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Message: <blockquote data-quote="boredgremlin" data-source="post: 2222982" data-attributes="member: 31646">Or for a succesful example of slave revolt look at the american colonies. Many of the citizens of america were indentured servants trying to pay off the passage to america. Even the freeman here towards the end had no right to representation for taxes or laws. The only truly free land was in indian country, and they werent really free. The english government just left them alone so they would keep fighting the natives and not make deals with the french (before the french-indian war, it was so close to the war of independence that many veterans of the the french indian war fought in both wars.)    So in many ways the colonial americans were effectively slaves, even if they werent called slaves. Pick a historical culture that suits you campiagn world and go with it. These cultures spent hundreds of years working out the details. You can spend a few weeks doing it yourself and leave all kinds of holes (they thought they had it right the first time too) or base it off a solid historical society that suits your campaign and make a few adjustments for religion and magic.    And dont forget monsters. The spartan helots lived in thier own villages. If a group of ogres, demons or a dragon starting ravaging slave towns do you really think the spartans would care much until it hit a point where so many had died it actually affected the ruling class? Many monsters are smart enough to see the ruling class doesnt care about slaves and so prey on them instead. Vampires especially come to mind here. As a spartan warrior or roman legionaire are you  really gonna go fight a vampire over a slave? My guess is hell no. For mass slavery in a D&D world you have to bear this in mind as well. Slaves are an easy target. They are rarely allowed any real weapons and besides gladiators (who were historically extremely rare, even in rome) they had no training.   So lets see. In a D&D setting your a monster preying on humans. One group of humans is intelligent (might know how to kill you), well armed, at least minimally trained, and if you hit them hard the government will come down hard on you.   Another group had no real weapons, just farm tools. No military training, and the government doesnt care unless you cut down thier work force enough to affect the higher class. Who would your band of orcs, vampires or anything in between go after? So in a callouse D&D culture the rate of slave death would be higher then in any real world setting.</blockquote>

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