Wolf_Boy, I think you're reading too much into the "points of light" business. These "points" aren't three huts huddled together 10 feet from a wall of ominious trees. They're entire villages and and stretches of farmland and a few roads. They may be quite pleasant and functional and happy. However, just a few miles outside of that radius are the dangerous woods.
But they're aren't packed with horrors just waiting to jump out and eat the town. You could probably wander into them once in a while and come out fine. They're just a threat. And sometimes, occasionally, something might creep out of the darkness, or somebody might go missing. Maybe there's a raid by goblins a couple of times in a generation.
This is a default "style" of play, not a setting. If you think of a reason why "points of light" is stupid, then you're thinking the wrong thing. The villages are small, but not so small as to be non-functional. Trade is dangerous, but not so dangerous as to make it unvaible. Help from "the king's men" is available, but not so readily available that adventurers aren't needed. Communication is fast enough, but not so fast that bad things can't go unnoticed for a while. Cities exists, but are not so prominent as to make the world safe. Heck, think of towns in the American Old West. They were, at least in the fiction, constantly beset by bandits and natives and were unable to go for help, thus relying on help from the heroic drifter that wandered into town.
Is that realistic? I don't know. Maybe not. But D&D isn't supposed to simulate reality. It's supposed to simulate fantasy-adventure fiction.
First off "Points of Light" is not a campaign setting it is a gaming state of mind. Let me see if I can explain it with an example.
You and your adventuring party are enjoying yourselves at a tavern in the castle city of Kingsthrone, a large prosperous city. It and the lands a day and half ride around it are fairly well defended by the king's army. While drink you over hear to merchants talking about a compatriot that hasn't shown up in a week. You inquire further and find out that the missing merchant's town is a 3 day ride from here. Your group decides to check it out. A days ride out while camping your party is attacked by a swarm of stirges. You kill many of them and drive the rest back. After following the survivors, you find their nest and destroy it. The next day while riding you pass a abandoned keep, but pay it no mind. Halfway into your 3 day of travel you are ambushed by a group of orcs. Your experienced party slaughters them easily. after another miles ride you come to the walled town of Stoneriver. Once the townfolk see you they know you are skilled adventurers by your quality weapons and gear. The mayor invites you to a feast at her manor. There she explains that this town has been under attack for the last weak by orc raiders, and the refuges from small towns have escaped here after their villages have been razed. You and your allies share a smile, this should be fun.
Your scenario does not exist in the vacuum described in points of light. This sounds more like what I'm describing. These people are not living in a vacuum and things that happen in one place are obviously being noticed in another and Stoneriver is acting exact capacity as the main city my kingdom scenario. Except in that the adventurers show up and make the cities job easier.
In mine it can be so much more.
If the adventures did not show, the people of Stoneriver would have to fend the orcs, which they are certainly capable of doing themselves or they'll all die as apparently the world depends on adventures to exist as everyone is helpless otherwise. Once it becomes obvious the orcs can't win, they'll leave and some people will be sent out to try and kill some of the stragglers. The orcs will regroup think things over and decide to not be idiots and stick with the smaller towns that are much harder to defend for awhile til they get their resources back and can make another attempt on Stoneriver which would make a nice fortress where they can retreat to with their loot, besides even if they don't succeed they can likely escape in good numbers to fight again later and it keeps Stoneriver preoccupied with it's own defense.
The orcs are going to be another big problem for this kingdom until someone can finally track them down and dispose of them, wrecking havoc all over the country side. The king needs to defend his lands, but has only so much resources, he sends out messengers on his fastest light warhorses to all the surrounding villages warning them to be on the lookout for these orcs. The news gets to different people at different times and the orcs could be camped or heading for anywhere. He wants to make things as difficult as possible for these orcs and spreading the news is likely to attract some adventurers attention and he can hire them as mercenaries or appeal to their goodwill.
Now when the adventurers find out about this, it's not just some merchant missing, it's the buzz of the town. Meanwhile the ruler of this city, from the sounds of it a king in his own right knows that his city is well defended, especially from some orcs who've already been in a costly war. He thinks to himself "how can I turn this to my advantage."
