Slavery

[Deryliss]

It is utterly undeniable that the UD start is by far the better out of all the options listed here.

In the UD, evil is not just accepted, it's expected. Being evil in the UD will earn you respect and friends. Being evil in Skal will earn you resentment that will boil over when you hit 16ish and have to move to the mainland. Your reputation will very likely follow you, and you'll just end up being yet another former Skal villain now camping out in Sibayad circle farming orcs.

Sencliff is a weird microcosm and pirate RP isn't for everyone. I can't comment further as I've never made a character here, and I don't want to cast aspersions on something I have no experience on.

Guldorand fast start requires a normal reward, which is a barrier to entry, and also places you in a really precarious position of being level 14 with no friends and no gear. It's a good option, for sure, but its hardly a total replacement, especially as you can't combine any other reward-locked races or character concepts with a guld fast start.

The UD is compact, runs out of a single writ-giver location (like Skal and Sencliff), has excellent early money making options, and as long as you avoid a few minefields like the deep Derro writs you'll have smooth, fast, money-rich leveling all the way through the mid levels. It's almost a cheat code, and since you're always in the hub, always in the thick of the community, you'll also get excellent, solid, healthy exposure to RP of all kinds if that's your jam. It's one of the reasons I heap so much praise on the UD and love the place to death.


Regardless, this is a *potential* derail. This thread isn't about good vs evil RP, its about the slavery system.

[The GrumpyCat]

IT: I want you to imagine the opposite. Right now it's a minor reward to play a good monster, but it has been repeatedly stressed that this isn't the same as being accepted in the surface, that a 'good monster' is still a monster and should behave like one. Yet the slave collar is very much the opposite. It's a free ticket to exist in the underdark, and will earn you immediate sympathy and support on the surface (along with a little suspicion, but far less so).

Just a point - Good Aligned monster is normal award - with an application if you arn't rpr 30+

[Edens_Fall]

As both a player who has been a slave and a Master, I would like to express my distaste for the casual observers judgment on slave RP. Not saying any here have done so, but there seems to be this rift where hard liners believe slaves should be treated horribly and abused near constantly. If they are not then clearly thier owner is OOC friends with them and helping them work the system OR not respecting the server setting.

I hate to play devils advocate but slave abuse is less the historical norm then people think. As history proves, slave are a valuable commodity. Food, time, money, medicine, training, and care are put into a slave to make them viable servants. Would you buy a brand new sports car, just to drive it home and brake the windshield with a baseball bat because it's on board GPS sent you the wrong way? Why would you do the same with a slave you just invested money in?

Service is rewarded, failure is punished. Loyalty can be earned with kindness far easier then with a fear.

This isn't an elf harem. It's common business practice. One used since the days of Rome. Slaves can become loyal to their masters enough to self sacrifice, not out of fear but Loyalty.

Forgive me if I sound a bit emotional, but I have dealt with the OOC sigma and tells one gets from being a fair master or loyal slave. It's one I always felt was uncalled for. We don't know the agreement that was made OOC between master and slave (I always recommend there always be consent and boundaries established) nor can we judge from a few moments of watching the true extent of thier relationship.

Yes there are evil masters who torture and abuse. But there are those of more level heads who use slaves as a resource to be harnessed and not beaten for sport.

I do agree with suggestions that the system can be used for meta-outcasts. Though other then what's been stated, I have no new ideas.

PS - I also do not advocate long term slaves using their higher levels to bull or deny RP. No matter the level a slave is a slave and should respect that position. It doesn't matter if the slave is level 30 and that drow is only level 10. Bow your head and show respect. But that's just my opinion.

Sorry for the rant.

[Kiffeh]

Okay, been mulling over posting on this subject for a bit. I'll take a swing at it since there's a thread up.

On the topic of slavery in general...

I feel a lot of people are coming into this not fully understanding what slavery is in the context of Arelith. It isn't until you play a master or a slave that you really come to understand the full range of problems a slave has to deal with. You are treated with suspicion or open hostility on most of the surface, you are also treated with suspicion or open hostility in most of the Underdark, as a surface/lesser race and rightly so. The only support structure you have is your Master and the other characters in their sphere of influence, and if you have a small time Master, as I did when I first arrived in the Underdark, that can quickly turn into a situation of larger organizations/slave owners bullying you because they can.

If you could not rely on your Master as a support, for RP, for collaboration, for work, for gearing, for writting, or for anything else because all they do is constantly abuse you, you would have nothing left. Down in the Underdark as a slave, you continue to exist at the suffrance of your Master. To everyone else you are target practice, or perhaps food. If your Master is never satisfied with your behavior because all you do is buck constantly so that you can keep up the punishment RP, everyone involved is going to have a bad time.

