Points of Light

[God_of_Awesome]

I prefer Tones of Gray campaigns. Their are no places teeming with bloodthirsty monsters (Okay, NOT MANY) but the wild roads are covered in banditry, crime runs rampant in the cities. Some places are better then others, o' course.

While I try to kick alignments out of my campaigns, I tend to have forces of 'good' and 'evil' interplay everywhere, thus blasting into tones of gray. In the forests, their are bandits and goblins waiting to gut you, but you also got Wood Elves and goblins you can negotiate with for safe passage. In the cities, you have the the High and Dark Elven Mafias, the Goblinoid Gangs, Werethugs, the Halfling Conspiracies, the Gnomes and the Kobolds (They don't need an agenda or group, those two are just crazy), Human Supremacists, corrupt City Watch and corrupt governemtn but you can also have the Wood Elven Mafia (But disrespect your elders, and they will break your kneecaps), Hill Dwarves, regular taxpaying Goblins and Halflings, Gnomes and Kobolds (Bares repeating), average joe Humans and competent officials.

[Lago PARANOIA]

GoA, what you just described is a Points of Darkness.

If you're an outlaw that killed half of the Senate with poison gas then the entirety of the empire is hostile to you. But that's still PoD. No one said that PoD had to be 100% safe, or even 50% safe. Just that there has to be civilization to interact with.

[God_of_Awesome]

Oh. Alright.

[ludomastro]

... there has to be civilization to interact with.

You are defining Light as Civilization. While that is a valid interpretation, it is not one that I would choose to use. I would contend that GoA is correct in his own interpretation.

[Lago PARANOIA]

While that is a valid interpretation, it is not one that I would choose to use.

Um, why? That's the one the book uses. What would you use?

[ludomastro]

As a matter of opinion (which by definition - in this case at least - is not defensible) I do not accept the book's definition as I find it leads to insanity in the game world.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Well...

1) What kind of insanity does it lead to? I've never claimed that Points of Light was insane, just that it contradicted certain elements of European heroic fantasy and/or was overly railroady.

2) What definition would you use?

[Username17]

I do not accept the book's definition

You seriously cannot leave it at that.

"Points of Light" is a label, a meme, and a title that appears first in the 4e D&D books. If you don't accept their definition, you are saying the term has no meaning at all, rendering discussion of any sort meaningless.

-Username17

[tzor]

"Points of Light" is a label, a meme, and a title that appears first in the 4e D&D books.

ANd I thought it was first used by George H.W. Bush at the 1988 Republican Convention.

I have spoken of a thousand points of light, of all the community organizations that are spread like stars throughout the Nation, doing good. We will work hand in hand, encouraging, sometimes leading, sometimes being led, rewarding. We will work on this in the White House, in the Cabinet agencies. I will go to the people and the programs that are the brighter points of light, and I will ask every member of my government to become involved. The old ideas are new again because they are not old, they are timeless: duty, sacrifice, commitment, and a patriotism that finds its expression in taking part and pitching in.

[souran]

Frank is sort of right. If you are not talking about what the book says then using the term "points of light" at all is silly.

Its an idea about how to build the fluff for your campaign. Honestly, I sort of wonder if the reason for using it was because they didn't want to pay Mr. Gygax's estate any more for the use of terms like "city of greyhawk"

Although honestly, I think it has more to do with the way the longer adventures were written / the way the adventure paths like shakled city turned out.

As I pointed out, in a lot of games you have a homebase in some region and all the adventures start there.

Anyway, one other thing is I think that the idea of "points of darkness" that people keep trying to put up against points of light is a false comparison. Its the same idea all you have done is define the "light" points as including some of their suppport structures. Something that points of light doesn't say can't be done.

If the villages in the kingdom are safe and so are the fields the pesants work in but the roads have bandits and the hills are where the bandits make camp and your discription of the kingdom is "a bunch of little farming villages connected by roads that merchants travel surrounded by hills" That is still points of light. Everywhere that hasn't been defined safe is now dangerous, and a place adventure could take place. Whats more it doesn't matter how you then modify the kingdom its still points of light as long as the "everywhere that isn't defined as safe is where adventures can happen" statement holds true.

If in the players base village their is a shady part of town respectible people don't go you have not somehow "broken" points of light. You have just defined a another nonsafe spot. The shades. Whats more it seems like exactly the kind of place adventures can happen.

I really don't see how these ideas are could be presented at the game table such that they create a different play experience. Not that there are not ways of defining campaigns that are not points of light. For instance the games I run I guess could be called "points of interest." The players have no real home base. They run around the entire campaign world. In some places they are considered heroes and in other places they are outlaws. However, the only places that are really defined are places the pc's have been, will go or are at.

