Slavery and evil

[Hand of Evil]

Define good and evil in your games I always say, it is my soapbox. I like to say mind control is evil, this includes slavery. In a place where slavery is legal, you normally have rules that can prevent acts of evil being performed, then again you may not, you can also have the caretaker or manifest destiny idea going, where one is in control because it was mandated by a higher power.

The problem gamers have with alignment, is they look at everything in the game through their eyes in the real world, it is a fantasy game you role-play in, again, by defining good and evil in your game you can build cultural taboos and increase the grey within the rules.

 

[painandgreed]

I think that it is more complicated than simply is it good or evil. For that matter, slavery could mean many different things under varying conditions. Serfdom, indentured servitude, and sometimes marriage all counted as slavery in my book. The names may have changed, and sometimes they were changed after the fact, but the effect was the same. If any oppresion is evil, then you're going to have a strong case that any strongly lawful society is evil. If oppresision is always evil then laws are also inherently evil if not consentually agreed to and upheld by force. Then you get into other arguements, especially economic ones. If the rich who control the resources, means of productions, and distribution use that to keep wages low (sometimes lower than the cost of upkeep on a slave) so that there is no other option for the poor, isn't that oppresion and slavery?

I think that whether slavery is evil or not would greatly depend on the meaning of the term in that particular society as well as the rights and privleges of the slave and owner. The reasons for slavery are usually economic and there are often rules as to how the master is supposed to treat the slave. I think you're going to end up with a wide variety of slaveries and what alignment that type of slavery is will depend upon the society or particular master.

Could the lawful good own slaves? It could be part of a lawful society and the master could treat them as a good person would. Freeing them might not be an option due to the laws of the land or other factors. Suppose such a person is given mastership over previously evil humanoids or other creatures inorder to preserve their lives but make sure they commit no evil?

 

[Remathilis]

I dunno if this was mentioned ( skimmed the replies)

According to the Alignment books (BoVD and BoED) slavery is evil. Period.

In a society where slavery is tollerated, it is still evil. Those engaged in the slave trade would be at least neutral. Good people (or at least exalted good) would fight against it even if it was legal. Either through legal means (challenging the law) or illegal means (freeing slaves in the night).

These PCs would be ahead of their time, but the absolute nature of D&D says the Goodness is eternal and not subject to the societies definitions of "good and evil".

If you have both books (or know someone you can loan them to you) they make a good read of the Absolute nature, esp the extremes of both.

 

[Imret]

Personally, I think it has a lot to do with both the legally mandated 'rights' of slaves, or at least the things their owners cannot legally do to them, and how these slaves are acquired. If, for the sake of argument, slavery is evil and broadly defined as forcing someone to live according to strictures you set down - where they sleep, who they can associate with, what they can own - in addition to obligating them to work at a given job for (typically) substandard wages, regardless of their legal protections and their method of entry into slavery, aren't prison work gangs/programs (Angola in the American south, the inmate who sweeps up cigarette butts in the yard) evil? The guards can't just ride down an Angola farmworker and beat him to death for amusement, or at least not legally, and to a certain extent, they put themselves in the position.

Or, to summarize, IMNSHO - a judicial/royal sentence of slavery is, basically, LN and smarter than prison. "You broke this law of society, and thus owe society a debt. Rather than forcing the taxes wrung from peasants and merchants to pay for feeding and housing you, here's a hammer, we need some granite quarried. See you in (x) years."

I consider prisoners of war a gray area (in a modern context, they should be released when the war ends, but this is not a modern context), while kidnapping for the purposes of slavery is more than likely evil.

But then, I ditch alignment except for outsiders, priests, and objects so infused with the essence of the Heavens or tainted by the Unbound...so YMMV. Plus, slavery in its myriad forms is actually pretty common IMC. Not because I approve, but because the king certainly would.

 

[Captain Tagon]

The problem is that those arguing that slavery is always evil are using a modern view of 'freedom', a concept that is very new to the world with its American connotations.

 

[John Morrow]

If alignment is absolute, is slavery evil in places where it is legal? If so, then the majority of human historical figures are evil by D&D's standards.

I think it's important to remember that just because something isn't Good in D&D does not mean that it's Evil and just because something isn't Evil in D&D does not mean that it's Good.

