Do you find D&D does this with other aspects within the game such as victims of murder, the family of those murdered, victims of theft, victims of arson, victims of betrayal, victims of brainwashing, victims of fire...etc?
Honestly, I feel all you're doing with your individual/culture exceptions, your genre exceptions and now this respect requirement is shifting goal posts with your criticism. I have no interest in discussing this topic within a sea of ever-changing parameters, exceptions and requirements.
There's no goal-shifting. Horror is different than heroic fantasy.
Seriously what are you going on about? I said inspired by a period of humanity's history. No one ever said that every species is a slaver? Also to note many of the D&D worlds have predominantly human populations in comparison to other species or at least are the dominant species (FR, Greyhawk, Mystara...etc) And many non-human species within D&D are or have been slavers. Some feast on intelligent life forms. Others use them for sport.
You didn't get what I said.
Slavery is one of those things that's a product of our human history, religion, culture, etc. Fantasy worlds are completely different. They have different histories, different religions, different cultures. The presence of magic, both arcane and divine, would make major changes, as would the presence of non-human intelligent species. Even if humans were the
only species, they would
still have a very different history. You can't say something is authentic when the worlds itself are so different--because you can also easily say that having a fantasy world that never had slavery is
also authentic. Or that hasn't had slavery in a thousand years, or that slavery has strict rules which include no abuse and automatically freeing the slave after four years, or that every time a person tries to enslave another, Trithereon (Greyhawk god of freedom) sends a posse of clerics to smite the slaver. They're
all equally authentic because you, the GM, are making that world up.
When you say "authentic," what you really mean is "I don't feel like making something else up, but this is dark so it feels realistic."
The only reason many species have been slavers or human-eaters is because Gygax et al needed Always Evil monsters to be killable; they weren't trying to do
actual world-building, the type that involves looking at every single aspect of a culture's development and seeing how that affects every
other aspect of its development.
Hey Faolyn, if you actually care about what I wrote, then please do go back and read up on what my favourite D&D setting is...
Which is...?