The idea is don't include descriptions or places you are not going to use. If you have decided that all the elves live in a forest that is many times larger on the inside that it seems it should be based on the local geography and once inside it is filled with sylvan dangers that most are unable to resist you should have at least one adventure take place there. Otherwise your campaign is a "points of pointlessness" game. Otherwise a sentence or two. The elves live in this forest here. They do elf shit in their spare time. Is really all you need.

This is honestly the problem I have with a lot of prefab settings and published adventures. They give you a book filled with interesting places and then they like to set their adventure in the ass crack of no where in the vale of boringness, in the kingdom of barely connected to the larger campaign world.

Anyway, points of light is not a bad idea for starting or novice dms. It keeps the world small, makes it easy to use prepublished adventures, and means that there are lots of returning npcs.

On the other hand for the kind of games many dms run points of light is sucktastic. Thats ok as well. Its just an idea for how to get your campaign going. If you don't like it reject it.

[Username17]

I really don't see how these ideas are could be presented at the game table such that they create a different play experience.

Well, in Points of Light "the adventure" starts as soon as you leave "town" in any direction. In Points of Darkness, the adventure starts when you choose a dungeon and go into it.

Points of Light is Diablo II, Points of Darkness is Crawl.

-Username17

[souran]

Frank,

If there is any single meaningful event or encounter of any sort before your POD party gets to the dungeon then on the players side of the screen they might as well live in a POL world.

If your POL party does NOT have any single meaningful evet or encounter of any some sort before they arrive at the dungeon they might as well be living in a POD world.

As there are POL games where there are no wilderness encounters before the dungeon and there are POD games with travel encounters this compairson is meaningless from a player perspective.

Players playing it won't be able to tell the differance unless you put up some kind of big sign.

[Username17]

Good point. If you completely discount the world, it doesn't matter what the world is. Do you have any arguments that aren't completely specious?

-Username17

[tzor]

Frank, I think the arguments between POL and POD seem at one level nit picking, but it seems that there are more problems with “stability” in the POD model than there are in the POD model.

Simply put, in the POD model, what is to prevent the light from dispelling the darkness? With the ability to easily organize, the light can gang up and take out one point of darkness at a time. Resources and adventurers could easily go to each point of darkness at a time and take it out with overkill.

In the POL model, the free flow of resources (both magical and adventurers) is reduced as everyone has their own problems to conquer. The inverse of the problem (the darkness overcoming all of the light) is lower because evil, being selfish, doesn’t organize well. Good fights evil. Evil fights good and other evil that is in competition.

Thus the POL model is more than just “adventure in every direction.” It also means that an environment can exist where the PC are important even though there may be another environment where they will be equally important (and not overkill) just over the next mountain, while not having the overkill of the stuff over the next mountain hit them at low levels.

[Username17]

Simply put, in the POD model, what is to prevent the light from dispelling the darkness? With the ability to easily organize, the light can gang up and take out one point of darkness at a time.

Huh?

We live in a points of darkness world. Why is it that there are always jobs for policemen?

If all the points of darkness were extinguished, society would just lumber on until a few more burbled up and created the need for more adventures. If all the points of light get extinguished, that's it. PoD has no stability problems because "the world isn't destroyed" is the steady state assumption. PoL is completely unmanageable from a stability stand point. The village is eaten, there are no more halflings, therefore there are no more adventurers, therefor there is no one left to adventure.

"The world has been conquered by Nazis" is not a stable world for Jewish adventurers to be from. "The world is almost entirely not full of Nazis" however, is.

-Username17

[tzor]

We live in a points of darkness world. Why is it that there are always jobs for policemen?

Somebody has to be out there to change flat tires and to referee when people get into traffic accidents.

But I think you've made my point. There is, simply put, no significant "darkness" for a low level character to solve in a world where most people deal with problems at two or three levels below their own abilities, in relative safety. There are a few exceptions, such as places currently suffering influx of immigrant driven gang violence, but they are more of general neglect than true points of darkness.

We live in a very bright world; one might even say he have to suffer with points of light polution as a result.

Not that I am complaining, the Hobbit in me likes it this way very much.

[K]

We live in a points of darkness world. Why is it that there are always jobs for policemen?

Somebody has to be out there to change flat tires and to referee when people get into traffic accidents.

But I think you've made my point. There is, simply put, no significant "darkness" for a low level character to solve in a world where most people deal with problems at two or three levels below their own abilities, in relative safety. There are a few exceptions, such as places currently suffering influx of immigrant driven gang violence, but they are more of general neglect than true points of darkness.

We live in a very bright world; one might even say he have to suffer with points of light polution as a result.

Not that I am complaining, the Hobbit in me likes it this way very much.

Are you high?

Ignoring the right-wing racism, have you ever lived in a major city? There are points of darkness and parts of town where a man with anything to lose does not go unless he wants to lose it.

