REVIEW: Points of Light

Points of Light, written by Robert Conley and Dwayne Gillingham, packs more old school goodness in its 48 pages than any product published in 2008 has any right to. Don't believe me? Take a look at the 11-page PDF preview and then come back here. Even a quick skim of that preview will make it clear what I'm talking about. Quite simply: Points of Light is the Wilderlands of High Fantasy for the 21st century -- and in some ways it's better. Hyperbole comes easily to me, doesn't it? Perhaps. Let's take a closer look at the book before continue with my effusive praise.

Points of Light describes four different settings, each one broadly consonant with the notion of a dangerous wilderness punctuated by small outposts of civilization. As everyone knows, this is the default setting assumption of 4e and the book's title is an allusion to it. I'll grant you that, when I first heard the title, I wasn't enthused. Like most things about 4e, "Points of Light," as a phrase, reminds me too much of my college philosophy classes, where 18 year-olds, confronted with Plato's dialogs for the first time, suddenly think thoughts they believe no one has ever thought before, failing to realize of course that Plato has been read and analyzed for 2500 years and that there are very likely no new thoughts about the great thinker. By the same token, "points of light" isn't new at all; it's been a setting assumption of D&D from the start. The formalization of the concept -- and the creation of jargon to describe it -- is a good indicator to me of how rootless 4e is, but that's a topic for another time. I don't blame the authors of Goodman Games for adopting the title in an effort to sell the product to players of the new edition, who could certainly learn a few things about the old school from its tightly-written pages.

Despite its title, Points of Light is not, in fact, a 4e product; indeed it's not a product for any system, since it contains almost no game stats at all. What stats it does include, such as references to classes and levels, for example, suggests that it's intended for D&D, but I have no doubt it'd be easily adaptable to any fantasy roleplaying game built on the same concepts as D&D. I was mostly quite pleased with this approach, as it increased the utility of the book a great deal and makes adaptation a snap. My only quibble -- and it's a tiny one -- is that some "high-level" NPCs are in fact given specific levels (Clr12, for instance). I'd have preferred that such things remain vague, so each referee could decide for himself what constitutes high-level. Now, such things are supremely easy to change, so I cannot complain too vociferously. I know from experience, though, that, if something is written in the book, at least some referees or players will expect it to be so and, in a toolkit product like this, the fewer expectations that are introduced, the better.

The meat of the book are the four settings it describes, each with an accompanying one-page hex map (each hex representing 5 miles). Each setting is given a capsule history of three or four paragraphs to "set the scene" and Adaptation Notes that give some ideas about how to customize it to suit the needs and interests of each referee. There is also a table of random encounters and random rumors to give the referee something from which to work in making the settings his own. The descriptions of the settings are divided into sections: Geography, describing terrain features and Locales, describing fixed "encounters," whether they be settlements, monster lairs, ruins, etc. Each hex is numbered and there is an entry in the appropriate section if the hex contains anything noteworthy. These entries are typically no more than a single paragraph, with a few (generally settlements) containing a little more detail (and possibly a thumbnail map). There's just enough detail here to spur the referee's own imagination and give a sense of a greater whole, but not so much that it's hard to change the details if so desired.

The four settings included in Points of Light are as follows:

• Wildland: An area analogous to an outlying province of the Roman Empire in the 5th century A.D. -- after the legions have gone. As its name suggests, it's a "wild" region, overrun with humanoid and barbarian tribes and only a few small outposts of civilization that cling to the old ways.
• Southland: An homage to the Outdoor Survival map of which OD&D often speaks, this setting is an untamed area "to the south" of civilized kingdoms and where the PCs are expected to go and establish themselves as local lords.
• Borderland: This is a war-torn area where several different factions seek the upper hand. It's a good locale for referees and players who like moral ambiguity and intrigue.
• Swamps of Acheron: The most unusual of the four settings, this one is located in an extraplanar realm dedicated to a Lawful Evil god, meaning that it's also the most limited of the settings. It's also the shortest of the four settings (and the one with the smallest map), which can be seen as either good or bad, depending on one's proclivities

