History Main / PointsOfLightSetting

* ''GURPSSteampunkSettingTheBrokenClockworkWorld'': The “Broken World” used to be a reasonably orderly, peaceful world of steampunk city states. Then something tore it apart and put it back together wrong. Many of the old cities are still standing, but the points of light are flickering at best.

TropeNamer and TropeCodifier is ''TabletopGame/NentirVale'', the official setting of 4th edition of ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons''. "Points of Light" was an unofficial nickname of the setting referenced by its creators and fans alike during development and before it was given an official name. Later it caught up in writing and roleplaying circles concerned with worldbuilding, becoming its own term. While it didn't invent such type of a setting, many of its traits were first defined on paper ''as'' its traits by Nentir Vale design principles.

** ''TabletopGame/NentirVale'', the default 4th edition setting, was specifically intended to be this sort of setting, and was indeed often explicitly described as a metaphorical sea of darkness with civilizations existing as scattered points of light. The majority of the setting's great civilizations all collapsed in the not-too-distant past, leaving the world filled mostly with wilderness and ruins and haunted by monsters and barbarian tribes, while civilized nations are almost all small, scattered, and often little more than city-states. The world was left under-defined so that GMs could fill it out as they chose.

* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'': Many started as such type of a setting, before with time being developed into something else.

** ''TabletopGame/NentirVale'' was specifically intended to be this sort of setting, and its was indeed often described as a metaphorical sea of darkness with civilizations existing as scattered points of light. The majority of the setting's great civilizations all collapsed in the not-too-distant past, leaving the world filled mostly with wilderness and ruins and haunted by monsters and barbarian tribes, while civilized nations are almost all small, scattered, and often little more than city-states.

** ''TabletopGame.WilderlandsOfHighFantasy'', a third-party setting, has this philosophy as one of its core foundations: its setting is very loosely defined, almost entirely unexplored, scattered with ancient ruins, and filled with monsters and unknown horrors. Travel is unpredictable and perilous. Even the mightiest of kingdoms -- Viridistan, Tarantis, Rallu, and the City-State of the Invincible Overlord -- are little more than petty city-states with only a tenuous grip to the surrounding lands and almost no influence anywhere farther. As the book itself puts it, "civilization is but a candle in the dark".

* ''Franchise/StarWars'': The Galaxy often functions like this, with civilized planets often being distant and isolated from each other, with long stretches of wild space and savage worlds between them. This is more pronounced in the Outer Rim compared to the Core Worlds, as the Core Worlds physically closer together and the Galaxy's governments tend to be based there and thus to have better control and enforcement there than they do further away. On a smaller scale, sparsely-populated planets like Tatooine also work this way, with a few spots of civilization here and there and harsh wild environments everywhere else. Most people in the Galaxy spend their entire lives on one planet or even one town, as they deem it too dangerous or otherwise not worth the effort to travel.

* ''Franchise/StarWars'': The Galaxy often functions like this, with civilized planets often being distant and isolated from each others, with long stretches of wild space and savage worlds between them. This is more pronounced in the Outer Rim compared to the Core Worlds, as not only are the Core Worlds physically closer together, but the Galaxy's governments tend to be based there and thus to have better control and enforcement there than they do further away. On a smaller scale, sparsely-populated planets like Tatooine also work this way, with a few spots of civilization here and there and harsh wild environments everywhere else. Most people in the Galaxy spend their entire lives on one planet or even one town, as they deem it too dangerous or otherwise not worth the effort to travel.

* People fear what they don't understand and in this world they will not understand a lot, meaning any kind of magic, advanced technology, or superpowers will be feared and distrusted off. The presence, power, and influence of such things may also be limited to avoid questions why it won't be used to fix this world, with an exception of an occasional villain who uses it for evil and needs to be put down.

* The world lacks wide-spreading organizations or groups that could claim any sort of authority and actually enforce it. If an organized military force exists it is likely having a very limited reach from its main base of operation or spread extremely thin, leaving common people defenseless and in need fo wandering heroes to solve their problems.

