Slavery in your game?

[assault]

I've pretty much stopped using taverns, for this reason.

 

OK, there are some cities that have them, but in general if you are in a city for no good reason, you aren't welcome.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Many prostitutes are essentially enslaved (they cannot leave their pimp or madame, they receive little pay for what they do -- some slaves did get a stipend -- they are compelled to undertake labor, they are treated as property, etc).  It is actually legal in the US Constitution to enslave people while in prison, forcing labor out of them for no pay (breaking rocks down at the penitentiary).  Slavery is more common and present today than most people realize.

 

It was almost ubiquitous in the past, in nearly every culture through human history.  Back when you had to draw water from the river, chop wood to build a fire, start a fire with two rocks, so you could smelt ore to make a pot to boil the water and cook some food, labor saving devices = slaves.

 

I wrote about the way slavery works in my Field Guide, because most modern players (especially younger ones) don't really understand slavery or its history, so a clear statement on it was needed, I felt.  Enslaving people who have done terrible things to force them to work off their debt to society is one thing, indenturing people to do free work in exchange for learning a trade is another, taking prisoners from a conquered nation to work as slaves yet another, and just raiding another people to make them slaves yet another kind.  Each has its own moral character and significance which just condemning slavery entirely whole cloth does not adequately address.

 

This is probably a bit deeper than most players want to get into the concept, but GMs who are doing worldbuilding need to consider this kind of thing.

 

And let's face it, freeing slaves from bad guys is a really great adventure concept.

[Ninja-Bear]

On 6/17/2021 at 4:30 AM, archer said:

I don't do slavery. There's no real way to handle it delicately as a GM. And there's no way to ensure you aren't going to have a player who thinks slavery is a swell idea and who wants his character to abuse it in every way.

Yeah there is, you have decent Players.

[archer]

1 hour ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Yeah there is, you have decent Players.

 

Sure, in theory. But I've never lived in a place where I've had my pick of people to play. It's always been "do you want to have enough people to play a game or not?"

[Hugh Neilson]

21 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

It was almost ubiquitous in the past, in nearly every culture through human history.  Back when you had to draw water from the river, chop wood to build a fire, start a fire with two rocks, so you could smelt ore to make a pot to boil the water and cook some food, labor saving devices = slaves.

 

You can either work at the one local industry (or the local family that owns all the businesses), or you can starve.  You have a choice, so you are not a slave, right?

 

A lot depends on how we define the terms.  "Wage-slave" is a common phrase in our modern capitalist society.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah, people abuse the term slave a lot to distort and betray its meaning as well.

[Steve]

Slavery does not necessarily have to be of other humans. It can cross species.

What if Orcs were the slaves? Or golems?

 

If those Orcs are the descendants of a savage, rampaging horde that looted and ransacked the human nations before being conquered and enslaved instead of being exterminated, is that still wrong to do? If they were initially enslaved to help rebuild what they destroyed, is that less wrong? If they are still enslaved two or three generations later because they would go back to being raiders and looters if left on their own, is it wrong then?

[bluesguy]

2 hours ago, Steve said:

Or golems?

Are golems sentient?  I always thought of golems as the medieval equivalent of a very dumb robot (do this based on this stimulus).

[Opal]

2 hours ago, bluesguy said:

Are golems sentient?  I always thought of golems as the medieval equivalent of a very dumb robot (do this based on this stimulus).

D&D Stone and Iron golems were prettymuch that, magical robots.   Flesh Golems had some sort of vestige of consciousness, and clay golems maybe an animating spirt or something? - they could go berserk, anyway.

 

The original golem of legend was more of a knock-off human, made of clay, like Adam was, and animated by a magic word (either inscribed on it, or written on paper placed in its mouth), it started out obedient but became rebellious and murderous.

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Great recap of the Golem story, its such a great one

[Duke Bushido]

21 hours ago, archer said:

 

Sure, in theory. But I've never lived in a place where I've had my pick of people to play. It's always been "do you want to have enough people to play a game or not?"