The second issue I have here is that chattel slavery in the context of Arelith just doesn't make very much sense. When you torture or maim your slaves, you diminish their capacity to work. When you brutalize your slaves, you diminish their desire to do work. Eventually this will set into a deep-seated IC resentment that, if arbitrary and cruel enough, will eventually solidify into an OOC resentment that will just make you want to get away from there. It also implies a high attrition rate that only makes sense when the point of your enterprise is to work unskilled, uneducated people to death and ship in new slaves from a vast network of shipping lanes. In the context of Arelith, you want slaves that are useful. As merchants, shopkeepers, tradesmen, bodyguards, healers, mages and general underlings. That requires training, time and care to some degree that would be entirely wasted if you just beat your slaves until they die and go and get new ones.

There is also an element I feel is being ignored here by people who come down to the Underdark, see slaves being loyal and immediately think 'You know, that slave is a slave, and there should be no loyalty there, it must be a twisted favorite pet RP' and miss a lot of context because they're not bothering to look. Any decent slave character that plans on playing a slave long-term will have motivations and reasons for it that could be easily gleaned if observers took ten minutes to question that slave and get into some good RP with them. It absolutely can make sense for an ex-Pit Fighter, a Vampire Thrall, a Fallen Paladin, an ex-Rogue fleeing murder charges, etc. etc. to get into a system of give-and-take with a Master that does not necessarily result in a need to buck the situation all the time. They absolutely should have reasons, checks and balances, that keep it from turning into 'Oh I'm just so happy to be here all the time forever teehee!' But in order to glean whether or not that is the case, you actually do have to get to know each individual slave IC and ask about their relationship with, and motivation for, service with their Master, something I feel a lot of players simply don't do. Most of my interactions with surfacers as a slave has been expressly limited to 'Do you want to be free right now? No? Then you must be Evil!' and that really just seems to be needlessly PvP-Oriented and sort of a shallow excuse to kill toons just because you can.

Having said that... if all people are interested in is watching Masters kick and beat and torture their slaves and use them for wealth extraction, someone is going to have to relax the PG-13 rules and then expressly inform every potential slave that that is what they're signing up for. A brutal, abusive, one-sided RP that never ends and never has any comforting down-time. Because I mean... if you can't get any support or affection or acknowledgement from your Master when you are loyal and succeed, who are you ever going to have any positive RP with? The Drow? A passing Orog? Other broken, tortured slaves? The world wonders.

[Lexx]

As both a player who has been a slave and a Master, I would like to express my distaste for the casual observers judgment on slave RP. Not saying any here have done so, but there seems to be this rift where hard liners believe slaves should be treated horribly and abused near constantly. If they are not then clearly thier owner is OOC friends with them and helping them work the system OR not respecting the server setting.

I hate to play devils advocate but slave abuse is less the historical norm then people think. As history proves, slave are a valuable commodity. Food, time, money, medicine, training, and care are put into a slave to make them viable servants. Would you buy a brand new sports car, just to drive it home and brake the windshield with a baseball bat because it's on board GPS sent you the wrong way? Why would you do the same with a slave you just invested money in?

Service is rewarded, failure is punished. Loyalty can be earned with kindness far easier then with a fear.

This isn't an elf harem. It's common business practice. One used since the days of Rome. Slaves can become loyal to their masters enough to self sacrifice, not out of fear but Loyalty.

Forgive me if I sound a bit emotional, but I have dealt with the OOC sigma and tells one gets from being a fair master or loyal slave. It's one I always felt was uncalled for. We don't know the agreement that was made OOC between master and slave (I always recommend there always be consent and boundaries established) nor can we judge from a few moments of watching the true extent of thier relationship.

Yes there are evil masters who torture and abuse. But there are those of more level heads who use slaves as a resource to be harnessed and not beaten for sport.

I do agree with suggestions that the system can be used for meta-outcasts. Though other then what's been stated, I have no new ideas.

PS - I also do not advocate long term slaves using their higher levels to bull or deny RP. No matter the level a slave is a slave and should respect that position. It doesn't matter if the slave is level 30 and that drow is only level 10. Bow your head and show respect. But that's just my opinion.

Sorry for the rant.

This pretty much sums up my feelings. Honestly most slave Rpers get it right and understand what is expected. But regardless what they are are playing. The player is entitled to enjoy their playtime where possible. Collar or not. A slave characters existence shouldn't be constant suffering at peoples hands who don't own them. That's damage of someone elses property. Property that's usually paid a pretty coin for honestly.

