Slavery practiced by the good races ....

[Pugwampy]

What are your thoughts ?

This is a medieval fantasy setting . All races good or evil indulge in some form of slavery . The lesser or more evil the race you enslave or abuse , the less anyone cares . Whats more evil ? killing a captured goblin or making him do work ?

Civilized Rome is slave central . The Barbarians are freedom fighters. Labour exploitation is used even to this day . A slave is property and your average good guy owner takes care of their property .

When someone is obeying laws and submitting they follow the lawful alignment . Freedom to do as you please is chaotic alignment . An untrained slave is "chaotic" so its owner whips her into submission to make her more "lawful"

In DND land I think Elves might not use that dirty word but still exploit even their wild elf kin and anything below them probably not unlike modern day wage slaves or cheap migrant labour ?
Humans and dwarves would have no problem with the word or practice but treat em fairly well .

Is it possible uncivilized , barbaric Orcs who might kill and eat humans and torture elf children for kicks might find slavery disgusting at least for their own species ?

[Darth Ultron]

What are your thoughts ?

In the 21st century mindset, slavery is always evil. Though that same 21st century mindset would say is fine to ''force someone to live one way'', give them an illusion of freedom and not call it slavery. So it is not clear cut at all.

Death is worse then slavery.

Elves, of all races, would use slavery the least as they are very chaotic in nature. They would be most liked to go the ''21st century it's not slavery(but really is)" route. So the elves would have (not) free goblin workers that are ''not'' forced (they are forced) to work everyday ''for themselves''(but 75% of that goes to the elves).

Dwarves might be the worst slave owners as they are very lawful. A ''worker''(slave) must load 16 tons or face a penitently under the law. So this leaves ''worker''(slaves) open to abuse.

Orcs might be the least like to own slaves...slaves are weak....but they would do the ''21 st century type slavery'' as they love the ''intimidate the not-slaves'' to do things.

[Max_Killjoy]

First, let's ditch the idea of "good races" and "evil races", outside of those rare examples where something inherent to that species makes its obligate behavior antithetical to moral behavior. In those species, some individuals would be capable of moral behavior, but as a whole they'd be not just evil in a relative sense, but objectively evil.

Second, let's separate the species from its culture. The culture will in some ways reflect the species, and in some ways not. It's also more believable for a culture to be evil, than for a species to be inherently evil (and in case it's not clear, yes, a culture can have evil aspects, absolute cultural relativism is vile postmodernist garbage).

Third, keep in mind that "slavery" covers a broad range of practices that can include severe forms of serfdom, debt-servitude, government-servant eunuchs, Spartan treatment of conquered neighbors, outright chattel slavery, etc. To just say that a culture "practiced slavery" is vague.

Fourth, how a culture treated its slaves does need to be looked at in the context of how it treated people in general.

[Nifft]

What are your thoughts ?

This is a medieval fantasy setting . All races good or evil indulge in some form of slavery . The lesser or more evil the race you enslave or abuse , the less anyone cares . Whats more evil ? killing a captured goblin or making him do work ?

Civilized Rome is slave central . The Barbarians are freedom fighters. Labour exploitation is used even to this day . A slave is property and your average good guy owner takes care of their property .

It's important to remember that Imperial Rome was not Medieval, and the near-universal Medieval rejection of slavery was specifically a reaction to the horrors of the Axial Age.

The idea that slavery is evil and should not be practiced at all, by anyone -- this thought is very much at home in the medieval mind.

[Noje]

A rose by any other name is just as sweet.

there was still types of forced labor in medieval times. calling it by another name just made it easier to do socially and legally.

Slavery wasn't all that heavily influenced by race. It was really more about what was most convenient. when revolts at home made it difficult to enslave the lower classes of society, other people were shipped in to replace that part of labor. A lot of people think slavery is based on hatred and racism, but it's really based on a need for inexpensive labor. In fact, there have been a lot of instances in history where people began to associate a specific race with slaves and that is where any hatred toward that race began (e.g. racism toward blacks in the U.S.).

[Vitruviansquid]

I imagine if you had to have slavery practiced by a civilization you want to portray as good, it would look something like this:

Everyone is the slave of the king because the nation interprets his rulership as actually owning everything and everyone within the nation. But that doesn't mean the king came down and told people what to do all the time, either. For example, a farmer in this society produces X bushels of wheat, and it is nominally all owned by the king, but the king's agent (in this case a scribe or overseer) will come by and count up the amount of wheat, give most of it back to the farmer so he and his family will be well-fed, happy, and productive slaves for the king, and then take Y portion for the king's use. In a different society, the same farmer might be seen has producing X bushels of wheat for himself, and then having to pay the king a tax of Y portion, but the results are the same.

People do think of themselves as working for the king, and the king's agents might be involved to direct much of the work, but that work is mostly like what you'd see around any other society. Conceptually, working for the king was a very similar idea to working for the society, or even working for yourself. For example, the king's armies are equipped by a large workshop worked by the king's "slaves." An armor-maker conceives of this task of equipping the armies as a mandatory obligation from the king himself as handed by via the king's agents (in this case maybe a military captain or logistician in this case), so that the king can equip his other slaves (the armies) to defend the king's possessions, including the armor-makers himself and his fellowslaves, from enemy warriors. Because the king wants his armor-makers to be productive and he wants talented craftspeople to aspire to do the technical and important job of the armor-makers, he allots extra goods and privileges for the upkeep of his armor-makers. You might even say that since the king and his agents don't particularly want to get into the minutiae of counting out every single possible necessity and luxury, he instead has his agents give the armor-makers a larger number of metal or paper tokens that can be redeemed for things like bread, clothing, and such. In other words, people thought of themselves as working for the king, but the king's job was the stewardship of his slaves, which makes it sort of loop around that working for the king was the same as working for yourself or your community.

