Perhaps we suspend out disbelief that the fictional "good guy" is not guilty of multiple counts of involuntary manslaughter because we are addicted to the adrenaline rush of all that violence and blood and things going smashy-smashy. So believe the fantasy that he's still a good guy despite being utterly reckless with innocent lives.
But some of us cannot suspend out disbelief that fictional slavery is ok, because there is no such adrenaline rush as a reward.
Do you think it could be something like that?
I think the idea is that when we are watching a film, often times we see from the character's perspective the justifications for violence and we're meant to understand them. This is not
always the case, though, and there are times where we aren't meant to forgive or empathize with the usage of violence. Framing ultimately decides how we are supposed to feel about it.
When you're a PC, you
absolutely understand why you want to resort to violence. Combined with the power fantasy, the knowledge that it isn't real, and knowing that you're the main character, you fully understand your reasoning. But hey, even then people can disagree with people at the table causing violence: I'm sure we've all had instances where we or other players were violent with our PCs and the rest of the table did not understand why. Again, it's all about understanding why and being able to justify it.
With slavery, there's no feeling that it can be justified. We're taught that it's just wrong and we shouldn't do it. This is the same for a lot of things that are universally unacceptable, like sexual assault, child abuse, etc. Even if you are stopping them, there are plenty of people who can be skeevied out by using that sort of stuff in a game. It can come off as exploitative or just tone-deaf. And that's not making a judgment if you do that at your table, but it's more talking about how people react differently to different things. There's much more risk when talking about these sorts of fraught elements compared to combat and violence.
We’re back to this? There’s nothing stopping that from happening now. Having it in an official setting won’t change that. And it’s weird to want to prevent people from having a choice because they might use that choice in a way you don’t like.
I mean, not having it in the official setting means someone else is adding it in, not being enabled by the game company. And we're not talking about a setting where there is an evil nation who does this, but that it's largely ubiquitous.
Why not? We do exactly the same by reducing the pain of murder, violence, war, famine, colonization, on and on and on…all for plot hooks.
I'll point out that people
do talk about not using things like colonization and such for plot hooks, precisely for this sort of reason.
That happens all the time at tables. People have weird instances where people don't understand why they get violent. But those are often individualized. This is the same as them not creating a setting where slavery is so common that it's hard to simply put it to the side.
So combine the two and indulge in the power fantasy of fixing a clearly broken and evil society by engaging in some of the old ultra-violence…directed at slavers.
Yeah, not all players will do that, nor is the setting simply going to be about that. When you create a setting where legalized chattel slavery is commonplace, you really can't stop players from engaging with it in, well, bad ways.
