Quietly Back to the Past (in spirit)?

[Hairfoot]

I've always believed "point of light" to be almost default for fantasy worlds. Where it came undone was in the fluff/flavour text of sourcebooks. Because books tend to focus on rare, special places and things that would only be encountered by the most powerful or heroic individuals - and then only rarely - they soon seem to be common. A great pressure on DMs is to reinforce the sparseness of civilisation and try to restrain players who want to be rewarded regularly with new toys and power.

 

[RigaMortus2]

I scratched my head when I read this as wasn't this the same assumption for Karameikos (the default setting for Basic D&D)?

IIRC the original setting was called "The Known World" whcih eventually became known as Mystara. However, Karameikos was a nation within "The Known World". Kind of like how the Silver Marches would be to Forgotten Realms.