Sometimes people on both sides of slave RP overstep the mark but from my experience at least. Those who abuse it are in the severe minority and most people add to the underdark rather than take away from it. The slave character already has limited storage due to not being able to attain citizenship. Adding level limits just seems stifling. There's nothing wrong with high level slaves if they're played right.

The upkeep cost is sensible and honestly easy to cover if the slave is being used productively. Having a ingame monthly tax based on the amount of slaves on your papers would make sense.

Taxes and gold sinks are good. I'd just advise against anything that hobbles functionality more than there already is. It's not a bed of roses playing a slave. If anything it requires a lot of lore knowledge and nuance to do. If anything I'd be for it being put behind RPR 20 to that end.

[xanrael]

Part of my rationalization for spur-of-the-moment freedom not working is that their owner is probably pretty possessive of them. If they want them back and have the means to locate and capture them then they might face worse repercussions for "escaping" in the first place. So unless the one freeing them wants to commit to being their protector forevermore then it can potentially do more harm then good. There isn't really a "witness protection program" institution of Cordor etc.

And maybe it would make more sense for there to be a cycle of a slave being freed then recaptured, but I'm not sure that cycle would be that interesting to RP out for the nth time.

[Freyason]

Level limit. This would, frankly, nip a good deal of it in the bud. Is it fun to be a level 30 wild elf monk in the UD, especially given how monks are? I mean, I guess. It'd be less destructive to the setting (sorry for the setting enforcement stuff) to be a perma-slave with no real rp goals if you were capped until freed, however. Stops the 'oh my slave is an archmage nbd' stuff, as well.

Make slaves only able to take commoner/specialist

[Deryliss]

Just a point - Good Aligned monster is normal award - with an application if you arn't rpr 30+

My mistake - fair, I had forgotten about the change.

I feel a lot of people are coming into this not fully understanding what slavery is in the context of Arelith. It isn't until you play a master or a slave that you really come to understand the full range of problems a slave has to deal with. *and more*

Maybe I've been unlucky, and never witnessed this by sheer happenstance. I've never seen a slave have this kind of trouble as described here. On the UD, I've seen some slaves engaged in this kind of rp wholly voluntarily, but outright rejection of players as described here (no writting support, open hostility especially) I have never come across, unless they happen to be the slave of someone powerful and controversial, like a faction opponent. Does this happen behind closed doors?

Far more common is seeing slaves either voluntarily engaging in degrading, torture-esque RP, or simply going about their business without anyone paying attention to them. Writting, crafting, the works. I've seen free sviefneblin receive far more abuse than surfacer slaves.

There certainly seem to be enough here extolling the virtues of the slavery system. I'm sure some good RP comes of it, or else it wouldn't be so beloved. I just wish I had had the opportunity to see some of it.

[Marsi]

What does slavery RP really bring to Arelith? We have an awful lot of infrastructure dedicated to a very polarizing niche.

Even gaoler RP has so rarely been done right that jail sentencing has become not kosher over the years.

Arelith has this strange pattern of development where if a system or kind of roleplay isn't working due to some inherent design flaw, we double down and adorn it with more and more hardcoded mechanics, rules, and heuristics until the resultant system "works", but only for such a laughably small use case that you have to wonder who any of it is for.

A mechanical system should be brought in when the RP has matured to a point that arbitrary player-to-player organizing can no longer be sustained. Introducing the settlement system made sense, because that's how players were organizing, and I have to imagine it was an immense pain dealing with voting/citizenship/recognition of authority through word of mouth and message-boards.

Can the same really be said of the slavery system? I played a slave twice pre-system (both the consequences of roleplay), and the level of interest and investment in it always felt very anemic to me. I don't know what the system offers that players couldn't figure out among themselves, other than forcing the slave player to keep to their role. Something that a half-decent roleplayer can do all on their own.

One lesson I've learned about Arelith is that captivity/retainer, even "job", RP can't sustain itself in the long-term. When you get down to it, unless they explicitly set out to do otherwise, people want to play adventurers and protagonists. No-one wants to play your mook, your grunt, your personal granite miner, or your eunuch doorman. Those who want to play followers and underlings are fewer than those who want to play leaders, masters, and entrepreneurs, and fewer still when you subtract the ones who have characteritis and will ghost.

On a different note, I just find the whole idea a bit repugnant. Even with all the fantasy elements and anxious assurances that it's not necessarily chattel slavery, I'd be embarrassed to bring it up to an ADOS. I don't know of any other server or video game that has put this much thought and custom development into letting players own other player characters.

[seppuku me senpai]

Slavery RP is weird for multiple reasons.

