Indentured servitude & equitable slavery in D&D

[brehobit]

I'll provide a bit of color about my world, perhaps it will be helpful in some way. Plus I really like this part of my world so I'll share...

Slavery is illegal in the Empire, but there is a form of indentured service that one can enter. This can be due to debt, certain illegal acts, and the like. Imperial law, which rarely deals with anything other than nation-states interacting, the military, and treason, enforces a minimum wage and minimum treatment. It's fairly limited, but it does exist. Also, the state of indentured service is exactly the same as an apprenticeship for nearly all of the trades, at least on paper. In fact the vast majority of "indentured servants" are apprentices. This means that lots of fairly important people have an interest in keeping indentured service laws enforced.

However, one nation-state has been flaunting the law and has a situation of outright slavery. The way Imperial law has evolved different races are treated differently before the law. It gets to be a bit complicated, but Imperial law has yet to address the existence of Kobolds. And so one nation has pretty much enslaved all the Kobolds they can (now about 50% of the nation's total population and rising as the Human population is slowing immigrating out). Kobolds are treated as non-beings in this nation state. They have no rights and in fact owners who treat Kobolds with much of any respect are shunned by their neighbors (or worse). Even in more "liberal" nation states Kobolds are either treated as a working/servant class or they just aren't allowed at all.

The notion of a single slave race in a multi-racial nation I think can add interest to a game. You can get your underground railroads, your poltical debates, and even assassination plots, all without a McGruffen (sp?) of any type. The slave holders try not to rub the slaves into the face of the Emperor. And the emancipationists are not only the target of the slave owners, others worry about political and economic impacts on the Empire if all the slaves were freed (would they revolt? Who will tend the fields?) And I find players don't immediately react with "must free the slaves at all costs" when they find the only slaves are Kobolds.

2 cents...

Mark

 

[Treebore]

City State of the Invincible Overlored and the Wilderlands (Judges Guild) has slavery as part of the setting. It is, overall, an evil world.

One of my reviews is for CSIO, and the other is for the Wilderlands Players Guide, both redone for d20 by Necromancer Games, under license from Judges Guild.

 

[Phlebas]

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And I find players don't immediately react with "must free the slaves at all costs" when they find the only slaves are Kobolds.
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Interesting moral dilemna for players - especially as kobolds are a traditionally 'evil' race

My setting is pretty similar (city states within the remains of an empire), only the nasty kingdom IMC enslaves all non-humans so pretty much no moral ambgiuity there

See sig if you fancy a browse

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The big question is whether or not a good society can have organized slavery...
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I'm not sure wether slavery comes under the Good-Evil argument as much as the Law-Chaos one. Even a LG society will have laws and punishment and it could be argued (raises heat shield) that slavery/servitude, especially if its controlled / regulated is a more equitable system than imprisonment and / or capital punishment. The fundamental issue is if you believe a LG society is paradise with no flaws, or wether it can have functional issues and still be generally Good aligned. Thats probably up to the individual DM to set the flavour of his own game.

Given most PC's (Including Paladins) believe murder, violence and decapitation can be a fundamentally good act, (providing they're decapitating evil people) then, IN A FANTASY SETTING, I can't see a major problem with servitude in a Good society - its not real life, and its not being measured by western post Wilberforce standards. The good - Evil of a society can probably be measured better by how they treat their slaves / serfs than if they have them or not.

I don't want to derail this thread to another G/E debate so please treat it as IMHO, and definitely something that can / should vary from game to game

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

Would anyone want to run an indentured servant or a "equitable slave" as a character. DMs would like it as it gives them more control over the PCs and players, but what about the players?

Also, given human nature, no matter the goals, it will all turn out in the same way the Stanford Prison Experiment did.

 

[JDJblatherings]

Slavery as a result of war seems likely to me.

On a single battlefield one can be left with many thousands of captured soldiers and camp followers. Few economies could imprison them all in a penall system. Killing them all after capture leads to all sorts of alignment issues and releasing them can cause all sorts of problems in the short and long term. enslave them, treat them well and they don't uprise and ravage the countryside for a generation, make things unpleasant to too great a degree and you have Spartacus and co to deal with.


Slavery does NOT always turn out like the Stanford Prison Experiment. Jannisaries and other "slave soldiers" throughout history and even slave scribes have ended up slowly evolving into the effective ruling class of a society without bloody revolution.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Would anyone want to run an indentured servant or a "equitable slave" as a character. DMs would like it as it gives them more control over the PCs and players, but what about the players?

yes. In fact, one of my characters in LEW was a gladiator wanna be whose big goal was to eventually go home and sell herself well as a gladiatorial slave.

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

All this pie-eyed adoration of slavery and bounded servitude is offensive and at best shows a willfully glairing ignorance of human nature and the reality of keeping people in those positions. People here are just seeking any excuse, and creating opportunities, to mistreat others for the pure base emotional satisfaction of doing so.

 

[maddman75]

Basically, you want the less morally repugnant forms of slavery. Here's my thoughts

- Indentured servitude and criminal acts should be the way to get to this state. They could be put into slavery to punish them for a crime for a set period, they could sell themselves for room and board or maybe extra money for relatives or at the end of their term if they are skilled.
- No generational slavery. If one of your slaves has a child, you are responsible for making sure that the slave is capable of taking care of and raising it. The slave is part of your household, and so is their children.
- Regular path to freedom. Either by paying off their debt or serving for the set amount of time a slave can be granted freedom.
- Legal status. Though a slave, they are recognized as persons by the state, and it is not legal to abuse or mistreat them. They are required to do as you say, but they are not chattel.

As noted, it will take strong social or legal pressures to keep this structure in place, and abuses will probably be rampant.

 

[Piratecat]

Grumpy Celt, please don't post in this thread any longer. I was exceptionally clear in the second post that any kind of hijacking wouldn't be tolerated. Discussion of slavery/indentured servitude in a D&D game is completely different than the opinions people hold in the real world, and is a valid topic of conversation so long as people stay on topic. Heck, heroes can't overthrow slavers if they don't appear as villains in a game.

Don't agree with me? That's okay; feel free to email me to discuss it. But don't post about it in this thread. And as always, folks, please report problematic posts (by clicking on the exclamation point in the bottom left of every post) if you see one.

 

[mmadsen]

I don't personally endorse slavery...

I'm glad we cleared that up...

Assuming that race alone isn't sufficient to determine who can be a slave and who can't, and that one can't simply enslave one's neighbors on a whim, what should legally be in and out of bounds?

Modern Americans tend to think of the chattel slavery of the American South, but ancient armies routinely enslaved captured enemies, because a live slave was worth far more than a dead foe. So a Roman citizen with any wealth would have plenty of slaves, and he might very well have highly educated slaves to tutor his sons and to administer his finances.

Until well into the modern era, Europeans feared Muslim slavers, who would seize ships at sea or raid the coasts for slaves to chain to their galley oars. On the other end of the spectrum, Egypt's Mamelukes and the Ottoman Empire's Janissaries were both elite units of slave soldiers. Islam does not allow enslavement or mutilation of fellow Muslims, so Muslim nations needed a constant influx of infidels to castrate and enslave for court eunuchs.

In the early Americas, poor colonists were able to pay the high cost of trans-Atlantic travel by agreeing to indenture themselves for years.

And, of course, most Europeans lived as serfs, not much different from slaves, for centuries.

I'd say there are many, many ways to fit some kind of slavery into your D&D world.