Why was the "points of life" philosophy of setting design completely abandoned ? what went wrong ?
>>98756625It's points of light, not life. And it's because 4e was too based for this godforsaken world.
Why don't you tell us about this philosophy?
Too game-forward.
>>98756625wotc realized that most people who buy d&d books don't use them to run games, they just read them for the sake of reading a d&d book. you can't make a 300-page setting book out of a barebones framework with a bunch of MadLibs blank spaces left as an exercise for the DM. so with 5e, they went back to highly detailed and populated settings like the FR, and Eberron, and the Planescape stuff, so that they can sell more books, which is their main product line after all. ... is what I WOULD say if it was still 2014. 12 years of experience has taught us that wotc doesn't even fucking publish books for 5e. there have been a few setting books, yes, but nowhere near as much content as was being churned out in the 3.x days. and two of those setting books were just mtg cross promos. I don't know how 5e makes money. I don't even know IF 5e makes money. I think the strategy might have been to spin up a proprietary digital tabletop and force everyone to stop using r20 and Discord, and I think that plan might have crashed and burned.so my revised answer is something like "grogs hated everything about 4e because everything was very different so they changed the default assumption about settings back, along with a lot of other things, to try and placate grogs and build as big of a tent as possible for the release of 5e." which mostly seems to have been a plan that worked out.
>>98756625>buy our product, you get a bare bones skeleton and the DM then has to do all the actual legwork and come up with his own shitnot the greatest sales pitch.
>>987566254e flopped
>>98756645it's an aesthetic, basically. the short version is that the default assumption of 4th edition d&d (I think this was laid out in the DMG) was that your setting wouldn't have huge thriving cultures, but instead a sparsely-populated civilization surrounded by hostile wilderness and ancient ruins of bygone empires (cough dungeons cough). settlements were meant to be "points of light in the darkness", hence the name. among other things, this was meant to save you time on world building and also allow you to focus your campaign on dungeoneering and fighting monsters -- yknow, the fun stuff. (per 4e's designers, anyway.)oversimplification: 3e's writers supposed that your game was going to be set in a world like Ocarina of Time, and 4e's recommended that you set it in a world like Breath of the Wild. there are a few other settings from vidya that I could use as examples here, like hollow knight or dark souls or gloomhaven. some post-apocalyptic settings taking place on earth could also be considered points of light settings, if they have dungeons and monsters roaming around. I would definitely count the first Fallout game.
>>98756645It can be summarized in a few points >Most of the setting composed by monster infested wilderness pontuated by small strongholds of civilization, or point of light if you will>Settlements are mostly disconected, with few roads frequently threatened by bandits and roving bands of savages making movement and comunication difficult>Most people rarely leaves the local stronghold/city, if ever>Settlements have little in terms of military power, barely enough to not be overran by common monsters >Settlements might be construct and last only a few years/decades>Ancient empires once sprawl through the land, but they crumbled and fell leaving countless ruing scattered around
>>98756804The thing is, in either case, you benefit from more fixed information. Not because players or GMs can't create a world, civilizations, etc. (well...usually), but because a fixed setting with meat on the bone puts everyone on the same page. It's why people keep asking for specific points of light settings, not asking to make their own.
>>98756804>>98756843i mean, there is nothing per se wrong with these premises. Frontier regions have always been a great place for adventures. But of course it is somewhat limited in scope, in case you arent currenty looking for a frontier adventuring vibe. Also what >>98756849 said, from what i´ve seen, things like Nentir Vale was pretty damn bare bones.
>>98756849Than you are asking specifically about Nentir Vale that had the lore of the Dawn War, the empire of Nerath(the one that make a pact with Asmodeus, who turned all their nobility into Tiefling to mark them) and went to war with the dragonborn empire of Arkhosia (leading both into ruin before the orc migrations)
>>98756804>>98756843But that actually makes sense.I'm with OP; why would that design philosophy be abandoned?
>>98756881because you give people variety so customers who are looking for something else will also buy your product. You only need one points of light setting (or a sub-setting within your kitchen sink) to fill that demand. Once that is done, you can move on to produce stuff for other niches.
>>98756873Well, there's "this is a frontier adventure, by which we mean we are on the frontier of an advanced civilization" and then there's "there is no advanced civilization, the most populous settlement anyone is aware of has fewer than 10,000 residents" and nentir vale in particular is the latter. the tone and a few other implications are different between the two.The 4e dmg (which I have pulled up for the first time in a very long time thanks to this thread!) even includes "Most of the world is untamedwilderness" as one of the first "core assumptions" that its rules make
>>98756898>customersOh, right, I forgot this board is still filled with corporate pigs and indie grifters.
