Improving Slavery

[Nikko]

I don't know where you run into all the players that fall into this really questionable behavior described here. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but I feel like I've been around a lot of slaves, been a slave, and I can't think of anyone who actually acted like this. Maybe I just hang out with only super awesome people. I found the UD roleplay amazing from both the slave and master sides of things. Some big personalities and excellent play.

I knew a lot of slaves who could power-wise kill their masters, turn into dragons, all sorts of stuff and could leave any time they wanted- knew the quests to get out and had millions in the bank.

Their stories dictated they stayed slaves for reasons from knowing they wouldn't be accepted on the surface, they were afraid how'd they'd be accepted, whether they could adapt to life there after so long below, afraid their friends on the surface would treat them differently, they had all their friends below, wouldn't leave friends behind in the UD, scared to go against their master, afraid of going places their master didn't tell them they could go, afraid they were being watched all the time, were too paranoid to let anyone help, afraid of letting surface friends get involved in case they would be enslaved in retribution. If you're enjoying being a slave, mechanical power doesn't have to dictate that you are psychologically strong, have a passion to go out on your own. I mean, it's sorta part of your job to be able to explain your character's actions IC.

We still deal with people all the time on the freedom quest stuff who want to keep playing as a slave and just write them off as not strong enough, not ready, too untrustworthy, or too broken already to be helped so they can continue their slave RP. It makes for some nice RP to let them go, have their friends give up on them..."Goodbye Lisa! I'll miss you a lot! Then a little! Then not too much!" and people move on.

I mean I prefer the RP when we throw a party when someone gets out but it's all good.

I think the system is really good as is and would rather have it left alone rather than diminished in any way.

[Durvayas]

Okay, so I'm home... I'll preface this with saying this. The slavery system quest, as currently implemented, is well intentioned, but its execution is mildly tedious to go through.

One of your tasks is to get into the base the 'proper way', but to this day I've never seen or heard of anything in the module explaining what the proper way is. It is inferenced, ONCE, very obscurely, by an NPC talking about looking for a hole in the slave pit pit. Unfortunately, you can easily find that there is, in fact, a hole in the pit that lets you swim to the other pit. So you assume. "Okay, found the hole, good to go." Except the obvious hole is not the one he means. You actually need to swim back and forth a dozen or more times to find the passage he's actually talking about. Its wholly controlled by RNG, and by design, its ridiculously simple to misunderstand what the NPC said to mean the obvious hole. The unfortunate result of this, is that I had to be told OOCly how to finish this task. And every single person I've ever talked to who did the questline had to be told OOCly how to finish this particular task. Its that obscure. Whoever somehow discovered this the first time, was very lucky, and also likely very, very, very stubborn. You da real MVP.

3-4 of the tasks are "Collect 50 X" fetchquests. Nothing really compelling to speak of there. In fact, I mentioned above that one of these collect 50 items is a logistical nightmare to collect, and by itself can take months. This is the part of the system that seems to be universally reviled, not only because it takes so long, but because its also mind numbingly boring to harvest the same thing over and over and over and over.

The rest of the tasks are more interesting. You meet a chainbreaker associate, poison someone, and duel an ex slaver. These quests keep the process fresh. Good stuff.

But those tasks are the only good parts of the quest before the very end.

With every completed task, Scars tells you a little more of the riddle for how to slip your collar, this is literally the only way to keep track of your progress. Your journal tells you nothing. You can't ask her "Hey what have I done so far again?" There is no, repeat... NO way of keeping track of what you've done, or how far in your current task you are, implemented in the system that you, the player, can check.

Now... the slavery system was implemented well before the writ system. For its time, as far as systems on arelith go, its not that bad. But it could be vastly improved with our new coding.

Currently, every good guy on the server associated with freeing slaves knows exactly what you need to give a slave to have them done with the quest in 2 hours flat. The system has been around long enough, and enough slaves have been freed, that its common knowledge among the aggressively emancipationist PCs exactly what is needed. This is where the "Hurr durr, I gave them everything, they must not want to be freed" mentality and trend is coming from.

So how to stop this?

Well, for one thing... The entire system should be reworked to a writ system.

Reasons:

• Aside from the package delivery quests and Hounynrae's guaji fetchquest, this is the only battery of quests existant on the server, and standardizing them with the writs is not a bad idea from a design perspective.
• You can have an item in your inventory you can check to see your progress for any task like your standard writ. (The system currently doesn't have this, and having this would be a massive QoL improvement for slaves doing the quests.)
• You could have an item in your inventory keeping track of what tasks you did already. (system currently does not have this, would be a QoL improvement)
• You could add some versatility to the questline to eliminate its predictability.