Of the four settings, I found that both Wildland and Southland fired my imagination powerfully and I am already torn between using one or the other as the basis for a new campaign. Borderland is also excellent, but it's a bit less "primal" than the other two. The Swamps of Acheron is a puzzle. There are lots of good ideas within its description, but it's also very esoteric, being extraplanar in nature and the realm of an evil god. Its utility is much less than that of the other three, but the other three are so well-done that I scarcely minded. And of course, the Swamps of Acheron is good; it's just not as good in my opinion as the others, but tastes differ on such things.

The layout of the book is simple and usable. The illustrations are nice black and white pieces, definitely contemporary in their appearance but not of the Elmore strike-a-pose school. The writing is generally very clear and concise, with only a few infelicities here and there. The hex maps are simply gorgeous, a beautiful melding of old school sensibilities with modern technology. Indeed, that's how I could characterize Points of Light in general. It's an old school product with new school production values. The book even includes an extensive index, making it easy to find things, which is a nice if somewhat unnecessary touch in a book of this size. All in all, the presentation of Points of Light should serve as a model for how old school publishers present their own products. I'd have liked different interior art, for the most part, but it's not a huge issue and, given that the book is intended to appeal to a broad spectrum of fantasy gamers, I can't fault Goodman Games for not going with something more strongly connected to older forms of illustration.

If Points of Light has a significant flaw, it's the intimation of a larger setting when you look at all four regions it describes. Certain names, historical events, and concepts reappear throughout the book. Now, none of these things gets much -- or any -- explication in the text, so it's not a huge concern. My worry, I suppose, is that there will be a temptation to use these names and so forth as the basis for creating a larger setting that encompasses them all, as was done with the Dungeon Crawl Classics line. The desire to find coherence and unity where there is no need for either is a powerful force in the RPG hobby today. As it stands, Points of Light gives us the thinnest of details, a pencil outline on a broad canvas that we can then color to our own liking. However, I am sure there will be gamers out there who'd like to know more about the history of the Bright Empire or the teachings of the goddess Delaquain and game publishers have a tendency to cater to such obsessives. I'd hate to see that happen, but I can hardly fault this book for what might or might not happen in possible sequels to it.

Leaving aside my concerns for a future that might not be, Points of Light is nearly perfect -- so perfect in fact that I can reasonably call it the Wilderlands of High Fantasy for the next generation. Like its illustrious predecessor, this is a product that's meant to be used rather than pored over for trivial details. One cannot (yet) talk about the intricacies of any of its settings, because they simply don't exist. In that respect, I think it has more utility than the Wilderlands, but then the Wilderlands has had almost three decades of support products. Given that much time, I fear the "world" of Points of Light would be just as detailed. I hope that does not occur; I hope that the toolkit approach of this volume is kept pristine.

The animating philosophy behind this great book is "imagine the hell out of it," a do-it-yourself perspective that is positively refreshing in a hobby filled with brand building and canned settings. Points of Light is gaming at its best -- a call to each referee to use these raw materials to create their own worlds of the imagination rather than relying on the pabulum spoon fed by game companies looking to develop an IP. I have no idea if Points of Light will appeal to today's gamers; I'd love to find out that it sold like gangbusters. That'd be proof that the old ways aren't quite dead, that the kind of gaming I enjoy is still cherished. Regardless, this is a terrific book and I can't speak highly enough about it. Go out and buy a copy and see for yourself.

Final Score: 5 out of 5 polearms

Mass Market Monsters

For a book that's frankly at least as much a cornerstone of actual play as the Players Handbook, you'd think the Monster Manual would have gotten better covers over the years. It hasn't and I find that strange. The 1e cover is, as I already discussed, a cartoonish muddle that doesn't really do its contents justice. The revised 1e cover that replaced it, however, has different problems.