I would argue, as others have here, that the sort of historical slavery that granted slaves certain rights and protected them is Neutral while the sort of slavery that treats humans as chattel and casually accepts their "loss" as a part of business (e.g., the way slaves where shipped out of Africa to both the Americas and the Middle East) is Evil. Slavery is clearly not Good in D&D terms, since the SRD/Player's Handbook clearly include a concern for the dignity of sentients as a component of Good. It's also not Chaotic but could be Neutral or Lawful. So that leaves you four to five alignments that could allow slavery -- LN, TN, LE, NE, and probably CE in a more ad-hoc way. Each one would have it's own spin on the subject.

As for "the majority of human historical figures", I would argue that most are indeed not Good by D&D standards. That does not mean that they were Evil, either. In most cases, I would argue that they are simply Neutral, though some of the "heroes" of mythology and history might very well be Evil by D&D terms. In fact, I'd argue that the vast majority of humanity, historically and even today, acts out of pragmatic self-interest much of the time rather than altruism or cruelty and is Neutral in terms of the Good and Evil axis. Heck, I would argue that plenty of D&D players are not Good by D&D standards. That doesn't make them Evil. It just means that they don't meet the standard demanded by Good in the standard D&D cosmology.

In D&D, "Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others." (SRD) And I would argue that "others" includes strangers or even enemies, since helping others based on personal relationships alone falls within the SRD definition of Neutral. If you aren't going out of your way to be good -- making "personal sacrifices to help others" -- then you aren't Good in D&D terms. That doesn't mean you are Evil. It just means that you aren't Good.

 

[Storyteller01]

IMO, I don't think slavery is good in any environ. Given evidence frorm the slaves themselves (Fredrick Douglass, the Hebrews of Egypt, etc.), even the best treated among them would still have preferred to be free. Seems to go against the human need for growth. I realize that Mr. Douglass saw the worst side of slavery, and the Bible can be cosidered less than accurate, But I have yet to see how sustained servitude is a good thing. Even those who underwent indentured servitude (some have even ID'ed military service as such) appreciated the lessons they learned and how they applied after they were released. Few preferred to remain in servitude (partners maybe, but not servants)

Even if the concept of freedom is new, the need for self improvement and respect is not, given historical accounts from said slaves.

Not wanting to get too much into religion, but Fredrick Douglass brought up a good point in his writings: How was this treament justified? One example given was that Moses sold his son into slavery.

"Moses sold his son into slavery. That was the will of God. It must also be the will of God that these folks are in the state they're in..."

Paraphrasing, but the intent is there. If there is no good justification (the apprentice will be released in 7 years, ready to work OR They give their crops to the kingdom so that our defense will always be at the ready [idealogical, but still...]) then is it really good?


Just my 2 cents....

 

[John Morrow]

IMO, I don't think slavery is good in any environ. Given evidence frorm the slaves themselves (Fredrick Douglass, the Hebrews of Egypt, etc.), even the best treated among them would still have preffered to be free.

I do think you are selecting evidence from among the worst examples. A person I know once wrote her Master's thesis about the evolution from Roman Slave to Medieval Serf and argued that people were better off as Roman Slaves than Medieval Serfs because the slaves had a much better life. In fact, one of the wealthiest houses unearthed in Pompeii belonged to an ex-slave who made good. In many ancient societies, slaves could own property (in fact, some owned their own slaves), could purchase their own freedom, could have free children, etc. Not all slavery was done the way it was the anti-bellum American South or like the Hebrews in Egypt in the Bible.

Yes, it's hard to argue that a slave wouldn't prefer to be free but consider that I'd also prefer to be a millionaire. That doesn't mean that it's Evil that I'm not a millionaire. That a society forces people to life a life less than what they'd choose or less than what others have does not make that society Evil. If it did, then every society that ever existed has been Evil. Every one.

But Ihave yet to see how sustained survitude is a good thing.

It's not, and I'm certainly not arguing that it is. But just because something is not Good does not mean it's Evil. Evil in D&D is not simply the absence of Good. It's pro-active violence and cruelty. Slavery is not Good. But in the absence of Good, slavery is not necessarily Evil, either.

D&D sticks "Neutral" between Good and Evil for a reason. A lot of things that people do are neither Good nor Evil or are a little bit of both.