Now I'll explain that last one. If we give people the ability to just pick and choose what tasks(in this case writs) they sign up for, you won't solve the problem with people handing slaves a ton of stuff and then getting confused or belligerent if they are not freed immediately. Those people will just demand the slave select specific tasks, and then get confused or belligerent if the result THEY want isn't met. The system as it sits now is rigid, there is no plausible deniability.

But... the UD has rotating merchants in the hub.
Certainly we could have multiple versions of the same NPC(Scars), that swap out each reset, each offering different tasks, but collecting and writing progess to the PC's inventory for eachother. We obviously have the coding to support those kinds of per-reset changes.

The result is that the quest tasks are no longer the static ones available. You could easily add more diverse ones like "Drop 5 iron shortswords in X barrel in the sewers to help arm the resisting escaped slaves." And "Go talk to X NPC and bring Y back." In addition to the ones already in the system. The key, is that the randomness of their availability prevents people from reasonably getting irritated if the slave they are trying to help isn't free within 24 hours.

Another thing, is change things so that only one task can be completed per reset. Some of these tasks already take several days, or, if determined, eight hours of mind numbing grinding time. Ensuring that a given player can only complete one task per RL day would slow things down marginally from "Day 1 slave gets collar and is given 200 items to get free immediately hurryup!whatstakingsolong?dontyouwannabefree?!"

Ultimately, the system we have in place is not broken. It functions.
Some people like the system as is, some people wish it had more triviality to it. I'd rather see it receive some QoL upgrades (like slaves being able to access the land bidding holdings of the district their owner is a citizen of. If I'm a table citizen, I should be able to send my slave to the silver mines, for example.)

[Nikko]

Some diversity in tasks and writ system would be cool. +1 to Durvayas

As one of the "aggressively emancipationist PCs" I guess, we do hand over some things they need but a big part of the fun I've had has been giving little chunks and clues on how to do things over time. That way surface PCs have to find ways to meet with slave PCs, get word to them somehow, RP with them- set up a chance to get caught or be scried. It also allows us to give tasks to the enslaved friends who want to help - oh I'm short on X to help your pal come with me to collect it... The people we've helped have come away feeling like there was a high lvl of danger and excitement around the whole process I feel.

The journey home should take some time so it helps develop and change your character's story. Otherwise why choose to be enslaved? Just to do a slightly pita consumable gathering quest? To spend some time the UD where you level up twice as fast and adamantine armor is half the price?

[Phaesporia]

2. "I have a slave! I now demand that I manage and control every aspect of this other player's experience. NO. Get your hands OFF that twenty five gold. That is MINE. Huh? You want to ENJOY THE GAME? Should have considered that before you agreed to this!"

This hits way too close to home

[Nitro]

As someone who was present to see how settlements ended up being run before there were mechanics to govern it, all I have to say is: Yes, yes we would. There was no appreciable difference in the level of immersion/involvement before or after mechanics became attached to settlements; PvP for control over settlements was rare and only happened a few times (usually with DM involvement and oversight.) In fact, the settlement mechanics actually made it so that it wasn't the people who were making the most interesting RP for the greatest number of people who were in charge - but instead simply the ones with the deepest pockets.

People don't need mechanics to tell them what to do, all the time. A lot of the time, mechanics actually are a limiter, not an aid to creating more RP. The slave system is one such system.

We have some very different memories then. I distinctly remember baronial Cordor being a no-holds-barred PvP wasteland of nothing being done because everyone was busy gainsaying eachother due to the fact that there was no mechanical enforcement to any side vying for control of their parts of the city. And that's not even mentioning the literal "Tea and crumpets by the Nomad" Drow RP that was happening before the killscripts went in.

They are limiters, yes. Because we don't live in a utopian world where everyone can work together, and having a baseline to help us solve disagreements mechanically without getting a DM involved or resorting to PvP every single time is a necessity.

[Cerk Evermoore]

If you think people can work out their differences go play a game where people use strictly emote combat. After three hours of watching two people deflect each others blows non stop in progressively outrageous and unrealistic ways because they don't want to lose, you'll understand why mechanics exist and they need to be made king.

[Sartain]

If you think people can work out their differences go play a game where people use strictly emote combat. After three hours of watching two people deflect each others blows non stop in progressively outrageous and unrealistic ways because they don't want to lose, you'll understand why mechanics exist and they need to be made king.

Making them 'king' might be a bit extreme but the point is definitely valid

[CosmicOrderV]

That's already the law of the land though, isn't it? What you see is what you get. You can only get away with something, so far as you can mechanically convince others that it happened. So while some mechanics can be bent, or justified in creative ways, at the end the day, what happens happens. Mechanics are like the physics of real life. Doesn't matter how high you /want/ to jump, gravity is gonna bring you back down and keep everything in line. The mechanics of a world validate the actions within it. It's part of what's made Arelith great after so many years, and had it stand above the rest as a roleplaying environment. And it's exactly why having some sort of slave system is better than having none.