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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Big J Money" data-source="post: 8172059" data-attributes="member: 70533">A fair enough number of people are getting "slave" vibes rather than the intended "treasure hunters in debt" premise.  Out of the folks following this thread still, what do you think about this change to perspective?"Gari" translates to "debtor" rather than "servant" (idea courtesy of Tonquez). Little changes gameplay-wise, but I can recolor several facts. Repayment of Life-Debt to the Patron who took on the refugee PC is still the Kumpali's law. However, I will change "Covenants" that must be recited every day into "Venture Bylaws" which must only be learned once during the official initiation of their Contract. I will probably kill any Bylaws that feel overtly "social class related", like the one that says "form no relationships with natives of The Well". Of course there are still implications of social class dynamics based on wealth and success in business Ventures. The general idea here is to recolor any traces of ritual for ritual's sake with a more mercantile / finacial influenced mysticism.Rather than restricting Gari to their tanka (essentially tent) when they spend time in The Well, they are free to go where they wish, but initially only the most meager of lodgings will be afforable. Making The Well a home for anything considered higher than the lowest class lifestyles is an exhorbitabtly expensive endeavor (idea courtesy of Umbran). There are plenty more ideas I can run with here.There is still one place of possible contention though, based on some things a few of you have said. The premise behind the setting is designed for players to buy in to the theme that they will be treasure hunting to pay off a huge debt. It doesn't mean that they can't change their mind eventually, when they have become powerful enough to consider going against "the system", but at least for quite a while the expectation is that if they try to skip paying their debt, it will go very badly for them. They'll lose access to the portals which are tightly controlled by the authorities. With no source of income and their treasure hunter contracts being broken, they would likely starve in the city once they run out of food while on the run as criminals. The tipping point for a party that wishes to break this system of life-debt would be for them to discover a way to take control of the portals, or even to be able to create their own (bypass them). This would be very high powered stuff, I haven't even thought that far ahead about how they might accomplish that and what all the consequences would be.In other words, it's not intended that PCs will act to avoid paying their debt. That isn't the purpose of the campaign. It can be a player's goal to find a way to do so, but this kind of goal would be akin to defeating a god or demi-god in a traditional fantasy campaign. Possibly achievable, but not for a very long time.Of course another option is for them to pick a Realm and stay there, never returning to The Well. I don't see a party wanting to do that because it defeats the purpose of playing in a campaign based on realm traversal, but it's certainly less of a feat than trying to make it inside The Well as a criminal.</blockquote>

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