# Non-cliche slavery in fantasy campaign settings?



## VelvetViolet (Mar 21, 2014)

Most fantasy campaign settings, when they bring up the issue of slavery at all (which is typically only as an offhand mention in the descriptions of evil races like drow and goblins), use the field slave/serfdom model of slavery where the slaves are are treated horrifically, being regularly worked to death, casually beaten, raped or murdered.

The institution of slavery has existed throughout history all over the world and in many different forms. Most pertinent to this discussion, however, is the institution of slavery in the Roman Empire and Ancient Egypt. In that context, HOUSE slaves (not FIELD slaves, which were treated the same way they were in the American South) actually had rights and were more akin to second-class citizens than what most modern persons would consider slaves. Being a house slave would actually give a person a better standard of living than many peasants and many foreigners in the Empire willingly (and pragmatically) sold themselves into slavery because it would give them an economic advantage until they became free men.

AFAIK fantasy campaign settings only ever use the field slave as a model and completely ignore the far less horrific house slave model, or even give field slaves a more humane treatment like that of house slaves. It would quite refreshing if the otherwise evil proud warrior race considered it morally wrong to mistreat a slave because they aren't worthy opponents and the paladin has an actual moral dilemma about freeing the slaves because many of them don't want to be freed due to their better standard of living as opposed to being free peasants.

What say you?


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## gamerprinter (Mar 21, 2014)

There are examples of slave trade in the Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones TV show), that are more akin to Greek/Roman slaving than US history slavery - I'd say a lot more people are being 'educated' on older style of slavery because of GoT, including those Americans (you believe are uneducated about slave history throughout the ages). Of course, I'm American too, but happen to love history, and am not uneducated regarding much older slave trade concerns.

While Roman/Greek slaves had some rights, they were to a large extent treated just as badly if not worse than the way slaves were treated in the American south. Though there were educated slaves of Rome/Greece that not only had more rights, but were treated fairly well. Still the vast majority of slaves were not treated well, in any era. On the other hand, while Celts consisted a large part of the Roman slave population, Celts themselves took and kept war slaves in their own lands - so slavery wasn't an unheard of concept to the Celts even before taken as slaves.

Despite the Bible stating that the Egyptians kept Jews as slaves, from all my historical research that is simply not true. In fact the Hyksos, a semetic tribe from the Near East, ruled Egypt with their own pharoahs for a century, until their defeat by the older Egyptians at the end of that period, and they left ahorse with arms and supplies - these were the only signifcant population of Jews in ancient Egypt as far as the historical record reveals.

While it cannot be overstated that the treatment of slaves in the American south was inhuman, Americans didn't take slaves themselves (at least not in the first centuries of slave use) this was the act of the Dutch East India Company, who should be getting some of the blame as well.


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## Celebrim (Mar 21, 2014)

I say you are being overly provocative.  Your proactive attempts to defend yourself from percieved attacks are over the top and unnecessary.   And your assertion that no one else is doing it "right" indicates you aren't maybe as broadly experienced with fantasy settings as you think.   In my experience, there are far more settings that ignore slavery entirely than make any sort of take on it at all, but I don't think I could make any broad assertion about the most common approaches.


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## gamerprinter (Mar 21, 2014)

I'd agree with Celebrim here, that most D&D/PF settings slavery is not even a consideration, nor casually mentioned. Sometimes references are made regarding drow, mind-flayers, aboleth and other specific evil slave taking beings, but these are isolated and never part of a larger existence of society or the setting.

I have seen some sword and sorcery settings with the slave trade, as well as more recently in Golarian - but I think that was done to bring some S&S concepts into the kitchen sink that is Golarian.

I cannot think of a setting over the last 30 years that had significant inclusion of the slave trade - _Escape from the Slave Pens_ is the only adventure I can think of that had anything to do with slaves since 1e, and in this adventure's case, its the PCs who are among the slaves of the adventure.


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## DMZ2112 (Mar 21, 2014)

I had an argument with a player years ago over whether slavery was an evil act or a lawful act, specifically in the context of whether or not a paladin should always attempt to free slaves regardless of their situation.  For what it's worth, I think it's a lawful thing, rather than an evil thing -- all four cardinal alignments have a big ugly at their ultimate extreme, and I think slavery is a decent synonym for the lawful one.

To clarify: I don't think slavery is necessarily evil, but that does not mean it is not /always bad/.


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## Greenfield (Mar 21, 2014)

We're running our current campaign in a Grecco-Roman setting, and I did my homework.  Here are a few numbers for you

At the height of Rome's glory, the city had an import rate on slaves over a million a year.  That was to replace the ones who died in service.

Getting a valid population count on Rome, or Thebes or Athens of the period was hard, as some sources included the slaves and some didn't.  What is apparent is that the slaves may have outnumbered the actual citizens of these cities.

Like the slavery of the American south a century and a half ago, slaves in Roman times tended to fall into several categories.

House slaves, who directly served a family in their homes, had a fairly decent life all things considered.  They lived in the master's house, had good clothes (if only to keep the household appearance up to some standard), and ate food almost as good as the family did.

Field slaves, on the other hand, were treated like animals.  Poor clothes, poor housing, poor food, and lots of backbreaking work made for a short life.

While their over all status varied from age to age and from culture to culture, there was always a "pretty" side and a dark side.


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## I'm A Banana (Mar 21, 2014)

You're right, the horrors of the trans-Atlantic slave trade are not the same pains that all "slaves" in history endured. Of course, one may still wonder if there is any rightly moral way to treat another free-willed human being as property, ever. And it's wrong to call this a simple "American" concern , given especially what happened to the French empire with that trade, and their colonies such as Haiti, and the continued effects on large swaths of the African continent and whatnot. The thing was trans-national, after all -- nothing causes horror quite like economics.  

What you seem to be asking for in regards to fantasy RPG's, though, is some model of "slavery" or serfdom or somesuch that isn't so clearly abusive and cruel as one informed by the abusive and cruel legacies of the trans-Atlantic era in human brutality. Given its historicity, fair enough, right?

I think the challenge with that, as it relates to RPG's, is just this: "Where is the adventure here?"

In an abusive, cruel slavery situation you have a clear villain and a clear heroic path of action. If the party comes across a city where slaves have voting rights and get paid and eventually become free after having worked off their debt (or whatever), what's the story? Who's the villain, and what is the action the party should take? 

If you can find a reason for it to be an interesting adventure, you can probably get people on board with it more easily than just pronouncing that it should be done.


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## Derren (Mar 21, 2014)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> "Where is the adventure here?"




Why must everything in the game world be a hook for a simple black&white adventure?


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## Grue (Mar 21, 2014)

This one is a thorny topic to approach but I think the core of it is how slavery actually functions in a society.  While there were some notable difference in the institution of slavery between the African slave trade (and pre-antebellum U.S.A.) and the ancient world I think there are a number of lurking assumptions that are a bit overblown by latter period revisionism and romantic notions.  While slave 'rights' fluctuated between different cultures and historical periods the core concept that slaves are property (like land or livestock) can be hard to wrap the noggin around at times.  

Laws in the Roman Empire (or from Hammurabi on) weren’t particularly concerned with what you did with your property, but moreso with how much was owed if you killed another man’s property.  The Serville Wars weren’t fought by prized skilled labor (Greek) slaves (who could one day hope to buy manumission) but by laborers.  A notion of some sort of 'life was better as a barbarian slave in the Roman Empire than as African one in South Carolina' is a bit of bunk... for the vast majority it was awful in either case.

As far as a ‘non-cliché’ slavery… like an ‘evil proud warrior race that wouldn’t stoop to mistreating a slave’… I can’t think of any realistic way of how they would get any work out of their slaves…ask them nicely maybe?  The Spartans were pretty freaking evil to their helots and their entire warrior culture in many respects was built to keep a police state level of control over their slaves.  The Mongols, while valuing skilled labor slaves, were not known to play nice with uppity property.  And for the Norse, their thralls were one of their most common trade items.

On the paladin issue… it strikes too close to the Southern plantation owner argument over protecting his inferior child-like slaves and the endless ‘is it evil to kill goblin babies?’ trope.  I guess from a historical perspective, while Charlemange tried to discourage slavery it remained an institution and the 12 peers (the Paladins) lived with it.  It’s a fantasy rpg, if you want to play out a story of a Paladin crusading against one particular social ill, do that.  If the evil lich who is corrupting the countryside is the more pressing problem, do that instead.


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## the Jester (Mar 21, 2014)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> I think the challenge with that, as it relates to RPG's, is just this: "Where is the adventure here?"




Isn't worldbuilding itself a valid reason to look at the topic?


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## Yora (Mar 21, 2014)

Making a setting in which society is basically unfair by modern standards is not a problem. But don't expect any to be published under the D&D brand.
Dark Sun did kinda go in that direction, but never really went much into it, from what I know.

When I started working on my homebrew setting, making discrimination an issue was a very early descision. It doesn't have to mean that the world portrays mistreatment of some groups as normal or even good, but it's more interesting if it is regarded as controversial within the worlds society. I am perfectly fine with woman berserkers or foreigners in an elite organization, both as PCs and NPCs, in that setting. But I think it would be somewhat inappropriate to have all the other NPCs in the setting treat it as entirely normal and approve of it. It is of course entirely fictional and I could create any kind of world I want, which means also one that is completely perfect and where everyone is treated fairly and equal. But even though it's entirely fictional, it's still based on history, and it always seems to me like a kind of whitewashing to simply have some issues, that would have been very important in similar societies in Earths history, simply disappear. Of course, no writer should feel forced to include every social problem that has plagued the world appear within the fiction. There's all kinds of things I don't want to deal with either.
But I feel it's a better treatment of those issues to have them appear in the world and provide some ideas how they can be dealt with, then to have a world in which the problem doesn't exist. Fantasy wouldn't be what it is if there were no monsters and evil wizards to fight. And I rather have my slavery, sexism, and homophobia and try to fight it in the fiction, than to image a world in which the problems don't exist. It's not the ideal that matters in fantasy, but the struggle to get there.


