Value of Slaves

[TerraDave]

Slave price should be related to productivity...as it was in the early US. Not only was supply restricted, but the cotton gin greatly increased productivity.

We know that in the D&D world, a laborer can make about a silver peice a day. ~36 GP a year. Say half that goes to upkeep (we are assuming bad conditions), so net ~18 gp a year. If the cost was 180 gp, then that is a 10% return.

I think looking at the craft and profesion skills can give you some idea of the value of a more skilled slave. (which I might do later in the day).

 

[Elf Witch]

No, Wandering Star, it's the adjective that indicates the slave's use value. Referring to a "comely" prepubescent boy would be offensive in a similar manner. Referring to a skilled elven female slave would be less so.

Comely or not, I really encourage the OP to talk very frankly with his players and what they want and are comfortable with before he gets too invested in this aspect of his setting. However historical, playing a game with slavery--with its connotations of racial inferiority, forced prostitution, and torture--is not everybody's idea of good time.

Always ask before going down the path of grim n' gritty.

Finally, see sig below:

First of all you are assuming that a beautiful woman would only be used as a sex slave and rape would be involved. It is very possible that more beautiful specimans would be of high demand as servents as a status symbol.

Not every slave society has to be one of racial inferiority, forced prostituation and torture. It does not have to based on the slave system of the south. It could be based more on the slave system of ancient Egypt where salves had some rights.

In history bands of warriors used to loot, rape and burn villages do you automatically assume that your PCs are doing the same thing when they loot and destroy sentient monster villages?

I do agree that if a game is going to have mature issues that it should e discussed before game play starts because not everyone is intrested in playing in a game like that.

 

[mmadsen]

Say half that goes to upkeep (we are assuming bad conditions), so net ~18 gp a year. If the cost was 180 gp, then that is a 10% return.

Except that slaves do not work in perpetuity. In fact, my understanding is that Brazilian plantation owners found it more economical to work their slaves to death and import a new batch each season. Pretty horrific.

I assume that didn't actually mean 100-percent mortality per year, but still... Also, this was obviously before the British Navy cut off the Atlantic slave trade.

 

[mmadsen]

So the assumption is that the only use a comely young elven female might have is one of 'dubious' nature?

I perplexed by both sides of this argument. Obviously beautiful young women have been enslaved since the dawn of time, and they have been enslaved to serve in harems. Why pretend this is odd and unusual?

And on the other side of the argument, we're willing to accept evil villains who slaughter and even eat people, but not villains who put women in a harem? That's so far over the line that it can't be mentioned? It's a pretty standard fictional fate worse than death from previous eras much more prudish than our own. Besides, our hero always rescues the fair maiden.

 

[EvilMountainDew]

Comely elf female?! Dude, that's so not a good example to use to start off a thread. Why twirk off people?

It seems that it wouldn't have gotten de-railed, had you not suggested it would be.



On topic, it might be relevant to note that it might be a status symbol, having slaves. Thus, it doesn't need to be economically more feasible to have a slave than to hire a worker. I do believe that it was more economically feasible, but I don't know if that jives with the DnD built-in-economics. I'd probably go off of X more gp than a horse, where X is a factor of legality, supply, demand, and feasibility.

 

[roguerouge]

First off, I'm not saying that your using slaves in your setting is badwrongfun, please see my sig in the first post on the thread. The only exception would be if you didn't talk about it with your players and they were very uncomfortable with this aspect of your DMing.

Second, I made my first post in this thread because, like my POW thread, it's something that you have to introduce very carefully. The OP defining the value of a slave on the basis of their attractiveness, gender, and race—rather than the economic value of their generic labor and game stats, as in the helpful post on the Kalamar rules, or on the basis of their health—upset me. The implication, which I am going to assume was unintentional, was not pleasant.

Third, I don't care what's realistic in history. We're playing a game and creating our own worlds: we don't have to replicate history if we don't want to do so. I am saying that slavery is one of those topics that demand explicit, honest, and sensitive conversation between the players and the DM, and the DM has to listen and allow players to veto this campaign element.

Fourth, responding to Elven Witch's post about my assuming various things about the institution of slavery. Yes, slavery could be a cultural-trait-neutral economic system, I suppose. Yes, slavery need not be based on racism and sexism and xenophobia. But that is the starting assumption you make given its history AND the likely cultural connotations MOST players are going to have entering the game. And when you introduce the topic of slavery with the most pricey slave being the most costly due to their gender, racial traits and physical attractiveness, you've confirmed that suspicion.

Finally, guess what? This shouldn't be off-topic because the cost of poorly introducing slavery in your campaigns could very well be your players.