* As a result, common people look to the world outside their communities with dread, often being distrustful of strangers coming into their town. Very few are well-traveled and even those are more likely to stick to common roads. Explorers are rare and trade is a limited and very risky venture. As such the world is mysterious and full of yet unexplored places and secrets to uncover

* Means of communication between civilization points are few and as such information spreads slowly. It is possible for any of those "points of light" to be swallowed by darkness - terrorized, conquered, or utterly destroyed by some sort of evil - and no one else noticing until the same threat is at their own doorstep or a band of adventurers stumble onto it.

It should be noted that a Points of Light Setting is not the same as CrapsackWorld. The two may overlap but none of the traits of Points of Light Setting in themselves make it a Crapsack World and it can still have an overall hopeful and optimistic tone. In fact, the setting may be designed with the purpose of being fixed by the heroes. On the other hand a Crapsack World doesn't need any of the elements that define Points Of Light Setting to still deliver on its overall grim and gloom tone. Similarly, while this trope can easily overlap with AdventureFriendlyWorld, the purpose of one can be accomplished without it turning into the other - a world that eschews all traits of Points of Light Setting may still be adventure friendly, while a setting following them may not focus on adventuring at all.

* Any cities, communes, villages or other centers of civilization are few, isolated and preferably small "points of light" scattered across a "sea of darkness"

[[AC: Anime and Manga]]

[[AC:ComicStrips]]

[[AC:FanWorks]]

[[AC: Film]]

[[AC: Literature]]

[[AC: Tabletop Games]]

[[AC: Video Games]]

[[AC: Web Animation]]

[[AC: Webcomics]]

[[AC: Western Animation]]

* Flognard from ''Anime/DogDays'' was originally like this in the backstory, where demons roamed the land and leaving the safety of the kingdoms was a death sentence. That is until Princess Clarifier of Pastillage and her band of heroes hunted down and sealed every single demon on the continent, turning it into the SugarBowl that it is in the present.

* The Grand Line of ''Manga/OnePiece'' is an ocean current that encircles the planet's equator. It is littered with hundreds of independent islands, each with their own unique climate and magnetic signature, which play havoc on the weather patterns throughout the Line's open ocean. To the north and south are the "Calm Belts," which are windless year round and infested with giant sea monsters, making the only ways to enter or exit the Grand Line sailing up Reverse Mountain or using the official government port in the capitol city of Mary Geoise (the latter not being an option for most of the cast, being pirates and all).

* ''Axa'' by Enrique Romero ran in British newspapers, and features an ActionGirl named Axa. She is chosen to leave the safety of the Domed City, and traverse the post-apocalyptic world, seeking other survivors living in a CityInABottle. Much of the world has been ReclaimedByNature, and is full of EverythingTryingToKillYou mutated monsters. Some villages have people living as pre-industrial tribes, though there is another domed city, built underwater.

[[AC: FanWorks]]

* ''Fanfic/TriptychContinuum'': Roughly 6% of the land and 7% of the sky of Equestria is actually a "settled zone", a place where ponies and other intelligent beings actually live and work. The rest of the continent is all wilderness, often crawling with monsters and extremely dangerous to travel through, and these "wild zones" often separate and isolate individual settled zones.

* ''Film/{{Waterworld}}'' is set on a future Earth after the polar ice caps have melted, submerging all the world's land masses. What's left of humanity live on [[OceanPunk watercraft]], such as the Mariner's catamaran, or on an artificial atoll that functions as a trade hub. Piracy, of course, is rampant and unchecked.
* The Galaxy in ''Franchise/StarWars'' functions like this too, with the "Points of Light" being the many inhabited planets within, surrounded by hostile, dangerous deep space. This is more pronounced in the Outer Rim compared to the Core Worlds, as not only are the Core Worlds physically closer together, but the Galaxy is governed through there and thus have limited control and enforcement further away. On a smaller scale, sparsely-populated planets like Tatooine also work this way, with a few spots of civilization here and there and harsh wild environments everywhere else. Most people in the Galaxy spend their entire lives on one planet or even one town, as they deem it too dangerous or otherwise not worth the effort to travel.