So he sends out the message that he needs some brave heroes to help him with the menace that is plaguing the land. The adventurers show up and he hires them to check into and take care of this orc problem. Meanwhile he sends the messenger back with the news that he'll help the other king who's resources are exhausted by the war, in exchange for a more favorable trade agreement between the two kingdoms. If things go right he'll get what he wants, and the adventures do his deed for him with him expending a minimum of his personal resources. Which allows him to better defend his city from similar ails that he's already dealing with.
If the adventurers do a good job, he'll use them for many of these problems as well, and they'll likely find themselves helping not just him, but eventually earning a reputation within some of the higher circles as well, giving them more options for work, and a chance to get into political intrigue if they want to or, as sometimes they are tools unwittingly.
To me, this is far more interesting a scenario than random town being ransacked by orcs. There's actual depth and a sense you are living in a real world. Yes, things are bad everywhere, but at least there's a sense of interconnectivity, that things that happen in one place can and will matter someplace else, that ripples can be made.
If you take out the orcs, it will allow the other kingdom to rebuild and give the other guy some political clout with that kingdom and word might spread of your deeds. It also ensure that infamy can spread as well if you commit some horrible atrocity that's worth sending out a few messengers, which helps keeping some players honest.
In points of light everything exists in what can best described as a vacuum, very little is interconnected and repercussions for actions is kept at a minimum. What you do in one town has little to no affect on any other town, and every town you go into might as well be a whole new game.
My problem with points of light is not so much that it's a default system is that they said they are designing the game with the assumption that it is the kind of game that will be run, which means the game will be designed assuming every town lives in a vacuum, which means no support for the social dynamics that a game with real depth relies upon.
Wolf_Boy, I think you're reading too much into the "points of light" business. These "points" aren't three huts huddled together 10 feet from a wall of ominious trees. They're entire villages and and stretches of farmland and a few roads. They may be quite pleasant and functional and happy. However, just a few miles outside of that radius are the dangerous woods.
But they're aren't packed with horrors just waiting to jump out and eat the town. You could probably wander into them once in a while and come out fine. They're just a threat. And sometimes, occasionally, something might creep out of the darkness, or somebody might go missing. Maybe there's a raid by goblins a couple of times in a generation.
This is a default "style" of play, not a setting. If you think of a reason why "points of light" is stupid, then you're thinking the wrong thing. The villages are small, but not so small as to be non-functional. Trade is dangerous, but not so dangerous as to make it unvaible. Help from "the king's men" is available, but not so readily available that adventurers aren't needed. Communication is fast enough, but not so fast that bad things can't go unnoticed for a while. Cities exists, but are not so prominent as to make the world safe. Heck, think of towns in the American Old West. They were, at least in the fiction, constantly beset by bandits and natives and were unable to go for help, thus relying on help from the heroic drifter that wandered into town.
Is that realistic? I don't know. Maybe not. But D&D isn't supposed to simulate reality. It's supposed to simulate fantasy-adventure fiction.
That's fine, because that's more what I'm describing, but that is no where near what "points of light" seems to be describing. That's closer to what I'm describing. Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but every time I do it seems to rub me the wrong way, because it seems to be assuming this interconnectivity that gives the world a personality is not important.
Also you seem to forget that these towns in the old west are filled with pioneers and are to a minor degree an adventuring type in their own right. They knew when they moved there that they were taking risks, but the free, or cheap land was lucrative, looking for gold, ect. The only reason the people existed that could create this towns was because of their connection to the coastline. They didn't exist in a vacuum, if they did they would have failed in hostile territory.
OR... you can just start playing and have fun. And here's the great thing about all of that culture and background you're putting into your monsters and encounters. For the most part, the players don't care!
Not all players play like 8-bit theatre. Some prefer to involve themselves in a deep thriving system. Explain the greater popularity of Rune Quest over AD&D for a time. Explain why TWERPS is thought of as a joke game while more people consider games with fantastic backgrounds and deep explanations of events and regions to be superior.
Empire of the Petal Throne, Harn, Blackmoor, Greyhawk, all of these are campaign settings that make sense and to varying extents live and breathe. What you are saying is that players just prefer to roll dice and shout senselessly. Enjoy that gaming style, if it pleases you. It does not please me. I prefer campaign games with sense to it.