Slavery invites a lot of narratives exploring non-consent. Themes of non-consent are really problematic to the point where the server has already had to ban romantic relationships between master and slave PC. That should be telling enough how uncomfortable the dynamic is already. Yes, some people can take this narrative of oppression, being oppressed, and over coming (or succumbing) to the collar and make something cool. Most people can't without having a good OOC rapport with their master PC in advance.

There have been oodles of testimony from players who have been pressured into taking a slave collar. Yes, this is a matter of report and fix, but the nature of this sort of peer pressure leaves the victim incredibly vulnerable. Its very hard to come forward with a report of potential foul play if you aren't sure something was done wrong, especially if you aren't certain it'll be taken seriously.

Slavery mechanic as Red Ropes has outlined is way too codified. You are stuck in rigid, non-dynamic systems that do not reward or encourage RP, but gaming a system. To be frank players who want to RP a slave are not going to go through that system anyway. The Prisoner Collar works much better for holding temporary captives, and the slave collar only works for people who are prepared for the long term commitment. At that point, why do you need a system? There are no benefits to being a slave except for hub portal use and access to slave quarters. You could just be an outcast at that rate and command more control over the terms of your enslavement and how you might break free of it.

My compromise would be to suggest replacing Slavery with Indentured Servitude. It would look like this:

an obvious consensual written contract of ""employment""
escape clauses for masters and servants to leave at will
cool down on taking a new master if an escape clause is used for 1-2 months
easy transfer of ownership from person to person with the servant's signature
masters pay x amount of money to the Bank to lease a servant
servants can buy out of their contract or with enough [arbitrary skill points in lawyer] can negotiate their buy out price lower

Indentured Servitude removes any interpretation of non-consensual forced relationship or term of bondage, and replaces it with an economic angle that is more neutral leaning. Indentured Servants can exist anywhere, debtors need a way to work out of debt after all. This changes the dynamic of killing slaves/slave owners because they are evil because slavery is bad. There is no pressure to free a slave simply because they are a slave. Some indentured servants prefer this life style; they can also leave to the service of the Bank if they don't like their current master.

A contract based system also opens up the floor for negotiations between contract holders (masters) and servants who might want to buy out of their deal. The contract holder wants to keep their servant, the servant wants to have work, the dynamic opens avenues to even ground back and forth. The system is intended to be easy to use and switch between contract holders so a player who wants to play someone as a servant/slave can do so, and someone who is uninterested in using this system can exit it with relative ease. This system is also far less openly "evil" and can open up to other alignments who might use this to staff their noble houses with commoner servants or something of the sort.

"But prisoner slaves!" you cry. If someone does not want to RP a slave, they are going to make it very difficult for you to have meaningful or cool scenes with them. Maybe don't do that? The prisoner slave collar can still exist for short term captives, but for people who want to commit long term to the servant aesthetic can do so without being a slave to the mechanic system.

Alternatively we can yeet the slavery system out the window because it is weird and makes people uncomfortable and is regularly problematic, and people wanting to play slaves can do so without having the constraints of a codified system. Its 2021, this is really weird to still be enabling players to do.

[Duchess Says]

I'm on the side of making it indentured servants as above or vassals or what have you. I see a few benefits in that.

One, it would be adaptable outside Anundor. You could use it to bond a knight to a squire or a borrower to a loanshark or recruits to a faction superior or what have you. Think of the RP possibilities.

Two, it would be the players choice to use is to RP slavery instead of a server endorsement. I'm of the opinion that player characters RPing the horrific issue of slavery leans towards bad taste and while not disallowing it the server should be totally agnostic on the issue.

[Arigard]

I think the slavery system is great & there is something that isn't being overly mentioned, which is its use as an RP tool for newer players looking to involve themselves in RP quickly. My first character on Arelith was a slave. I instantly got parachuted into a whole load of RP that I would never have managed to come into, had I not been a slave. Could this be done with an 'agreement system' ? Probably, but i don't think it would provide anywhere near the amount of interaction that slavery does, simply because people are actively alerted by free slaves and approach them for RP. It naturally draws RP to those characters and has them thrown into RP from the outset.

Also in terms of it being PG13. I'm not sure about you guys, but I was learning about the Romans & their slaves in primary school when I was about 9-10 years old. We aren't detailing anything to the extreme here & there's plenty of concepts from FR that when viewed in their original setting are savage (Devils/Demons/Monstrous races). Go read the background to Gnolls for example, it's definitely not PG13, or some of the Forgotten Realms books on undead/necromancy. It's all about how you represent these things in a tasteful way within the boundaries being set by the community.