[Roland St. Jude]

Sheriff: This is a reminder that real world politics and religion, of any era, are inappropriate topics on this forum. No matter how relevant to the conversation, please do not raise them here. If you can have this discussion purely as matter of fiction, please do, otherwise this thread will be closed.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

{Scrubbed}

{Scrubbed}


Anyhow, more on topic, in my settings I have slavery be fairly universal. In fact, one of the major themes is "In freedom you become your master", a variation on "violence begets violence". The Tieflings enslaved humans and elves, and when their empire fell and the humans and elves became independent, they enslaved the Orcs. Now the Orcs are mostly independent, and they enslave anyone they can get their hands on.

[Noje]

Sheriff: This is a reminder that real world politics and religion, of any era, are inappropriate topics on this forum. No matter how relevant to the conversation, please do not raise them here. If you can have this discussion purely as matter of fiction, please do, otherwise this thread will be closed.

But where do we draw the line between politics and history?

[Vinyadan]

I think it depends on what you mean by slaves. The ancient costume of having slaves who were only warranted food and shelter, had no property, and had no right to create a family, strikes me as always evil.

At the same time one could say "if this guy knew that not paying his dues would make him a slave, why didn't he just pay them, or avoid debts altogether?". Maybe the slave really needed the money back then. Maybe the creditor really needs the money right now, though.

A more measured system would be one with slave villages, in which the single villagers belong to different owners, must work for their owners and are something of a warranted work force, but are otherwise free to handle their own affairs like marriage, having children, buying their own house, improving their education, and so on. Slaves could gain money in certain places, so why not to give them freedom to use it?

About the "I'm good therefore I enslave the evil" part, that's a bit hard for me to work with. However, it can work from a "these people are dangerous and they must be punished for assaulting us" perspective. Today there are norms concerning POWs, but, in the middle ages and before, deporting them to work in the fields of some affluent dude was completely acceptable.

[SLIMEPRIEST]

Just going by the B/X alignment options (lawful neutral chaotic), I can't see much of an argument for slavery being lawful. Seems pretty firmly in the chaotic region.

As far as other alignment systems go, practicing slavery usually puts you on the evil axis. This is because owning someone surely demonstrates a total lack of respect for that person's life. Really, everyone's life.

Relationships in a feudal system are a two way street. Lords have as much of a responsibly to their subjects as they have to the Lord. That's why in legends, characters that don't respect their subjects are treated as evil (think Prince John from Robin Hood).

Settings where "good races" practice slavery are called "dark" or "grim."

As far as history goes, anyone who wasn't Roman probably saw the Romans as an "evil" empire. This is because romans used pejoratives like BARBARIANS! as an excuse to kill their leaders and populations, burn their villages, enslave them and takes their gold. Mostly, it's about the slaves and the gold.

So yeah, slavery is evil...

[Mechalich]

This is a system and setting dependent question. You have to define evil, slavery, and pin the moral system down further.

For example, in the specific case of D&D, slavery - in terms of the conversion of a person from one sapient species to the chattel of another sapient - is not defined as evil. We know this because the Formians, which are hegemonizing slavers, are not considered evil.

[SLIMEPRIEST]

I thought Formorians were usually neutral evil in D&D. They are described that way in all the material I can recall. I remember them being described as the wickedest of the giants. Am I wrong about this?

[Mechalich]

I thought Formorians were usually neutral evil in D&D. They are described that way in all the material I can recall. I remember them being described as the wickedest of the giants. Am I wrong about this?

Formorians are evil giants. Formians are mind-enslaving extraplanar insect people.

[SLIMEPRIEST]

Right my mistake. They're like that hive mind in Unity from Rick & Morty.

You could design a setting where slavery is common and not considered evil but from my perspective there are two things that would make it a problem.

First is that since player agency is pretty key to player satisfaction in most rpgs, your players are going to I buck back hard againt being slaves. This will probably force them to be anti social just so they can do whatever they want. Basically society will consider them "evil" for violating the norms. Fine if they want to be evil. But what if they want to play good characters? In this scenario it's hard to see how that really works.

Or you could just say the players aren't slaves, they own the slaves. That brings up the second problem which basically boils down to cognitive dissonance. Do the players wasn't to play heros that have to discipline slaves, sell slaves, take slaves etc.

All This assumes that slaves don't want to be slaves generally. Or, at least some of them don't. But If all the slaves are happy being slaves then I don't really see what's the point of making it party of the setting.

[JoeJ]

Not every slave holding society has to be Gor. There are a number of variable that make slavery in one society different than slavery in another.

Take a look at how a person becomes a slave. Are they convicted criminals? War captives? People who can't pay their debts? Would somebody in that society ever think of selling themselves into slavery? Does the society send raiders out to capture people as slaves? Are children born to slaves also slaves, or are they born free (although likely very poor)?

Also, how does a slave become free? Can they purchase their freedom, or be granted it as a reward? Or is escape the only way?

Do slaves have any enforceable rights? Can slaves own property? Can they own other slaves? If a slave is mistreated, can they take their owner to court? Is it a crime if a slave is injured or killed by their owner?

[Roland St. Jude]

But where do we draw the line between politics and history?

Sheriff: That's not a sensible division here. Being historical does not determine whether something is political. No matter the age or era, and no matter the purpose for raising it, if it's real world and political, it's prohibited here. If the question is, "what is politics?" then I'd advise interpreting it extremely broadly and steering clear. Things have to do with governments, governance, laws, and policy should all be suspect.

I'm going to lock this now, as it seems to be inevitably problematic.