 

 

I use taverns, a bit, usually because most of my players over the years have come from games where "you are all gathered together in a tavern" was the starting point of every campaign, so they sort of unconsciously learned that "tavern = important." 

 

Before going on, though, I would really like to say that Archer has an excellent point, at least in allusion:

 

If something has historically been a problem in your games, there is no mandate to fix it; leaving it out works just as well, and more than fixing ever could, it offers an immediate and definite solution.  Similarly, if there is a reasonable chance that something is going to be a problem-- say any recent or recurring or just well-known "hot button" issue in the real world-- then a GM wanting to ensure that a game does not go in a direction he doesn't care to preside over is not just in his rights but well-advised to leave that out as well.

 

And finally, before proceeding, I would like to double-down on LL's comment about his game world being "not unduly sanitized."  So what if it is?   If he elects to exclude sex slaves, what's the problem?  _I_ don't use them, either.  To the best of my knowledge (meaning "accepting that I haven't read every single thing and could be wrong."  Now I have taken all the fun about lording a simple error over me  ), Heinlein _never_ wrote a sex scene.  I think the closest he ever got was a couple of people disappearing into a room and the story jumping to the next scene, and even then I can only think of one instance of that.

 

It didn't weaken the story in the slightest.  Frankly, I felt it served the story better that I didn't have to derail my interest in the actual plot while someone explained to me in lurid detail what some fictional character's armpit or butt crack tasted like.  (I still tend to find sex scenes in fiction to be completely unnecessary  filler, be it book, movie, or game.)   

 

I have found that one really great work around to to players insisting on going down the seduction path is role play.  You know: unbutton my shirt to expose my hair pelt, brush my beard back, make moon eyes at him, puff up my lips and say "put those dice down.  Go ahead, Nick.  Seduce me.  Let's get it on."  (if that doesn't do it, delivering my lines while standing up and urgently rubbing my groin helps kill that mood, too.)

 

I also find it unnecessary to this discussion any more than as an example, as it is an example of exclusion that does not weaken the story.  We exclude all kinds of things:  if I declare "flying saucers and revolving six-guns are excluded from my fantasy game," pretty much everyone is going to say "well _duh_--!"  If I exclude JK Rowling's house elves, most people are going to say "good!  That's got no place in proper fantasy anyway!"  If I exclude Beholders, most folks will go "well that's fine.  I don't use them much anyway, particularly after the weirdness that came out of the Beholders-in-Space thing...."

 

I exclude elves, and people go nuts (in general; most of you folks have been pretty good about it) or they say "well, that's either Duke or Talislanta...."  

 

The entire crux of what's included or excluded in any GM's game is "this is how this particular world works."   Magic works this way, or that way, or not at all, and it's all good.  Everyone says "well, that's how this world works."  So one guy has a world where tavern culture doesn't include prostitute slaves.  _That's_ a problem?  I don't recall Tolkien wasting a lot of words on prostitute slaves, and according to people who aren't me, he is the holy grail of fantasy, particularly considering how many fantasy worlds are straight clones of his stuff.  Another guy declares that his world doesn't have taverns.  Fair enough: the cultures of his world don't think you need a special building to gather around inside of and get drunk.  Considering that I haven't been to a bar since I turned sixteen and didn't need a fake ID (it lost its appeal the moment it wasn't illicit), and yet I've still had considerable opportunities to drink with friends and loved ones, I find it pretty easy to envision such a culture.  

 

I realize that the initial question was whether or not slavery is something that occurs in your campaign, but I have to assume that everyone who didn't answer simply "yes" or "no" was inviting a more involved conversation; it makes sense that this conversation moved on to other things that are or are not part of someone's campaigns, at least not routinely, but I don't get the complaints or aspersions about what someone does or does not want to play.  I am sure I will hear the term "realism" at some point, so I'd like to take a moment to say "elves, dwarves, dragons, magic" before that happens.     

