what are the ramifications of points-of-light?

[DreadPirateMurphy]

Even in the modern day, cities require massive amounts of farmland. The 2% of the population in agriculture is only due to automation. The hard part in a real Points-of-Light campaign would be protecting enough land to serve the population. That's going to keep population relatively small unless you have some kind of magic in play.

Keep in mind that a city doesn't have to have farmland right outside. Rome used to ship grain from Egypt. It does presume an ability to protect shipments of food, however. Maybe a large city survives via trade portals or teleportation?

Apart from that, pretty much every community is going to be very vulnerable. There is only so much you can do to defend a small population, and you're not going to have the depth of reserves that a larger empire would. Expect a degree of xenophobia and paranoia. Justice is likely to be harsh, vigilante, or both.

 

[haakon1]

once i discovered what "points of light" means
. . .
if cities/towns/villages are the few (or only) safe havens for civilized races, then the inhabitants of those areas will become largely confined to the city/town/village in which they reside, right?
. . .
does points of light result in a faster growing, faster advancing civilization?

My view of points of light is that it's a post apocalyptic setting.

My first thought is of the Dark Ages, a few centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire, with petty barbarian warlords have looted everything for several generations, and the physical infrastructure, economy, and society in tatters.

So no, I don't see a faster growing, faster advancing civilization. I see a civilization with a wolf at the door, barely holding on to survival. The world isn't progressing at all, it's trying to keep the last vestiges of light from permanently blinking out.

I think that's WOTC is going for.

As for what the points of light ARE, I think of small settlements, with self-sufficient economies, mostly centered on yeoman farmers (small freehold farmers who can fight) and minor fortifications like towers or caves or walled villages, held by minor nobles, where they hold up when the baddies come around. With very little trade between them, and very little produced beyond food and homespun rough clothing -- weapons and magic and all that are mostly relics of the fallen civilization or poor quality, peasant-made stuff.

The only places that are more advanced might be isolated, fortified monasteries -- where old learning is kept alive (think: The Name of the Rose) and a few fortresses, perhaps run by heroes, or an ancient order preserving civilization, or villains who exploit the peasants (prima nocte, etc.) but provide some security against other villains (what we used to call Lawful Evil before 4e abolished it!).

A idea to understand Dark Ages nobility -- think of a biker gang, but with horses. They collect "protection money" from the peasants, by force if necessary, and the protection is both protection FROM the racketeer himself, and from others like him, or worse.

So yake all your post-apocalyptical settlement ideas from the movies or Gamma World, and it will more or less work.

 

[Rechan]

On technology et al, remember that big cities have always existed and it took forever to accomplish technological advances. Outside of the Industrial Revolution (which led to really, really fast technological advancement), tech was very slow. And tech advancement can happen elsewhere (for instance, the steel plow's invention, which made plowing much easier due to the decrease in weight compared to the iron plow).

Now, as to PoL and the issue of 'cities and food and suchlike'. A good rule of thumb (IMO) is that anything a day's walk/ride from a castle/fort/whatnot is Reasonably protected. So you can have your farmland protected that way. It's just that as soon as you get outside of a day's travel, you're on your own. This makes travel particularly treacherous.

One way you can have one of those Big Cities, or one way you can get around an issue, is if the city has a sustainable food source that doesn't need to be farmed. For instance, the whole place is overrun with vegetation that bears fruit - bitter fruit that makes people smell awful, but edible none the less. Or they sit on top of a HUGE fungal colony, or they even gain magical sustenance. The point being that they get the necessary nutrients without a huge farming community - it's not great, but it sustains them.

One idea, if you like thinking about this sort of thing, is a very Communist/Socialist setup. Where things are rationed out/shared to the utmost, because the city has to maintain a certain level of Balance. If you have too many mouths vs too little food (or other resources), you have Problems. Now, imagine what happens to this delicate balance when adventurers, deep in gold, come in to drop it down to buy supplies/sell magical items!

And remember that outside of the Points of Light, it doesn't mean that there's monsters neck deep. The Darkness outside of the Light is just that: dark. There's no telling what's out there. Back in the old days, maps of the continents not explored would just have ? on them. The darkness very well can just be big question marks.

 

[haakon1]

On technology et al, remember that big cities have always existed

Tangential to what you're talking about, but big cities have NOT always existed. And civilizations do and have collapsed.

For example, Roman England's most important city, Londinium, had 60,000 inhabitants and a sophisticated political economy, linked with the Mediterranean world.

Then the Roman empire crashed, and the hordes of barbarians came. Whatever the population was, it was small (my guess is a few thousand).

Eventually order was restored, so that we know the population again in 1100, under a newly stable monarchy that united England -- about 18,000 people. Not exactly a "big city" by Roman standards, and it's a small town by 19th century or later standards.

London - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

My point is -- in a true points of light setting, I don't think cities worthy of the name city should exist, other than as ruins, perhaps with a town rebuilt among the rubble.

 

[Rechan]

Tangential to what you're talking about, but big cities have NOT always existed. And civilizations do and have collapsed.