So as much as you want to deny it, the gaming world is there, living and breathing from the actual thought and work of real people, intelligent people, people quite unlike those who would consider a serious and intelligent and fun game to be TWERPS, points of light, and other things developed by people without brains.
After all, it is not as if anyone such as yourself cares about fantasy. It's like TV, you just want to plop down in front of it and not think. Leave the thinking to people with brains, I always say. I prefer to think and to play intelligent games.
ranger9 wrote:
There would be relatively safe areas where humans/human allies held dominion and had full military control, but much of it, perhaps half or more, would be no-go zones. In a D&D world, where the adventuring actually happens, there's likely to be a big city as a home base and some larger towns as temporary bases for excursions; beyond that, the land isn't empty of humans, but it isn't full of humans, either, and humans are in constant peril.
You seem to ignore the idea that "man" is by no means unified in D&D (nor in the real world) and hence regions are hardly safe even from predation by humans on humans, by predation of "allies" of humans upon humans neither is it safe.
Here is where alignment plays a strong role. Here is where the "points of light" fail. There are evil folk, no matter the species, in a fantasy world. This might seem alien to you that even in the best of moods with all reason to love and to forgive, some folk feel love for devouring flesh of the living while they scream. Even in these points of light it would be so, just as it is in the real world. Some would desire to cause tyranny ever so slight just to make a stronger people -- although this tyranny would result in torture and imprisonment of innocent folk. Even in these points of light it would be so, just as it is in the real world.
If you have an independent campaign world where there are gardens of safety and love -- that would work in a fantasy world. However, undeclared as a specific fantasy world we look upon a generalization that cannot possibly be true of Greyhawk, cannot possibly be true of Forgotten Realms, nor true of Ravenloft (especially Ravenloft), nor of Eberron. Very very few fantasy worlds have the "points of light" scenario be it undeniable safety, be it unalterable situations that only activate when player characters near, but it is a good starting place for those who are not yet aware of complexity or even those who are unable to handle such complexity due to reason of natural situation.
I would never call any nation a point of light in the real world. In a fantasy world it is ever a passing and vulnerable situation when it is not just ill considered foolery.
Ultimatecalibur wrote:
There she explains that this town has been under attack for the last weak by orc raiders, and the refuges from small towns have escaped here after their villages have been razed. You and your allies share a smile, this should be fun.
I and my allies would only share a smile in that situation were we drunken and stupified. Had we journeyed a pre-determined route to that point without question, we would be sorely concerned for our DM's mental state, inable to consider a way to imagine other events in accord with the personal decisions of players.
As I have stated earlier, a stupid man or stupid woman might make a point of light dungeon and expect all to work to plan, a single path that cannot be altered, without variance, without expectation for diverging personal choice. An ill person might do the same, let us hope for their health. A child without experience in varied decisions and creative approach might also err thus, let us pray our education system improves (and others outside this Democratic nation of the US might also pray with us).
Those who scrawl beautiful fantasy worlds in the basement (or in the office as a paid design job) do consider the personal choice of players, the liberty of divergent expression, and hope to entertain their players. This is laudable as an activity. Just as laudable, the World of Greyhawk and its creator Gygax. Just as laudable, Blackmoor and its creator Arenson. Just as laudable, Empire of the Petal Throne and its creator Muhammed Barker.
Do not cheat yourself and others out of a wonderful campaign system. Do not let D&D4e be as stupid as many people seem to indicate it is.
>>>As I have stated earlier, a stupid man or stupid woman might make a point of light dungeon and expect all to work to plan, a single path that cannot be altered, without variance, without expectation for diverging personal choice. An ill person might do the same, let us hope for their health. A child without experience in varied decisions and creative approach might also err thus, let us pray our education system improves (and others outside this Democratic nation of the US might also pray with us).
I have no earthly idea what you're talking about. You seem to be reading an entirely different post about what the "Point of Light" conceit means. There is no such thing as a "Point of Light" dungeon. A dungeon isn't a point of light. It's by definition an area of darkness. How "Points of Light" translates to "railroaded dungeon with only one path" in your imagination is quite beyond my grasp.