I seriously don't see how people can think the world is some 1950's sitcom except by willful and malicious ignorance. I grew up in neighborhoods where everyone you know has had a family member killed by homegrown domestic crime, and I am personally insulted when people try to tell me "oh, its just the damned immigrants we need to push out."

Douche.

[Zinegata]

I think both sides are demonstrating the really big problem with Points of Light and Points of Darkness setting though:

It can't be the absolute state of the entire world. It's always relative.

If one looks at the real world, you can claim that it's a mainly "PoD" world when you look at America, Europe, and the rest of the industrialized world. As a whole, they're good places to live in, but you've got places like slums and ghettos where crime thrives and cops are a huge necessity.

If you go to Africa however, it's an entirely different story. Most of the continent is a mess with problems all over the place.

And you see the exact same thing in pretty much every fantasy setting. You've got great cities where law and order is upheld, and messed up backward countryside areas where Orcs run rampant. The proportions vary from world to world, but the context of a campaign can turn any setting into a PoD or a PoL one.

Even Dark Sun, which at first glance is a totally PoL setting, can be turned into a PoD one if you're playing a party of Templars maintaining order in one of the city-states and rooting out dissidents. From the party's perspective, they're living in a world of light provided by a God-King, and they're just stamping out the little points of Darkness that just don't get the message that "We're all gonna die horribly unless you worship the God-King".

[NativeJovian]

It's been said before that it's best to describe campaigns rather than settings as either PoD or PoL. Hell, it can even switch between one or the other mid-campaign.

Say your campaign starts in a city with the PCs as new recruits in the city guard. There's a criminal element to the city, but not a major one. That's a PoD campaign; you can move around most of the city in relative safety, but if you raid a liquid pain den or a hidden Hextor shrine, that's effectively a dungeon crawl where you know you're going into a dangerous situation and can prepare for it beforehand.

Now, say later on in the campaign the criminal element has gained significantly in power. Now they're actively waging war against the guard for control of the city. Some areas, like the palace and the guard barracks, are constantly patrolled and thus relatively safe -- but once you leave these areas you're open to ambush and attack by criminal forces. That's a PoL campaign. You have relatively small "safe zones" that are occasionally subject to attack in force, surrounded by unsafe areas where you're constantly under threat of attack.

It's all relative. The criminal-overrun city is a PoL campaign for the guardsmen, but the kingdom the city is a part of is a PoD campaign for the average citizen, but the world the kingdom is a part of is a PoL campaign for the globetrotting adventurer.

The question is, are your PCs the one who has to seek out and attack their enemies? That's PoD. Do enemies attack the PCs while they're out and about trying to do whatever? Then that's PoL. It's an attitude more than anything else. In PoD, your party should feel relatively safe until they reach the particular point of darkness they're assaulting. In PoL, they should feel threatened unless they're in a point of light.

[Zinegata]

What if your campaign moves from a PoD to a PoL place? What if your Templar group decides to "Screw the God-King! I'm joining the rebel villages outside!" Then your campaign instantly turns from PoD to PoL.

Setting vs campaign is a bit of hair-splitting honestly. The important word is "relative".

[ludomastro]

Let me clarify my original thought a little better. It depends greatly on how you define civilization. By my reading only walled towns count as civilized (ie "light") whereas an undefended hamlet is not civilization. If we disagree on that simple point then we will reach very different conclusions about this discussion.

1) What kind of insanity does it lead to? I've never claimed that Points of Light was insane, just that it contradicted certain elements of European heroic fantasy and/or was overly railroady.

Carrying on from the civilization = light = walled towns point, we get to no farms as they are not walled or the somewhat insane (it's a matter of degree and in my case exaggeration) to have ALL the crops grown inside the city. (However, I believe that I may use that in a future campaign.)

2) What definition would you use?

Point of Light = anything not dominated by the darkness. Could be an old church, a farming town, a glade under the protection of faerie, etc. Put another way, POL =/= civilization in the walled town sense.

Good point. If you completely discount the world, it doesn't matter what the world is. Do you have any arguments that aren't completely specious?

souran actually has a non-specious point. Unless my GM is making a huge effort to bring the world around the adventure to life then a POL vs. POD discussion is virtually meaningless. The difference between a group who sees the occasional random encounter upon leaving town (let's agree to call that a POD world) and the one where they KNOW they will get jumped (POL) could honestly come down to how much of a dick the GM is.

In my experience (since AD&D) few GM's have made that much effort to bring the world to life. So, how much of a dick your GM can be is hardly a good measuring stick for POD/POL

That said, I accept (and respect) your point about POD/POL being a world design choice; however, not all of us are fortunate enough to have a GM who plans that far in advance or takes that much time.

