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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iron Sheep" data-source="post: 1917910" data-attributes="member: 4965">Except in unusual and extreme edge cases, by the book in D&D slavery is Evil.  Slavery is a situation where a person is forced to perform certain tasks, has no right of refusal, and had little or no choice in their situation.Someone who routinely owns slaves and uses them to perform tasks for their own enrichment or comfort is (D&D) Evil, just as someone who routinely hurts others for their own enrichment or comfort is (D&D) Evil.  The vast majority, if not all, slave owners in a slave-owning society are (D&D) Evil.  Just because everyone else is doing it doesn't make it (D&D) Neutral.Roman slavery may have been better than mediaeval serfdom, but that doesn't make it (D&D) Neutral.  At its heart it is still an inherently Evil (in D&D terms) practice: people were taken from their homelands against their will and forced to work.  The fact that their children were not slaves, that they could purchase their manumission, that they had some rights, and that they may have been materially better off than they would have been in their original lands does not change the fact that these people were required to work against their will.Even the Mamluks who ruled as Egypt as a fraternity of slaves relied on obtaining children as slaves to be trained in their order.And yes, that implies that mediaeval serfdom where peasants were tied to the land is oppressive, and therefore (D&D) Evil.  Even something like indentured servitude would probably count as (D&D) Evil if people are commonly forced into it by events beyond their control.When I think of (D&D) Good agrarian societies as portrayed in D&D products (such as the Village of Hommlet or the Lendore Isles modules) serfdom is most definitely not a feature.  Most farmers are either small landowners or, at worst, fairly paid workers on someone else's land.  They have the freedom to leave the land and try their hand at some other line of work if that is what they wish.  Nobody is using force, or the implied threat of force, to make them work.  They may owe some sort of fealty to a local noble or king, but that's more a matter of (D&D) Law than Good or Evil.And yes, there is no historical mediaeval society which comes even close to the (D&D) Good model.  It's based on Tolkein's idealised English village life as portrayed in his books (and the books of fantasy authors that followed in his footsteps), particularly with hobbit society.  So yes, (D&D) Good societies are completely unrealistic, but they do make for a good heroic fantasy setting.And as I said at the beginning, you can come up with extreme situations where owning slaves might be considered (D&D) Neutral, or done by someone who is (D&D) Good, but the way in which they treat the people they own would have to be slavery in name only.  For example, in a slave-owning society so dark that slaves cannot safely be freed it may be a (D&D) Good act to own a slave to protect them from society at large if they are treated with dignity and respect and are not forced to do anything against their will.  But in this case the "slave" is not really a slave in anything but name. And the second they are compelled to do anything it is an (D&D) Evil act.  And even then there are probably better ways that a (D&D) Good person could deal with the situation.Similarly, some sort of forced labour as payment or punishment for crimes committed, justly applied, fairly enforced and in proportion to the severity of the crime, is probably not (D&D) Evil.Now if you use house rules to change the alignment rules, then "Good" can be whatever you want; and for grim and gritty or "realistic" settings it may even make sense and make a more compelling game to have "Good" be more grey and nuanced.  But in the rules as written, its pretty cut-and-dried that anything which deserves the name "slavery" is Evil, in the sense in which the term is used in D&D.Corran</blockquote>

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