 

The simple fact is that the games occur in fictional worlds-- worlds created entirely by one group of people, for the enjoyment of that one group of people.  They are like any other form of entertainment: no one likes all of any given genre.  If they did, we'd have more games about midwestern waitresses having sex with vampires in order to create the ultimate spell to throw sand into the eye of Sauron and get her sheriff ex-boyfriend to admit his lust for his hobbit deputy and they'd spend all their spare time under the neon lights of some motel in New Orleans, at least until the kraken came and they had to time travel back to find Captain Nemo and Jaques Cousteau to deal with this problem, all while trying to single-parent a surly teenager who may or may not be one of the many sons of Zeus.

 

We play in worlds that interest us.  How could it even make sense that we would play in a world that doesn't interest us?  "Dude!  have you seen this awesome new video game?!"   Yeah.  I played through most of it a couple of months ago.  I really, really hated it.  Setting was awful; art was dull.  Characters were uninspired; graphics were so weak I couldn't tell my pack animal from the communal well.  It just sucked, Man.  "Cool!  You should _totally_ play it!  It's really the only video game ever made!  Play it!"  I did.  It hated it.  "Yeah, but you should totally play it.  Any other game is just wrong."   Well, this one has lasers and spaceships.  I like lasers and spaceships.  "It's wrong.  It doesn't have elves; it doesn't have magic.  This one does."   Lots of games have that.  I fact, I beat Magic Elves I and II last year.  "Nope.  Those games aren't this game.  Only this game is worth playing."

 

See?  It doesn't make sense.

 

Pulling from the published stuff:  I have considerable respect (now, and mostly thanks to LL's thread on it some time back) for the "official" HERO System fantasy setting.  I don't _like_ it at all, but I can now appreciate it, on a level or two, for the work and the quality of all the things I care nothing about (politics?  Really?  I want _escapism_, not a new version of what I am trying to escape from).  I _love_ Tuala Morn, though.  Alas, I am the only person in my group who grooves on it, so I will never get to use it, but there it is:  the HERO System doesn't even have _one_ setting: Turakian Age, Valdoran Age, Atlantean Age, Tuala Morn-- and probably one or two that are escaping me.  These are very noticeably not the same.  So what's the problem with one guy's variant or even his homebrew being a bit different?

 

I like hearing about the differences, honestly, but I am certainly not going to complain about or insult them-- they don't affect me _at all_ unless it's something that makes me think "ooh!  I like that!  I think I might try to work in a twist on that for my own game!"  It'd be like me screaming foul because someone says "I really like David Drake's stuff!"  I mean, I don't like it, personally, but when someone says that, the thing that _never_ comes to mind is "Eeeew!  Really?!"  What comes to mind is "Sweet!  He's a reader!"  followed by "Hello, fellow sci-fi fan!"   

 

And that's pretty much where it ends.

 

Worlds are big, and they are a lot of work.  The idea of your world not including something that doesn't interest you-- or perhaps personally offends you, or has proven to be a problem in the past-- saves not just the effort of having to build something you don't want anyway, then having to deal with the ramifications of something you weren't interested in personally, then having to play a game in a world that doesn't appeal to you-- but it saves games and possibly friendships.  Let's say for example that I hate Tolkien elves (because I do, so it's easy to select as an example), but I decided to cave to the "well, it's just not fantasy without a race of too-beautiful-for-words nigh-immortal better-than-everyone-at-everything supermen running around!" crowd.  Okay, fine.  Elves are real.  Have some elves.  Let me just sprinkle a few here, a few there, a few more yonder ways....  before you know it, I've got six players who are elves, who want nothing more than to roam through the elven lands, doing elven things, learning elven lore....   Well, I'm going to have a blast, aren't I?  Suppose I do the only thing I can think of worse than including elves, and decide "dwarven women look just like the men and have beards and everything" poppycock.  Well, the only two players I have who play dwarves at all are both female (even though one typically plays male dwarves), and I have heard enough of their opinions on that subject to know that it's going to wreck their good time, so....

