Points of Light - An Extrapolation [Archive] - Wizards Community

Points of Light - An Extrapolation [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Salken Silverwing
09-27-07, 05:45 PM So I was recently reading the new-ish Design and Developement article on the concept of "Points of Light" that will be the mainstay of 4th edition settings. I like this idea even though I don't think it should be applied to all settings, and was thinking of a setting of my own to jive with this new concept (well, Athas was similar, but hey...)

So I started thinking about which DnD cultures might be capable of surviving some kind of apocalypse and survive, sort of assuming there was a classic epic struggle between god and evil, only the conflict ended in a sort of stalemate that wrecked a good chunk of the world, leaving only a few small populations to live among the ruins. These would be the points of light...

So, does anyone have any ideas for any viable PC-oriented societies that might exist in a world like this? Keep in mind that the standards of the game still need to be addressed. One mistake a lot of people make is they make their setting overly specific and hence suck the fun out of it. Focused settings are great for novels and Dragonlance, but not roleplaying (I jest, I jest... I like Dragonlance.)

While Dark Sun took this concept and turned much of the world into a desert, I kind of want to take it to a different place with blackened landscapes instead of deserts and massive, gothic ruins as opposed to buried temples, alhough both are cool and have their place. Where Dark Sun had it's Sorcerer Kings and psionics, I've been playing with the ideas of vampires and sacrificial magic. It's also interesting to think about how extraplanar races would react to this crisis on the material plane (the githyanki and mind flayers for one...) and what this would mean for religion.

Here's some random ideas of mine:

- The Fallen Elves: A race of wandering elves descended from the powerful civilized elves of yore, living off of the ruins of their once-great civilization, moving from ruin to ruin, extracting what secrets they can before being chased off by whatever darkness now inhabits said ruins.

- The Gormenai (inspired by the works of Mervyn Peak): A massive, gray-walled city rises out of a choked landscape, stradling a brackish river. This is the city of Gorm, final bastion of a once-great empire. No one leaves the Gorm valley, and no one enters the city proper. It is ancient, many-tiered, and perhaps the largest city the world has ever known. Ruled by a demented and in-bred royal line and protected by the contrived and dark magics of a now-dead mage class, the city is, despite the efforts of the priests, running low on resources. Cannibalism and riots are just as likely in this place as demonic invasion or political strife...

- The Gnomish Solution: A sprawling series of interconnected underground passages carefully planned and engineered by the gnomes prior to the devestation of the past conflict, are now succumbing to attacks mounted by drow, liches, mindflayers and other denizens of the underdark, who see the largescale destruction of the world above only as an opportunity.

- The last of the Dwarven strongholds: Since the great conflict, the few remaining dwarves have retreated into their solitary fortresses and have barred the gates. One such fortress is slowly succumbing to the same darkness that wracked the world from within and without, but refuse to work with the other dwarven clans for fear of letting the outside world into their refuge. It is up to the PCs to travel to the other dwarven fortresses to recover the artifacts necessary to save the first stronghold, dealing with paranoid dwarven thanes and corrupted priesthoods as they do so.

- The Diary of Sindarris: The great adventurer Sindarris was a hero renowned in all the lands of the pre-conflict world. He was a champion and an adventurer. A roaming tribe of halfling opportunity traders happened across a fragment of Sindarris' diary in an old temple devoted to some ancient god, and it apparently contains some clue as to the fate of the final forces of good and evil in the last conflict... but the diary is incomplete (or it was in the temple for a reason, or the halflings are scamming the PCs, or or the diary is a trap laid by agents of evil, or the diary is complete and leads the PCs around the world on an epic quest to restore the world etc...)

And so on... As I get more Ideas, I'll post them. But my main reason for starting this thread was to see what others might do with the concept. Let's see what we can come up with!