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## gamerprinter (Mar 21, 2014)

Yora said:


> Making a setting in which society is basically unfair by modern standards is not a problem. But don't expect any to be published under the D&D brand.




Not D&D, but under the Pathfinder brand, via Rite Publishing, I've got a published *Kaidan setting of Japanese horror (PFRPG)* which most reviewers agree is designed to be a gritty, low fantasy setting based on feudal Japan. The social castes are cosmic and locked in, tied to the reincarnation mechanic and the accumulation of karma, thus defined prejudices between the betters and the lessers is firmly defined in the setting. The noble caste consists completely of undead beings of various types. Kaidan like feudal Japan is a police state, maintained by the shogun and the entire caste of samurai, as well as the state religion, Zaoism (based on Buddhist thought). There is the tainted caste (Eta) which consists of foreign born families usually descendants of prisoners of war, that comprise a large segment of the population, and though not slaves are treated just as poorly, although they do have some wealth.

So though you might not expect it, but there are published settings with some dark social commentaries and expectations built into it.


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## I'm A Banana (Mar 21, 2014)

the Jester said:


> Isn't worldbuilding itself a valid reason to look at the topic?




Adventure-building is often a useful lens through which to view worldbuilding, which is why I brought it up. There's *probably* a bunch of adventure opportunities in such a society, and if what you want is to play a game in which such a society exists, what's gonna be useful is figuring out what they might be. IE: how is this relevant to the players?

Evil Evil Slavery is obviously very relevant. What does Only Kind of Evil Slavery offer us in that context?


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## VelvetViolet (Mar 21, 2014)

Thank you for your input. I've adjusted the OP to compensate.

Yes, I am looking for a model of society that treats slaves more humanely in order to challenge the philosophical and moral beliefs of the typical adventurer.

Given the widespread prevalence of magic in a typical fantasy setting (and all traditional economic models break down when you can mass produce food and any substance other than a few now-worthless precious metals), there's no reason why the soul-crushing field work can't be performed by mass-produced golems, and slaves would instead be performing service work (e.g. maintenance, cashiers, clerks) or being used as symbols of prestige (e.g. maids, butlers, bodyguards, concubines, etc).

If they refuse to work, you don't beat them, you use a spell that gives them a high whenever they follow orders. Given a choice between water and an electrode wired into their brains that induces pleasure, all living creatures will pleasure themselves until they die.


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## I'm A Banana (Mar 21, 2014)

Raneth said:


> Yes, I am looking for a model of society that treats slaves more humanely in order to challenge the philosophical and moral beliefs of the typical liberal democrat adventurer.




Mod warning: real-world politics are off-limits here at ENWorld. Tossing around "typical liberal democrat adventurer" (or "typical conservative republican slave-lord" that might be the opposite end of that coin?) is veering into territory that gets conversations shut down very quickly.


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## Savage Wombat (Mar 21, 2014)

I tried, but I can't come up with anything.  

In my games, any time slavery reared its head in any form it became an issue immediately.  If I wasn't prepared for the PCs to go haring off after slavers and slave-holders, I was going to have a hard time that night.

If you just want it to be a background trait of the setting, be prepared for reactions like this.  If you want the party to engage the issue, ask yourself what you want as DM out of the engagement - the party is effectively struggling with a massive economic force armed only with some swords and spells.


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## Croesus (Mar 21, 2014)

Raneth said:


> Most fantasy campaign settings use the field slave/serfdom model of slavery where the slaves are are treated horrifically, being regularly worked to death, casually beaten, raped or murdered.
> 
> The institution of slavery has existed throughout history all over the world and in many different forms. Most pertinent to this discussion, however, is the institution of slavery in the Roman Empire and Ancient Egypt. In that context, HOUSE slaves (not FIELD slaves, which were treated the same way they were in the American South) actually had rights and were more akin to second-class citizens than what most modern persons would consider slaves. Being a house slave would actually give a person a better standard of living than many peasants and many foreigners in the Empire willingly (and pragmatically) sold themselves into slavery because it would give them an economic advantage until they became free men.
> 
> ...




1. I'm unsure that one can say "Most fantasy campaign settings use the field slave/serfdom model of slavery where the slaves are treated horrifically, being regularly worked to death, casually beaten, raped or murdered", since slavery is rarely included in any published setting, and we have no comprehensive data on homebrews.

2. While there have indeed been many differences in the forms of slavery between societies and eras, I find very few examples where slavery was not considered a horrific fate. Ancient Greeks and Romans constantly feared slave rebellions, and those captured in battle and sold into slavery generally did not think of themselves as "second-class citizens". Even house slaves could be abused and there are documented stories of Roman citizens being murdered by their house slaves. I also cannot find any examples of individuals voluntarily choosing slavery in Greece or Rome. Plenty of examples of Roman citizens entering serfdom due to debt, but not choosing slavery because they saw that as an improvement. 

3. I did find one example of voluntary servitude - specifically, the devsirme of the Ottoman System. Slaves under this system were drawn only from the Balkans, these slaves were the property of the Sultan alone, were converted (voluntarily or not) to Islam, and trained either for Janissary military units or the palace central administration. Devsirme recruits started at the bottom and were promoted based on talent and performance. Though legally slaves, this seems closer to a caste system, similar to the administrators of Confucian China. The primary reason for this system was to protect the Sultan from rebellion - these slaves were completely dependent on the Sultan for their livelihood and rewards, and therefore (for a time) showed considerable loyalty. Of course, as time went on, the Janissaries became kingmakers, dominating the later Sultans, which begs the question how much like slaves they really were...

If one wants to have a campaign that's a bit different, adding something like the devsirme would accomplish that. But given our modern views toward slavery, and the historical reality that the vast majority of slaves were in no way better off enslaved vs. free, I wouldn't recommend it. One could accomplish much the same by using Byzantine eunuchs as a template. (Eunuchs were considered safe in positions of power because they couldn't father a rival dynasty. However, many eunuchs still felt considerable loyalty to their families, and more than one eunuch attempted to place a relative on the throne, so it's not a foolproof option for a cautious emperor.)


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## VelvetViolet (Mar 21, 2014)

When fantasy settings do bring up slavery, it's unambiguously evil. It also completely ignores the fact that within the setting itself there are far easier methods of getting field work done than enslaving people. Wizards who can mass summon extraplanar creatures and mass produce golems have existed for thousands of years and are a dime a dozen. If slaves do exist in a fantasy setting, it shouldn't be for soul-crushing manual labor when the setting has those things.

EDIT: A relevant article can be read here. It's about slavery and Pokemon (aka cockfighting seizure monsters).


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## Nagol (Mar 21, 2014)

Raneth said:


> Thank you for your input. I've adjusted the OP to compensate.
> 
> Yes, I am looking for a model of society that treats slaves more humanely in order to challenge the philosophical and moral beliefs of the typical liberal democrat adventurer.
> 
> ...




Slaves are cheaper than magical constructs (much cheaper -- look at the cost of a single flesh golem!) -- mass production is typically beyond the capacity of presented magic. 

Similarly, negative reinforcement is cheaper than getting spells / magic items to enforce compliance.



My last campaign had a variety of slavery/indentured servant types that ran the gamut.

The typical nation had slavery, but everyone is born free.  Typically slaves are criminals or prisoners of war for whom ransom was not paid.  Though their treatment varied dramatically with the owner, the cultural norm is slaves can buy or win their freedom and expect sufficient food and care.  

The evil empire had a typically dark and horrific version of slavery and serfdom.

A shard of the empire that split in a civil war tempered many of the excesses of slavery.  Slaves could be freed at their master's whim, but there were fewer cultural expectations regarding freedom and care unlike the typical nation, above.

A very Lawful and somewhat Good society rented convicts out as part of their penance to society.  Those whom took advantage of the labour had to care for and account for their charge's well-being with periodic checks to verify health and status being performed by the state.  The service was up when (i) the sentence completed, (ii) the renter returned the servant, (iii) the servant requested the return through the check ups, or (iv) the state detected negligence or mistreatment.  Since the punishment is mistreatment is the renter is forced into indentured servitude to pay for the harmed servant's injury, it was rarely a problem.  A servant who was problematic was returned to the state who added a charge to the servant's account for the trouble.

The northern barbarians occasionally had criminals and prisoners of war work for their captors, but that is more for survival of the group than entrenched slavery.


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## GSHamster (Mar 22, 2014)

I think an "indentured servitude" model might work better than outright slavery. Especially if the indenture is because of debt or crime incurred by the individual.

Along those lines, the _gai'shain_ in the Wheel of Time can be considered a model of benign slavery. (http://wot.wikia.com/wiki/Gai'shain).


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## Grue (Mar 22, 2014)

Raneth said:


> When fantasy settings do bring up slavery, it's unambiguously evil. It also completely ignores the fact that within the setting itself there are far easier methods of getting field work done than enslaving people. Wizards who can mass summon extraplanar creatures and mass produce golems have existed for thousands of years and are a dime a dozen. If slaves do exist in a fantasy setting, it shouldn't be for soul-crushing manual labor when the setting has those things.
> 
> EDIT: A relevant article can be read here. It's about slavery and Pokemon (aka cockfighting seizure monsters).




Seems to be a bit of cart before the horse thinking here... I'm assuming this is a world building thought exercise.  Slavery exists(ed) for economic reasons, not as a moral test or some sort of cultural need as a social measuring stick.  Other posters have covered why the economics of magic would not negate the utility of slavery in a baseline fantasy setting... making golems or spending money on binding is not cheap.  On the filip side using extraordinary magical means to manage and control slaves doesn't fit well for a non-magictech fantasy setting... the lash and the collar are far cheaper tried and true methods  (considering the magical training and infrastructure involved).  If the economic incentive isn't there the other stuff has no reason to exist.

