POINTS OF LIGHT:
HOW YOU SHOULD BE PLAYING YOUR 4E
- THE FORCES WITHIN THE CAMPAIGN SETTING
All your forces are acting toward an outcome that suits their interests.
For the forces of Evil, Good, and Neutrality there is a realistic outcome
that suits their needs.
- THE BBEG TYPES
The BBEGs are acting toward an outcome. When a BBEG plays the
Merchant Guild off against the Council of Wizards it is always with an
agenda where the end result is fragmentation of the State into Points of
Light so individual Points of Light can be picked off/Isolated and
converted to their purposes or plundered and destroyed.
- THE MORDENKAINEN TYPES
This guy likes to smash up Kingdoms because it is the only way to
isolate out the strong and sustainable Points of Lights that are capable of
resisting some darker, Entropic Evil that will pretty much devour
everything. He's into cutting back the bush to get stronger growth and
better fruit.
- THE IMPORTANCE OF ORDER TYPES
These guys see the state as a unifying concept to keep people
together. Civilization dies when smashed up into Points of Light. Well
managed and well defended Estates and nations produce lots of
resources that support not just the population but the Spread of
Civilization and Stability.
WRITTEN BY
yellowdingo
- RESOURCES VS POINT OF LIGHT STABILITY
Pretty much every resource (food, Wine, Minerals used in Weapons
and Armors) requires a certain timeframe for production. Say you have
Wine in your POL setting. Vineyards require 15-30 years of stability in
which they are not being looted, burned, abandoned to the wilderness
for grapes to be produced and converted into wine. If you don't have
that, it becomes a non-producible commodity. So You might find wine
becoming a treasure item discovered in ancient wine cellars in a ruin
where vineyards once made wine or some wizard collected. Lord Vigo
learns that the PCs have discovered Wine (something they have not had
in the Town of Imincharge in a century), so he has his man collect it, or
armed troops if they won't 'render unto Caesar'. You certainly won't find
it for sale...though Bob the brewer might have produced some foul
beverage from the poisonous berries on the Chico tree that looks like a
brownish wine.
Wheat crops require several months to grow and be harvestable.
Shortages in mill grain and seed grain can make bread a wealthy
citizen's commodity while everyone else must start scrounging for that
toxic root that can be mashed down and dried into powder as a
flatbread. Vegetables require months of stable growth.
Sword making requires metal. Metal from mining and smelting which
implies a steady supply of food, mined metal and timber for fuel. It
probably takes five men about a month to extract the iron needed and
turn it into a two handed sword as well as those needed to feed and fuel
the process. That kind of adds to the price of a sword the wages of
miners, metal workers, food producers, and woodcutters (and any other
process workers and hangers-on).
A couple of wheat crops burn and your Point of Light crashes and
burns in a single year. People abandon it in search of food and shelter.
COMPILED BY
Twin Agate Dragons