 

[fusangite]

Well, staggering back in from another crazed round on the other alignment thread, I think we will be much better off if we make a distinction between how alignment actually works in most people's campaigns and how it is set out in the core rules. I do not dispute that if you apply the core rules to the letter, they probably prohibit slavery but then again, if you apply to core alignment rules to the letter in your game, explaining slavery will be the least of your problems.

From the many innovative amendments to the alignment rules that people have suggested in the other thread, it seems pretty clear that the way alignment is applied in most campaigns, slavery is not evil.

In the post that compared slavery to medieval serfdom, one point that went unmade is that the boundary/difference between these things was essentially undefined and in the Slavic world, one can make a pretty strong case that the difference between a serf and a slave was not a very meaningful one.

And now my response to a few individual posts:

Yes, slavery is evil. Claiming ownership on a person's life is always evil. There is never any ambiguity regarding the institution: always evil.

Slavers are always evil. They profit on the enslavement of others. No matter how much good they do in other parts of their lives, they cannot overcome the great evil they're doing by actively propagating slavery. Evil.

So, what if the slaves are paid for their work and can purchase their freedom? Still evil? In Roman, Spanish and Portuguese slavery, slaves were paid and could purchase manumission. You've also run into another problem here -- under your definition, aren't most pre-modern models of marriage also evil then?

As another poster pointed out, there was really no difference between a litus and a servus in the Carolingian world, no real difference between a Russian serf and a Roman slave.

This is what I hate about alignment. Rigorous application of alignment rules effectively acts to prohibit any setting in which people think and act in pre-modern ways.

I'm not being politically correct here guys, but think about what we're talking about. One person deciding, against another's will, that he owns him, body, mind, and soul. And backing that declaration up with force. It's not just taking away a man's life in the way you do if you kill him. It's taking away a man's hopes and dreams, his desires, and forcing him to live whatever sort of life you choose. It's the rape of your entire life.

So, is a military draft evil? Isn't this the state deciding that it has the right to send its citizens to their deaths against their will and to keep them under the absolute authoritarian command of a military officer until that death happens or the war ends?

Yeah, slavery probably counts as evil in D&D, though a slave owner wouldn't necesarily be so. In the D&D alignment system one looks at the totality of a person's behaviour. A single evil act is not sufficient to determine alignment unless it's something absolutely horrendous.

The other thing you have to bear in mind is that D&D is not a historical simulation. It's a game set in a world that never was as imagined by the inhabitants of the 20th/21st centuries. In some respects the morality is that of our own era, while in others it is whatever is required to make the game work. That's why paladins have no problem killing things and taking their stuff.

Nicely put, Doug. D&D is a very uncomfortable and sometimes incoherent mix of modern and pre-modern values and behaviours.

While I would go with WingsAndSword in terms of the Law/Chaos axis re: Slavery, I'd pretty much have to agree with Lord Pendragon and Umbran in terms of the Good/Evil axis. Given the definition of evil in the core rules, slavery is undoubtably evil in D&D. You might change the definition of evil for your campaigns, and so doing change slavery's position in the scheme of things, but slavery will still remain evil within the core rules.

In the core rules, slavery is evil. Some cultures may justify it, and in these cultures good people may own slaves simply because they do not fully understand their actions. You may decide that slavery is not evil in your given campaign, taking a morally relativistic point of view, but the core rules are not morally relativistic. I wouldn't recommend making this change.

I'm a big fan of applying D&D rules to the letter and not messing with them under most circumstances. Because balance is such a big part of D&D 3.5, messing with the rules is a dangerous and unproductive thing to do generally. But when it comes to alignment, I'm coming from somewhere else. For me, playing in cultures that do not share our modern assumptions and values is probably the single most fun thing about playing RPGs.

Having modern people thinking modern thoughts living in modern societies but using pre-modern tech just doesn’t do it for me. Basically I just cannot suspend disbelief. In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, it was funny when King Arthur met the anarcho-commie peasant but it was funny, in part, because it attacked the audience's suspension of disbelief.

Furthermore, without medieval social structures, I don't see how one can produce/explain a landscape dotted with castles and manors -- and that's the landscape I often want to play in.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Removed