It's not a pretty institution... I've seen (and used) it both as a major element in something like an Al Qadim setting or just as a background bit of fluff for ancient world style empires.  I'm not going to give a hard time to Paladins who don't go to extraordinary means about slavery in their native society (that accepts the institution as a cultural norm and totally economically dependent on it for generations... as long as they uphold their moral code even when dealing with slaves), but I will slap them around a bit if they don't take an opportunity to help slaves from the nearby Orc empire (who use their slaves as both a labor pool and food source).

The reason it is an unambigously evil institution because it is ownership of another person and their legal status is no more important than the master's favorite horse (at best).  Servus non habet personam (A slave has no persona ... is not a person).  We take laws and rights for granted in our modern era but there were ancients who saw the institution as morally wrong as well.


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## VelvetViolet (Mar 22, 2014)

Nagol said:


> Slaves are cheaper than magical constructs (much cheaper -- look at the cost of a single flesh golem!) -- mass production is typically beyond the capacity of presented magic.
> 
> Similarly, negative reinforcement is cheaper than getting spells / magic items to enforce compliance.



Frank Trollman, Pun-Pun and plenty of others have pretty much debunked that type of thinking as short-sightedly unrealistic. In most non-D&D-derived fantasy fiction, any wizard above 6th-level is the in-universe equivalent of Superman. In most D&D fantasy campaign settings you have hundreds of 20th-level wizards (who are the equivalent of Doctor Fate, Doctor Strange, and _Kriemhild Gretchen_ in terms of sheer world-altering/destroying power) running around one planet and yet the technology level and standard of living stays exactly the same for tens of thousands of years. Fantasy campaign settings are kept in artificial, sanitized renaissance  fair conditions, rather than becoming a magical version of _Transhuman Space_/_Eclipse Phase_/_AT-43_/_Warhammer 40,000_ on steroids, solely because of author fiat.


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## Grue (Mar 22, 2014)

Raneth said:


> Frank Trollman, Pun-Pun and plenty of others have pretty much debunked that type of thinking as short-sightedly unrealistic. In most non-D&D-derived fantasy fiction, any wizard above 6th-level is the in-universe equivalent of Superman. In most D&D fantasy campaign settings you have hundreds of 20th-level wizards (who are the equivalent of Doctor Fate, Doctor Strange, and _Kriemhild Gretchen_ in terms of sheer world-altering/destroying power) running around one planet and yet the technology level and standard of living stays exactly the same for tens of thousands of years. Fantasy campaign settings are kept in artificial, sanitized renaissance  fair conditions, rather than becoming a magical version of _Transhuman Space_/_Eclipse Phase_/_AT-43_/_Warhammer 40,000_ on steroids, solely because of author fiat.




20th level wizards have concerns other than the betterment of their fellow man (or demi-human, humanoid, thing).  A few hundred wizards does not a economy of scale make.  Lots of things go into an industrial revolution and a technological base replicable by tiny handful of the population (who are busy killing monsters and each other) is a choke point for stasis and not progress...  

As far a 'stuck in renaissance' level tech levels... we're used to fairly quick technologically progress in our lifetimes but that was never the historical experience of our ancestors.  I suspect he majority of the fantasy rpg market isn't particularly interested in playing stone age D&D or eclipse phase transhuman D&D and that has more to do with setting expectations of fantasy escapism than any poorly thought out author fiat.


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## Croesus (Mar 22, 2014)

Raneth said:


> Frank Trollman, Pun-Pun and plenty of others have pretty much debunked that type of thinking as short-sightedly unrealistic. In most non-D&D-derived fantasy fiction, any wizard above 6th-level is the in-universe equivalent of Superman. In most D&D fantasy campaign settings you have hundreds of 20th-level wizards (who are the equivalent of Doctor Fate, Doctor Strange, and _Kriemhild Gretchen_ in terms of sheer world-altering/destroying power) running around one planet and yet the technology level and standard of living stays exactly the same for tens of thousands of years. Fantasy campaign settings are kept in artificial, sanitized renaissance  fair conditions, rather than becoming a magical version of _Transhuman Space_/_Eclipse Phase_/_AT-43_/_Warhammer 40,000_ on steroids, solely because of author fiat.




You're once again making a broad generalization about campaigns which I don't believe is backed by any data. As a single data point, I've never played in a campaign where "you have hundreds of 20th-level wizards". I can't think of a single published campaign that made such a statement, though perhaps some exist.

And even if magic is so prevalent, it won't necessarily replace mundane means. A real world example: We possess the technology to replace virtually all electrical power generation with solar cells. So why haven't we done so? Because it would be prohibitively expensive, and because any current industry that would be displaced would use its economic and political power to preserve its current status. Simply because something can be done does not guarantee that it will be done.

If your point is that it is _possible_ to design a hi-tech campaign using magic as technology, I agree. If your point is that it would be _possible_ to design such a campaign with a form of relatively benign slavery, I again agree. However, I'm not at all convinced that such elements are automatic in a fantasy or D&D campaign. And given the cruelty common to slavery throughout human history, I think running a campaign with that element would likely be more trouble than its worth. YMMV.


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## Nagol (Mar 22, 2014)

Raneth said:


> Frank Trollman, Pun-Pun and plenty of others have pretty much debunked that type of thinking as short-sightedly unrealistic. In most non-D&D-derived fantasy fiction, any wizard above 6th-level is the in-universe equivalent of Superman. In most D&D fantasy campaign settings you have hundreds of 20th-level wizards (who are the equivalent of Doctor Fate, Doctor Strange, and _Kriemhild Gretchen_ in terms of sheer world-altering/destroying power) running around one planet and yet the technology level and standard of living stays exactly the same for tens of thousands of years. Fantasy campaign settings are kept in artificial, sanitized renaissance  fair conditions, rather than becoming a magical version of _Transhuman Space_/_Eclipse Phase_/_AT-43_/_Warhammer 40,000_ on steroids, solely because of author fiat.




Optimisation artefacts like Pun-pun aside, there is precious little in D&D that alters society on a macro scale outside of low-level clerical magic (which should have a massive impact).

So you have a ratio of a few hundred really powerful people and millions of normals.  What happens?  Do the super-beings work selflessly to raise the rest or do they fight amongst themselves, attend their own whims, or otherwise ignore the mass of humanity?  How much effort does the typical super-being put into building up society _and then maintaining that advancement_ against loss or subversion?

The normals do not need the super-beings to continue society; the super-beings literally need nothing from the normals.  And the costs to build magical replacements still exist.  A flesh golems costs over 10,000 gp to create in 3.X _and takes a month where the super-being isn't working on something else_.  12 per year from dedicated effort is hardly mass-production.  How many people can be maintained in servitude for that price?  How many golems will the super-beings churn out to better society because they feel like it?  How many are needed just for periodic replacement?


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## VelvetViolet (Mar 22, 2014)

20th-level wizards are reality warpers whose power is limited only by what spells they know. There exist a virtually infinite number of spells that can do pretty much anything imaginable. New spells have to come from somewhere. There's probably a spell to instantly create golems, or speed up time so that construction takes only a few seconds, or a spell to turn dirt into gold, etc. If wizards can create new kinds of monsters, then it should be possible  to create living, self-replicating factories that churn out golems. Von Neumann machines, grey goo, etc. There's also _Wish_, which can duplicate the effects of all lower-level spells. When you get into epic levels then everything pretty much goes out the window.

Furthermore, 20th-level wizards have literally superhuman intelligence and probably think much differently than we do. Do you honestly believe that someone as smart or smarter than the smartest people who ever lived on Earth, who can use magic with purely arbitrary limitations, is not going to actually use their vast intelligence to dramatically alter the world around them forever and will just go on pointless adventures where they kill monsters and loot corpses? Much as with Seed AIs modifying their own code and find ways to circumvent any and all laws imposed upon them by their programmers, that wizard is going to find ways around the laws of magic and will optimize in order to make reality their playground.

Even going by the much more limited magic in _Harry Potter_ (though SpaceBattles has optimized the heck out of that to build flying battle fortresses), any sufficiently intelligent person can still create a world where no one can trust their perception of reality.


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## Celebrim (Mar 22, 2014)

Raneth said:


> Frank Trollman, Pun-Pun and plenty of others...




None of which exist or even could exist in my setting.  Few games allow the full breadth of broken material necessary to pull off those sort of things.



> ...have pretty much debunked that type of thinking as short-sightedly unrealistic. In most non-D&D-derived fantasy fiction, any wizard above 6th-level is the in-universe equivalent of Superman. In most D&D fantasy campaign settings you have hundreds of 20th-level wizards (who are the equivalent of Doctor Fate, Doctor Strange, and _Kriemhild Gretchen_ in terms of sheer world-altering/destroying power) running around one planet and yet the technology level and standard of living stays exactly the same for tens of thousands of years.




You keep spouting off generalities like that with no real facts to back them up.  

My homebrew world of Korrel has so far as I know exactly 3 20th+ level wizards on the whole planet - the Lord of Dee, the Master of the Mystic Isle, and the Head of the Provost Council.   The first one lives in a tower and no one has seen anything from him but his spells in 300 years, the second lives on an isle that is said to be intangible to all those he doesn't want is visitors and is surrounded by a perpetual magic fog and he's scarcely less often seen, and the third is a lich that never leaves the University catacombs and spends most of his time slowly decaying and torpid.  My current campaign features a bad guy who is a 17th level wizard - Keeropus the Many Hearted.  He's the first Archmage that's been seen in the east of Sartha (think Asia) in 80 years, since Halivar of the Many Colors died.  In the nation of Amalteen that the PC's just left, the highest level character in the whole nation (100,000+ citizens) was 10th level.  The nation they've just journeyed to, mighty Talernga, the Pearl of the Storm Coast, one of the greatest city states on the whole planet, after the bad guy, the two highest level characters are 14th level.  One is a 70 year old human priestess of the God of Beauty who has no physical stat above 6 and ~30 hit points, and the other is a 700 year old Elven expert who is the kings' mayor of the palace.  

