D&D General D&D Assumptions Ain't What They Used To Be

[Necropolitan]

don't star wars and middle earth still both have slavery though? like it's a significant plot point in star wars that anakin was a slave.

Both Lord of the Rings and Star Wars have slavery as pretty significant parts of their settings, yes.

 

[Reynard]

don't star wars and middle earth still both have slavery though? like it's a significant plot point in star wars that anakin was a slave.

Neither of those things actually depict slavery in any way -- especially The Phantom menace, in which Anakin's slavery was a nearly irrelevant background detail that had no apparent impact on his life.

 

[Reynard]

Both Lord of the Rings and Star Wars have slavery as pretty significant parts of their settings, yes.

I don't recall "significant" slavery in either setting. Can you articulate it?

 

[Belen]

That sounds like a campaign/adventure path which is fine, but not everyone follows them. I may just be once bitten twice shy about some of these topics. Folks may look for a revenge/hero fantasy, or they may look to explore the darker side of life. Worst case scenario is becomes a parody and/or perpetuation of stereotypes of topics I find sensitive. Its been quite sometime since I have included topics such as these and it hasnt made my games any less interesting. YMMV.

I have explicit rules for characters. No evil alignments. I may have slavery in my games. In fact, a group just raided a village for slaves and the PC went to free them but I will never allow evil PCs.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Neither of those things actually depict slavery in any way -- especially The Phantom menace, in which Anakin's slavery was a nearly irrelevant background detail that had no apparent impact on his life.

Not really the point. The claim was put forward that such things might not have existed at all, let alone still exist somewhere in the current setting. That is what I can't wrap my head around. You don't have to make it an important part of your game, but never having existed in the world at all, in any form?

 

[Reynard]

Not really the point. The claim was put forward that such things might not have existed at all, let alone still exist somewhere in the current setting. That is what I can't wrap my head around. You don't have to make it an important part of your game, but never having existed in the world at all, in any form?

I didn't make that claim, only that the actual evil we see in Lord of the Rings and Star Wars is big and operatic, rather than banal.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I didn't make that claim, only that the actual evil we see in Lord of the Rings and Star Wars is big and operatic, rather than banal.

I don't know...a lot of evil in the Empire (basically anything not having to do with Palpatine, Darth Vader, or the Death Star) is pretty banal. Have you seen Andor? Fantastic worldbuilding!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Sure, but it still logically existed at one time and/or place in those worlds

I would say no, not always. A lot of fantasy settings don't have a historical progression modelled on real European history, and there's no particular requirement that they should. So it's not logical to assume that. It's merely a possibility. Plenty of societies developed with more or less use of forced labour/slavery. It's also interesting to me that some the most brutally slave-centric societies get like, ignored in the list of "slave-y" societies. The Vikings being a key one. Thralls were never a huge proportion of the population, but were a significant and noteworthy one, and sometimes they were freed, but that was hard slavery, no question about it. Yet you can definitely make a fantasy society that feels authentically "Viking" without using thralls at all - we know this because most fantasy Viking societies skip the thrall element! Including older ones (ironically this is more because people were either ignorant of the role of thralls, or trying to make Vikings look good, rather than out of any sensitivity or anything).

I daresay you could pretty easily make an authentic-seeming ancient Greek or Babylonian or Egyptian society without really having hard slaves either, just like oppressed workers and disenfranchised members of society, but who weren't actually owned.

Roman-style I think it's more difficult because Rome itself made slaves and enslaving people so central to its own worldview of itself, and that has very much propagated through history. People have tried but it tends to feel a bit more "fake" compared to say Vikings without thralls, even though both are equally ahistorical.

"Soft" slavery absolutely definitely gets a "pass" so yeah isn't an issue to have in a setting imo. Indeed we're actually at a cultural point where there's some excessive playing-down of how unpleasant some "soft" slavery* was (and from all parts of the political spectrum - not just the ends but also the center!). Just avoid the term slavery or any actual chains that aren't strictly carceral.

* = For example, re: indentured people coming to the US - people are like "Oh well they mostly only had 5-20 year indentures!" and that's absolutely true - but an awful lot of them did not live long enough to see the end of their indenture (what was killing them - primarily disease, malnutrition/starvation, etc. is a whole other discussion).

 

[CreamCloud0]

Neither of those things actually depict slavery in any way -- especially The Phantom menace, in which Anakin's slavery was a nearly irrelevant background detail that had no apparent impact on his life.

you don't think anakin's intense desire for the power to have control over things in his life, up to and including the survival of his loved ones, may not be somewhat a consequence of his lack of power in his childhood as a slave being unable to also save his mother from slavehood?

 

[payn]

I have explicit rules for characters. No evil alignments. I may have slavery in my games. In fact, a group just raided a village for slaves and the PC went to free them but I will never allow evil PCs.

I’m the opposite, I like evil characters but ones who work for it. Not the low hanging fruit twirly mustache types. I understand these make good foils for heroes but I don’t want to be a low hanging fruit GM either.