From a technical and compositional standpoint, this cover is pretty good. Like the original 1e cover, this one shows a flying red dragon, but, unlike its predecessor, the dragon doesn't look like a piñata. The other nice thing about the piece is that it depicts an actual scene and one that gives a sense of scale. It's clear from looking at this cover illustration that the dragon is much bigger than the pegasuses. I appreciate that. I also appreciate that the piece doesn't just look like some random monsters thrown together willy-nilly, like a page from a kid's coloring book. There is a suggestion (albeit a thin one) of a story here and I think good old school art should always leave the viewer asking questions about the nature of that story. So, overall, this cover is a definite improvement over the Sutherland 1e one.

With that said, I don't in fact like this cover very much. The reason I don't is that it's too polished and slick. Now, there's nothing wrong with polish or slickness in and of themselves. I'm definitely not someone who loves roughness to the point where I would, as some old schoolers do, praise the scrawls in the OD&D LBBs as good art. My problem here is that I smell the powerful whiff of marketing in this illustration. A red dragon on the cover makes good sense, given the name of the game. But the pegasuses? We're treated to not just one but to a whole flock of these winged, white horses fending off this evil draconic beastie. Now, I have nothing against the pegasus, but, like unicorns, they are often overused and emblematic of the kind of happy-go-lucky high fantasy that D&D birthed in popular media. Some call it "Ren Faire Fantasy," but, for me, it's always been "mass market fantasy," which is to say, pulp fantasy with all the edges pounded down and rough patches smoothed out. Its existence is, to me, the death of D&D.

Yes, yes, I know, hyperbole and you're right, of course. Still, there's something in this piece that bugs me that has nothing to do with the artwork itself, which, as I say, I think is decent (even if it's not necessarily the best possible choice for the cover of the MM). The revised covers were created to give D&D a new look. They're for a world where the game is available in Toys 'R Us and chain bookstores and every kid in America is a potential buyer. In short, they're a mass media production even if their content remains very much a product of a hobbyist culture. I think it's that tension that I detect and the one that irks me so.

Take note: I am not exculpating either TSR or Gary Gygax from their responsibility in having turned D&D into a mass media product. In many ways, the whole purpose of AD&D was to do just that, as Gary stated on numerous occasions. OD&D was a game for hobbyists by hobbyists; it was deemed "a non-game" by Gygax, because of its do-it-yourself ethos. AD&D, on the other hand, was meant to be accessible to a wider range of potential customers, most especially those without the background in wargaming, history, or pulp fantasy that almost all adopters of OD&D were assumed to possess. Given this, is it any wonder that we would eventually see D&D become beholden to mass media conceptions of fantasy that had little or nothing to do with the original inspirations of the game?

And, for me, that's where the real root of the problem lies: D&D became successful and, in so doing, it slowly shed all the things that drew me and many others to it, to the point where, in 2008, "Dungeons & Dragons" means so little even to the company who produces the latest iteration of the game that they felt it necessary to shed more of the game's patrimony in a never ending quest to make it yet more palatable to the mass market. So, if you're looking for the source of my beef with recent vintages of D&D, there it is. If that makes me a grumpy old man, so be it.

PlaGMADA

Here's a really neat site: PlaGMADA, which stands for "play generated map and document archive." It's a site devoted to archiving the materials gamers have created for use in their own campaigns, from maps to character sheets to handouts. This is great stuff and I may contribute some of my own gaming materials to the archive.

Thanks to Allan Grohe for the pointer.

Speaking of Old D&D Campaigns

Here's a scan of a small section of a much larger map I did for my old campaign world of Emaindor.
I drew -- and colored! -- this by hand when I was 13 or 14, so that puts its origin in 1984 or thereabouts. I'd been playing in a version of the same setting for several years prior to that (as well as in a Greyhawk-based campaign). I can't quite recall why I used graph paper instead of hex paper, but I suspect it's because I didn't have hex paper larger enough to cover the vast amount of terrain I wanted to draw.