We've been playing for almost 4 years IRL now, and the PC's are 6th level.   During that time I've had 8 or 9 PC deaths.  Only one PC has survived to this point from the original party of 6 1st level characters.  The world is just not covered up with high level characters.   In fact, in my game, the 6th level PC party constitutes high level characters, and none of them have the ability to craft anything fancier than a smoke grenade.



> Fantasy campaign settings are kept in artificial, sanitized renaissance  fair conditions, rather than becoming a magical version of _Transhuman Space_/_Eclipse Phase_/_AT-43_/_Warhammer 40,000_ on steroids, solely because of author fiat.




About 5000 years ago, in the age of the Art Mages, the Time of Wonders, there were hundreds of 20th level characters.  It looked roughly like magic powered science fiction, I'm sure.  The beginning of this campaign involved the bad guys accidently setting of a malfunctioning 'mass driver' and unleashing a tsunami that devastated half the country.  Anyway, as often happens the humans decided they wanted to usurp the heavens (and the hells for that matter) from the Gods.  The resulting war - the Iconoclasm - devastated Heaven and Earth (in the Hells, you couldn't really tell the difference).  In a desperate bid to win the war, the leaders of the Art Mages create the Apocolapse Word of Power (Power Word: Planet Killer) and threatened to use it.  The gods called their bluff; they weren't bluffing.  To prevent them from speaking it on Korrel and destroying what the unknown creator had made (none of the gods have the power to make the world), at the moment the word was to be spoken the united gods ripped a continent off the planet and hurled it in to the Astral Plane.

Since that time, both the gods and the surviving mortals have a rather skeptical view of magic in the hands of mortals.  In many parts of the world, sorcerers are killed as children.  Those that survive are treated as monsters.  Bards are little better off, but only because they've hidden themselves away in secret colleges so well that 'spell singing' is widely regarded by most right thinking wizards as being merely a myth.   Shamans are generally burned as witches in most human lands and must survive on the sufferance of their local community.  One bad crop, and they'll likely to find torches and pitchforks at their door.  In all parts of the world, wizards must make their presence known to magistrates or face prosecution as witches.   The clerics and champions of the gods vigorously seek out those that might be practicing the dark arts, and any mage that gets close to learning the secrets of art magic may well find the gods personally arranging his death.   For this reason, most high level mages become strict recluses, figuring that as long as they don't intervene in mortals daily affairs, the gods will tolerate their personal quests.  

All this happened because of author fiat, it's true.  But don't tell me that Korrel maintains a fairly low tech level as a result of me handwaving away the implications of the setting.


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## VelvetViolet (Mar 22, 2014)

We're getting off topic fast.

Anyway, I find it highly unlikely that no one in the infinite multiverse  has figured out how to cheaply, quickly, and efficiently mass produce  constructs to perform all menial labor. It stands to reason that this technology fell  into the hands of a proud warrior race that considers it dishonorable to  harm the weak, those who cannot defend themselves and those who are  unworthy opponents, and this proud warrior race also practices slavery (all of which perfectly describes the _non-heretical_ worshipers of the Warhammer god Khorne, who is big on honor). Because said race  considers it dishonorable to harm the weak, they wouldn't be treating  their slaves like dirt. Once they transition to all-construct labor, the  slaves would be free to move entirely into the much less soul-crushing  service and maintenance industry. And bam, you have a society with  slavery that doesn't automatically imply horrific abuse of the slaves.

Of  course if I'm feeling lazy I could use a form of slavery based on  pokemon, where the slave race are immortal god-like monstrosities that could  effortlessly turn their slavers into chunky salsa with a mere thought  but serve them out of a bizarre biological need to serve. The only thing keeping them from literally blowing up the planet is that the slavers do not understand the concept of combat that isn't friendly cockfighting between their slaves.


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## Obryn (Mar 22, 2014)

I for one play D&D to do some heroic stuff, so I'm perfectly happy there's no in-depth discussion of the finer nuances of the ownership of other sentient beings in most published settings. YMMV, of course, but I'm firmly in the "owning people is bad and fighting slavers is a good time" camp. 

I'm sure there's plenty of homebrew and small publisher stuff that fills that niche, if that's what floats your boat.


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## Zardnaar (Mar 22, 2014)

Mulhorrand (sp?) in the Realms was a neo Egyptian theocracy and the primary LG church/head of pantheons duties included tending to the slaves. Slaves were not treated very well in ancient times but neither were the citizens either in most cases. The Mameluks are a real life example of a slave caste that ends up ruling and they were elite troops that defeated the Mongols.


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## steelsteve (Mar 22, 2014)

Raneth said:


> Most fantasy campaign settings, when they bring up the issue of slavery at all (which is typically only as an offhand mention in the descriptions of evil races like drow and goblins), use the field slave/serfdom model of slavery where the slaves are are treated horrifically, being regularly worked to death, casually beaten, raped or murdered.
> 
> The institution of slavery has existed throughout history all over the world and in many different forms. Most pertinent to this discussion, however, is the institution of slavery in the Roman Empire and Ancient Egypt. In that context, HOUSE slaves (not FIELD slaves, which were treated the same way they were in the American South) actually had rights and were more akin to second-class citizens than what most modern persons would consider slaves. Being a house slave would actually give a person a better standard of living than many peasants and many foreigners in the Empire willingly (and pragmatically) sold themselves into slavery because it would give them an economic advantage until they became free men.
> 
> ...




Here's a cool one that i'd like to explore. Elves always hide because their reproduction rate is slower than anything, what if they produce half-elves for the purpose of a serf caste? All half-elves in a nation are third class citizens while  outsiders are considered to be second class with some rights, and any elf are considered to be noblility by default. Surely there's something able to be done with this right?


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## Scorpio616 (Mar 22, 2014)

Given how many PCs treat the people they hire like pack mules, disposable shields and monster snackrifices, it probably would be even WORSE if the actually OWNED the poor souls. This alone is a good reason NOT to have slaves readily available.


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## ExploderWizard (Mar 22, 2014)

I think a a system of state sponsored indentured servitude could work in a setting without pulling the pin on any paladin who wanders by. All indentured servants would be regulated by the government and in service to the state, that would then rent their labor to private businessmen. Each indentured servant would work at a pay rate determined  by their level of job skills until the debt is paid. Indentured servants could be criminals paying for their crimes through labor or regular citizens using their work as collateral for a loan.


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## Majoru Oakheart (Mar 22, 2014)

I know that in the early years of Living Greyhawk based on some information in the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer, the country of Ket was one of the few non-evil countries on Oerth to practice slavery.  Slavers are fairly common in Greyhawk but they are evil, mistreat their slaves and are always used as the villains.  Ket, on the other hand, is an extremely Lawful Neutral country that practiced Indentured Servitude for financial debts and also reserved Slavery as punishment for horrible crimes.  Ket did not believe in the death penalty so murder was punished by a Lifetime of Slavery in the silver mines.

Though the issue of slavery was brought up as a concern by players who felt uncomfortable at the idea of slavery and the fact that this was happening was downplayed and barely mentioned after the first couple of years of the campaign in order to avoid issues.


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## Bluenose (Mar 22, 2014)

Raneth said:


> Thank you for your input. I've adjusted the OP to compensate.
> 
> Yes, I am looking for a model of society that treats slaves more humanely in order to challenge the philosophical and moral beliefs of the typical adventurer.




Depending on how you're defining slavery, there are models that include slave soldiers in which those soldiers can rise to high positions in the government while remianing slaves. At least one - Mamluk Egypt - existed where if you weren't a slave you could never have the highest ranks. There's others where temporary slavery is a feature, where defeated warriors would become the "slaves" of the victors. This was supposed to encourage their families to come up with a ransom promptly.


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## the Jester (Mar 22, 2014)

Sorry- long post here, mostly disputing others. I'm not trying to be a jerk, but many of the arguments in this thread seem overly simplistic or to rely on assumptions that the game just doesn't support. Moreover, it seems like there's at least as much "Why would you do that? Don't do that" as actual addressing of the OP's question about alternatives to the harsh version of slavery that most modern depictions show.

For clarity, I agree that slavery as we usually think of it is absolutely reprehensible, and being enslaved is a terrible thing, no matter the style of slavery. But I don't think it is nearly as unambiguous as some of you claim.



Raneth said:


> When fantasy settings do bring up slavery, it's unambiguously evil. It also completely ignores the fact that within the setting itself there are far easier methods of getting field work done than enslaving people. Wizards who can mass summon extraplanar creatures and mass produce golems have existed for thousands of years and are a dime a dozen.




I think you're making a lot of setting assumptions here.

Let's talk about one possible origin of slaves: as prisoners of war. Slavery arose, in some ancient cultures, because there was enough food to leave your POWs alive. Otherwise... you kill them. 

"Better to die on your feet" stuff aside, which is worse for a guy whose tribe has been crushed- being executed along with his family, or being kept alive and fed in return for hard labor for life? Most important to the equation is the kids; the POW might be willing to do just about anything to keep his family alive.

So, in the right setting, slavery need not be unambiguously evil; in fact, I've used it in exactly that way before. The good-aligned, more merciful people in such a society take slaves _to avoid unnecessary slaughter of innocents._ 

As to high-level wizards being "a dime a dozen", outside of the Forgotten Realms, they sure don't seem to be all that common to me! Greyhawk has maybe a dozen or so at a time, most wrapped up in their own affairs. Eberron npcs are very rare above about 6th or 8th level. In my own campaign, if there's a wizard powerful enough to cast a 9th level spell on the same continent as you, pretty much everyone knows it- such a powerful spellcaster is rare, indeed.