>>>Those who scrawl beautiful fantasy worlds in the basement (or in the office as a paid design job) do consider the personal choice of players, the liberty of divergent expression, and hope to entertain their players. This is laudable as an activity. Just as laudable, the World of Greyhawk and its creator Gygax. Just as laudable, Blackmoor and its creator Arenson. Just as laudable, Empire of the Petal Throne and its creator Muhammed Barker.
What was being challenged was your daft claim that you're busy tracking the movements and actions of every single creature in your game world rather than having them wait in a room until the adventures happen upon them, and that good DMing requires such a colossal and useless investment of time.
Of course they're waiting for adventurers to happen upon them. In practical reality, no one "exists" at all until players stumble upon them. RPG's are point-of-view games. You are not busily tracking every move of the orcs in the moathouse when the players are not there and it's twaddle to suggest otherwise. Even if you include, as many do, a randomizing element or a schedule that will determine if the room is empty or occupied when the players enter, or if they find the orcs sleeping, drunk, or manning the barricades, you're simply noting a few possibilities, certainly not actually bothering to dream up what precisely the orcs are up to even when you're not playing.
You seem to be guilty of tremendous overstatement. A basic notion of major events in the world or basic agendas and personalities of *major* characters if of course helpful for good DMing and good storytelling generally. But actually investing every 3 hp goblin with an inner life of his own? No one does that. No one could do that. It would be futile to try.
In a "living, breathing campaign" where logic was actually worked out fully and creatures did lots of things off-screen, a lot of subhuman races would have been hunted/massacred to extinction or near-extinction, and a large bit of acreage could only support a single large predator (not lots of them, each competing with each other, etc.) The Point of Light thing is just there as an excuse to partly (thinly, superficially) explain why the D&D world is able to sustain so many tribes of warring humanoids and megapredators.
Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but every time I do it seems to rub me the wrong way, because it seems to be assuming this interconnectivity that gives the world a personality is not important.
Ooh, yes! See, that's all I'm saying! We're talking the default, beginner, "I don't know what I'm doing", never heard of Greyhawk, pull it off of the shelf and play type situation. If it had "personality", it would be a setting! This is essentially the "blank slate". It sets a mood and a theme, but goes no further. It's not supposed to be detailed, realistic, or have a "personality" beyond "dangerous and ripe for adventure". It's the "default" form of play that we all engaged in when we were 13. Yes, there's more to it, but that's there to be added on when you're ready for it.
What Ranger9 said. Also, Greyhawk, FR, Blackmoor, etc are not "living, breathing worlds", they're static source material. If you go back to that book 10 years later, everything is still the same. Yes, they're detailed and interesting, and full of potential, but they are there expressly for the purpose of entertaining the players, if their characters show up.
But that's beside the point. As I said in a previous post, "points of light" is the default, no-frills style of play. Of course your players are probably going to want more. If they are, great, give it to them. If they're not, if they're a bunch of pre-teens just looking for some fun, if they're not interested in RPGs as an "artform", then the "points of light" model is the obvious place to start. It's not a setting. It's the place that you play if you don't have a setting, and it should work perfectly for that.
We're basically on the same page of course but I'm not sure why you see "Points of Light" as necessarily a beginner's conceit. A complex world with lots of details and politics and such could still be a Points of Light campaign, couldn't it? The idea seems to be tenuous human control over the world, except in its major power centers and surrounding areas, but that doesn't exclude the sort of more detailed campaign setting. It's a type of world conceit, but the conceit doesn't necessarily mean "simplistic" or "no-frills" as you put it.
Of course it a good starting conceit as it seems to limit the amount of prep-work needed to begin designing a world, but it doesn't really limit the amount of detail that can ultimately go into it.
Again I think of it as a dark ages after the plague sort of world -- Europe massively depopulated, many towns simply abandoned to the rats, limited control over forest and wilderness due to simple lack of enough capable men under arms, etc. There's nothing inherent in that that makes it necessarily simplistic.
Empire of the Petal Throne, Harn, Blackmoor, Greyhawk, all of these are campaign settings that make sense and to varying extents live and breathe. What you are saying is that players just prefer to roll dice and shout senselessly. Enjoy that gaming style, if it pleases you. It does not please me. I prefer campaign games with sense to it.
This is obviously the sentiment of someone who either barely read the article under discussion, or... well, no, that's what it is.