The issue from what I've seen is that mechanical consequences on Arelith are few and far between and this is where the main problem lies (This is also an issue when people refuse to RP consequences of death) with slavery as a system. There really isn't much you can do as an owner, or a citizen when a powerful slave suddenly decides to go off the rails and if there was, I would almost guarantee it wouldn't happen as much as I've seen it happen during my time in the UD. The issue is when it does happen, it undermines the entire structure of the slavery system in Arelith. When you have a player that knows there are no consequences and then RPs differently because of that knowledge, it leaves very little room to work with.

Let's say for example that dying on Arelith lost you levels. That would overnight change how people RPed in both hostile encounters and when they were facing death. Would it make the game better? Not necessarily, it would open a whole another can of worms where people would likely pick and choose their battles and would likely make things worse across the board IMO in several areas (people would band together, form gank squads only fight with the intent to win at all costs etc). The one thing it would do however is change a whole load of interactions that currently usually end up being "Kill me, I don't fear death! I shall return shortly, you shall see!", especially if you have someone kneeling before you begging for their life, because the RP penalty of death has something OOC to attribute to it. Mechanics, in this sense can actively influence RP.....and this is why well designed systems not only work for RP, but facilitate it. As much as we hate to admit it, RP can be frequently influenced by knowledge of what can happen to your character OOC and if hard and fast rules are not set through mechanics, there is a tendency for 'exceptions' to be made to justify IC action.

"You would never be able to break my disguise, I'm too good at being discreet" vs You invest in skills and you either succeed, or fail.

"I can do this evil act, or engage in this evil system, or wear this mechanically beneficial evil item as an overtly good character because: reasons I just came up with". vs this item is alignment locked. Or committing this act will shift you alignement etc etc.

Good systems remove the reasonable doubt from things your characters can/cannot do and keep the world and player agency consistent. That is why any system backed by good mechanics, not only makes sense, but removes a lot of potential problems.

Back to slavery, a bad slave owner (or one that is using it as a way to 'bully' people) can be solved very simply through reporting. Express you do not like the train of RP that is happening and if it keeps on happening, file. Likewise it's against the rules to force anyone into slavery, so it's not an argument against the system. It's a rule break & using potential rule breaks as arguments against systems is simply false equivalence. If someone is breaking a rule in any way, it's something for the DM team to handle & goes outside of the mechanics that have been built within those rules.

Ultimately though there needs to be balance. The slavery system shouldn't be too authoritarian, but at the same time there are not enough ways for owners to manage their slaves currently. Some of the suggestions in this thread are interesting, others a little harsh (level caps etc) ....as a system though, I think Arelith would greatly suffer if it was removed. There is no reason it has to be either slavery, servitude, or nothing. Why can these things not exist together to provide yet more options for the RP and mechanical pathways people wish to follow?

When I made my first character I wanted it to be a slave, not someone with a contract, or an agreement, but a shackled character who could move through the world and grow under those conditions where control was out of my hands. Some players have zero problem with RPing being property, or being owned and are more than happy to roll with the punches of the roulette wheel or RP that comes their way. That in itself makes it an exciting & attractive challenge that is mechanically enforced, rather than being something you constantly have 100% control over, or need to pretend.

[seppuku me senpai]

[I get up onto a soap box.]

[I take a big breath.]

Romanticizing Roman slavery as anything but inhumane objectification of other human beings is super problematic. Don't. I appreciate the devil's advocate position. But don't. It was slavery.

Forgotten Realms also has a Chaotic Good aligned Giant God from 2.E who routinely does VERY BAD THINGS to the women of his pantheon. Not to mention any of the weird rituals the drow have going on. Do not quote the old lore to me, boy. I was there when it was written. The setting has plenty of things that are not PG-13 appropriate, but we make the responsible decision of what is appropriate to depict and isn't.

Learning about slavery in class with a textbook in academic discussion is much different then actively exploring narratives where you control a slaver, slave, and or slave owner. You learned about sex in middle school too, but that isn't allowed in here either.

Slavery could exist in depictions through NPCs, either DM run or in the module. But leaving it in the hands of players to portray is decidedly irresponsible. Why even risk the headache?

[xanrael]

We play a game where killing is the go-to problem solving method. We don't get our ethical cues from this game, or at least I hope not.

I don't think drawing RL ethical parallels to RPing slavery applies anymore than drawing parallels to killing a hobgoblin because your PC's race doesn't like them fits with RL racial violence discussions.

It's like watching a movie in my mind, I don't suspect the actors hold the same beliefs as the villainous characters they portray, nor do I think the director or writer are ethically bankrupt for having a villain in a movie.

I'm not saying things can't cross a line, but generally that's a case of "report to the DMs" as opposed to "remove this mechanic" in my mind.