Simply put, I do not like the implication that light = civilization. I am fine with the broader concept of POL as that is how I normally run my campaigns. Just that the borders of light and darkness are a little further away than the other side of the dead trees lashed together to make a town wall.

Edited for spelling.

[Starmaker]

Dark Sun is not Points of Light. There is civilization, there are trade routes, you can travel virtually anywhere on the map provided you have water (and you do have water unless the DM screws with you). If you're an escaped slave, there's only one city where you're wanted, other cities and other sorcerer-kings don't give a kank's ass. The party is not more likely to be eaten by a grue if they camp outside the city walls. The wilderness is dangerous, but it's not evil. The party loots ruins, hunts dragons, rescues slaves, clears yuan-ti temples, spies for the Veiled Alliance, fights on the arena, builds fortresses, conquers Guistenal, has a preserver transform into an avangion and offs one or more of the sorcerer-kings. In any order they prefer, because the existence of the sorcerer-kings ensures the absence of other threats to civilization as a whole.

Now compare Dark Sun with Midnight-as-intended. The whole party is nonhuman and is kill on sight in all civilized regions, the only option is guerilla warfare. That's Points of Light, not bad as a setting, but there's only one classic D&D story you can tell, that of overthrowing Izrador. There's no continuity.

[Murtak]

I guess some sort of Planescape world could be described as points of light. If you play a party of Githyanki trying to break free of slavery there are precious few save spots in the world. And if you lose all light mightbe extinguished - for this particular plot. Of course your next characters might be some necromancers trying to take over a small plane or something - again, next to everyone will be trying to kill you. So speaking in terms of "points of light" you constantly have lights appearing and disappearing. There is story and world continuity. But I'm not sure if this qualifies as "points of light".

[Username17]

Considering that despite the fact that many of the planes of the abyss are individually infinite in scope, it's Points of Darkness. You can move freely and in relatively predictable safety between the different hell pits. Indeed, you can be in civilization in Sigil and literally go to a door to a limitless number of points of darkness from there.

It's the opposite of a railroaded setting, and that makes it the opposite of Points of Light.

-Username17

[tzor]

Ignoring the right-wing racism, have you ever lived in a major city? There are points of darkness and parts of town where a man with anything to lose does not go unless he wants to lose it.

Yes, and I still live within 60 miles of one; New York City. Consider Crime:

As of 2005, New York City has the lowest crime rate among the ten largest cities in the United States. Since 1991, the city has seen a continuous fifteen-year trend of decreasing crime. Neighborhoods that were once considered dangerous are now much safer. Violent crime in the city has dropped by 75% in the last twelve years and the murder rate in 2005 was at its lowest level since 1963: there were 539 murders that year, for a murder rate of 6.58 per 100,000 people, compared to 2,245 murders in 1990. Among the 182 U.S. cities with populations of more than 100,000, New York City ranked 136th in overall crime (with about the same crime rate as Boise, Idaho).

In 2006, as part of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's gun control efforts, the city approved new legislation regulating handgun possession and sales. The new laws established a gun offender registry, required city gun dealers to inspect their inventories and file reports to the police twice a year, and limited individual handgun purchases to once every 90 days. The regulations also banned the use and sale of kits used to paint guns in bright or fluorescent colors, on the grounds that such kits could be used to disguise real guns as toys.

In July 2007, the city planned to install an extensive web of cameras and roadblocks designed to detect, track and deter terrorists called Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, which is similar to the City of London's "ring of steel".

As of December 31, 2007 New York City had 494 reported homicides, down from 596 homicides in 2006. This marked the first year since in 1963 (when crime statistics were starting to be published) that this total was fewer than 500.

In 2008, there were 523 reported murders, a 5.2% rise from the previous year.

Note: There are over 8 million people in New York City. Having around 500 murders in a city of 8 million people hardly counts as a "point of darkness" - a quantum point perhaps.

But we are talking about a point of darkness right? Something that isn't supposed to be a cake walk; something where there is a good chance of failure in the course of going after the darkness, where the good guys do occasionally die, like the NYC boys in blue:

Since December 25, 1806, the NYPD has lost 769 officers in the line of duty. This figure includes officers from agencies that were absorbed or became a part of the modern NYPD in addition to the modern department itself. The NYPD lost 23 officers on September 11, 2001, as well as 20 officers as a result of illness contracted from inhaling toxic chemicals while working long hours at Ground Zero and Fresh Kills Landfill.

I'm not saying that the city isn't a dangerous place to live, but rather that in general the good guys are significantly of higher level than the bad guys. Now it might be that NYC is the "city on a hill" and all the other cities in the US are cesspools of evil where those who fight constantly risk their very lives and often die in the struggle, but I somehow doubt it.