You will note I was very fond both of calligraphy and of imaginary languages. I created several of them (Cynda, Emânic, Otrenska, and Rathwynnic, derived from Dutch, Welsh, Swedish, and Old English, respectively) with simple grammars and extensive vocabulary lists. I found that even the silliest names sounded much cooler if they were translated into a language no one natively understood.

The setting itself was a weird mishmash of things, but was primarily a medieval Europe knock-off, albeit one that mix and matched cultures and time periods. I had a Frenchified Roman/Byzantine Empire analog, for example, and an Arthurian/Celtic bunch standing in for the Germans. Now that I think on it, there were a lot of Arthurian elements to the setting, because, let's face it, King Arthur is heroic and tragic in a way that appeals to teenage boys (and old men, ironically enough). Despite being an AD&D world, it was even more strongly human-dominated than you'd expect. There were no halflings and few gnomes. Dwarves were reclusive but present and elves were reclusive to the point of xenophobia. Most of my adventures were political or investigative in nature, a tendency of mine that hasn't changed much in 20+ years.

A few years ago, I had a professional cartographer do a rendition of these maps and it was really cool to see that. I'll dig around on my computer to see if I can find them again. I won't say I prefer my amateur versions, because I'm not sure I do, but I still have a lot of pride in them. I spent untold hours drawing them and carefully placing the towns and cities and sites and naming them all. It was a labor of love and pretty well illustrates why I still love this hobby after so many years.

Live and Learn

I've been reminded of numerous truths over the last few days and one of them is this: talk is cheap. At the end of the day, the old school renaissance I remain convinced is going to happen can't be something we just talk about it and it certainly can't be something we just complain about. Instead, it just has to be done. So that's what I plan on doing. That's not to say that I won't be talking about it, discussing it, or even, from time to time, complaining about it -- but that won't be all that I am doing. The time has come to put up or shut up and the naysayers be damned.

I am certain that, for all the acrimony, disunity, and kvetching, the old school community is not in fact a herd of incontinent cats. Or at least it's more than that. Fight On! offers a good model of what I want to see more of. It's an absolutely brilliant example of people who share a common passion for old school games and not much else coming together to create something that brings the community together. That's due in no small part to the vision and dedication of its publisher and editor, who's a huge inspiration to me. Issue 1 was a terrific first start -- not without its problems, certainly, but a far, far more constructive example of what the old school renaissance could be than any I have seen. Fight On! will only improve with time and I have few doubts that it might, in spite of -- or maybe because of -- its lack of a unitary focus, help usher in a second flowering of old school gaming.

I'm a dreamer and planner by nature, as I told someone just yesterday. I'm not content with being told "but it'll never work" or "you just don't understand how it is." It's quite possible that I don't understand how it is, but I see that as a point in my favor, since it means I'm willing to try "crazy" things others have dismissed as impossible or even foolhardy. I know I'm not alone in this regard, which is why I am sure we will see more projects after the fashion of Fight On! and those projects will succeed, modestly at first perhaps, but such is the nature of leaven, whose action is initially small but nevertheless produces nourishment.

And so I say: Fight On!

Sea Change

Since sometime last summer, I've noticed an indefinable change in the hobby, something that was lurking beneath the surface and that finally burst free in the weeks and months after the announcement of 4e last August. That's certainly when it all started to fall into place for me. As I told some friends of mine this weekend, I think 4e actually came at the right time. People were ready for a new edition of D&D, especially people who'd been playing 3e since its release in 2000. I was one of those people.

And then we started to hear more about 4e and it seems as if it left a bad taste some people's mouths. Some of that, of course, has to do with WotC's execrable PR for the new edition. They seemed never to miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity and many people began to wonder if maybe the game were similarly ill-conceived. Not badly designed, mind you -- I have little doubt that 4e will be an extremely well-designed game, perhaps even the best designed edition of D&D ever in an "absolute" sense -- but tin-eared and missing the point of why people actually play and enjoy roleplaying games. Or at least missing the point with regards to a sizable minority of gamers.