 

[Dave G]

First off, I'm not saying that your using slaves in your setting is badwrongfun, please see my sig in the first post on the thread. The only exception would be if you didn't talk about it with your players and they were very uncomfortable with this aspect of your DMing.

Second, I made my first post in this thread because, like my POW thread, it's something that you have to introduce very carefully. The OP defining the value of a slave on the basis of their attractiveness, gender, and race—rather than the economic value of their generic labor and game stats, as in the helpful post on the Kalamar rules, or on the basis of their health—upset me. The implication, which I am going to assume was unintentional, was not pleasant.

Third, I don't care what's realistic in history. We're playing a game and creating our own worlds: we don't have to replicate history if we don't want to do so. I am saying that slavery is one of those topics that demand explicit, honest, and sensitive conversation between the players and the DM, and the DM has to listen and allow players to veto this campaign element.

Fourth, responding to Elven Witch's post about my assuming various things about the institution of slavery. Yes, slavery could be a cultural-trait-neutral economic system, I suppose. Yes, slavery need not be based on racism and sexism and xenophobia. But that is the starting assumption you make given its history AND the likely cultural connotations MOST players are going to have entering the game. And when you introduce the topic of slavery with the most pricey slave being the most costly due to their gender, racial traits and physical attractiveness, you've confirmed that suspicion.

Finally, guess what? This shouldn't be off-topic because the cost of poorly introducing slavery in your campaigns could very well be your players.

It's true, I no longer even deal with slaves in my campaigns as the players invariably seek to free them, and the madness that follows that will kill a party, a world or even a game...

 

[DamnedChoir]

And to further the discussion of 'grim n gritty' when you step into any historical situation with institutions that challenge or don't coincide with our current moral values, you can generally do it two ways:

1. It's wrong, bad, and only evil people do it, only good people are victim to it, etc. This is the most common way to do almost anything in comic books, movies, games, etc, about the past. The hero of said story is always ultra-progressive and believes in equality and good righteous modern values ahead of his time, while the villain, of course, is evil and does these things only because he's selfish and really should no better. Perhaps the empire is evil, and corrupt, perhaps the world is just brutish and barbaric, but either way you're clearly using our current moral values to judge the situation and it can make a very good morality play if done correctly. If done poorly, you end up with a world where there really isn't much interesting conflict going on and the only real struggle is finding out who the bad guys are and then defeating them.

2. There's a lot of moral gray. The people who perpetuate the institution are neither necessarily very evil or very cruel. They might have conflicting feelings, they might just be used to things the way they are, or they might not really be able to question the values of the society they're in. (Like most people are today.) Neither, of course, are the victims necessarily angelic, good, or even really battling to break free of their oppression. You could have lots of awful, terrible people yes...but there's just as good a chance you might meet someone who supports the institution for a seemingly noble reason, or would do whatever they could to prevent people from abusing it. You can run into people who /like/ being 'oppressed' others who don't like it, and some who are simply going along with things because they know no other way to live...and might be upset if you liberated them.

On the one hand you tend to create a world of fat white men in togas, chasing around screaming, nubile slave girls through their lavishly appointed villas...but if you're doing things grim-n-gritty and moral gray then you end up with complex characters and motivations that aren't always easily brought into line with how we'd like to think of the world working. We must not forget that most of our greatest historical heroes held values that we'd probably consider offensive at best to our modern judgments.

Sometimes I think it's a good thing for people to be able to step out of their own shoes and step into someone else's, and sometimes it's just good to be able to see different points of view that can challenge your own world view. Sometimes situations are just too complex, and aren't problems that can just be solved with a single set of strokes, these are the sorts of situtations that can really make you think.

 

[TerraDave]

Except that slaves do not work in perpetuity. In fact, my understanding is that Brazilian plantation owners found it more economical to work their slaves to death and import a new batch each season. Pretty horrific.

I assume that didn't actually mean 100-percent mortality per year, but still... Also, this was obviously before the British Navy cut off the Atlantic slave trade.

Right, you might need to build in an allowance for depreciation...but remember, your slave population might be growing overall, giving you another source of income. (again, as it did in the US before the civil war). And you could get into "optimal utilization rates" based on available supply. If there are a lot of slaves that can easily be taken, that drives down the price, the value of their offspring, and increases the amount you work them, and deprive them.

You could even right this all out in a function, do some calculus...again, maybe later.

 

[TerraDave]

More on the above: anyways, if you can take the value of labor as given, and change in personal slaveforce (new slaves-slave death) as a constant--both big assumptions--then its easy to modify the above math.

Slave Value=(return to labor-upkeep)/(equilibrium rate of return-growth of population).

So you net 18 gp with your slaves, need a 10 percent return, and your slaveforce shrinks 5 percent a year, then the price should be 120 gp.