Sounds like a pretty hardcore game. Can you please elaborate as I'm curious. I've always wanted to run a good quality slave game myself, where players might eventually make it to freedom, but how do you set a game like that up and what do they do to work towards something better?
My world was once your typical D&D fantasy world much like Greyhawk or Mystara. Then the Great Dragon Wars began. In the end, all of the humans and demihumans, along with the orcish and goblinoid races, were destroyed. Nearly total genocide. All that remains of the hairy races is totally enslaved. Or worse, is now raised as cattle (except orcs. No one wants to eat orc). This all happened so long ago that is is now only an unbelievable rumor.
The ruling races are lizardfolk, kobolds, and a few other lizard races I created, with the dragons being worshipped as gods. With no temples and no worshippers, the other gods are currently dead to this world, or rather, the world is dead to the other gods.
The players choose whatever race from human (including varient), elf (not drow), dwarf, halfling, gnome, half-elf, half-orc, orc, or goblin. They are all slaves. The most important choice is what they did as slaves. They get 3 skills and 2 tool or language
proficiencies. 2 skills and 1 tool/language must be useful for the slave to serve the masters. (Literacy is almost unheard of in slaves, it is not common for the masters) Due to the very different throat-lip-tongue structures between the slave and the lizard races, all slaves are bilingual, speaking saurian and slave-speak (a corruption of saurian merged with common). Elvish, Dwarvish, Common, ect. are all forgotten ancient languages.
Due to lack of proper nutrition (slaves never eat meat or eggs, all of which is solely reserved for the toally carniverous masters) the slave characters haven't reached their full racial potential. Thus the temporarily capped stats, and the delayed special racial abilities exept darkvision.
The slaves almost never run away. There is no place to go, and who would take care of them? And if they tried but got caught, they would suffer a horrible fate. They would be slowly eaten alive.
I start the campaign with a situation to allow for and force the PCs to escape. Survival, finding food and shelter, hiding are all that matters at first. Fighting is to be avoided at first, with no proficiencies, but is sometimes unavoidable. Experience allows limited proficiencies. Proper nutrition allows the capped stats to slowly be raised.
Experiences, not just XP, and opportunity allow the slaves to learn a class. Generally, we play for a couple of months before the characters reach 1st level.
EDIT Starting hit points depend on how sedentary the slave was. Bookkeeper (literacy required) gets a d4, house slave a d6, heavy manual labor gets a d8.