>>98756873Frontiers are the classic OSR way of doing things.Civilization one end, wilderness the other, scaling difficulty as you push further from the known world into the unknown.
>>98756919yes, customers. Because setting design kinda implies settings designed and published by companied, be they the big ones, or some smaller third party one. And wouldnt you belive it, companies designing settings do so for customers, because they want do sell shit and not having to shut down.what other viewpoint would i try to rationalize from their own PoV and internal logic? Some shitty anons homebrew setting?
>>98757021The way OP phrased his topic, it sounded like the design philosophy was universally abandoned, little piggy. Someday, you might learn to think beyond soulless cash grabbing and think about the love of the craft.
>>98756734tbf hey did put out a good number of books like xanathar's volo's and mordenkainen's. Are they counted as bestiaries? Anyway, the content didn't meet the volume of 3/3.5 but it was on par with other game lines at least.
>>98756898>>98757021OP here I was not referring only to 4e Nentir Vale setting, but the whole style of the world and the philosophy that it was based of that I don't really see being used in world building circles or being taking by DMs trying to make their own kitchen sinks
>>98757043well go ahead, contribute to the thread and enlighten us to your thoughts as to why this style of setting has been abandoned, instead of being a little shit
>>98757081I already posited that this philosophy makes sense to me in the way the Anons I responded to in >>98756881 described, under the understanding that OP said it was universally abandoned.Basic reading comprehension would tell you it doesn't make sense for such a philosophy to be abandoned.So, to spell it out for you, I'm at an impasse until OP clarifies whether he meant abandoned as a design philosophy universally, or just by grifters and pigs.
>>98757132I think OP just meant that wotc abandoned it. like many things to do with the development and release of 4e, it was presented as a serious step forward in publishing and game design philosophy that the designers had spent a lot of time thinking about and were quite proud of, only to be totally walked back with 5e because it was poorly received.(at least by some, or most, players. 4e definitely had some people who loved it.)
>>98757076Basically any gm that is running any kind of hex crawl or classic sandbox game is running this kind of game.Honestly, I think it "failed" in regards to modern d&d because, for those games, travel has been completely de emphasized. You're not going to make a bunch of random encounters if you have to design every single encounter to an extreme degree, and it kind of doesn't matter anyway because you're only gonna have a single encounter per travel day, and everyone's power resets anyway. It's funny that 4e was the mainstream game that wanted to push "points of light" when it was the game mechanically least suited for it.
>>987571515e took so much from 4e, they just obfuscated it behind naturalistic language and better graphic design.
>>98756758Wait, your DM DOESNT come up with his own shit? Damn, how many people here play the game wrong and then complain that it's shit?
>>98757262dont be a dumbass misunderstanding things on purpose. Every DM does come up with their own shit. But you´re not going for an established setting just so it says "yeah there is a forest and a town here and some ruins over there i guess, idk, fill out everything on your own." At that point you might as well make your own setting from square 1. If you go for a established setting, you want to go there because it has already some meat on its bones and you can fill in your own shit within the established groundwork and pick and choose from some premises and ideas that speak to you, but you might not have came up with in your own, because thats not your usuals comfort zones, or because other people think in different directions than you do.
>>98757285the 4e setting already had the mead as pointed by >>98756878, but it was distributed across many books instead of being all in a campaign setting bookBesides the approach you are suggesting makes sense if the goal is to push a series of setting books instead of having it across adventure modules
>>98756804It's literally just LOTR
>>98757783I see what you mean with the fading civilization of the elves and all that, but not exactly no, there's a battle with almost 100,000 troops in LotR which is quite a bit outside of the scope of a points of light setting.Red Hand of Doom makes a decent example. it has an invading army of hobgoblins as its big endgame threat (it's an adventure for levels 6-12). It's meant to be set in the frontier land of the Forgotten Realms or of Greyhawk, and the PCs can rally up to about a thousand good guys in total to defend from this huge army consisting of about 4,000 hobgoblins. (and some giants and undead and a handful of dragons.) and even that is significantly more organized than the stuff that happens in Nentir Vale adventures. an obvious point of comparison would be 4e's "King of the Trollhaunt Warrens", for levels 11-13, where a troll unites an army of trolls. I don't think it gives exact numbers for his "army" but they get repelled by the PCs and the garrison of the frontier town of Nightstair, which is like a few dozen town watchmen. I mean, mostly by the PCs, but still.
>>98756881It's not really conducive to writing an adventure about running a gay nightclub.
