The basic idea was that 'points of light' described a location that could drop off the map and function without an active communication link to some other community.
What i was wondering was how you were going with applying that to your own Campaign?
I am using the elements as described in the in core 4th edition books and making them my own.
The players started in the Nentir Vale for the H series of adventures. Those things common like Nerath, Arkhosia and the tiefling empire are all incorporated in my own world.
For instance, the blighted land where the tiefling empire used to be is known as the Last Lands now.
Here is the opener from the Players handout.
100 years ago the last empire fell. Nerath is no more. With the fall of the Golden Empire, the world has descended into a cold, harsh, and bitter twilight. Now, one hundred years later, hardly anything remains from the glory of the former empire but its crumbling ruins.
The world is indeed a harsh one. People starve. Famine and Disease are rampant. Petty city states war blindly with one another for resources. The enlightenment and education brought about by the Empire has all but faded. What time do people have for such pursuits when they must survive?
All hope is not lost. There are those that would carry that light out from their hearts and into the world once more. They stand tall like points of light before the oncoming darkness, ready to return it to whence it came.
The basic idea was that 'points of light' described a location that could drop off the map and function without an active communication link to some other community.
What i was wondering was how you were going with applying that to your own Campaign?
I'm not.
Thanks, bit no thanks basically. My campaign centres around an empire in slow and terminal decline but the roads mostly still work.
The aristocracy is decadent and out of touch but their commands still reach to the edge of the Empire.
My game is really more 'Points of Dark'. The Evil sprouts slowly and it grows and twists like weeds coming through cracks in the cement corrupting those nearby.
Admittedly beyond the frontiers there is the darkness of lands ruled by goblinoids - but thats not really points of light either. Thats more like 'no points of light'.
Really the Points of Light concept in the PHB talk about a world 100 years after the fall of the last great Empire. My campaign is more about what happened in the last great Empire during the years just before it fell.
The concepts don't fit my campaign world so I'll be mostly ignoring them.
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The basic idea was that 'points of light' described a location that could drop off the map and function without an active communication link to some other community.
What i was wondering was how you were going with applying that to your own Campaign?
Heh.
To be honest, for these past 30 years I've been doing PoLights and not even knowing it. I've always held to the concept that at home is where safety is. You step outside, there are things that may want to have a chomp on you.
Lately, I've really been into dwarves. WoW dwarves, LotR dwarves, 4E dwarves - its all good. I HIGHLY approve of WotC's re-doing dwarven women, and I love the artwork and body styles for them.
I'll post my opening premise a little later.
My next D&D campaign will probably have the PCs try to restore the fallen empire by seeking out the legit heir. Mostly by travelling the countryside and competing in tourneys. I'm actually going to have big dark evil forests encroaching on the civilized lands, which will be mostly plains, steppes, and meadows. But the Empire fell 10 years ago, not 100.
I was thinking of running a PCs make the game world kind of campaign where towns and cities don't exist until the PCs get rid of the monsters infesting them. The world isn't mapped, and there are no "good" human, elf, dwarf, or halfling rulers anywhere, and certainly no dragonborn or tieflings in great numbers. Should be interesting to see what happens, if I ever get my 4th edition game off the ground.
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My next D&D campaign will probably have the PCs try to restore the fallen empire by seeking out the legit heir. Mostly by travelling the countryside and competing in tourneys. I'm actually going to have big dark evil forests encroaching on the civilized lands, which will be mostly plains, steppes, and meadows. But the Empire fell 10 years ago, not 100.
It sounds vaguely familiar: a Scifi called The Osiris Chronicles:
The Commonwealth has collapsed, enlightenment is gone but not forgotton (a decade on-perhaps even thirty years). The "Lost Heir" (Shan) wanted nothing to do with the Millitary faction who wants to use him to rebuild what has fallen into a centralist Republic. Their fleet sits rotting in some port that is their "Republican Stronghold".
Shan is now a petty Warlord with a Small warship and an army of twenty bandits.
No one knows how to build ships (the secret was lost when the Commonwealth's Shipyards (and the master-builders) were destroyed during the collapse) but a young woman constructs the technological equivelent of a two man rowboat and within a day is abducted by a secret society of non-humans who want to keep the secret of "Ship building" from getting out.
The basic idea was that 'points of light' described a location that could drop off the map and function without an active communication link to some other community.
What i was wondering was how you were going with applying that to your own Campaign?
I'm applying it the way I've always applied it.
The "Points of Light" setting doesn't appear to be anything new in my book and I've actually been surprised by how people are reacting to this. In every game I've ever played the wilderness has been full of monsters, ruins, and so many dungeons I'm surprised each and every peasant hasn't been eaten already.
In the Forgotten Realms you couldn't lift a rock or take shelter in a cave without SOMETHING trying to eat you. Hell, in DnD, the walls and floor themselves might try and eat you. That chair you're sitting in might try and eat you. Every fantasy setting I've ever seen has been full of danger, with cities generally being the most well protected and adventurers constantly having to save the small villages and farms that are inevitably attacked.
So yes, my campaign has cities, and in between those cities it is dangerous to travel without protection or stealth. Maybe regular folk don't get bothered too much but adventurers always seem to have a knack for finding lost hordes and eldritch terrors. Heck, if those pesky PCs weren't in the party that caravan probably wouldn't have even been attacked. :)