Comments on: Points of Light

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 23:35:51 +0000

Thanks for commenting. I see where you’re coming from with this post, and I do agree with you; however, this is not really the forum for political or ideological debate. This is a website about playing and making games, and other bits of general geekery. If you’d like to post something on-topic, feel free. There are lots of web sites out there for debating politics and ideologies, but this isn’t really one of them.

Brian

By: sometime

sometime — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 02:36:30 +0000

In some ways this is how the universe really works. For instance, between the stars is a great deal of empty space. Also on the other end at the tiny scale of subatomic particles.

In human affairs, the same can easily be seen. For instance Bush41 and his “1000 points of light” was to encourage that in 1000 places we see people making a difference. But that would be 1 out of 300,000 people in the USA - thinly spread points of light indeed.

Great characters of history are largely isolated, or perhaps clustered in fortunate synergy with a few choice others. Whatever you consider to be the acme of humanity (unless you prefer pop culture, or the everyman) is by definition rare.

Perhaps the key difference is that we percieve the world as a generally benign place, not full of monsters and fiends.

Maybe if were so unfortunate to live in Iraq or Darfur, or the dismal poverty of 30% of the world, or our own inner cities only a 15 minute drive from suburbia, or the ubiquitous panopticon of our unseen prisons - maybe then the points of light worldview would appear emminently correct.

By: Gamecrafters’ Guild » Blog Archive » Viking culture in RPGs

Gamecrafters’ Guild » Blog Archive » Viking culture in RPGs — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 22:02:37 +0000

[...] explanation of how Viking culture can be applied to the ‘points of light’ model that I discussed earlier. Some of this I’m not sure I can reconcile with what I have in place right now (such [...]

By: Viking culture and RPGs (and I don’t mean rocket propelled grenades) « Travels with Shiloh

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 02:21:48 +0000

[...] 24 10 2007 Brian, over at Gamecrafter’s Guild just had an interesting post about a way to look at gaming universes. In order (I assume) to make a gamemaster’s task of [...]

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 23:46:53 +0000

Absolutely. I’d love to discuss this with you further via email.

By: iago18335

iago18335 — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 16:37:11 +0000

I’ve been listening to a lecture about Viking society and there are some quite interesting parallels to what you’re talking about here. In the Viking age (7th to 10th centuries), Scandinavia was generally made up of settlements along waterways with vast forests in the interior. Sea travel was the preferred method of getting from point A to point B because it was (much) quicker and safer. My guess is that they may have viewed their world in a way similar to that of the Demasne. Perhaps that would have some sort of impact on the culture that would develop???