>>98758164I trust your experience in this
>>98758517What, you don't want to play World of Darkness: Blade: Hate Crime edition?Come on, it's a rolickin' good time. Gay vampires run the media so any time you clear out a nest you get a Spiderman-esq media blitz
>>98758598I have never been that fond of vampire characters in general, actually
This predates 4e though, doesn't it?t. skipped 4e
>>98758739I guess? That's a rather standard way to prep an area for any kind of exploration campaign in the wilds.
>>98758807I meant the term 'points of light' in particular. I'm just wondering if I've encountered it post 4e and subconsciously retroactively labelled earlier games as being in this style.
>>98756625It is a pretty solid framework for a classic dungeon crawl/exploration/monster of the week game. >colonists resettling the Aegean after the Greek Dark Ages>navigating far off trade routes lost after the Bronze Age collapse>following the retreating glaciers after the Last Glacial Maximum>exploring Mesoamerica after disease wiped out most of the natives
>>98757194>Honestly, I think it "failed" in regards to modern d&d because, for those games, travel has been completely de emphasized.This.Even beyond ignoring encumbrance, I don't think modern D&D players even bother with shit like rations or anything that isn't a magic item.From what I've seen, everyone has magic adventurer's kits that will contain any non-magical thing they need.Not saying they're wrong to do so, but doing it means "wilderness" settings are kinda pointless.
>>98759016>the term 'points of light'Yes, a philosopher used the term in some text or another, but I think he wasn't talking about D&D settings.
>>98756734>I don't know how 5e makes money. I don't even know IF 5e makes money.It doesn't. WOTC published data that revealed that D&D is a money sink. They just burning money on it so it keeps the brand lit in hopes of pimping the IP out to other media.
>>98759016>>98758739>>98759152NTA, but "A thousand points of light" or more specifically "an America of a thousand points of light" was a slogan/talking point coined by HW Bush for his 1988 election campaign and used throughout his presidency. His core idea was that the US was superior to the Soviets because of its "points of light", all of America's civil society, a thousand initiatives and organisations, founded and run totally freely and independently by its citizens out of a sense of altruism and duty. Basically saying that volunteer community libraries and such are the foundation of American greatness. Yadayada New Englander pioneer liberties, community values, entrepreneur spirit of America, evil commies want to subjugate everything under the state and make you pay more taxes, you get the point. The part I never understood is how and when this got somehow reapprotiated by RPG writers.
>>98756873>But of course it is somewhat limited in scopeNot really, you've got a healthy mixture of civilization (the eponymous Points), frontier, and true wilderness. That's what anyone really needs in fantasy.
>>98757203And then they fucked up by making short rests an hour for some godforsaken reason.
>>98756625>>98756881Unironically, it was this: >>98756758 >>98758164I encourage somebody to "yes and" my post because I'm writing this while distracted/making rosé sauce, but the basic premise was 4th edition was introduced on a border of development: D&D had been plugging a long in semi-obscurity for a while, but the heads were growing concerned about what they perceived as the 'death' of the franchise to video games. 4th edition was that taken to some logical conclusion: big open world, details were there but vague, the dm filled in the gaps, and people played their gamified, video-gamefied, characters - which was mostly combat orientated. However, this was a marketing error because in actuality WoW people and D&D people didn't compete with one another "that much": D&D people were typically either grognar dad-gamer old school rpg people, little plastic men guys, or pretend gay coffee house people. This position was also strongly vindicated by the "future" because D&D became an infinitely more world-wide household sensation with livestreaming D&D shows like critical role and dimension 20.
>>98759665>The part I never understood is how and when this got somehow reapprotiated by RPG writers.Because ttrpgs have always been political.
>>98757132So what you're saying is you don't actually play games and thus assumed OP was correct in his assumption, but feel very strongly about people "paypigging" as opposed to doing things for the "love of the game" (you do neither).
>>98758051You haven't read LOTR have you? (No offence intended.)Middle-earth is quite depopulated overall, not just the elves, with sparse settlements (perhaps due to the Great Plague). The old roads are disused and troubled by dangerous creatures and ruffians. Ruins of older kingdoms of men, elves, and dwarves are all over the place as the fellowship travels around (several of these are not in films, mind you).>a battle with almost 100,000 troops in LotRNot true. Typical strengths for the "good guys" were just a few thousand for all battles in the book. 100,000 might have occurred in the distant past though.