So I have to say, your "dime a dozen" argument really doesn't hold water.



Grue said:


> The reason it is an unambigously evil institution because it is ownership of another person and their legal status is no more important than the master's favorite horse (at best).  Servus non habet personam (A slave has no persona ... is not a person).  We take laws and rights for granted in our modern era but there were ancients who saw the institution as morally wrong as well.




This is a huge assumption that relies on a version of slavery where the slave is no more valuable than the master's favorite horse. Again, there are serious assumptions about the nature of the campaign world tied up in this. What about criminals enslaved for their crimes and forced to work the fields to feed the rest of society? What about a system of slavery where the slaves have rights (including the right to own slaves of their own!) and privileges and are well-treated, but are technically property of a family or estate that has owned theirs for generations in a system that has shown gradual improvement in their treatment until the 'slaves' have almost every right that their 'masters' have?

Let's not oversimplify, especially in a thread whose whole purpose is to explore the possible complexities of the topic for worldbuilding purposes. 



Raneth said:


> 20th-level wizards are reality warpers whose power is limited only by what spells they know. There exist a virtually infinite number of spells that can do pretty much anything imaginable. New spells have to come from somewhere. There's probably a spell to instantly create golems, or speed up time so that construction takes only a few seconds, or a spell to turn dirt into gold, etc.




There are, at least to the best of my knowledge, no spells in official sources that do anything you want. Even _wish_ has limits.

I've yet to see a spell for making permanent laborers, short of _animate dead_ (which comes with its own problems). It's fine to assume that such a spell must be out there somewhere _in your campaign_, but in many settings, magic has proscribed limits. A really common one (for purposes of balance) is "no eliminating massive costs in money and time for magical work". In fact, in the Epic Level Handbook for 3e, adding time and money is a way to make spells less difficult to cast at epic levels. 

So while you might be able to research an epic spell to instabuild a six-pack of golem laborers, you're going to need a 40th level wizard to cast it, you're going to have to convince him to create it (at great cost in time, money and xp), then to cast it, then to cast it _over and over again_ until he's replaced... how many laborers, exactly? 

While you seem to think in terms of settings being implicitly high-magic, I think a close look will reveal that most published settings are actually fairly low-magic (excepting the FR and admitting Eberron as an odd case of prevalent magic with few high-level npcs to create it). It's not a safe assumption that you can find "Instant Golem" spells in most campaigns, and even if you could, there is a tremendous logistical issue with getting them to the fields, keeping them on task, etc.



Raneth said:


> If wizards can create new kinds of monsters, then it should be possible  to create living, self-replicating factories that churn out golems. Von Neumann machines, grey goo, etc.




Why? Says whom? 



Raneth said:


> There's also _Wish_, which can duplicate the effects of all lower-level spells. When you get into epic levels then everything pretty much goes out the window.




First a quibble- _wish_ cannot duplicate all lower-level spells, just most of them. You won't be able to ape an 8th level cleric spell (at least in 3e). 

But about the epic stuff, sure- you can literally do anything. So just how many epic level wizards are there in an average milieu? How many of them are going to spend years and millions of gps and xps to build better farming tools?



Raneth said:


> Furthermore, 20th-level wizards have literally superhuman intelligence and probably think much differently than we do. Do you honestly believe that someone as smart or smarter than the smartest people who ever lived on Earth, who can use magic with purely arbitrary limitations, is not going to actually use their vast intelligence to dramatically alter the world around them forever and will just go on pointless adventures where they kill monsters and loot corpses?




That's a pretty specious argument. I don't think anyone's arguing that epic level pcs just go kill things and take their loot. 

However, I think that's far more likely than that they spend all their hard-earned resources working to change the economy of one country or another. For one thing, _a country is too small of a matter for epic-level pcs to really care about._ At least in most cases that I've seen, run or played, epic-level pcs are busy negotiating with gods and arch-devils, constantly moving from one world or plane to another, are fending off attacks from their archfoes, etc.

Frankly, epic-level pcs typically have more important things to do than worry about slavery.

Now, I'll totally grant that I am inserting a lot of setting assumptions into this argument about epic-level pcs, but they're arguments that arise from the rules rather than being arguments that rely on a certain interpretation of setting that seems contraindicated by both existing examples (e.g. the number of epic-level npcs on most published worlds) and the rules themselves (e.g. demographics in the 3e DMG clearly show that there aren't many, if any, epic npcs to be found in the typical world). 



Raneth said:


> Much as with Seed AIs modifying their own code and find ways to circumvent any and all laws imposed upon them by their programmers, that wizard is going to find ways around the laws of magic and will optimize in order to make reality their playground.




Magic is explicitly not science. It may simply not be possible to do this. And even if it is (in a given campaign), realize that your argument here boils down to "Well, even if the rules say you can't, sure you can!"


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## Grue (Mar 22, 2014)

the Jester said:


> This is a huge assumption that relies on a version of slavery where the slave is no more valuable than the master's favorite horse. Again, there are serious assumptions about the nature of the campaign world tied up in this. What about criminals enslaved for their crimes and forced to work the fields to feed the rest of society? What about a system of slavery where the slaves have rights (including the right to own slaves of their own!) and privileges and are well-treated, but are technically property of a family or estate that has owned theirs for generations in a system that has shown gradual improvement in their treatment until the 'slaves' have almost every right that their 'masters' have?
> 
> Let's not oversimplify, especially in a thread whose whole purpose is to explore the possible complexities of the topic for worldbuilding purposes.




Key word- *Legally*.  No matter how many rights and privileges a slave is granted they legally do not own their own body no matter how well they are treated or what privileges and traditions their owners, state, or extra-legal religious institutions grant them in any de facto historical case of slavery I can think of.  If they do own their body they are not 'slaves' but something else... serfs, conscripts, or some other form of peonage... while those could be considered latter forms of slavery it's pretty clear the OP is looking at classic world chattel slavery.  While I'm not a fan of moral relativism, if part of a PCs philosophy is anything along the lines that all sapients are some sort of manifestation of the same universal spirit (such as with the Stoics in the ancient world), then they are by nature equal and slavery is an unambiguously evil institution.

Even if the State has restrictions on what you can do with a slave it's more more of a case of protecting civil harmony and prevention of depriving the state of labor...the slave still does not own their body and is just subject to a higher level 'owner' (the State as ultimate master).  It's not about a slave's inalienable right, just a rule governing property.  

On a world building side of things, Good would oppose the ill-treatment of slaves if it could not be undermined or opposed openly.

Unambiguously evil or not, it doesn't really matter for world building purposes but as far as the baseline assumptions of D&D alignment system a slave owning society is not Good.  Granted, it might be interesting to see how PCs would react if only certain races like kobolds could be legally taken and kept as slaves.


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## Argyle King (Mar 22, 2014)

I'm not sure if this offers anything useful to the conversation at the campaign setting level, but I have had societies in my games (and vastly prefer it to me this way) where morality wasn't strictly black/white.


As it pertains to slavery, there was one case in which a player decided to kill an aristocrat who owned slaves.  Rather than the gratitude the player assumed he would get, he was met with some amount of resentment.  One slave in particular was upset because life under the rich aristocrat was fairly good; now, without the resources of that aristocrat, he (the slave) was on his own.  Certainly, some of the (now dead) aristocrat's slaves did flee and make a break for freedom, but there wasn't what I'd say was a unified opinion and set of actions.  

Later, in the same campaign, the player who murderer the aristocrat was hunted by the authorities; the slave who was upset about the death of the master turned him in.


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## ExploderWizard (Mar 23, 2014)

the Jester said:


> So, in the right setting, slavery need not be unambiguously evil; in fact, I've used it in exactly that way before. The good-aligned, more merciful people in such a society take slaves _to avoid unnecessary slaughter of innocents._




This is a classic case of the evil conquerer thinking that he is the good guy. 

If they were a good aligned and merciful people then they wouldn't be making war on their neighbors and putting them in a position where its either slavery or death. Conquering another group of people and killing or enslaving them is an evil act. One can rationalize and say that sparing lives is indeed more merciful but not without consideration of the agression that got things to that point in the first place. 

So saying, hey we _are _going to invade, and we _will _take your lands by force. You can die or become our slaves what say you?  That isn't really being merciful.


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## the Jester (Mar 23, 2014)

ExploderWizard said:


> This is a classic case of the evil conquerer thinking that he is the good guy.
> 
> If they were a good aligned and merciful people then they wouldn't be making war on their neighbors and putting them in a position where its either slavery or death. Conquering another group of people and killing or enslaving them is an evil act. One can rationalize and say that sparing lives is indeed more merciful but not without consideration of the agression that got things to that point in the first place.
> 
> So saying, hey we _are _going to invade, and we _will _take your lands by force. You can die or become our slaves what say you?  That isn't really being merciful.




Here's a scenario for you:

One tribe or group of people is forced to leave their ancestral lands due to a shift in the local climate; water and food are simply no longer available in sufficient amounts to support their population.

This tribe (let's call 'em tribe A) moves into the nearest lands where there is food and water, but there are already people living there, so- much as you describe- they say, "Hey, we're moving in and taking over!"

But the people living there already- tribe B, we'll call 'em- say, "We're defending ourselves!" 

In the ensuing conflict, tribe B wins. And has prisoners of war. And has to decide what to do with them- kill them, let them have what they wanted in the first place or find some compromise where the POWs live but don't just get to walk away after killing a bunch of the tribe. Maybe make them make up for what they've done somehow- make restitution. 

Sounds a lot like justice... and one viable option for a tribal society with no tradition of jail or imprisonment in this situation is to enslave tribe A.