- Sal
LefferDP
09-28-07, 08:23 AM A classic convention for these sorts of worlds are ships that ply the silt sea, moving people and goods between city... Not to mention the pirates. If you wanted to, you could even have silt sea submarines.
yellowdingo
09-28-07, 09:13 AM MYSTARA INFERNUS

The world has moved on from the sinking of Alphatia. Bargle the Infamous, having ascended to great power begins a terrible quest to seek the path to Immortality.

He seeks out an artefact of enthropy and begins opening permanent gates from the plane of fire deep beneath the sunken land. Over the centuries that follow The entire Region is pushed up with great volcanoes spewing a foul ash tainted with enthropy. The world is plunged into a dark age as magic and crops fail and wither. The Sun can no longer be seen.

The Land of Infernus (Previously Sunken Alphatia) become populated by worshipers of Alphaks. They dwell in cities carved from magma or In Abandoned, ruined Cities pushed to the surface. It remains a land of fire and ash. Then heeding the Call, a new and powerful Orc race emerge. They mine the Cooling lava to carve their weapons. The Reavers of Alphaks with their GreatAxes of Enthropy. Unleashing wounds that do not heal.

And now their Clerics Open Gates to distant lands. They hunt for Food and Slaves. Elf, Dwarf, Hin, Human. Food or Slaves in a land of fire and ash.

It is a Dark Age.
Salken Silverwing
09-29-07, 10:46 PM Very interesting stuff. I was also thinking about an interesting concept using the 4th edition idea of wizard orders or disciplines or whatever they're called. A whole campaign in this world could revolve around piecing together an idea of what the world was like before by reuiniting the various conceptions of magic and their underlying philosophies. This could lead to all kinds of cool campaign devices like mage wars, chapters of secret societies dangerously close to obtaining real power etc.

I also really like the idea of the whole silt sea thing. People could be pushed into a life of piracy or sea-wandering by oppressive magelords, nefarious vampire regimes, demonic invasion, gith usurping etc., essentially making almost every inch of the setting fraught with danger. As for Mystara, the concept sounds very cool, but I really don;t know much about that setting to tell you the truth. What I have heard I find quite interesting though...

So, anything else?