** Living among this DeathWorld are the Grik (an [[TheEmpire empire]] of LizardFolk, heavily implied to be descended from [[RaptorAttack raptors]]), scattered populations of Lemurians (CatFolk who evolved on Madagascar but had to pull an [[HomeworldEvacuation Homeland Evacuation]] when the Grik invaded), and the occasional community of humans who got stranded in this world after getting pulled through a [[NegativeSpaceWedgie Squall]]. Not all of those humans are [[TheMultiverse from the same universe]], either.
** Over the course of the books, TheAlliance started by the crew of USS ''Walker'' to fight the Grik explores this alternate world and gradually becomes a SpaceFillingEmpire; however, much of its territory consist of islands or coastlines, and as late as "Devil's Due" (the eleventh book out of fifteen) one character doubts more than 5% of the globe has actually been explored yet.

** Outside of pockets of civilization and a couple of dying kingdoms, Middle-Earth consists of miles and miles of empty lands, dark forests where no one dares to go, ruined dwarf-cities crawling with monsters and lands ruled by orcs and human barbarians hostile to all outsiders. The remaining holdouts of civilization are often highly isolated and superstitious -- the hobbits have little to no knowledge of anything outside the Shire, for instance, while the Rohirrim have come to regard the elves of Lothlorien, one of the greatest remaining bastions of good, as malevolent fey ruled by a dangerous witch.
* ''Franchise/TheWitcher'': After the Conjunction of the Spheres the Continent was invaded by hordes of monsters from dozens of universes. The Witchers, alchemically altered monster hunters, were created to fight them off, but often treated as little better than the monsters by the fearful townspeople. By the time of the books and games many monster species are nearing extinction, but there's still little central authority, with small kingdoms and the Nilfgaardian Empire just starting to exert control over the scattered villages and towns.

* Aside from the aforementioned ''Nentir Vale'', many worlds of ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' started as such type of a setting before with time being developed into something else

** ''TabletopGame/{{Dragonlance}}'' started as an attempt to combine influences from ''Lord of the Rings'' and Gaygax's worldbuilding. As such, it tried to tell a HighFantasy narrative in a world that was only beginning to raise up from an apocalypse, with few remaining kingdoms distrustful of one another and unprepared to defend against world-conquering armies of evil and other races like Elves or Dwarves isolating at large from rest of the world. As with the previous two this aspect had vanished with the release of a large number of other adventures and novels adding more and more to the world until it firmly moved closer to a standard high fantasy territory. The moment the series moved from Age of Despair to Age of Mortals is often seen as when the transition kicked off for good and even later attempts to roll back many of the changes did not manage to shake it off.
** ''TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms'' uses this in locations isolated from major civilizations, most famous of those being probably Icewind Dale - a cut off by mountains, snow-covered area where main centers of civilization are literally called the Ten Towns because there is only ten of them and communication between them is limited due to extremely dangerous environment.
** ''TabletopGame/{{Ravenloft}}'' as a whole - it is a whole demiplane of areas literally isolated from one another by deadly mist, each one filled with its unique kinds of monsters and usually only a few small towns in it, and each ruled with an iron fist by a different tyrant.
** ''TabletopGame/DarkSun'' is this in spades, being a postapocalyptic take on a fantasy genre and as such mixing two genres most fit to this kind of setting.
** The venerable third-party setting ''Wilderlands of High Fantasy'' has this philosophy as one of its core foundations: its setting is very loosely defined, almost entirely unexplored, scattered with ancient ruins, and filled with monsters and unknown horrors. Travel is unpredictable and perilous. Even the mightiest of kingdoms - Viridistan, Tarantis, Rallu, and of course the City-State of the Invincible Overlord - are little more than petty city-states with only a tenuous grip to the surrounding lands and almost no influence anywhere farther. As the book itself puts it, "Civilization is but a candle in the dark".
* TabletopGame/WarhammerFantasy: While larger cities tend to need massive armies to defend them, isolated villages and towns are at the mercy of beastmen, orcs, bandits, and skaven attacks as huge forests cover most of the land.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Numenera}}'': The game is set in the wake of a billion years' worth of godlike civilizations emerging, ruling the Earth and vanishing or collapsing, and this has deeply affected the nature of the world. Human civilization -- and likely the human species -- has only recently reemerged, and is both very fragmentary and constantly in the shadow of the ruins of the prior worlds and the plethora of technologies, entities and creatures left over from their reigns. Even in civilized lands such as the Steadfast, Lostrei or Augur-Kala, settlements are often very isolated and separated by vast stretches of wilderness home to ferocious predators, incomprehensible and usually dangerous machines, vicious abhuman raiders, and good old-fashioned bandits; it's very common for distinct towns to have very unusual quirks not shared by others or to even be unaware of their nation's nominal capital. In the wildernesses of the Beyond, villages and cities are often tiny islands of civilization in vast seas of dangerous, uncharted land, and having arisen in complete isolation tend to be wildly different from one another -- one town might be home to peaceful farmers, the next one over to insane cannibals, the next to exotic people riding strange machines, and the next one still not even home to humans.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer40K}}'': Warhammer 40K role-playing titles invoke this trope literally. The Imperium rules about a million star systems, which amounts to 0.00001% of the galaxy. Between the far-flung Imperial worlds there is space for any threat or adventure you could care to imagine.
* ''TabletopGame/WorldTreeRPG'': The titular World Tree has many branches, and is constantly growing. Civilization tends to gather atop the newest and best-sunlit branches, in handfuls of mighty cities and smaller villages, each normally surrounded by powerful and deadly magical walls. This is because outside of these areas are many monsters and dangers deliberately created or encouraged by the gods to populate a world of adventure. While there are old and broken cities deep within the shadows of the lower branches, some possibly with treasures worth entire new cities, they might as well not exist anymore once the monsters take over.

* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'': The game's version of Hyrule is set in the wake of a fantasy apocalypse that almost completely destroyed it a hundred years in the past. The extensive ruins found throughout it show that it was fairly densely populated before this, but in modern Hyrule civilization is limited to seven isolated villages -- three effectively human ones and the four other species' base towns -- and a handful of roadside stables. Outside of these, the world consist entirely of vast stretches of wilderness littered with the broken shells of villages and sites of ancient magic, and travel between the surviving towns is difficult and dangerous -- numerous monsters live in the ruins of Hyrule, often making their encampments in the remnants of towns, along major roads or even right outside the surviving settlements, while central Hyrule is so infested with the powerful, deadly Guardians -- {{Magitek}} robots that were the ones to destroy Hyrule to begin with -- that nobody lives or goes there anymore. Link, of course, is going to spend his quest hoofing it through this wilderness, fighting monsters, living off the land and uncovering a great many wondrous and secret things.

* The ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' world is mostly this kind of setting. Although a few regional powers begin to rise as the series progresses, the world is mostly made up of isolated settlements cobbled together from the ruins of civilization and a handful of Vaults that haven't managed to kill their inhabitants. The wasteland is otherwise populated with raiders, mutants, ghouls, pockets of radiation, and various other horrors which only a few brave traders and Lone Wanderers attempt to navigate.
* The Earth in the state that it is in the ''VideoGame/BlazBlue'' world is almost completely covered in seithr, a magical toxic gas that not only renders all but the highest mountaintops uninhabitable for humans, but has mutated and generated magical beings, some of which are friendly to humans but most are hostile. The result is humanity being reduced to roughly a dozen cities around the world located on these mountaintops; despite there being TheEmpire that governs these cities, there isn't much means of or interest in communicating with each other. Unlike most examples of this trope, none of the main characters are all that interested in traveling the world--the ones that have are not fond of it at all--and most of the story is set in the city of Kagutsuchi.

* In WebAnimation/{{RWBY}}, the [[AnimalisticAbomination Creatures of Grimm]] are found everywhere throughout Remnant, seeking to destroy humanity and their creations. In the countless years that humanity had roamed the planet there have only been four locations that have survived throughout the centuries. Those being the four Kingdoms, Vale, Vacuo, Beacon and Atlas, only surviving due to humanities tenacity and the natural barriers, such as mountains and frigid temperatures, keeping Grimm away And though small villages have been built, they do not last long thanks to the Grimm.

[[AC: Web Comics]]
* In ''Webcomic/GirlGenius'', most of Europa (an AlternateHistory early 18th century Europe) is a wilderness where travel is made deadly dangerous by MadScience-generated biological and mechanical abominations and more mysterious beings. Civilised life is confined to a number of fortified cities and strongholds ruled by [[MadScientist Sparks]].

* The Future That Is Aku from ''WesternAnimation/SamuraiJack'' is technically ruled by a single authority of Aku, but he and his subordinates seem mostly concerned with hunting down Jack and snuffing out any remaining points of light, filling the world with more monsters and criminals.
* In ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLegendOfKorra'', during the story of Avatar Wan, there were four civilizations, watched over by four lion turtles, who would grant the power to bend elements to those who wished to journey out into the wilds between each civilization. It was only when bending was granted to humans full-time and the spirits left for their separate world that humanity was able to expand their civilization beyond these four separated cities.

* As a result common people are looking to the world outside their communities with dread, often being distrustful of strangers coming into their town and very few are well-traveled and even those are more likely to stick to common roads. Explorers are rare and trade is a limited and very risky venture. As such the world is mysterious and full of yet unexplored places and secrets to uncover

Many worlds of HeroicFantasy and AfterTheEnd stories use this type of setting, especially those with an episodic nature where each adventure is planned individually with no desire to make them into one long narrative. It should also be noted Points of Light Setting can exist as a part of a larger world that does not follow its principles, usually due to being isolated from it by some natural means. In fact, many works of TheWestern genre or others focused on SettlingTheFrontier fall under this setting due to the fact they are about traversing wild and dangerous places and slowly bringing civilization to them.

* ''Film/{{Waterworld}}'' is set on a future Earth after the polar ice caps have melted, submerging all the world's land masses. What's left of humanity live on watercraft, such as the Mariner's catamaran, or on an artificial atoll that functions as a trade hub. Piracy, of course, is rampant and unchecked.

* ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'': By the time of the War of the Ring, millennia of war and social decline have left Middle-Earth in this state. The elves and dwarves are {{Dying Race}}s, the former restricted to four city-states often little more than fortified households and the latter a vesitigial empire clinging on to life in a handful of far-flung outposts after the center of their civilization was lost to orcs, dragons and worse. The human kingdoms have been in decline for centuries or more, with the northern land of Eriador so completely destroyed by civil war and a great plague that the western Middle-Earth is almost totally devoid of human life, with only ruins and haunted cairnlands marking the old kingdoms' extent. Outside of pockets of civilization and a couple of dying kingdoms, Middle-Earth consists of miles and miles of empty lands, dark forests where no one dares to go, ruined dwarf-cities crawling with monsters and lands ruled by orcs and human barbarians hostile to all outsiders. The remaining holdouts of civilization are often highly isolated and superstitious -- the hobbits have little to no knowledge of anything outside the Shire, for instance, while the Rohirrim have come to regard the elves of Lothlorien, one of the greatest remaining bastions of good, as malevolent fey ruled by a dangerous witch.

[[AC:Video Games]]

* In ''Webcomic/GirlGenius'', most of the AlternateHistory early 18th century Europa is a wilderness where travel is made deadly dangerous by MadScience-generated biological and mechanical abominations and more mysterious beings. Civilised life is confined to a number of fortified cities and strongholds ruled by [[MadScientist Sparks]].

[[AC: Web Animation]]

* The world lacks wide-spreading organizations or groups that could claim any sort of authority and actually enforce it. If an organized military force exists it is likely having a very limited reach from its main base of operation or spread extremely thin, leaving common people defenseless and in need fo wandering heroes to solve their problems. ** If there is an organization possessing means to enforce its authority and defend its subjects it may be isolationist, keeping its reach only to its own borders due to xenophobia, the pursuit of a specific goal within the territory it already controls, or a belief it has no resources or responsibility to provide for the rest of the world.

* In ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLegendOfKorra'', during the story of Avatar Wan, the world is portrayed as being this. There were four civilizations, watched over by four lion turtles, who would grant the power to bend elements to those who wished to journey out into the wilds between each civilization. It was only when bending was granted to humans full-time and the spirits left for their separate world that humanity was able to expand their civilization beyond these four separated cities.