Yes I wasn't talking of absolutes. Obviously cities haven't existed before people. But you've had Constantinople and places in China going back long, long times. Compare the amount of time cities existed and with technology and you'll get what I mean.

My point is -- in a true points of light setting, I don't think cities worthy of the name city should exist, other than as ruins, perhaps with a town rebuilt among the rubble.

Except we've seen cities in the published setting, which is PoL. I mean, we don't need to be hypervigilant. It's just an idea to hang your hat on, not rigidity.

Cities are, simply put, fun. They supply certain niches and tropes. It's also hard to rationalize how you'd have a matical item shop in a town.

 

[S'mon]

My point is -- in a true points of light setting, I don't think cities worthy of the name city should exist, other than as ruins, perhaps with a town rebuilt among the rubble.

Yes, in a post-apocalypse/dark ages setting you will get almost no significant cities. In a medieval setting they may reach tens of thousands, but the medieval period ca 1000-1500 was not 'points of light'.

The Classical world does have some interesting paradigms of 'points of light' city state systems that IMO can make a very good model for D&D - compared to the complexity of medieval society it's a relatively simple set-up and also in some ways more 'modern' in mindset.

Some trading cities like Athens got quite large, 5th century Athens had around 100,000 people even before the short-lived Delian League > Athenian Empire. Generally though Greek city-states were more like 10,000 people and the olive groves, villages and fields a half-day's journey around. The Middle East had a similar paradigm. Of course these city-states ultimately proved very vulnerable to organised empires...

 

[Starfox]

Discussing this more from the hypotethical history angle more than the good story angle here.

For example, Roman England's most important city, Londinium, had 60,000 inhabitants... we know the population again in 1100, under a newly stable monarchy that united England -- about 18,000 people.

One interesting thing here is that Londonium/London revived in the same spot. Certain places have the potential to become thriving cities - usually at natural crossroads, sometimes at exploitable resources. Few cities have been abandoned and not revived on the same or a nearby spot. Troy is 19 cities more or less on top of one another. A city with an easily defensively food supply not only survives longer, it revives faster too.

Another angle that is present in history (but presumably not in fantasy) is the assimilation/culturalization of the invaders. When Saxons and Vikings/Normans invaded England, after a few generations, they became Christians and built a "newly stable monarchy that united England". Presumably this would not happen with Orc invaders in a fantasy world?

 

[Starfox]

Yes, in a post-apocalypse/dark ages setting you will get almost no significant cities. In a medieval setting they may reach tens of thousands, but the medieval period ca 1000-1500 was not 'points of light'.

I agree. Europe in the period 500 to 1000 AD could perhaps be described as Points of Light. The church maintained a tenuous communication network, but doing so was an adventure. Trade was minimal, but some trade in luxuries did exist. (One reason the Viking thrived was they their trade on the Russian rivers, cumbersome as it was, worked better than Central European trade.) For most people, the horizon was the end of the world; what was beyond the forest or across the mountains largely the stuff of legends. This is the milieu where Charlemagne's paladins were messengers of civilization weaving a frail net of communication over a dark continent.

Of course, it is also the milieu of romance, where history almost collapses, leaving room for fantasy. Most of what is told about this era is almost certainly not true. Fantasy grew out of these legends, and we can mine the period for our settings, as long as we realize it is mostly fiction.

 

[Starfox]

if cities/towns/villages are the few (or only) safe havens for civilized races, then the inhabitants of those areas will become largely confined to the city/town/village in which they reside, right?

if that's the case, then civilized people would become more geared towards urban life than agricultural life, right?

If the city has some internal way to sustain itself this could certainly be true. If the city can close its gate and survive nourished by the "horn of everlasting food" or simply has a walled area large and productive enough to sustain it, could definitely develop this way. Check out Neil Stephenson's Anathem for a take on this idea.

I feel the eladrin cities in the feywild could work like this. The feywild is a magical place, so it is more credible to have a sustenance system not based on agriculture. The feywild was always wild, never tamed the way the natural world has been; even in the days of united kingdoms, cities had a reason to become self-sufficient. These "arcologies" would survive the fall of empire pretty well, they cannot simply be starved into extinction. It takes a concentrated effort like that of the fomorians to bring them down.

 

[ST]

I feel that PoL is an end-run to get the environment that fits a particular type of heroic fantasy, and that's why it was introduced. It removes the "need" to map out the entire region the game's taking place in, or whatnot. You can have one fleshed-out town or city (or a few) rather than a dozen within a day's march, all of which are sparsely detailed. It sets up the "local -> regional -> global and beyond" tier system.

Don't get me wrong -- I like PoL and it's interesting to examine its ramifications -- but it's useful to remember it was a conscious decision made to make the setting easier to play and prep, rather than an absolute requirement.

As far as urbanization, well, absent magic not present by default in 4e, it's impossible to have large towns or cities at that tech level without lots and lots and lots of farmland around them. It's perfectly reasonable to assume the PoL includes that agrarian area as well as the population centers. So if anything I'd expect them to stay the same sort of mixed agrarian-tradesman culture for longer than you might think (absent the actions of the PCs, of course) rather than advance to a more developed urban culture.