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<blockquote data-quote="Hexmage-EN" data-source="post: 8950392" data-attributes="member: 79428">I think this has stumbled upon what some people find &quot;problematic&quot;. There's a concerningly common trope in &quot;isekai&quot; (people from the real world finding themselves in a fantasy world, usually permanently) for slavery to not only be an institution practiced by society, but for the hero to participate in it and have slaves that grow to like him. Perhaps the most prominent of these is Rising of the Shield Hero, in which the protagonist not only buys a slave, but later comes back and buys a second one from the same person, and then again patronizes the slave dealer to buy a monster egg. Unless something happens later that I'm unaware of the protagonist doesn't seem to have any qualms about buying slaves and doing business with the slave trader (who operates in the open, btw).WotC is probably (rightly, IMO) afraid to publish a setting with institutional slavery that exists beyond whatever the mindflayers or neogi are up to because some proportion of games will feature PCs buying slaves. Even if the DM later intends to make the slave buying PCs face a comeuppance its still not a good look for a game that is constantly being scrutinized for problematic content and trying to avoid controversy (especially since when it does happen, like with the hadozee last year, people will start sharing everything ever published related to it without context for who wrote it when and if it's still canon).Personally if I ever run a Dark Sun campaign I will 100% feature not only slavery, but the near futility of trying to oppose it due to how virtually hopeless fixing Athas is. If I don't think a group would be okay with that I won't run Dark Sun. I still wouldn't allow PCs to participate in the institution, though.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Hexmage-EN, post: 8950392, member: 79428"] I think this has stumbled upon what some people find "problematic". There's a concerningly common trope in "isekai" (people from the real world finding themselves in a fantasy world, usually permanently) for slavery to not only be an institution practiced by society, but for the hero to participate in it and have slaves that grow to like him. Perhaps the most prominent of these is Rising of the Shield Hero, in which the protagonist not only buys a slave, but later comes back and buys a second one from the same person, and then again patronizes the slave dealer to buy a monster egg. Unless something happens later that I'm unaware of the protagonist doesn't seem to have any qualms about buying slaves and doing business with the slave trader (who operates in the open, btw). WotC is probably (rightly, IMO) afraid to publish a setting with institutional slavery that exists beyond whatever the mindflayers or neogi are up to because some proportion of games will feature PCs buying slaves. Even if the DM later intends to make the slave buying PCs face a comeuppance its still not a good look for a game that is constantly being scrutinized for problematic content and trying to avoid controversy (especially since when it does happen, like with the hadozee last year, people will start sharing everything ever published related to it without context for who wrote it when and if it's still canon). Personally if I ever run a Dark Sun campaign I will 100% feature not only slavery, but the near futility of trying to oppose it due to how virtually hopeless fixing Athas is. If I don't think a group would be okay with that I won't run Dark Sun. I still wouldn't allow PCs to participate in the institution, though. [/QUOTE]

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