 

If I remove elves and dwarves entirely, have I customized the world to prevent problems, or have I somehow sanitized it?  If I remove sex slaves, have I sanitized it, or have I created a world where people find such things unthinkable?  Is removing taverns sanitizing?  Or have I created a culture where drinking is an intimate thing, done only with close family members and the closest, most dear of comrades, and exclusively in the privacy of one's own home?  Perhaps it's simply the culture that one _only_ drinks with friends, and only of the wine that he brings to the home of a friend?    Is it something new and different?  Perhaps fantastic?  Or sanitized?

 

And even if it is completely, hopelessly sanitized, or hopelessly ruined, or whatever-- these are the private worlds of a private group of people doing things that will never affect anyone who doesn't like it.  Why the complaining?  It's really easy to not get forced into such a game: just keep doing whatever it is that you have been doing up until this very moment, and it will never affect you.  What logic is there in participating in what is essentially a "tell me this one thing about your personal world" thread and then complaining when others do the same?

[Ninja-Bear]

22 hours ago, archer said:

 

Sure, in theory. But I've never lived in a place where I've had my pick of people to play. It's always been "do you want to have enough people to play a game or not?"

If your players can’t handle it or you don’t want to deal with it that is fine. I just wouldn’t make it a blanket statement for

everyone. Sorry if you had bad players like that. 

[Opal]

3 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

I have found that one really great work around to to players insisting on going down the seduction path is role play.  You know: unbutton my shirt to expose my hair pelt, brush my beard back, make moon eyes at him, puff up my lips and say "put those dice down.  Go ahead, Nick.  Seduce me.  Let's get it on."

So, by leveraging the players' presumed homophobia?

 

....

 

OK, keeping my nerd hat on, and not trying to peel that onion, I'll move on to amature RPG design theory, and ask, why would seduction - or any other PRE skill - go to live-action resolution?  If you don't want the player fighting a certain DNPC, do you pull out the rattan & duct tape?  

 

It seems dreadfully common, even in comparatively complete systems, like Hero, to just toss the resolution mechanics when it comes to social scenes.  It's always bothered me.

 

[Duke Bushido]

4 hours ago, Opal said:

So, by leveraging the players' presumed homophobia?

...

 

 

Yeah, nice try, but not even close.  By demonstrating "if this is important enough to become a part of the story, we should role play it with as much gusto as all the other things that you want to make a part of the story.

 

 

And of course there is the whole reversal of the frog / prince thing:  hey, that gorgeous hunk of a tax collector is an unattractive sixty-one-year-old far guy....  Hmmm...

 

And it works!  I've been playing since I was introduced to Traveller in...  The late 70s?  I am not sure; its been a while.  Anyway, in all that time, I have only had one player decide "to heck with it!  I'm going to make out with him!"  (Granted, I was younger and slightly prettier  ) though I expect, guliven the group, it was done for laughs.  But I digress; forgive me.

 

I am willing to make a deal with you:  you don't assume that I harbor animosity toward anyone (because, in my life, with three exceptions- none of them total strangers, mind you) and I won t assume you span any number of online communities swinging your scope, looking for an opportunity to fire on anything that can, with enough interpretative effort, be turned into some crime against against political correctness, striking a blow for social justice everywhere.

 

Are we good?

 

 

[Scott Ruggels]

7 hours ago, Opal said:

 

OK, keeping my nerd hat on, and not trying to peel that onion, I'll move on to amature RPG design theory, and ask, why would seduction - or any other PRE skill - go to live-action resolution?  If you don't want the player fighting a certain DNPC, do you pull out the rattan & duct tape?  

 

It seems dreadfully common, even in comparatively complete systems, like Hero, to just toss the resolution mechanics when it comes to social scenes.  It's always bothered me.

 

In Duke's Defense, You just walked on a bit of a hot button between some GM's and players, basically the whole "Role  Play vs. Roll Play" argument. A lot of GMs aggressively encourage  Role play, rather than allowing a player to simply roll social skills on a sheet. I take the opposite tack, and why I smile on Role play, I also realize that I may have otherwise very good players that lack in social skills due to various factors that are uncomfortable, or incapable of  performing social scenes other than a few mumbled lines, backing up those who can. Games in General, most GMs would allow a player to roll a seduction roll, then describe the results in what ever detail a consensus of the table agrees upon. I agree with you about tossing the resolution system, when it was fine a few minutes earlier when using "Streetwise" to find the tavern in the first place. I know a lot of GMs can be disappointed in a player insisting that he is going to roll for persuasion, conversation, or Seduction, rather than role play it out. But comfort around the table is important to maintain trust there.

