Ancient civilisations and a dangerous, isolated world are the foundations of 4e’s semi-official setting.
While the Forgotten Realms may ironically be D&D’s most remembered setting (as the official setting of 5th edition and the setting of many video games, board games and books), it’s easy to forget that just one edition ago, we were given a very different concept for a semi-official setting. We were given Points of Light.
Points of Light was the default setting provided for D&D 4th edition and is almost a polar opposite to the approach of the Forgotten Realms. Where the Forgotten Realms has deep, rich lore, Points of Light has broad, vague concepts for DMs to fill in. Where the Forgotten Realms has vast civilisations, Points of Light has sparse towns and villages. Where the Forgotten Realms has a detailed and mapped out geography, Points of Light has the equivalent of a crudely drawn treasure map with vast areas of uncharted territory.
If that all sounds wonderful to you, then Points of Light might well be exactly what you’re looking for in your next campaign setting.
So what exactly is Points of Light?
In many respects, Points of Light is more a set of world-building concepts than a fully realised setting. The designers wanted a place that was easy for DMs to homebrew campaigns into that followed certain core ideas. These include:
- A savage wilderness over-run by monsters and distinctly lacking in the civilisation department.
- Some roads connect settlements, but these are often threatened by bandits, roving orc war parties and other nasties. But they remain safer than the monster-infested wilderness.
- This is interspersed with small bastions of safety (“Points of Light” if you will).
- People rarely leave the safety of these Points of Light. This means that even places located just miles away might be steeped in rumour and legend.
- Settlements and other structures might be built and last just a few years or decades leaving a myriad of ruins dotted around the landscape.
- Others might have great evil befall them with neighbouring towns being none the wiser.
- Ancient, intelligent civilisations once dominated large regions of the land, but each has failed. This has left abandoned places to explore and discover, perhaps retaining untapped magic and wealth.
- There is little in the way of police or military other than what a village or town might provide for themselves. Many settlements might rely on the good fortune of an adventuring party stumbling upon them to provide protection or other services.
It takes the concept provided by the Greyhawk setting (plot hooks and many areas of less defined lore) and dials it up several notches.
Having said that, there is some lore and information on locations and people, which brings us on to…
Nentir Vale
What little that’s officially told about the Points of Light setting is centered around an area called Nentir Vale.
About 400 years ago, the Nerathi Empire, to the south of Nentir Vale, began conquests into the region. They cleared out monsters and clans from the area and began settling it for themselves, expanding the Nerathi Empire.
During a similar period, dwarves from the kingdom of Shatterstone established a fortress in the mountains known as Hammerfest. This was a tactical move to aid them against the dragon assaults.
About 150 years ago, however, the Nerathi Empire was destroyed by demonic hosts let by the “Ruler of Ruin”. This left the people of Nentir Vale without the military might and protection of the empire and 60yrs later, orcs took advantage.
The orcish armies of clan bloodspear swept through the region, destroying all in their path until they were repelled by the dwarves of Hammerfest. The orc armies were forced to retreat, but this was too late for most of the people of Nentir Vale. The entire region was left nearly desolate with just a few pockets of people left to attempt to rebuild what they could in what is now a sparse and dangerous area.
It’s in this state that adventurers find Nentir Vale. A shadow of its former self. People isolated and fearful. A rag-tag group of survivors that have managed to barely survive over the last couple of generations amidst the unforgiving forests of Nentir Vale. Most of the rest is up to the DM to determine.
What makes a Points of Light campaign great?
I’ll preface this by saying a Points of Light campaign isn’t for everyone. If you don’t like to homebrew or build your own world, you’re much better off sticking to more fleshed out settings like the Forgotten Realms, Eberron or Greyhawk.
If you like your civilisations big and your threat levels low, then you may also want to avoid this setting.
However, I think that conceptually, Points of Light is exciting and can work really well in the following ways:
- Combat-focused adventures – High danger levels is great for combat-focused adventures and groups.
- High stakes adventuring – It’s also great if you want to keep threat levels high.
- Great hooks – Ancient, ruined civilisations create a great hook for mysteries. What happened to them, why were they destroyed and what secret treasures lie hiding in their ruins?
- Bite-sized homebrewing – Smaller settlements make homebrewing more bite-sized and manageable. Home-brewing an entire city can be daunting and require making things up on the fly. Hombrewing a village is far more manageable.
- Fleshing out the world as you go – Aspects of the world can be fleshed out as you go. When the party asks the mayor about the next town over, he may not know, and the DM doesn’t need to either. At least not until the party decide to go there giving the DM time to prepare.
- Dungeons everywhere – The setting is rife with opportunities for dungeons and a variety of monsters.
- Loosely-defined lore – You don’t have to know a lot about the lore. And you can make up the lore however you like.
- Multiple cataclysms for a multitude of influences – You can keep things quite varied by having dungeons and ruins influenced by different events and civilisations, all built on top of each other. This means you can have an abandoned wizard’s tower with defences still intact next door to a coven of witches who live round the corner from a haunted mansion for some bygone baron.
- Big influence in small places – Players can have a lot of influence when settlements are quite small. Be the ones to kill the nearby orc clan that’s been burning their crops, you’ll be the heroes of the town! You don’t get that kind of fame in big cities.
While I do think conceptually, Points of Light is great, it’s only really great for a select few DMs that are both experienced and want to do a lot of homebrewing. I think one of the missteps here with 4e is that new DMs were handed something far too intimidating and with too much to make up with the setting. That’s why we’ve seen more popular settings like the Forgotten Realms, Eberron and Ravenloft remain while Points of Light has drifted into obscurity.
I do think that what’s being done with the 2024 DM’s Guide and Greyhawk works much better. There’s lots of defined lore there to draw inspiration and knowledge from, while giving lots of freedom to build on that and create in the way Points of Light wanted to do before.
Do you feel inspired to take your players into a Points of Light campaign? Or have you run one before? Let me know about it in the comments below:
