Ea - A "giths and 'thids" land for L4W

[Graf]

Personally....

I don't think that we should designate someone as liberator at 1st level. Or at any level. If you're still playing her after 20 levels and we get to the point where the character and the world have developed to a degree that having a massively powerful PC uniting the gith against the illithids is where we want to take the campaign then Dunamin, or whoever's been overseeing everything, should get all the effected DMs and Players together and see what would be best for everyone in the setting.

I have seen literally dozens of "Joe Bob is the chosen one" games go up in smoke.
It's frustrating for the other players, it limits the DMs options, if the player drops out or gets bored of their character the whole campaign stops making sense.
I have heard stories about it working too, but those are usually very tight real world groups with one DM who runs the game for years. And even then the DM struggles a lot with the tension; very few people want to play the-guy-who-carries-king-arthur's-standard.

This is a living game. People may differentiate themselves in play in one way or another, but starting off someone as the equivalent of a gith messiah?

I just don't think that's the way that a living campaign should be structured.

I am fine, of course, with people playing around with the idea of you being the liberator in character. You could have a Githzerai monk who's convinced that you're the messiah, or weird prophesies related to you, etc.

But just saying OOC at the start of the campaign "I'm Jesus Christ to Gith" is a bit overboard; especially in a living setting where there will be other people playing Gith characters who may want elements of ambiguity or to focus on something besides your character.

Once someone is "the single perfect chosen one" it is very hard to get other players not to interpret it as "there is this one person, who is superbadassawesomedude, unlike your lame chumpy character. If you're lucky s/he will save you 'cause you can't do it yourself".

Torment used the whole Gith/liberator thing as a fulcrum to talk about the development of the self; that was what was compelling about it in story terms. [sblock=Spoiler - don't read if you haven't played torment, take a month off, play torment and come back]You could both gain enlightenment or at least travel toward it, and guide someone else along as well.
In the process undoing (or at least somewhat mitigating) a wrong you'd perpetrated ages ago.

Shifting the focus to some sort of external thing... ?
[/sblock]

If I were the character judge and I got a submission along these grounds I might give the following suggestion(s)

Personally I suggest making your kicker: Hunted by the Illithids (for reasons unknown).

You can play around with the idea you could be the Liberator, without really having the fact that you're Anakin Skywalker/Ran al'thor/Harry Potter be an immutable OOC statement.

 

[Phoenix8008]

I was mostly joking about her ACTUALLY being THE Liberator. Just a fun idea, but as you've pointed out, no good way to make it be so starting from first level. All I can do currently is set her up to where she'd be a possible candidate for being the Liberator and go from there. But if I'm still playing her at level 20 then the levels better progress faster here than in LEW, because otherwise I'll be dying of old age!

I've always liked the idea of seeing the time of the Liberator come to pass though, and maybe in this world that can happen eventually. I don't think I'd even make her kicker "hunted by Illithids" because that implies a reason for them to be hunting her beyond the ordinary. Of course, we don't even know for sure yet if we are actually using 'kickers' (unless that was decided and I missed it). Although it would still be part of character backround/origin even if there isn't a 'kicker' mechanic.

 

[Graf]

I thought 20 was absurdly low level.
You want to become the Liberator, unite the githyanki and defeat the Illithids at heroic tier?

Frankly, I wouldn't really think much about becoming the liberator. It's not a viable goal for a perpetual setting.

[d]--[/d]

There is a blog called Fragmented that tries to talk about story engines and status quos (he mostly does comic books but they share a serial nature with living DnD settings). You might want to look at his definition of false status quo

The rough idea of a false status quo is that it's a set-up for a series in which the central concept involves something that the protagonist is trying to resolve, something that would result in a dramatic change to the series' set-up if they ever did manage to fix whatever was wrong. (The classic example is 'The Fugitive', a series that revolved entirely around the hero's hunt for the one-armed man who killed his wife. Every week, he almost finds him, and every week, he fails, because the second he finds him, the series ends.)

In general, I've talked about false stati quo as something to avoid. This is simply because putting a false status quo into your story makes an implicit promise to your audience that it will be resolved, and that's not always something that you can follow through on. (All too many series have floundered after finally resolving their false status quo, and a few--'X-Files', I'm looking at you--faltered when the audience got sick of never getting their resolution.)

Originally from here.

Once the messiah's done and brought peace to the world its a similar situation.

It's sorta cool for the player, but if a big chunk of the campaign's story engine has been removed and all the other players and DMs are supposed to stop running gith vs gith vs illithid stories?

 

[covaithe]

+1

Thinking in-character that you're the Liberator is cool, if dangerous. Declaring it out-of-character would be out of place in a shared world.

 

[Phoenix8008]

Like I said, don't worry about it. I'm not actually gonna touch the Liberator thing. I'll be happy enough to be part of the faction wanting peace between the two gith sides so they can focus on the tentacle faced enemies. That alone will give her plenty of enemies to keep her going for a long time without even thinking about other possible adventures and foes that could add to the mix.

 

[Dunamin]

Good thought on opening the wiki entry with a superficial overview from a Dauntonian perspective.
I understand the reason behind making a “secret history” separate from the main write-up but there’s one oddity: The rest of the entry was not written with that in mind. Though it may not be common in-game knowledge, reading the wiki will make it apparent (if not explicit) to players out-of-game that the enclave is an illithid organization and the war revolves around a messiah-like legendary figure.
The original opening chapter may be revealing about motivations of the powers that be, but it also provides a brief overview of what Ea is about. I’d recommend keeping it there so that players know what local adventures likely will be like, but add a few lines making it clear that this isn’t common knowledge. It’s probably a good idea to keep the enclave’s history in the secret department, however, since they are likely to be main antagonists in many games.

As to playing the Liberator, I think everything has been said here. It could be fantastic for a private solo game, but not a team game in a shared world. I wouldn’t discourage Phoenix from working with the idea, though; go ahead and make a gith to model Gith – why should it matter if she actually is recognized as such to the populace? If she reaches epic heights, has achieved greater unity among giths, and struck severe blows to illithids, she’s a legend in her own right – one that is real and tangible.

 

[Graf]

The rest of the entry was not written with that in mind.

Yeah. My time is finite.
I'd love to say I can perfect it, but honestly, there is so much of the wiki that needs to be re-written....

I agree with your suggestions but I still have to do the rest of Binder Fred's stuff, and there are whole other vectors of work that need to be done.

If you can make the time to brush it up that'll be fantastic, but for now my goal is to get down "something".

 

[Dunamin]

Sure, just wanted to note my opinion and see whether other members were in agreement, rather than edit it in silence.