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## Majoru Oakheart (Mar 23, 2014)

the Jester said:


> In the ensuing conflict, tribe B wins. And has prisoners of war. And has to decide what to do with them- kill them, let them have what they wanted in the first place or find some compromise where the POWs live but don't just get to walk away after killing a bunch of the tribe. Maybe make them make up for what they've done somehow- make restitution.
> 
> Sounds a lot like justice... and one viable option for a tribal society with no tradition of jail or imprisonment in this situation is to enslave tribe A.



Maybe, but one thinks there would be other options.  I mean, they did win.  Tribe A has been defeated.  Why not let them go in peace after they lost?  After all, they are likely to die without food or water in the wilderness anyways.  I mean, in real life if POWs are captured during an attack, they are either sentenced for crimes, traded back to the original countries for POWs of their own or eventually let go.  After all, you can't hold every member of an army responsible for an attack on you.

Not sure I understand the provision on "no tradition of jail or imprisonment".  That's like saying "What if there was a society with no tradition of jail, imprisonment, slavery, or mercy?  Wouldn't that mean the only option is to kill all of their enemies?"  Just because they don't have a tradition of jail or imprisonment doesn't mean that isn't an option still.

It sounds like this is simply justification to enslave your enemies by saying "sorry, we don't believe in the other options".  The reason you don't believe in the other options, however, is that you are evil.


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## N'raac (Mar 23, 2014)

Majoru Oakheart said:


> Maybe, but one thinks there would be other options.  I mean, they did win.  Tribe A has been defeated.  Why not let them go in peace after they lost?  After all,* they are likely to die *without food or water in the wilderness anyways.  I mean, in real life if POWs are captured during an attack, they are either sentenced for crimes, traded back to the original countries for POWs of their own or eventually let go.  After all, you can't hold every member of an army responsible for an attack on you.




Emphasis added.  Is it merciful/good that we let them starve?  "Well, I didn't pull the trigger" makes it OK?  

I think one reason many alignment-type discussions get uncomfortable is that it shines a spotlight on areas where "in real life" compromises ideals and Good for pragmatism and expediency.



Majoru Oakheart said:


> Not sure I understand the provision on "no tradition of jail or imprisonment".  That's like saying "What if there was a society with no tradition of jail, imprisonment, slavery, or mercy?  Wouldn't that mean the only option is to kill all of their enemies?"  Just because they don't have a tradition of jail or imprisonment doesn't mean that isn't an option still.
> 
> It sounds like this is simply justification to enslave your enemies by saying "sorry, we don't believe in the other options".  The reason you don't believe in the other options, however, is that you are evil.




Hard labour is a pretty common component of jail or imprisonment throughout the ages.  Economically, they are getting food, shelter, etc.  Is being forced to produce some of their own necessities, with a surplus they can effectively trade for other necessities, a lot different from the lot of many free people in the society?  Is imprisonment with no labour somehow "more good"?  Aren't we still depriving the prisoners of their basic freedom?We did make war on them to keep what we have.  Would it have been more good to share what we have voluntarily?  What happens when there are simply not enough resources for everyone?  How much must the "good" culture sacrifice their own standard of living to benefit the displaced group before they cross the line and are  no longer expressing "good" behaviour?  That's likely an uncomfortable issue - given we live a pretty good life ("we" who have electricity, internet access, computers, leisure time for RPG's, etc.) compared to a lot of the world.


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## GSHamster (Mar 23, 2014)

N'raac said:


> Hard labour is a pretty common component of jail or imprisonment throughout the ages.  Economically, they are getting food, shelter, etc.  Is being forced to produce some of their own necessities, with a surplus they can effectively trade for other necessities, a lot different from the lot of many free people in the society?  Is imprisonment with no labour somehow "more good"?  Aren't we still depriving the prisoners of their basic freedom?We did make war on them to keep what we have.  Would it have been more good to share what we have voluntarily?  What happens when there are simply not enough resources for everyone?  How much must the "good" culture sacrifice their own standard of living to benefit the displaced group before they cross the line and are  no longer expressing "good" behaviour?  That's likely an uncomfortable issue - given we live a pretty good life ("we" who have electricity, internet access, computers, leisure time for RPG's, etc.) compared to a lot of the world.




To some degree, I think it would depend on what happened to their children. Are the children of these war slaves themselves slaves?


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## gamerprinter (Mar 23, 2014)

Majoru Oakheart said:


> Maybe, but one thinks there would be other options.  I mean, they did win.  Tribe A has been defeated.  Why not let them go in peace after they lost?  After all, they are likely to die without food or water in the wilderness anyways.  I mean, in real life if POWs are captured during an attack, they are either sentenced for crimes, traded back to the original countries for POWs of their own or eventually let go.  After all, you can't hold every member of an army responsible for an attack on you.




What if even though Side B wins, all the farmers of the community have been killed although most of the warriors survived, however, now without some kind of subsistence farmers (slaves) they are doomed to perish. It could have been a Pyrric victory. If both Side A and Side B were clan villages with relatively low economy and technology there might be little facility for trading POWs. Its not holding every member of an army responsible, rather it is holding an army responsible, and the survivors are all that is left of this army, perhaps even their commander was killed. The survivors count as the army.



Majoru Oakheart said:


> Not sure I understand the provision on "no tradition of jail or imprisonment".  That's like saying "What if there was a society with no tradition of jail, imprisonment, slavery, or mercy?  Wouldn't that mean the only option is to kill all of their enemies?"  Just because they don't have a tradition of jail or imprisonment doesn't mean that isn't an option still.




Again, if both Sides were villages and the war was really a grand raid and attempt to takeover. Perhaps there is no caged area, cave or other enclosed facility to hold 'prisoners', all the buildings in the community include individual villager homes, the clan hall and some food storage huts. If side A hopes to have enough food to survive the winter the only way to do so might be agree to forced labor by working Side B's farm fields under duress.



Majoru Oakheart said:


> It sounds like this is simply justification to enslave your enemies by saying "sorry, we don't believe in the other options".  The reason you don't believe in the other options, however, is that you are evil.




I don't believe it is, nor believe that was the point Jester was making. It was only a viable possibility to provide food to survive the winter by both sides in the conflict. It might not have been the only solution, but perhaps the only feasible one due to season and facilities available. Had the war occurred at the start of the growing season instead of towards harvest, other options might have been available and preferrable. Even if it was a bad decision on the part of the winning side, as an option for survival, it doesn't necessarily have to be an evil act. Its always the circumstances that help define what is evil and who is to blame in any given conflict.

It could be argued that every Neolithic/Bronze Age/Iron Age culture, especially the Celts and Vikings, for example, practiced raiding and the taking of cattle and war prisoners as the standard operating procedure for many/most early societies - just as described by Jester and myself regarding these circumstances occurring. Were all Celts and vikings evil as societies, because the taking of human lives as chattle did occur and was a practice for thousands of years by most human society at some time in their history?


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## N'raac (Mar 23, 2014)

GSHamster said:


> To some degree, I think it would depend on what happened to their children. Are the children of these war slaves themselves slaves?




I think this is a good question - is the result slavery through the generations, or indentured servitude of the current generation, who took the actions resulting in the enslavement?  



gamerprinter said:


> It could be argued that every Neolithic/Bronze Age/Iron Age culture, especially the Celts and Vikings, for example, practiced raiding and the taking of cattle and war prisoners as the standard operating procedure for many/most early societies - just as described by Jester and myself regarding these circumstances occurring. Were all Celts and vikings evil as societies, because the taking of human lives as chattle did occur and was a practice for thousands of years by most human society at some time in their history?




Let's turn that around - does the fact that a given practice was the normal practice for some period of human history mean the practice cannot be evil in-game?  Torture was pretty common for much of human history as a means of both interrogation and punishment.  It was common to kill all children of a deposed or defeated monarch to prevent future uprisings.  

I'd also note that "commits one or more evil acts" does not necessarily equal "is evil".  The individual character, or the society as a whole, is not good/evil/neutral based on a single act.


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## VelvetViolet (Mar 23, 2014)

If the concern is about innocent people suffering, then why not just enslave races that are inherently evil like orcs, goblinoids, gnolls, etc? If it's already okay to break into their homes, slaughter them _en masse_, and steal their valuables... then what exactly is the problem with enslaving the walking pieces of garbage so they're actually helping our good societies instead of attacking our villages, killing our men, eating our children and raping our women? These creatures were created by evil gods with evil literally in their DNA. The only thing you can do with them is either kill them or make them do something useful, because if you don't kill them or enslave them or brainwash them with _sanctify the wicked_ they will try to eat you.


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## GSHamster (Mar 23, 2014)

Raneth said:


> If the concern is about innocent people suffering, then why not just enslave races that are inherently evil like orcs, goblinoids, gnolls, etc? If it's already okay to break into their homes, slaughter them _en masse_, and steal their valuables... then what exactly is the problem with enslaving the walking pieces of garbage so they're actually helping our good societies instead of attacking our villages, killing our men, eating our children and raping our women? These creatures were created by evil gods with evil literally in their DNA. The only thing you can do with them is either kill them or make them do something useful, because if you don't kill them or enslave them or brainwash them with _sanctify the wicked_ they will try to eat you.




Because having slaves that are innately impelled to turn on you and eat you is unlikely to end well?

You don't try to put a rabid dog to work, you have to kill it.


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## Olgar Shiverstone (Mar 24, 2014)

I struggle to try to imagine a fantasy society where there's magic sufficient to create and control undead that would bother with slaves.  Undead don't need feeding, upkeep, or security, and aren't going to conspire to overthrow you. (I'm listening to Brandon Sanderson's _Warbreaker_ at the moment, which has a morally-neutral take on undead.)

