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Message: <blockquote data-quote="David Argall" data-source="post: 804768" data-attributes="member: 4481">slavery"  Do you mean that chattel slavery is the only kind we should consider? If so, you're picking a model of slavery much rarer than the other types we're discussing."    Rarity is not a concern here.  We are after game utility, and the lesser forms do not have the indignation factor for one thing.   "The Southern US is the only slave-based society in Western history in which slaves had no rights."    This is incorrect on both counts.  The Southern slave had distinctly few rights, and rather fewer as time passed, but was not without recourse.  A recent study found about 300 cases filed in Misouri by slaves against their owners, with a substantial number succeeding.  The normal claim was that the slave had resided in a free state for some time and was thus a free man [Tho the newspaper articles imply that one woman won her freedom purely on a claim her master was cruel.]  It seems the Dred Scott case was deemed slam dunk until the Supreme Court invented some law.   On the other end, we likely have problems of definition, both in area [Latin American is properly deemed Western and included huge numbers of abused slaves.] and the difference between theoretical and real rights.   "Chattel slavery was generally practiced by Germanic barbarians outside the Roman Empire who were far less dependent on slavery than their neighbours to the south were."      It was also practiced by the Romans who gave the slave about zero rights.  The law eventually said the master could not kill the slave, but it also allowed the master to turn the slave over the the town executioner and order his execution.  The slave could buy his freedom, but the master could simply take the money as his anyway and not grant freedom.  He accepted the offer because it was in his interest, not because the law made him.    "colonial Spanish and Portuguese societies in the New World were slave-based societies, absolutely dependent on slave labour. They gave slaves rights."     Did they now?       These rights may have existed in some lawbooks back in Europe.  They did not exist in the Americas where the slaved died in droves from harsh treatment.      "the Southern US basically had to believe slaves weren't human to sustain the system"     Nonsense.  All they had to believe was those slaves were profitable, which they were.        "and even then it had nowhere near the longevity of Peruvian, Brazilian or Roman slavery."    The length of slavery is a function of outside forces, not of the slave society.  Slavery pretty much lasts as long as there is a source of cheap slaves.  When that dries up, slavery withers away.  In the case of the American South, it was not given time to wither, so any measurement of longevity is worthless here.   "You're telling me that Haida slaves and confederate slaves were allowed to buy their freedom?"    In the case of Southern slaves, this is quite well documented.  It did not happen often.  in 1860, a prime field hand cost $2000 and $1 a day was durn good wages for a free man, much less a slave who pretty much had to take what he could get.  You don't need to be a math major to see that was not easy.  Most often it was an entire family uniting to free an eldest son, whose wages as a free man helped with some of the others.  But it did happen.    "Outside of the Southern US, slaves were less likely to be used in dangerous labour. Why? Simple economics. The costs of slave labour are all up-front; if a waged labourer is killed in the line of work, no investment is lost. If a slave is killed in the line of duty, the future work of the slave (for which you have already paid) is lost."     Actually all the examples of this are from the Southern US, and precisely because slaves were expensive and thus well cared for there.  Elsewhere slaves were cheaper and were used much more casually.    We might note here ancient Athens, whose prosperity was largely based on silver mines operated by slaves.  The usual figure quoted is that no slave lived 5 years after entering the mine.  But slaves were cheap and so they were sent to die for centuries.      Despite all the propaganda you hear these days, the slave in the Southern US had it easy, by the low standards of the average slave in the rest of the world that is.  A simple proof of that is the natural birth rate.  The US was about the only place where more slaves were born than died.  In Latin America, far more died than were born and slavery would have rapidly vanished without continued supplies from Africa.  In the Middle East, virtually no slaves managed to breed at all.  The Ashanti of Africa were such efficient slavers that they simply slaughtered slaves by the thousands as public events.    The American South was a brutal system, but if you had to be a slave, it was a quite good place to be one.      "many DM's don't use slavery in their settings and if you want this to be able to plug into anybody's setting then you need to keep this optional."      Unless we are going to be super generic, we are just going to have to use some things that some DMs do not use.  And it can be argued the other way too.  It is not that easy to plug in a free city into a system that has slavery.     In either case you would need justifications, so the question is more whether the slavery is game useful, which we have good grounds for considering it.     "a few other places (Greek, Rome etc) also had systems where slaves were free to pursue careers in their spare time and could be quite rich and influential in their own right."    No place had a system like this.  Rather the owners often found it to their profit to cut the slave some slack for various reasons.  When the slave was skillful and/or lucky, he could become quite rich, but he was swimming upstream in doing so.  A slave system prospers on what it can squeeze out of the slave, and the slave who manages to do well is the rare exception.   "I still think any selling of slaves should be done outside the city, you could have a slave bazaar to the north of the city (where it's relatively safe), or on the big island where the silk fish harvesters are. There would be a law against the buying and selling of slaves in the city of Mor's End but no law forbidding the owning of slaves."    Stated that way, it makes more sense.  We are relatively segregating many things as it is, and putting slave business in one area fits fairly well.</blockquote>

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