[Talvenlapsi]

PS - I also do not advocate long term slaves using their higher levels to bull or deny RP. No matter the level a slave is a slave and should respect that position. It doesn't matter if the slave is level 30 and that drow is only level 10. Bow your head and show respect. But that's just my opinion.

I also wanna quote this;
Not every slave has to bow their head and show respect. There's slaves who retaliate and are attitude-driven. That's fine, too, and it /should/ also sprout RP. That can very much be part of the slave rp, where you're not accepting your position, you're mean and disrespectful and you get the consequences - usually in terms of punishment from your master, or if so, from someone else.

At that point, why do you need a system? There are no benefits to being a slave except for hub portal use and access to slave quarters. You could just be an outcast at that rate and command more control over the terms of your enslavement and how you might break free of it.

I mean.. The benefit is the slave RP. Some people like it, myself included. Plus, if you want the RP of being captured, enslaved etc. there's little to do with outcast tag. It's not that easy to get outcast tag for surfacer, the whole process of applying to DM's, and if you don't have enough on you of doing bad things , you won't get it. And what then? With prisoner collar, people don't let you wander around without escort constantly. Practically you're tied to only RP when your captor or signed escort is with you, because people are suspicious about prison collars. With slave collar, you can do RP and stuff outside your captor/master being online too.


But outside that, my biggest note is..
COMMUNICATE!
It's so important to communicate with other RPers in difficult situations, and especially in slavery themed RP. You're giving away your IC rights, so your OOC boundaries and rights are even more prominent. Talk to your master. Send them a tell, talk to them in discord. Work your boundaries, and if they can't respect those, send to the DM's and tell them how it is. My most pleasant slavery experiences have been with people who have been the most co-operative and kind to respect me as a person.
You are not OOCly a slave. You play character who is. You OOC have rights, and if people start not respecting you OOCly because of your IC state, pull in a DM and explain the situation, get away from those people.

This goes both ways. If the Slave is going over and not respecting the masters boundaries and demanding them to do things you're not comfortable with, set boundaries, and if the other part can't meet them, maybe it's best for you both to find someone who fits as an RP counterpart to you better. Slavery is not easy, and lovely does it require some good communication.

[Vespidae]

Former slave player here.

My least favourite thing about the slave system is how prevalent 'Complicit slaves' become, and how often they're used as spies who might seek out help but in bad faith. Now, this is the sort of RP that should be Awesome, but in reality all it does is just make distrust of slaves on the surface so great that supposedly Good characters end up dropping slaves that they see, and using bad (but mechanically very well supported) arguments about why slaves should be kept out of cities.

The system would make more sense if there was a way that actually reaching the surface was extremely difficult for UD Slaves, even with the aid of their masters. Maybe using a portal lens always takes them back to the Hub, and they can only access other UD portal destinations from there.
Upon actually reaching the surface, make the process of removing the collar easier for surface PCs to aid with.

To summarise:
Getting to surface: Much More Difficult
Removing collar on surface: Much More Easier

[TooManyPotatoes]

+1 to the above.

More than once (read:alot) ive seen low level surfacers get enslaved only to portal to the surface the moment their masters back is turned. These also tend to be players unfamiliar with the system who are dumbfounded and upset that you cant remove the collar right there (yes, i know the explanation is very clear at the slave collar npc). Cue them rolling the character not long after.

The tediousness and awkwardness of the FOIG quest has been discussed at length in the past.

I do think if it was made easier to remove on the surface while at the same time the application of the collar prevented various portal destinations to and from the surface it would be a step in the right direction. They gain the hub portal and boats, they lose the surface portals and boats. Why not also make some of the other underdark portals nearer andunor inaccessible to surface characters while we're at it. You would probably need to do something about conjuration yoinking while at it. And i guess sibayad will want its own slave rules too.

You would have less of these awkward interactions and it might force slaves to actually commit to the region where the collar was applied.

But as i write this, i expect it is too much work to apply. I can dream though, cant i?

[mash]

The slavery system is fine. The slaves I have interacted with (surfacer) have not shown any of the bad characteristics outlined by some here, but several of the good ones.

GrumpyCat made the strongest argument why mechanical collars are useful with his slightly exaggerated "paladin frees slave" storyline. As a paladin player myself, I smiled because it is pretty close to the truth. We play characters who want to help, and we would have to do serious mental gymnastics to justify why we don't just hide away every slave we find, or come up with some other clever and involved things to free them. Without the collar, the slave player who wants to keep playing a slave - a role they voluntarily chose to play as server rules demand - would have to constantly OOC deny all freeing attempts. With the collar we have at least a halfway reasonable and commonly understood IC reason to not go free every slave we meet. This is important for slaves and do-gooders alike! The interactions become much more interesting when they are not bound by "we must free them" but rather "determine if they can be trusted and maybe help them out a bit long term".