>>98760140>You haven't read LOTR have you? (No offence intended.)I did. I was twelve so it's been a couple decades, but I still remember the descriptions of the thousands of men that Aragorn rallied to Pelennor Fields to turn the tide of the battle there, and that they were still badly outnumbered at that point. >Not true.It is true. I didn't say it was typical, and I didn't say there were 100,000 good guys. I was referring to the biggest battle in the trilogy and there were in fact almost 100,000 men party to it (not counting only the good guys). Mind you, a battle with "just a few thousand" to each side is ALSO not something you would see in such a setting... The difference is a matter of degree. Middle Earth ca. LotR is a realm in decay, which makes it closer to the default assumptions of 4e than, say, the Forgotten Realms setting is. So you are onto something here. But no, it's not quite there.
>>98756734>nowhere near as much content as was being churned out in the 3.x daysThe 3.X era was churning out so many books it was eating its own profit margins. The output volume of that era should be seen as an outlier, not the point of comparison for every other edition. >>98757194>>98759143Hexcrawls and travel logistics are irrelevant to the discussion. Points of Light is worldbuilding philosophy.
>>98760349that's true in a strict sense, but your worldbuilding philosophy, assuming you're planning to use the world in a game, can be guided by your expectation of what players are actually going to be doing while they play that game, no? 4e's setting guidelines make a point of stressing that the wilderness is dangerous because they intend for DMs to run random encounters during overland travel, and up to pretty high levels. I don't think that's irrelevant
>>98756625because the way 4e used it was a complete failure for one simple reason. Power level and scale.
>>98759034what system would you even use for this?
>>98759152>>98759665Intent easily gets lost via text.I meant the RPG term 'points of light' and its associated philosophy.But cool random Bush factoid nonetheless. I guess a setting could be>a group of american Whites travelling between volunteer public libraries in a 99% brown America, on an epic quest to learn what happened to their foreskins
>>98760349>Hexcrawls and travel logistics are irrelevant to the discussion. Points of Light is worldbuilding philosophy.Form follows function. Without having to actually travel between those points of light, and consequences arising from travel, it's all set dressing. It doesn't mean anything. It's like if I run d&d and go "oh, by the way, this also takes place on a flat earth," but do nothing to actually use that fact. The players forget, it becomes a pointless factoid.
>>98760140>>98760265To add some context, Archaic Greek city states mustered something like a tenth of their populations for batte, which results in standard battles ranging from the low thousands of combatants to the tens of thousands.The biggest battles of the period would creep into the six figure range.
>>98756919>I am BEGGING and PLEADING for corporate products to cater to me but I would NEVER EVER be a customerOh, so you're a leftist.
>>98756625Wilderlands of High Fantasy is still the best published setting ever made
>>98760870Literally anything. D&D, Mythras, BRP, GURPS, whatever. Just emphasize the travel and random encounters as other anons have pointed out.
>>98760896Well, to be fair, if he's a leftist he doesn't need to beg and plead for corporate products to cater to him, they'll fuckin trip over each other to do that completely unprompted.
>>98759680well "need" isnt the same as "want". If you feel like having a pulpy noir game, there is no need to force it into a frontier-vibes points of light setting if Ebberon and Sharn are right there
>>98760891yeah, but the idea of points of light is closer to the post bronze age collapse Dark Age than to the archaic period proper
>>98761603Yes, well, I can't really provide historical context from a prehistorical period, can I?I didn't suggest PoL is equivalent to Archaic Greece. I gave data from which you can extrapolate population sizes from army sizes or vice versa.By the numbers provided, LotR looks close to Archaic Greece in army sizes.
>>98756804So, like Dark Sun?
>>98756625People like buying book and reading wikis full of setting material. White wolf already demostrated that in the 90s. So probably it wasn't a great business move. Nerds want more, but also hate change. Remember the spellplague?Anyway, it is intersting the thread because my first idea for actually implementing the approach seems to be way more of a high-magic/tech setting than you guys.
>>98761821it's not generally assumed that living in a points of light setting sucks as much as living in Athas does, but yeah, I'd say it checks all of the boxes. >>98761901>Anyway, it is intersting the thread because my first idea for actually implementing the approach seems to be way more of a high-magic/tech setting than you guys.Final Fantasy X, bro
>>98756804>a sparsely-populated civilization surrounded by hostile wilderness and ancient ruins of bygone empires (cough dungeons cough). settlements were meant to be "points of light in the darkness"So just Warhammer Fantasy, then?
>>98762576not really, WF empire is too strong and centralized and have a large standing army and the same can be said about most of the other nationsthink more of city states and small kingdoms with military force of a few 1000s at most and no real capacity to expand, and almost no commerce or communication between points due to how difficult and dangerous travel is
>>98762576>just Warhammer Fantasy, then?You could very easily do something entirely different.