That said, if you want an alternate model ... how about a society where citizenship (and thus political power) is only earned via service as a slave? Everyone becomes a slave, and stays a slave for life or eventually earns citizenship.  Alternately, you can be a member of society without political rights (e.g no vote, no property ownership), but to earn those political rights you have to earn citizenship by volunteering to serve as a slave for a fixed or indefinite period.  There might be complex legal structures built around the service as a slave, or not, depending upon how involved you want the relationship to be.


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## Zardnaar (Mar 24, 2014)

Olgar Shiverstone said:


> I struggle to try to imagine a fantasy society where there's magic sufficient to create and control undead that would bother with slaves.  Undead don't need feeding, upkeep, or security, and aren't going to conspire to overthrow you. (I'm listening to Brandon Sanderson's _Warbreaker_ at the moment, which has a morally-neutral take on undead.)
> 
> That said, if you want an alternate model ... how about a society where citizenship (and thus political power) is only earned via service as a slave? Everyone becomes a slave, and stays a slave for life or eventually earns citizenship.  Alternately, you can be a member of society without political rights (e.g no vote, no property ownership), but to earn those political rights you have to earn citizenship by volunteering to serve as a slave for a fixed or indefinite period.  There might be complex legal structures built around the service as a slave, or not, depending upon how involved you want the relationship to be.




 Undead as slaves would probably annoy various nature and agriculture based gods. Undead can't tend crops if the powers that be render the soil infertile or manipulate the weather. Hell most sun gods in D&D hate the undead and your lands could have a few gloomy days if the sun god decides to withhold his favor.


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## pemerton (Mar 24, 2014)

I think this is the sort of story element that has an obvious "handle with care" sticker on it.  I have run one campaign in which the presence of slavery was an important plot-point. One of the PCs was a slave who had bought his freedom, and who had two principle motivations: a mostly self-serving desire to become a magistrate; and a mostly altruistic desire to bring the institution of slavery to an end. He had little success in the latter goal, but did manage to run a successful campaign in his wizardly order to prevent it adopting a more exclusive policy towards admissions that would have excluded various candidates for admission on ethnic and status grounds. It was the player who decided to foreground the issue of slavery in the game, though once he had done this I was happy to run with it.

As to whether paladins would be obliged to liberate slaves - this depends on the broader theory of duty and entitlement within which a particular game locates paladins. In a modern superhero game presumably Superman isn't obliged to free all the convicts, because Truth, Justice and the American Way uphold the conclusion that prisoners deserve to be there. Even if Superman knew that a particular prisoner had been wrongly convicted, presumably he would proceed through the normal processes of judicial and executive appeal rather than just break open the jailhouse.

A paladin in a serf- or slave-oriented game presumably could be played in a similar way. There would be some sort of theory of just deserts that explains why most slaves deserve their lot (eg because they are POWs who, having lost a battle, have forfeited their lives to the victors), and even where some slaves are held unjustly presumably we can imagine a paladin who only seeks to liberate them through lawful means (much like Superman and the wrongly convicted prisoner).

If you don't want this sort of somewhat gritty/realistic paladin, then take a leaf out of Tolkien's book: erase all those features of poverty, servitude etc from your fantasy world.


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## Obryn (Mar 24, 2014)

Raneth said:


> If the concern is about innocent people suffering, then why not just enslave races that are inherently evil like orcs, goblinoids, gnolls, etc? If it's already okay to break into their homes, slaughter them _en masse_, and steal their valuables... then what exactly is the problem with enslaving the walking pieces of garbage so they're actually helping our good societies instead of attacking our villages, killing our men, eating our children and raping our women? These creatures were created by evil gods with evil literally in their DNA. The only thing you can do with them is either kill them or make them do something useful, because if you don't kill them or enslave them or brainwash them with _sanctify the wicked_ they will try to eat you.



So you want to take a morally grey stance on slavery, but not one on orcs' free will or lack thereof?


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## ExploderWizard (Mar 24, 2014)

Raneth said:


> If the concern is about innocent people suffering, then why not just enslave races that are inherently evil like orcs, goblinoids, gnolls, etc? If it's already okay to break into their homes, slaughter them _en masse_, and steal their valuables... then what exactly is the problem with enslaving the walking pieces of garbage so they're actually helping our good societies instead of attacking our villages, killing our men, eating our children and raping our women? These creatures were created by evil gods with evil literally in their DNA. The only thing you can do with them is either kill them or make them do something useful, because if you don't kill them or enslave them or brainwash them with _sanctify the wicked_ they will try to eat you.




Ah the old nature vs nurture debate. Who says evil is in their DNA? Their society might be evil from a human veiwpoint but human societies can be that way too. Why can't a humanoid brought up in a human community be good? One of the characters I am playing in an ongoing campaign now is a NG bugbear fighter.  He was raised by human parents and acts very much like a human.

Humans are very tribal and historically have looked on other humans not of their culture as walking pieces of garbage, so it is quite natural for them to look at another sentient species as such. Humanity is every bit as inherently evil as orcs or gnolls. Humans never cease to come up with new justifications for perpetrating violence on one another, yet every tribe or culture will self identify as "the good guys".


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## VelvetViolet (Mar 24, 2014)

My point is, not every society with the institution of slavery is going to be evil gits that abuse their slaves, because the crux of the argument is the suffering of the slaves (which is most of the reason it's considered evil, and less because they aren't being paid). The lawful neutral alignment, being midway between good and evil, would permit the use of slaves (which is not good) but not their abuse (which is evil). Domestic animals are technically slaves, but it's considered horrifically evil to abuse them even though they're _not people_. It stands to reason that a society could exist where intelligent beings can be slaves and yet are still treated with dignity. A society where labor is performed by (cheap) constructs or undead would free slaves from having to perform back-breaking labor (aside from maintaining the workers). In such a society, slaves could be considered a sign of prestige, since the owner is shown to be rich enough to provide for their needs in addition to his own. Heck, the slaves might be allowed to enter government/military positions and own their own slaves if you want to get even more ambiguous.

With enough thought put into the execution, I don't think it's impossible to create a system of slavery that is morally grey.


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## VelvetViolet (Mar 24, 2014)

ExploderWizard said:


> Ah the old nature vs nurture debate. Who says evil is in their DNA? Their society might be evil from a human veiwpoint but human societies can be that way too. Why can't a humanoid brought up in a human community be good? One of the characters I am playing in an ongoing campaign now is a NG bugbear fighter.  He was raised by human parents and acts very much like a human.
> 
> Humans are very tribal and historically have looked on other humans not of their culture as walking pieces of garbage, so it is quite natural for them to look at another sentient species as such. Humanity is every bit as inherently evil as orcs or gnolls. Humans never cease to come up with new justifications for perpetrating violence on one another, yet every tribe or culture will self identify as "the good guys".



That's explicitly not how canon D&D works. D&D is morally black and white, not grey unless you count certain campaign settings where being gray is the point. D&D's black and white morality is also incredibly warped, since "good" is just evil multiplied by negative one. It's considered morally good to do things that would be considered evil in the real world, such as mass murder against communities of evil alignment. D&D morality is cartoonish and revolting.

In LotR, which D&D heavily rips-off, the only reason the good guys are slaughtering orcs in the first place is because the orcs are attacking them. They aren't going on a crusade to conquer Mordor.


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## ExploderWizard (Mar 24, 2014)

Raneth said:


> My point is, not every society with the institution of slavery is going to be evil gits that abuse their slaves, because the crux of the argument is the suffering of the slaves (which is most of the reason it's considered evil, and less because they aren't being paid). The lawful neutral alignment, being midway between good and evil, would permit the use of slaves (which is not good) but not their abuse (which is evil). Domestic animals are technically slaves, but it's considered horrifically evil to abuse them even though they're _not people_. It stands to reason that a society could exist where intelligent beings can be slaves and yet are still treated with dignity. A society where labor is performed by (cheap) constructs or undead would free slaves from having to perform back-breaking labor (aside from maintaining the workers). In such a society, slaves could be considered a sign of prestige, since the owner is shown to be rich enough to provide for their needs in addition to his own. Heck, the slaves might be allowed to enter government/military positions and own their own slaves if you want to get even more ambiguous.
> 
> With enough thought put into the execution, I don't think it's impossible to create a system of slavery that is morally grey.




Umm......no. The act of claiming ownership of a free-willed sentient being is evil. With regard to slavery and other more gruesome alternatives, there can be a situation in which slavery becomes the lesser of two evils, but that doesn't mean it isn't still evil. 

Some circumstances make slavery the least objectionable option. For example the slave/serf farmer. If the serf's lord decides to "free" him by kicking him off of the land then the serf and his family have the option of becoming the slave of another lord, becoming a criminal, or starving to death as a free person. Life as a serf is thus the least horrible of these options but that doesn't mean that it isn't bad.


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## Obryn (Mar 24, 2014)

ExploderWizard said:


> Umm......no. The act of claiming ownership of a free-willed sentient being is evil. With regard to slavery and other more gruesome alternatives, there can be a situation in which slavery becomes the lesser of two evils, but that doesn't mean it isn't still evil.
> 
> Some circumstances make slavery the least objectionable option. For example the slave/serf farmer. If the serf's lord decides to "free" him by kicking him off of the land then the serf and his family have the option of becoming the slave of another lord, becoming a criminal, or starving to death as a free person. Life as a serf is thus the least horrible of these options but that doesn't mean that it isn't bad.



This x100.

Also, D&D alignments cause brain damage.


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## I'm A Banana (Mar 24, 2014)

ExploderWizard said:
			
		

> Umm......no. The act of claiming ownership of a free-willed sentient being is evil. With regard to slavery and other more gruesome alternatives, there can be a situation in which slavery becomes the lesser of two evils, but that doesn't mean it isn't still evil.




I think for me, this is kind of how it plays out.

The idea is that in D&D, "good" is associated with valuing the autonomous personhood of another. Forcing someone into any act against their will is "not good." 

Making someone legally bound to obey your commands is "not good," regardless of how well you treat them and how nice you are to their families and how many "outs"  you give them. 

