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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TwinBahamut" data-source="post: 4143156" data-attributes="member: 32536">Well, regarding some of the "monsters in PoL" debate that I seem to have missed earlier...In my opinion, a Points of Light setting is not a setting where civilization itself is at risk of complete destruction from a great threat. Instead, it is a setting where civilization is simply unable to deal with the moderate threats, because there are too many really minor threats tying up resources elsewhere. You don't need a hundred monsters wandering the countryside, raiding whole regions every night, you just need a single monster in the right place.For example, let me use the classic PoL-style monster: the troll. Take two or three trolls and put them under a bridge (because trolls just happen to like living under bridges). Say that this bridge is the main link between a mining town and various surrounding towns. The trolls' presence chokes off the trade between the mining town and the rest of the world, and threatens to slowly starve out the miners trapped in the town.In a non-PoL setting, such a treat can probably be dealt with by the nobles or other powerful figures in the surrounding area. Perhaps they could send some troops, or perhaps gather some funds to hire a wizard to chase the trolls away. The difference with a PoL setting is that those nobles or other power figures are unable to help. Maybe they have troubles with goblins (which are no threat to a community, but only so long as there are guards watching the town walls), or maybe they simply are not as wealthy. As such, in a PoL setting, the isolated mining town doesn't have any way of fixing the problem built into the setting itself. Perhaps it can be described as the difference between a stable equilibrium and an unstable one?Another way of thinking about it is that PoL assumes there are a lot of monsters in the "regions of darkness" between settlements, but it does not assume that these monsters are  even usually interested in attacking settlements. Certainly, if a strong monster decides to attack a point of light, or even move too close to one, then that point of light is in severe danger and needs to be rescued by the PCs, but the odds of this should be low enough that it doesn't happen very often at all.A mythological example would be he Sphinx from the story of Oedipus. A single monster shuts down an entire city, until a hero arrives and saves it. Monsters like the Sphinx don't always cause trouble in greek myth, but when they do they cause severe problems. On the other hand, a lot of monsters like Cerberus or Scylla and Charybdis exist in that world of myth, but for the most part their place in the world is known and understood and they can be avoided completely, except for when a brave person tries to take a dangerous route through their home.</blockquote>

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