawhound]

I see PoL as a variety of populations.

Some places will have many people.
Some places will have few people.
Some will be depopulating.
Some will be growing.

Think of the old west, where you could travel from boomtown to shantytown in a couple hours.

Now, here's the trick: what is the population of a space, what is the population of the shadowfell of that space, and what is the population of the other parallel planes of that space? How do they interact? That's where things get complicated fast.

I imagine that many places have their steady heroes, like a fire company. They work constantly to "put out fires." Other places do not have heroes, or those heroes are fallen, or those heroes are too busy.

An important part of PoL is that there are places with no people left. That is the EXPLORATION part of the D&D game. Heroes are not just responding, but going out and LEARNING about the world.