It doesn't have to be cartoonishly evil, of course, but the very principle upon which slavery is based: "you can own people," violates the typical D&D Good-alignment tenet of "lives -- and the choices people make with them -- are precious and sacred." Evil isn't just cartoonish. It's often banal, even utilitarian. 

In D&D, "evil" is typically associated with the idea of disregarding that sacredness for life and the choices people make in them. CE and LE folks don't care at all about what you want to do with your life (in the former case, you're irrelevant, in the latter case, you're a useful tool). Slavery fits right into that model -- it turns the lives of people into nothing more than labor and property. 

What's more is that it dehumanizes those people you own, which is always a great way to turn a blind eye to the fact that you're pretending that these people aren't as worthy of free action as their "owners" (whoever those happen to be). 

When I think of a Lawful Good society, and how slavery might go down there, I don't see slavery. I see sort of an idealized communism -- a central authority tells everyone what to do. Everyone who trusts that central authority (which is most everyone, because this is an LG society that believes in central authority) does the work confident that their labor is being used to benefit all the people around them. The central authority legitimately looks out for the good of every member of that society (because it is an LG authority). Those who don't want to be a part of that society, who don't trust that central authority, are given permission to seek their lives in the "wilds."

If such a society goes to war (something that I'm sure would sadden them greatly, but which might occasionally be necessary for the Greater Good), slaves wouldn't be in the cards. It'd be more of a "conversion at sword-point" kind of system, where they would allow people to become willing members of their society, or allow them to get the heck out of dodge. People who join the society are treated no better or worse than any other member of society, and are expected to contribute the same. Those falling outside the society are in the "not our problem" bucket. 

Now, tetch that down to a Lawful Neutral society, and you might have a version of slavery. But it is a very legalistic vision of slavery, and it is something that happens internally as much as externally (debt bondage and whatnot).

And then you have the Lawful Evil societies that delight in making their slaves suffer.


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## Celebrim (Mar 24, 2014)

Raneth said:


> That's explicitly not how canon D&D works.




You have some strange ideas about what is canon D&D.  Repeatedly, you seem to not be arguing against canon D&D, but against a warped perception of it that for me at least looks like a straw man.



> D&D is morally black and white...




Nuetral is feeling very left out here.



> It's considered morally good to do things that would be considered evil in the real world, such as mass murder against communities of evil alignment.




Murder is I'm pretty sure never considered morally aligned with good by anyone, and there is plenty of evidence that D&D good has always rejected killing indescrimently as good - prohibition against the assassin class, prohibition against poison, etc.  Any killing by good done within even the D&D framework is framed within the context of 'just warfare'.  I think very few would sympathize with a DM that protrayed good in the context you claim is default.  



> D&D morality is cartoonish and revolting.




I suspect that may well depend on just how cartoonish people's approach to it is.  Certainly the actual D&D cartoon was not nearly as cartoonish as you claim, much less people's actual mature campaigns.



> In LotR, which D&D heavily rips-off, the only reason the good guys are slaughtering orcs in the first place is because the orcs are attacking them. They aren't going on a crusade to conquer Mordor.




Mainly because they lack the power to do so.  And yet, had they the power to do so, is it your contention that a crusade against the power of Sauron would have been morally unjustifiable?

Would you condemn the Valar for waging war against Morgoth, or praise Morgoth as just because the Noldor launched a war of agression against him?   Surely if the Valar deserve condemnation, it's not for refraining from crusading against Morgoth, but for not heeding the Wisdom of Orome or the Suspicion of Tulkas and prosecuting the crusade against Morgoth sooner.   Much suffering might have well been avoided had the Valar been bolder.

Speaking of cartoonish morality, gird yourself and answer me.  I presume you are at least somewhat aware of Harry Potter?  In the 3rd book, Harry Potter, Remus Lupin and Sirious Black debate the morality of executing the mass murderer Peter Pettigrew without.   Both Lupin and Black favor killing Pettigrew on the spot, but Harry ultimately decides that this would be murder for murder - vegeance and not justice.   Is Harry correct, or is Harry just being cowardly?   Keep in mind that as a result of Harry's decision, both Lupin and Black - along with many many others, including Cedric Diggory - are going to be murdered.   If Harry had the power to warn himself against his decision, should he have done so?   Is Harry motivated by compassion or by cowardice to put into someone else's hands something he himself knows must be done (Harry isn't actually against Pettigrew being killed)?


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## pemerton (Mar 24, 2014)

Raneth said:


> My point is, not every society with the institution of slavery is going to be evil gits that abuse their slaves, because the crux of the argument is the suffering of the slaves (which is most of the reason it's considered evil, and less because they aren't being paid).





ExploderWizard said:


> Umm......no. The act of claiming ownership of a free-willed sentient being is evil.



I agree that the deprivation of freedom is a pretty serious wrong that is inherent in slavery.

There are moral theories that might prioritise the question of suffering over the questin of freedom, but I don't think D&D defaults to such theories.



Obryn said:


> D&D alignments cause brain damage.



Hey, the thread that proves this still has openings!


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## tomBitonti (Mar 25, 2014)

Celebrim said:


> Speaking of cartoonish morality, gird yourself and answer me.  I presume you are at least somewhat aware of Harry Potter?  In the 3rd book, Harry Potter, Remus Lupin and Sirious Black debate the morality of executing the mass murderer Peter Pettigrew without.   Both Lupin and Black favor killing Pettigrew on the spot, but Harry ultimately decides that this would be murder for murder - vegeance and not justice.   Is Harry correct, or is Harry just being cowardly?   Keep in mind that as a result of Harry's decision, both Lupin and Black - along with many many others, including Cedric Diggory - are going to be murdered.   If Harry had the power to warn himself against his decision, should he have done so?   Is Harry motivated by compassion or by cowardice to put into someone else's hands something he himself knows must be done (Harry isn't actually against Pettigrew being killed)?




Well, you don't know what else might have transpired had Pettigrew been killed.  I'd say, to follow fantasy tropes, the dark blot on their souls would have let to equal or worse evil.  Remember, Harry's mercy was instrumental in defeating the dark lord.  With a darkened heart, would Harry been as likely to a similar act of mercy?

On other notions: Tolkien, while depicting a detailed and realistic world, might be faulted for portraying Orcs as _corrupted_, and, based on the absence of the contrary in the stories, _irredemable_.  In LOTR, Orcs are simply to be slaughtered, the same as mad dogs must be put down.  Being corrupted fits a fantasy story, but can be hardly be seen as presenting moral depth.  If anything, it perpetuates a pattern of racism, although, placed behind a mask of fantasy.

And: Slavery involves a lot worse than many many folks imagine.  To present it, _thinly_, doesn't do it justice.  To present it realistically (looking, say, at the many modern and continuing examples), is well beyond the bounds of this board.

Thx!

TomB


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## Celebrim (Mar 25, 2014)

tomBitonti said:


> Well, you don't know what else might have transpired had Pettigrew been killed.  I'd say, to follow fantasy tropes, the dark blot on their souls would have let to equal or worse evil.  Remember, Harry's mercy was instrumental in defeating the dark lord.  With a darkened heart, would Harry been as likely to a similar act of mercy?




Maybe.  It's easy to say that in hindsight when everything works out in the end.   It depends on whether you consider killing a mass murder who is responsible for the deaths of your parents and who may kill again an act of evil likely to stain one, or rather the rough work that must be done to defend ones loved ones from evil and not staining at all.  Standard children's story tropes answer one way.   I'm not entirely convinced things worked out better given the deaths of Peter is ultimately responsible for, or that the author gives Harry enough motivation beyond the need to not have the story's rising action be put on hold at the end of book three.  Harry certainly is never made to say or think that Peter doesn't deserve death, nor does the author claim Peter doesn't deserve death.  Harry just seems willing to let something else get their hands dirty in his place - which is not virtue.  Arguably, Harry doesn't kill Pettigrew only because he has at that time a naïve faith in authority - naivety that's going to be driven out of him the hard way in the long run.  Point being, I don't think there isn't an easy answer here, and the author never has Harry wrestle with it.



> On other notions: Tolkien, while depicting a detailed and realistic world, might be faulted for portraying Orcs as _corrupted_, and, based on the absence of the contrary in the stories, _irredemable_.  In LOTR, Orcs are simply to be slaughtered, the same as mad dogs must be put down.  Being corrupted fits a fantasy story, but can be hardly be seen as presenting moral depth.




That depends on what you are looking for.  If you wish to have the orcs represent some human minority, then sure their point in the story is ugly racism and so forth.  But, we don't need to have the orcs represent humanity at all.  There are plenty of actual human peoples in the story - Southrons, Easterlings, the Wild People under Saruman, the Pukel men, etc.  If you wish to build a case for racism or lack of a moral depth in race relations, you can turn there if you like - though Tolkien has already addressed that particular critic within the story itself.  But if you admit it is fantasy, why can't orcs represent the baser parts of our nature, so that in slaying orcs is a metaphor for rejecting our evil selves?   If they are truly irredeemable, why assume they are metaphors for humanity at all?  Why not assume they are metaphors for corruption itself?  After all, when orc is used as an adjective, that's what it is used to describe, and ring brings out the 'orc' side of everything around it - including Boromir and Frodo.  And considering the metaphor thusly, what does it say about Denethor - who refuses to confront the orcs but hides himself away in a lonely tower with his own dark thoughts, compared to Théoden - who comes out of his gloom in order to face them?   Conversely, we see why fighting orcs with the power of the ring - becoming an orc to face orcs - is impossible.  Tolkien wouldn't need orcs to demonize humanity.  You can demonize humanity plenty without inventing orcs.  You need orcs only if you want something inhuman.



> And: Slavery involves a lot worse than many many folks imagine.




Granted.  Even Roman house slavery is a pretty nasty business.


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