That's what's really different this time around. It's been 34 years since the release of OD&D, a generation and a half. That's a lot of time -- time enough, in fact, for the grandchildren of the oldest gamers to have been born and take up gaming. While "this ain't your grandfather's D&D" sounds exactly like the kind of slogan I expect WotC's marketing department to come up with to promote 4e, the reality is that, for some gamers, such a slogan is exactly why they feel wary and exactly there's there's been this strange, indescribable undercurrent to the hobby over the last year.

My gut tells me, though, that we're on the cusp of a change. I'm reluctant to go all-out and say there's a full-scale Old School Renaissance in the offing and yet it certainly feels as if that's the case. Just take a look at my Links of Interest on the right and you'll see quite a few blogs, forums, and companies that are dedicated to the spirit of old school roleplaying. And those barely scratch the surface. Certainly, they're a minority within a minority, so maybe it all doesn't matter in the end. Still, it's interesting to see how many grognards and neo-grognards have started to come out of the woodwork and, rather than just sniping from the sidelines and complaining about those "damn kids," they're actually engaged in some really interesting and constructive projects, things that actually celebrate this hobby. They're not just bitter beardos writing jeremiads anymore -- they're guys and gals who love the history and traditions of this hobby and are working to preserve them for a new generation. That's really exciting.

Speaking only for myself, I can tell you of two factors that finally drove me back into the loving arms of OD&D. The first is that, quite frankly, I increasingly find modern RPGs too restrictive and too driven by concerns to build an exploitable IP rather than anything having to do with the simple joy of playing games. The second is that computer and video games have now reached the stage where there is simply no point in trying to beat them on their home turf. D&D combats are never going to be, solely based on game mechanics, as interesting and as engaging as those of many video games. But then I've never felt that the heart and soul of D&D -- or any RPG -- was in its mechanics. Trying to compete with video games on the field of "pure" gameplay is a recipe for failure.

Early RPGs, though, aren't about game mechanics. Certainly, such things have a role to play, sometimes even an important one, but anyone who looks at OD&D combat mechanics and hopes to have, simply on the basis of dice rolls and combat matrices, an exciting and memorable combat is setting themselves up for disappointment. RPGs live or die by the passion and skill of their players, particularly the Game Master. This is a simple yet often overlooked fact. It's one of the reasons why some people can talk about the most poorly designed games in glowing terms: they played them with a great GM and a bunch of imaginative friends. There's no way to make a formula that guarantees good gameplay every time. RPGs are notoriously "swingy" entertainments. No company, not even WotC, can ensure that every session you play will be memorably fun. That's the nature of the beast.

What I am seeing, though, is more and more gamers are realizing that fun isn't a formula. Fun is what you bring to a game. If that's the case -- and it is -- why not play games that don't merely encourage but demand that the GM and players alike have to engage it in order to create a fun experience for everyone? That, I think, is part of why we're seeing the return to old school games. It's not just nostalgia (though I'm sure there's some of that); it is, I think, a realization that, somewhere along the line, something's been lost in this hobby. Maybe it can't be found again but it's worth looking for nonetheless. I am hardly surprised to see gamers rediscovering the roots of roleplaying and finding that, despite what collective wisdom would have them believe, older games weren't in fact so bad at all. Indeed, they might just teach us a thing or two we've forgotten.

Exciting times.

Do It Yourself Days

I've often been heard to make a sharp distinction between "the hobby" and "the industry" of roleplaying games and I think I do this with good reason. In the early days (1974-1977 or thereabouts), there really wasn't much of a RPG industry. Sure, there was TSR and there were a handful of other companies selling RPGs, but those companies were (mostly) just extensions of fandom. You have to remember that this was all before the advent of personal computers, easy to use desktop publishing programs, and print on demand services. This was also before the rise of the Internet and PDFs. Back then, if you wanted to get your RPG out into your fellow gamers' hands, you either had to create a fanzine or found your own company to do so.