[Duke Bushido]

Thanks, Scott,but I generally let playes do what they are the most comfortable with, roll or role.

 

The above example was for those players who have decided "its been almost an entire scene since I seduced an enitre harem; better get back to it.  When it becomes detrimental to everyone else's good time, make it real.  Let them exam it.  Let them decide "is this _really_ so important I should derail the game with every chance I get?"

 

Wasnt ever really a problem until ten or twelve years ago, when somone threw "oh, you know, the typical horny bard" onto social media and everyone just decided to run with it, as if it was a necessary thing for every group of people to have one.

 

Ugh.

[Opal]

7 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

You just walked on a bit of a hot button between some GM's and players, basically the whole "Role  Play vs. Roll Play" argument. A lot of GMs aggressively encourage  Role play, rather than allowing a player to simply roll social skills on a sheet.

Oh yes, I'm quite familiar, and thought I'd wade into it, once again, since I hadn't recalled seeing it brought up as a way of discouraging actions (often, as in D&D, it's a way of avoiding a bad rule to keep the game playable, sometimes, even in games like Hero, it's a way of shaving points by not paying for "things we'll just RP through anyway") - and since it was easier and more on topic to address.  

 

Punishing a player for straying into undesirable actions by changing resolution from rules/description/imagination/tokens to live-action calculated to make him distinctly uncomfortable has problems on other levels to.

Not that players pushing the campaign out of it's intended thematic range is any better, in the first place.  ;(  

7 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

I take the opposite tack, and why I smile on Role play, I also realize that I may have otherwise very good players that lack in social skills due to various factors that are uncomfortable, or incapable of  performing social scenes other than a few mumbled lines

That's my feeling - and has been my experience from both sides of the screen - and it goes further than that, IMHO, because for the whole range of character concepts and actions, at least on the TT side of the hobby, resolution can be handled abstractly, with rules, descriptions, imagination, with nothing more concrete than moving a painted mini on a play surface, some gesticulation, a little onomatopoeia. 

 

That means we can play characters very different from ourselves, which I think is one of the great things about our hobby, we get to live in other times, places, bodies, and, well, roles.   

[archer]

17 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

What logic is there in participating in what is essentially a "tell me this one thing about your personal world" thread and then complaining when others do the same?

 

There's no logic in participating at all.

 

I knew going in that describing how I deal with it would generate at least one obnoxious judgy comment. And it came on schedule.

 

Fortunately, I'm participating in hopes of being helpful to others rather than logically protecting myself from obnoxious commentary directed toward myself.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

I still tend to find sex scenes in fiction to be completely unnecessary  filler, be it book, movie, or game

 

It almost always is.  This is way off topic but its something close to my heart as a writer, so... forgive me.

 

People will complain about how violence is okay to show in movies but sex is forbidden blah blah.  The thing is, everything you write into a story has to serve the story: move the plot along, develop character, etc.  Violence can easily do that, but sex tends not to.  Sex is almost always just sex for its own sake: ooh, sexy and hawt!!!  It doesn't reveal anything about a character, it doesn't drive the story, its just this titillating interlude in almost all cases.  Sex can do the right thing (reveal this character's fears, or their violence, or whatever) but usually its just... sex.  And that's a waste of pages, or frames, or digital storage.  Cut that out and what has the story lost?  Nothing.

[Simon]

Hey folks - just chiming in here to ask that we keep things civil.  There are a number of hot button topics being discussed and things are getting a little bit personal -- let's try to avoid the latter.  By and large, folks are handling this discussion quite well - I'm just asking that we keep it that way.  Stick to discussing the topics, not the posters.