Slave Collar Timer

[Yma23]

Slave Collar Timers

Every now and then, a Slave Master must ‘use’ his Slave List on his Slave to re-brand the collar. If he does not do this once per period of time (Say, one In Game Year) the slave is released to the city for another slaver to purchase.

Pro’s.
Right now if the owner of a slave goes absent (as is not at all uncommon) rp can literally grind to a halt for many involved.
a) The slave is left without a direct master
b) Other slavers are unable to purchase said slave
c) Other interested parties are unable to free said slave.
d) There’s no incentive/requirement for the owner to view the slave as anything but a trophy. In fairness – I think very few do this. But it’s good to give further incentive for owners to actually rp with their slaves.

Right now slaves –can- be released by DMs, but this means not only more work for the DMs, but more potential Out of Character conflict. Imagine, for example, if a slave character were to lie about how often the master player was on. Or if the player of the master came back and was upset, thinking they weren’t gone long enough to qualify the release of the slave. I don’t know that it’s happened yet, but it does feel like a fairer and easier system would be better.

Of all the things the slave system needs this, IMO, is the most important. There was rumors of something like this being discussed, and even if this particular suggesting is rejected, I’d be interested to know if something like it is being considered.

Con’s.
This does make it marginally easier for slaves to escape. But they still have to scrape together the huge amount of gold, and during this time they can be purchased by others.

Possible Abuses: With the slave callers, it’s difficult to avoid being ‘tagged’ by your master, though it may be possible for slaves to just hide in Cordor for one In Game Year in order to escape, or to avoid meeting their owners. However, this could simply be fixed by adding a slave Caller to Shadow Cordor.
Another possibility is if the slave simply doesn’t log in for that period, they will be released. But that said, If someone is so dissatisfied with their In Game Master that they’re refusing to play a character for a month, I think there may be greater issues at hand.

Improvement: A small improvement to the above – if it’s possible – slaves do not automatically become ‘released to the city’ after a month, but rather they have the –OPTION- of being released. So if the players/characters involved wish to continue, even with long term absences, they may.