I've played in Harn and Greyhawk, as well as FR, Eberron, and others, and of the games you mention, anyway, Harn is a lot more like the "points of light" scenario than it isn't. There may be kingdoms, but they don't run your life, and most people have never been to the forest three miles down the road. There may be sages around, but most people don't know what magic is, and good luck if you cast spell while you're tooling around in a city. Elves are almost never seen among large groups of humans. Harn, for all the planning that went into its design and execution, is a lot closer to what it seems D&D is moving towards.
And thank the gods, because I, for one, am sick of being able to walk into a town of 100,000 (that somehow manages to sustain itself without cholera outbreaks or any other of the serious social problems that afflicted medieval cities once they got too big) after mugging some monsters for gold, whereupon I flood its economy with rare metals and hire a priestess to raise my less fortunate party members from the dead.
The article says
Roads are often closed by bandits, marauders such as goblins or gnolls, or hungry monsters such as griffons or dragons.
Does that make it impossible for you and your "allies" to have a well-fleshed-out campaign with plenty of opportunities for roleplaying? Um, no. Just because travel is more difficult doesn't mean your party has nothing to do in a small, realistically gritty Medieval town. If you have trouble coming up with story ideas that take place in a plausibly Medieval setting in which you neither run an army, are 24th-level, or are powerful in the service of a mighty state, you might try watching "Andrei Rublev" or "The Name of the Rose" for ideas. Instead of being a condescending a** to everyone around here.
I'm really looking forward to a D&D core setting that takes into account the inherent difficulties of preindustrial society, the painful lack of opportunity for most. As much as I like it, FR, for example, involves too many 500,000-person cities, too many 24th level characters, and for its level of magic use, too little exploitation of magic for industrial production (it doesn't take much to figure out ways of turning a cantrip into something that can power a train or operate a loom on its own.) When
it’s easy for all sorts of evils to befall a settlement without anyone noticing for a long time
that means MORE opportunities for RP, not fewer. Playing in smaller, more cloistered environment than Waterdeep can mean having to rely on better characterization of minor characters. It's good to have to RP out the encounter in which you bargain with Bob the Blacksmith, in which you know that he might try to extort an extra 2 CP out of you but you also know he's the best in town, for example, and have it matter.
Septembervirgin, you're confusing depth of play with melodrama. Ultimately, it all comes down to the level of skill of your DM whether you're in an expansive, operatic campaign or the gritty chamber dramas suggested by the PoL article, and, since they'll NEVER retroactively make changes that render FR or Greyhawk an ecologically plausible game world it's probably all optional anyway, just quit getting your panties in a bunch.
We're basically on the same page of course but I'm not sure why you see "Points of Light" as necessarily a beginner's conceit. A complex world with lots of details and politics and such could still be a Points of Light campaign, couldn't it? The idea seems to be tenuous human control over the world, except in its major power centers and surrounding areas, but that doesn't exclude the sort of more detailed campaign setting. It's a type of world conceit, but the conceit doesn't necessarily mean "simplistic" or "no-frills" as you put it.
Of course it a good starting conceit as it seems to limit the amount of prep-work needed to begin designing a world, but it doesn't really limit the amount of detail that can ultimately go into it.
Again I think of it as a dark ages after the plague sort of world -- Europe massively depopulated, many towns simply abandoned to the rats, limited control over forest and wilderness due to simple lack of enough capable men under arms, etc. There's nothing inherent in that that makes it necessarily simplistic.
I'm trying to think of how to explain this. I think "no-frills" is appropriate, because it's not a setting, it's just a conciet. If you add the "frills" it becomes a setting, even if it's just naming some places and making some NPCs. Arguably, after playing for a while in "generic" mode, you will have created a setting through play.
Please don't take what I'm saying the wrong way. I'm not implying anything more than I'm saying. If you prefer, look at it this way: "Points of Light" isn't a beginner's conciet, but a beginner's conciet is ""Points of Light". PoL can be as deep as you want it to be, but it doesn't have to by default, so it's good for "beginners" or others who don't want to, don't have time to, or wouldn't know where to start developing an actual setting.
So, to sum up, I think we're in agreement that PoL is the default "no-setting" setting, and is flexible enough to support not only "advanced" but "beginner" play as well.