Mechanically, I think freed slaves losing their Andunor privileges the moment the collar comes off would be reasonable.

[Red Ropes]

I think the biggest issue of the slavery system is that exists entirely on OOC consent but if you want the narrative force of ending your slavery condition on the end of the slave for any reason you're not allowed and that you have this weird mechanic vestige of a super collar that can't be removed

It's not just communication, but, if a player tries out slavery and decides the weird UBER CONTROL system isn't for them they can't undo it and are forced to do WEIRD/ARBITRARY FOIG way to get rid of it or paying an unreasonable sum of gold to get out of the entire system.

People will say "oh but the prisoner collar exists" - the prisoner collar doesn't exist as the mechanized deep system does. It's another class of it and it isn't straight forward as what the consequences will be in any way that is fair nor accessible.

So I think giving the tools to players, WHO NO LONGER WANT TO DO SLAVE RP, is a good thing and should be done. I don't get why people freak out that someone either because of their story or their own OOC decision that they don't like it, don't have time for it, has no recourse to do it that isn't ridiculous when faced with other systems.

It's easier to die and respawn than it is to stop being a slave. It shouldn't be like that.

Unlike being a pariah, an exile, or anything else that you can earn. The current premise behind it as a system is you were "pressured to do it" and then magically, for no reason at all cannot end the status for "reasons".

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I just also think the system is old, not nuanced enough to beyond SKELETOR'S CASTLE. It's only used in areas on the server with the indications that it is absolutely vile and evil. The Clamper NPCs are just reskins of each other and are set on Sencliff, Andunor, Dis and Sibayad.

Everyone who is enslaved in the other places still has to use the FOIG WAY to get rid of it if they can't afford to absurd FOIG sum which is just strange - there is no support for slavery really beyond Andunor.

I don't think "mechanical slavery" needs to go away. But it needs to be simplified and made useful to IC dynamics.

Someone who wants to liberate someone and someone who wants to be liberated can't indulge that without it being an absurd hassle. A settlement on the surface can't experiment with more esoteric forms of punishment or can't go full Skeletor mode so people can get angry about it.

Smaller, non-revolutionary update:

The current system just needs to be lighter - easier to leave, less about money or a weird FOIG thing.
I don't think the slave collar conjuring doesn't really add anything and this sort of stuff should probably be relegated to the consent based -yoink.
Make where you're clamped matter and separate them so the surface clamps don't make you able to use portals/systems below.


big, cooler update:
Slavery as a concept could be done in any settlement. Maybe even making it something a settlement can turn on / off.

Tie slavery to settlement, make it so that one of the ways they can be free - if you're from that settlement (or district) you can be set free by the leaders of those district (but maybe with some sort of cost / cooldown.)

Being able to set quotas of resources or specific actions to be done to get free of "slave state" to indulge indentured servant or prisoner RP with temporary disabling of mechanics like citizen storage/voting/etc. (obviously all with ic and ooc consent)

Being able to, as a settlement, discriminate against slaves by declaring them pariahs / unwelcome when they're from certain places.

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I really don't want to judge people for how or why they like slavery but I don't really think the system is as good as it could be and I don't think it is wrong to say it needs some love and to be carried in a way that puts power in all parties' hands.

It is much better that someone can, at any time, end their state for any reason whether it be IC or OOC than to have it be something that locks you out of the world, your own ability to decide how you use your time (YOU CANNOT CONSENT TO THE COLLAR YOINK), and so forth.

Being a slave in the game should not be being a slave OOC. It also should be more useful as a tool to generate RP for everyone - not just a weird McDonalds receipt that says SLAVE.

[The GrumpyCat]

The slavery system is fine. The slaves I have interacted with (surfacer) have not shown any of the bad characteristics outlined by some here, but several of the good ones.

GrumpyCat made the strongest argument why mechanical collars are useful with his slightly exaggerated "paladin frees slave" storyline. As a paladin player myself, I smiled because it is pretty close to the truth. We play characters who want to help, and we would have to do serious mental gymnastics to justify why we don't just hide away every slave we find, or come up with some other clever and involved things to free them. Without the collar, the slave player who wants to keep playing a slave - a role they voluntarily chose to play as server rules demand - would have to constantly OOC deny all freeing attempts. With the collar we have at least a halfway reasonable and commonly understood IC reason to not go free every slave we meet. This is important for slaves and do-gooders alike! The interactions become much more interesting when they are not bound by "we must free them" but rather "determine if they can be trusted and maybe help them out a bit long term".

Mechanically, I think freed slaves losing their Andunor privileges the moment the collar comes off would be reasonable.

