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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WizarDru" data-source="post: 3738994" data-attributes="member: 151">True for low-level modules, at least.  Of the original adventure path:Sunless Citadel: Teeny town and nearby dungeon (day's ride)Forge of Fury: Small town and nearby dungeon (several day's ride)Speaker in Dreams: City AdventureStanding Stones: Small town with several nearby small dungeons (few hours ride)Heart of Nightfang Spire: No town listed, one big dungeonDeep Horizon: Underdark exploration, town vaguely implied in back storyLord of the Iron Fortress: Planar adventure, Outland town listed brieflyBastion of Broken Souls: Planar adventure, no urban info specified (though possibly implied)So for the majority of the 3E adventure path, there is no town detailed in the module proper, though in several it is implied or assumed that the players can, if they wish, return to one.  The first five modules easily fit into the 'points of light' idea with little change (other than the tone).  The last three are too broad and world-travelling to make that assumptions, though "Deep Horizon" doesn't really have anything in it to contradict such a setting.  LotIF and BoBS both assume planar travel is a commonplace event, as the players are now high-level...which sort of breaks that 'points of light' assumption, regardless. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />By contrast, Paizo's adventure paths prominently feature urban centers:  Cauldron for Shackled City, Sasserine for Savage Tide (except when the action relocates to the Isle of Dread, where a town takes over) and first a town (Diamond Lake?) and then 'the Free City' (aka Greyhawk) in Age of Worms.If 4e's default assumed setting is a more desperate place in need of heroes, good on them.  An implied tone in the first few modules is simply that the players are explorers, but they really don't have to do all that much.  In the first two modules, they're simply hunting out some nuisances and looking for some missing persons.  The towns aren't really all that worried about continued survival or about wandering too far from town.  In Citadel, the people foolishy went to the scary temple.  In Forge, some orcs are raiding the outlying farms and they'd like it to stop.  Now these could be easily tweaked to be much more like the "points of light" idea, and I like that.I don't really envision any mechanical changes, but more the tone of the fluff.  In 3e, there are three zones: settlements that are safe, the untamed wilderness which is effectively neutral ground and the far-off dark places of the world.  4e sounds more like that second zone is effectively shrinking to a few miles away from civilization, as opposed to everywhere except the evil temple and great city.</blockquote>

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