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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 3964909" data-attributes="member: 32164">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.</blockquote>

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