'Slight?' Lets be honest - it was huge!

And I do want to add- I really do appreciate that it is a hard position for 'Team Good.' I've played slaves, and I've also played Paladins around the system and it is... difficult when you feel so unable to do anything... and again the example I gave? It wasn't 'all' paladins and I don't even think it's 'most' paladins... but it's enough that without the system we'd probably get a fair amount of that happeng.

Or, to be more accurate, - without the system what we'd get is drow locking pcs away in cells for weeks and weeks on end, only able to rp when the drow owner/house was on. Which is OK - I did it with a character of mine ages ago and it was entirely complicit ooc - but it's what I'd call 'hardcore mode' - it's not something that most people would like.

And yeah - I absolutly utterly and completely agree that any 'ud privilages' should be lost upon freedom. That slaves still have access to the hub portal after freedom is, IMO, a bug not a feature.

[Deryliss]

It really is a difficult system for a good aligned character to coexist with.. especially when any comment is quickly derided as being just 'oh boy, lawful stupid is at it again'.

I very much resonate with Red Ropes' post. I do know someone who got into the slavery system without any idea what he was getting into (specifically that he can be called to the andunor slave pits at any time, and that he would be playing a 'slave to everyone' rather than a 'slave to one master'), and he tried for the longest time to get out of it.

Eventually he found the FOIG way, or the beginnings of it, but as soon as he was seen in that area he started getting harassed (ICly, and correctly, I would say) by other characters who were trying to get him back in line like a good slave, and wanted to crush any idea that his character might have had to escape slavery. He was monitored, hunted, and recieved whispered and written threats.

This made the player ooc extremely uncomfortable, as all he wanted was to get out from an ooc angle, and he ended up deleting the character rather than continuing play.

[Dreams]

It's easier to die and respawn than it is to stop being a slave. It shouldn't be like that.

This point stands out the most to me.

[-XXX-]

IMO this is one of the areas that jars with our OOC modern values that often sneakily get projected IG.

Having a good-aligned character see a slave and then having them go out of their way to help and/or free the slave is a knee-jerk reaction that often comes from an OOC place.

This is further exacerbated by the dominating IG culture of the surface that perceives slave ownership as one of the five mortal sins (along undead animation, fiend pacting, piracy and PICKING POCKETS)

I'm afraid that unless something changes about this, the entire mechanic would remain pointless - certainly in Sibayad.
The only way I can see this changing is just making clear OOC that "slavery is a part of the setting, respect the setting".
Get the hint - while that poor collared man working the field might be suffering and all miserable, it's hardly a horde of demons pillaging the countryside, a host of undead rising from the marshes or a maiden-eating dragon slumbering on a hoard of pure adamantine in the nearest mountain ...so probably shouldn't be that high on a paladin's to-do list.


Also, let's face it, most players concern themselves with collared slaves only to find out which character can be PKed with little to no IG consequences (the slave owner - whose name is listed on the collar).
Hilariously enough, very often the end result tends to be "let's go kill the slaver and shun/exile the slave".

[Deryliss]

Are we seriously making the point here that a good aligned character is being played badly if they feel sympathy for another sentient being in bondage and suffering abuse, and that it is *bad roleplay* to want that sentient being to be afforded freedom and self determination?

If so, I honestly can't disagree hard enough. If I have to convert all my characters to Ilmater to continue fighting slavery ICly without it being *bad roleplay*, I will.

[seppuku me senpai]

it is not bad roleplay for good aligned characters to see to liberate another person from their suffering under oppression/tyranny.

And it is good aligned. A good aligned person cares about the well being of someone else and will try to help them from their situation even if it is inconvenient or comes at an expense of themself. Good Aligned should absolutely be showing concern and empathy toward collared individuals, or at the least, pity and sympathy. Yes, slavery is part of the setting. It even says in the Tyrran write up that paladins are not expected to kamikaze themselves against oppressive and corrupt governments, and focus on improving the lives of those they can immediately effect with their influence. But that does not mean you get to ignore the problem all together. You are still a Good person, and being Good means actively doing Good things to the extent you are capable of doing. Sometimes this means you can't save the slave, but you can still talk to them and find out how you can make their day better.

It is even worse for a good aligned to have to ignore a slave and hand wave it as something inescapable and unavoidable. This is uninteresting and does not prompt critical thinking or compelling story. We should be looking for methods we can take elements existing in the setting to use as prompts for interesting narratives to explore.

Anyway, bad roleplay is pretending pale mastery doesn't come directly from the book of vile darkness and involves horrific gothic horror and deliberate body mutilation to achieve, not good aligned striving to do good aligned things.