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Salken Silverwing 09-27-07, 05:45 PM	So I was recently reading the new-ish Design and Developement article on the concept of "Points of Light" that will be the mainstay of 4th edition settings. I like this idea even though I don't think it should be applied to all settings, and was thinking of a setting of my own to jive with this new concept (well, Athas was similar, but hey...) So I started thinking about which DnD cultures might be capable of surviving some kind of apocalypse and survive, sort of assuming there was a classic epic struggle between god and evil, only the conflict ended in a sort of stalemate that wrecked a good chunk of the world, leaving only a few small populations to live among the ruins. These would be the points of light... So, does anyone have any ideas for any viable PC-oriented societies that might exist in a world like this? Keep in mind that the standards of the game still need to be addressed. One mistake a lot of people make is they make their setting overly specific and hence suck the fun out of it. Focused settings are great for novels and Dragonlance, but not roleplaying (I jest, I jest... I like Dragonlance.) While Dark Sun took this concept and turned much of the world into a desert, I kind of want to take it to a different place with blackened landscapes instead of deserts and massive, gothic ruins as opposed to buried temples, alhough both are cool and have their place. Where Dark Sun had it's Sorcerer Kings and psionics, I've been playing with the ideas of vampires and sacrificial magic. It's also interesting to think about how extraplanar races would react to this crisis on the material plane (the githyanki and mind flayers for one...) and what this would mean for religion. Here's some random ideas of mine: - The Fallen Elves: A race of wandering elves descended from the powerful civilized elves of yore, living off of the ruins of their once-great civilization, moving from ruin to ruin, extracting what secrets they can before being chased off by whatever darkness now inhabits said ruins. - The Gormenai (inspired by the works of Mervyn Peak): A massive, gray-walled city rises out of a choked landscape, stradling a brackish river. This is the city of Gorm, final bastion of a once-great empire. No one leaves the Gorm valley, and no one enters the city proper. It is ancient, many-tiered, and perhaps the largest city the world has ever known. Ruled by a demented and in-bred royal line and protected by the contrived and dark magics of a now-dead mage class, the city is, despite the efforts of the priests, running low on resources. Cannibalism and riots are just as likely in this place as demonic invasion or political strife... - The Gnomish Solution: A sprawling series of interconnected underground passages carefully planned and engineered by the gnomes prior to the devestation of the past conflict, are now succumbing to attacks mounted by drow, liches, mindflayers and other denizens of the underdark, who see the largescale destruction of the world above only as an opportunity. - The last of the Dwarven strongholds: Since the great conflict, the few remaining dwarves have retreated into their solitary fortresses and have barred the gates. One such fortress is slowly succumbing to the same darkness that wracked the world from within and without, but refuse to work with the other dwarven clans for fear of letting the outside world into their refuge. It is up to the PCs to travel to the other dwarven fortresses to recover the artifacts necessary to save the first stronghold, dealing with paranoid dwarven thanes and corrupted priesthoods as they do so. - The Diary of Sindarris: The great adventurer Sindarris was a hero renowned in all the lands of the pre-conflict world. He was a champion and an adventurer. A roaming tribe of halfling opportunity traders happened across a fragment of Sindarris' diary in an old temple devoted to some ancient god, and it apparently contains some clue as to the fate of the final forces of good and evil in the last conflict... but the diary is incomplete (or it was in the temple for a reason, or the halflings are scamming the PCs, or or the diary is a trap laid by agents of evil, or the diary is complete and leads the PCs around the world on an epic quest to restore the world etc...) And so on... As I get more Ideas, I'll post them. But my main reason for starting this thread was to see what others might do with the concept. Let's see what we can come up with! - Sal
LefferDP 09-28-07, 08:23 AM	A classic convention for these sorts of worlds are ships that ply the silt sea, moving people and goods between city... Not to mention the pirates. If you wanted to, you could even have silt sea submarines.
yellowdingo 09-28-07, 09:13 AM	MYSTARA INFERNUS The world has moved on from the sinking of Alphatia. Bargle the Infamous, having ascended to great power begins a terrible quest to seek the path to Immortality. He seeks out an artefact of enthropy and begins opening permanent gates from the plane of fire deep beneath the sunken land. Over the centuries that follow The entire Region is pushed up with great volcanoes spewing a foul ash tainted with enthropy. The world is plunged into a dark age as magic and crops fail and wither. The Sun can no longer be seen. The Land of Infernus (Previously Sunken Alphatia) become populated by worshipers of Alphaks. They dwell in cities carved from magma or In Abandoned, ruined Cities pushed to the surface. It remains a land of fire and ash. Then heeding the Call, a new and powerful Orc race emerge. They mine the Cooling lava to carve their weapons. The Reavers of Alphaks with their GreatAxes of Enthropy. Unleashing wounds that do not heal. And now their Clerics Open Gates to distant lands. They hunt for Food and Slaves. Elf, Dwarf, Hin, Human. Food or Slaves in a land of fire and ash. It is a Dark Age.
Salken Silverwing 09-29-07, 10:46 PM	Very interesting stuff. I was also thinking about an interesting concept using the 4th edition idea of wizard orders or disciplines or whatever they're called. A whole campaign in this world could revolve around piecing together an idea of what the world was like before by reuiniting the various conceptions of magic and their underlying philosophies. This could lead to all kinds of cool campaign devices like mage wars, chapters of secret societies dangerously close to obtaining real power etc. I also really like the idea of the whole silt sea thing. People could be pushed into a life of piracy or sea-wandering by oppressive magelords, nefarious vampire regimes, demonic invasion, gith usurping etc., essentially making almost every inch of the setting fraught with danger. As for Mystara, the concept sounds very cool, but I really don;t know much about that setting to tell you the truth. What I have heard I find quite interesting though... So, anything else?