Greetings!

I have the institution of slavery being widespread and common throughout my Thandor campaign. However, not all nations, kingdoms, or peoples embrace slavery. Much like in our own historical world, while slavery has been common for thousands of years virtually everywhere, there have also been those societies and cultures in different places that rejected slavery.

I'm reminded as I recall that the Chinese Empire--through various dynasties--ended official slavery. In other places, some quite surprising, like the Persian Empire, Xerxes I, I think--a majorly important early Persian Emperor, ended the institution of slavery. All state buildings, palaces, royal cities, were built by free-serving labourers and craftsmen, which the Persian Emperor mandated must be paid high wages for their work. The Persian Emperor, much loved by his people, wanted everyone to feel great pride in their empire, and to embrace a sense of common ownership in the glory of the Persian Empire.

In my campaign, I have different regional price indexes for slaves, based upon numerous factors--race, age, sex, applicable skills or training, and beauty. I also have a Rogue Subclass of Slave Master. I also have a Character Background: Slave, that Player Characters can select or potentially get through dice roll.

Do you use different kinds of slavery in your campaigns? How have you used slavery in your campaigns? Lots of good drama, storytelling, and plot development becomes available when using slavery in a campaign!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Slavery makes a great 'bad guy' to push against for heroic PCs. It's like that line from Sin City: you never feel bad about what you do to slavers.

About to start running a 2E Dark Sun game so yeah...

Is it a cheap source of labor or the alternative to "kill them all"?
Do you have a way for the "slave" to work / buy their freedom?
These have an impact on the practice.

Quote from: Greentongue on July 12, 2022, 01:23:18 PM
Is it a cheap source of labor or the alternative to "kill them all"?
Do you have a way for the "slave" to work / buy their freedom?
These have an impact on the practice.

Do they hold political and military power, like the Ottoman Jannisaries? I've been fascinated with them since I learned about them and have often thought about having a "ruling" slave class in a fictional RPG society.

It's very rare for me to not have some amount of slavery in a setting for the simple reason that I'm looking for multiple sources of potential conflict.  Some societies have slave, some do not. They vary in how much they support it or oppose it, and on what grounds. That's a really rich source of conflict.

I also usually have areas with completely different conflicts, where it doesn't come up much, if at all.  Maybe the local goblin tribes keep captives as slaves, but that's not really a conflict.  The players already were going to kill or drive off the goblins anyway, and freeing captives is just part of that.  Might give it a little extra sauce when they do.  Also gives a good reason why a captured PC isn't killed. 

Anyway, there's time to go deal with a difficult, sticky, ethics questions on the boundary of two societies, and also time to go blast some goblins.  It's up to the players what they want to do today.  The setting tries to give them room. 

In my longest-running game, the world's strongest power had slavery as a very prominent feature of their society because 1) I wanted them to be primarily antagonists for the game, and 2) one of the groups I mashed-up to create them, Eddings' Nyissans, is all about slavery.  I set up some points to make for possible interesting plot twists, but they never came up in play.  First, the nation the PCs lived in outlawed slavery, and it was stronger than the other in the little corner of the world that housed the campaign.  And second, in order to allow more interaction and commerce between the two groups, the rulers made a compromise that slaves brought into the free country remained slaves, but if they remained in the country for a year by law they were free.

Quote from: Dropbear on July 12, 2022, 11:53:22 AM
About to start running a 2E Dark Sun game so yeah...

Most times I've played Dark Sun I start most of the PCs at Tyr's gladiatorial pits the day that Kalak is killed and the rest of the PCs watching the games. Then when Kalak gets killed chaos ensues and the slave PCs have to make a run for their freedom and the non-slave PCs end up meeting them along the way. Dark Sun without slavery ain't Dark Sun.

I also tend to include slavery at the periphery in other worlds. All traditionally "evil" humanoid races practice it, and finding them hauling human or demi-human cargo is commonplace. Many cultures from other races practice it to some extent or another as well, usually with prisoners of war or certain criminals. Even cultures that don't actively practice it with open slave markets may still hold slaves bought elsewhere.

Slavery isn't illegal in most places, since there's no central authority to stop the practice completely, but it might be frowned upon in freedom loving communities and slave masters may have difficulty keeping hold of their slaves in those territories, since such groups have a tendency to liberate slaves by force.

I have slavery as a caste, I have slavery as indentured servitude, I have slavery as punishment instead of death sentences, I have slavery as a "profession". Depends on location and setting assumptions.

Generally speaking, you don't have "civilization" without slavery. It's almost a developmental mandate to get past "Iron-Age" technological levels for a civilization. There are no ancient cultures that did not practice slavery and since most of the details of my fantasy games are informed directly or by analog by these cultures, it's pretty common in my fantasy games.

This doesn't mean there aren't locations where the practice is banned, of course. Or that there aren't cultures that that abhor it - but they tend to be smaller cultures or those that lean heavily on magic. That pyramid ain't gonna build itself - slaves or otherwise.

Quote from: VisionStorm on July 12, 2022, 04:09:47 PM
Dark Sun without slavery ain't Dark Sun.

100% this. Slavers make perfect targets for enthusiastic ass whoopings.

I ran a scenario years ago about players being paid to capture Orcs so they could be forced to work until death.

It put them to good use instead of killing them outright.

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on July 12, 2022, 09:58:58 PM
I ran a scenario years ago about players being paid to capture Orcs so they could be forced to work until death.

It put them to good use instead of killing them outright.

Yucky.

Quote from: Headless on July 12, 2022, 10:18:14 PM
Yucky.

It just makes common sense... Put the greenskins to work until they drop.

Remember it's only a game of make-believe.

Slavers make a good opponent for demigods to punch. In the face. Repeatedly.

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on July 12, 2022, 10:24:35 PM

Quote from: Headless on July 12, 2022, 10:18:14 PM
Yucky.

It just makes common sense... Put the greenskins to work until they drop.

Remember it's only a game of make-believe.

Right it's only make believe.  The imaginary orcs can't actually do any work. So why pretend to be yucky?