What We Lose When We Eliminate Controversial Content

[MGibster]

I'm a little surprised Blade Runner hasn't come up given that the entire premise is built on the titular runners going after slaves. You even have the option of creating a slave character who goes after other replicant slaves.

 

[Alzrius]

OK then. So why care about that one? Why is slavery better than some of the others?

As I've explained to you before, the crux of the issue (insofar as what you and I are discussing) is that slavery is an element of world-building, i.e. it lends itself to how easily disbelief can be suspended when asking to players to invest in the setting.

Having the players make checks for STDs or PTSD is an issue of game-play, and so must be weighted differently. Interrupting the flow of combat with random checks to see if each wound the PCs get is infected because their enemies are using rusty blades slows down play in a way that a description of the evil nation to the north, which has a slave population larger than it's free citizen population, doesn't.

 

[AnotherGuy]

OK then. So why care about that one? Why is slavery better than some of the others?

Because with slavery it's usually party goals and adventure paths (DM input) Let's destroy or overthrow the Slave BBEG/Empire and let's rescue the Slave a,b,c
With PTSD it's usually player driven character arcs. Hence I mentioned Bonds Ideals and Flaws.

 

[MGibster]

There's a strange irony here where something so anti-natural (even in a game setting) as a zombie horde is described as being a force of nature.

It's odd, but Umbran is right. Your classic Romero zombies don't appear to act with any particular malice or intelligence* and isn't very discriminating when it comes to what they eat. I kind of liken zombie movies to disaster movies. Instead of a fire, earthquake, or tornado we have zombies.

 

[AnotherGuy]

So as an optional rule buried in a book that many people don't read, and not a requirement for any settings (5e Ravenloft doesn't reference those tables, AFAICT).

Blame that on the poor creatives at WotC.

 

[Lanefan]

So you are also making your players get STDs, PTSD, and infected wounds, right?

STDs and infected wounds can usually be treated in the field by the party Cleric. PTSD: I'll cop to ignoring that one, yes.

You're making sure they suffer lasting scars after every battle,

Not after every battle (I should be more vigilant on this), but every now and then I do roll on a homebrew table to see if anyone's picked up significant scarring; which if bad enough can affect Dexterity (always worse) and-or Charisma (for better or worse, depending). Scars and their effects sometimes go away given enough time, otherwise it takes a full Heal to fix them (or a Resurrection, where you get a whole new body). Rarely (but I've seen it!) severe throat scarring might render a character unable to speak.

and melting their faces off when a dragon breathes fire or acid on them?

That comes under "scarring". My tables also account for internal scarring where the source might cause such e.g. acid gas might scar the inside of a victim's throat or lungs.

 

[AnotherGuy]

@Faolyn out of interest if a DM at your table wants you to track iron rations do you demand that you also check to see how many get spoiled during travel (weather, water, age or vermin/insects) and combat (Dragons Breath, falling prone, Gorgon's trample or a kytons missed chain attack)?
And if they say no because they don't want that level of detail then do you object to their diminished verisimilitude?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Slavery was usually lifelong and carried over to children born to slaves, and a very similar situation to the sourcing of slaves for the transatlantic slave trade went on for centuries in East Europe, where various tribes and polities raided each other for slaves and traded them in massive numbers mainly to Mediterranean powers, like the various Muslim empires and certain Italian city-states. Point two and four still stand though.

To clarify, I wasn’t saying generational slavery was unique to American slavery. AFAIK, generational slavery can be found as far back as the Egyptian Empire.

It was not, however, associated with the several other factors that set it apart as a horror of a different nature.

 

[Lanefan]

If you actually care about verisimilitude, then you have to care about other forms of verisimilitude. To move away from medical conditions, do you include rampant sexism and homophobia in your games?

Depends on the culture and-or species; but if you look for it, you can find it (more the sexism than the homophobia). Note however it's not always men being sexist to women; in some cultures it's quite the reverse.

Do you include discrimination based on country of origin?

Sometimes. And species-based discrimination, almost constantly. Truly cosmopolitan places where all are seen as roughly equal are few and far between in my setting.

Do you have different sects for your fantasy religions that war against each other, where the Reformed Church of Moradin battles against the Orthodox Church Moradin?

No; a benefit of having deities that are active in the world is that they can nip this kind of thing in the bud. But disputes between deities (and thus their followers), even within the same pantheon, are another thing entirely; and some very big background plot points have been - and still are - based on just this.

 

[Minion X]

It was not, however, associated with the several other factors that set it apart as a horror of a different nature.

It's kind of hard to say what has happened or hasn't happened throughout the history of the world, but now that I think about it, race-influenced slavery isn't entirely unique to slavery in the US. While the caste system in India isn't exactly slavery, it does come quite close as it severely restricts the freedom and choice of the bottom castes, and it is ultimately based on skin color, though the original ethnic/cultural differences between the peoples that ended up at the top and the bottom respectively have blurred or been forgotten over close to two millenna. And I believe that a similar situation still prevails in Mauritania where laws against slavery have been passed to appease the international community but little or nothing has been done to enforce them, and white Berbers/Arabs still effectively keep black Africans in slavery.