I think it's fair to say, though, that the appearance of AD&D over the period between 1977 to 1979 changed the face of the hobby forever. Not only were its books the first hard cover RPG volumes -- a fact Mike Carr boasts of in his foreword to the Monster Manual -- but they were also the beginning of a shift in the way companies and, eventually, fans approached RPGs. To begin with, AD&D had its genesis in a number of non-hobby factors. By "non-hobby," I mean factors other than ones related strictly to gameplay.

OD&D was, by all accounts, still going strong in 1977. Indeed, its popularity was very much on the upswing, as more and more copies of the game and its supplement were being sold than ever. Likewise, attendance at gaming conventions were growing as well, as was interest in RPG tournaments. The tournament scene is an example of a "non-hobby" consideration that led to AD&D's creation. Gygax, in his June 1979 Dragon editorial leading up to the release of the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, explained that the demands of tournament play created a need for standardized rules of the sort that AD&D would provide. Likewise, he noted that OD&D was too "vague and often ambiguous" to bring in new players, many of whom were not "familiar with medieval and ancient history, wargaming, military miniatures, etc." that OD&D assumed. Finally -- though I hesitate to say so -- there was almost certainly a calculation on the part of TSR to cut Dave Arneson out of the D&D equation entirely by creation a "new" game with a "different" name that was wholly the creation of Gygax.

All of the factors I cite above are non-hobby ones. They all pertain to TSR's desire to maximize the popularity -- and sales -- of Dungeons & Dragons. Obviously, this isn't a bad thing in itself, but AD&D marks the real beginning of the "the industry" with interests and agendas that didn't always match up with those of "the hobby." At the time, AD&D was in fact quite controversial among OD&D players and many vowed, as D&D players have with every edition change, not to buy or play it. The saw it as a money grab and an unneeded revision, as well as a "betrayal" of the open-ended and do it yourself ethos of the original game.

Gygax acknowledged this himself when said that "there is no similarity (perhaps even less) between D&D and AD&D than there is between D&D and its various imitators produced by competing publishers." Obviously, I think he overstates his case a great deal, because, mechanically at least, AD&D is clearly derivative of OD&D. On the other hand, the spirit of AD&D is indeed dissimilar to that of OD&D. Again, Gygax acknowledged this by saying, "AD&D rectifies the shortcomings of D&D. There are few grey areas in AD&D, and there will be no question in the mind of participants as to what the game is and is all about. There is form and structure to AD&D, and any variation of these integral portions of the game will obviously make it something else."

That right there is when "the industry" began, maybe not literally but spiritually. It's an interesting counterpart to the lengthy Gygax quote I posted yesterday, because it's also clear that Gary never intended what he saw as the immediate needs of TSR to set any kind of precedent that would deform the way RPGs would be made for the next 25 years. And yet it did. Since that time, the demands of the business side of gaming have been in the driver's seat. This was probably inevitable and it hasn't always resulted in either bad games or in the destruction of "the hobby" side of things. Still, I can't shake the feeling that we're still coasting on the momentum of the crazy, gung-ho, rough around the edges, and not entirely consistent early days of gaming. We're living off the dwindling interest of the imaginative capital from the Do It Yourself days.

What thrills me so much about gaming lately is that technology is allowing a return of the Do It Yourself days. Not only are clone games ever more prevalent, but gamers with great ideas can now disseminate them without having to form their own companies if they don't want to do so. While I fear that "the industry" itself is about to be lost, I am far more sanguine about the prospects of "the hobby" side of things, which is probably as vibrant and creative as it's ever been. It's a great time to be a gamer and I expect we'll see some really remarkable things over the next few years.

Assembling Your Own OD&D Set

Here's a guy after my own heart: why pay hundreds of dollars on eBay to get your own collection of OD&D books, when you can build them yourself.

Simply awesome.