JoeGKushner said:
As I noted in my review, you have to have a group willing to accept the fact that for about 85% of it, they are slaves in a low magic world.
I know this is an issue from a while back, but I have to take issue with this as a mischaracterization of the book. I think a more accurate characterization is something like 20-25% of the campaign. The way Matt and I viewed the book, the PCs are only really slaves in the sense that they have severe restrictions on their freedom of movement or ownership of personal property during Book 2 (out of 5 Books) and maybe the very beginning of Book 3. By the thick of Book 3, they are really Agents, in the Spycraft-type sense. They have become such valuable and powerful enough (and to some degree, trusted) heroes that their "masters" are really more like sponsors. They are even offered missions that they can decline rather than ordered to execute them. Yes, the PCs do not have the complete freedom to go off and build their own citadels or whatever, but I think the notion of being tied to a sponsor is hardly an unusual trope in RPGs to keep things moving in the right general direction. This was especially important in this book loose the details of the plotting already are in much of the campaign.
By Book 4, the PCs become military officers who lead entire units--it's true that this role, like any other military role, does not give them complete freedom to run off wherever they want, but in return, they get to command a significant number of underlings.
the rewriting involved would be trying to turn steak into chicken. They pretend to be penitent. Which doesn't necessarily protect them from say, being put into more dangerous situations where they really have little control or little cash.
If the PCs take the "rebels undercover" route, then I assume that part of the fun involved in doing so is doing the whole "double agent" thing, where you have to lead a double life and have to make do with limited resources and constantly deceive to avoid getting caught (see the early Alias seasons).
And it's not at all true that they always have few resources. Remember that as powerful members of the rebels or medicants, they would now be able to draw on the resources of the faction that they join, and possible quite significant resources and control. They could become, say, the leaders of particular cells and be able to have quite a bit of covert resources and underlings at their disposals.
None of this is to say that you were in any way wrong to have stopped your campaign when you did, Joe. I was quite grateful for the updates and liked reading them, and I hope that you did have fun while the campaign lasted, and that parts of the campaign serve as useful ideas for your game in the future.
Cheers,
Eric
