Grievances About Slavery Thread

[La Villa Strangiato]

This is the thread, as opposed to the "Slaver Manuals Should Expire" thread, where everyone gets to put in their two cents about the slavery system. I have titled it thusly because my experience has been largely eeeeh. Here's a Cliffnotes version of my points.

1. On my Underdark character, I purchased a slave because they specifically requested for me to purchase them. I thought it would be a fun way to sort of manually bring some RP to myself if the individual in question was willing, and it was! However...

2. I think when people see the words "slavery" they tend to unconsciously base their slave or slaver PC's behaviour on the patterns of the Atlantic slave trade, given that most of our playerbase is American and that's the big Slavery Thing that happened a lot closer to our present day. To me this kind of seems ripe for opening up a Pandora's box of unfortunate implications that may verge away from our content rule (but the content rule is kind of all over the place, let's be real)

3. I think the lines of "consent" to slavery can be kind of blurry for new(er) players especially when they realize the monetary cost of freeing themselves or that little FOIG quest. This is especially relevant if they liked the RP at first with their master but then it progressed in a way they didn't like, whatever that may be. (Note: "Just roll the character 4hed" is not a helpful answer to this question.)

4. Common trends I see in discussions about slavery:
* RP with their master was good but when aforementioned master wasn't around, others in their associated faction would basically use them as a crafting bot
* Being straight-up bought as a crafting bot
* "Collar or die"
* Being used as a status symbol and getting very little RP

Obviously this is an incredibly loose first post to a thread and it's mostly created because you aren't supposed to air your grievances in that thread I mentioned. Mostly I'd just like to use this as an informal opportunity to poll the community on their general thoughts on the mechanics, and whether you think it should be axed or kept.

Discuss!

[Marsi]

I don't like the slavery system, and in fact I wish slavery RP itself went the way of kids/pregnancy/self-harm RP.

[AstralUniverse]

Well, I'll just expand on what I wrote in the other thread.

Being a slave in Arelith is a mechanical advantage, lets call it out. More portals, less headache, easy start, faction with gold, lvl30 people telling you what to do and tl;dr you accumulate exp and gold faster than you would as a free agent. you can also go pretty much anywhere you like without getting ganked for being an underdarker/surfacer cause you're kinda both.

I dont like the domination sexy elven fun times it promotes and I dont like that it gives the above mechanical advantage with no awards spent.

I rather see it removed. good writers dont need this system and bad writers dont deserve free cookies.

[xanrael]

On point #3 there is already a fair bit of warning, only extra thing I could think of would be perhaps requiring DM approval for new players (what's the starting RPR now, 10?) to select a slave start or to allow to select the collar in game. Not approval like you need for the Assassin PrC but just to double check that they understand what they're signing up for.

For the rest I don't think anyone is going to change their minds whether they disapprove, approve, or are largely ambivalent to the system so I'll leave off my own further thoughts.

[Drowboy]

I haven't seen anywhere that this is a boon for RP. At all.

It feels like one of those systems that got Added Back When and is nothing but trouble (sexy elven fun times slaves, 'super outcast' level-up slaves, people who frankly clearly don't want to actually be playing an rp server and thought the slave tag would let them sort of just coast, etc) buuuut it was Added Back When and is Part Of Arelith, so it can't just be removed, then what would people do?

All of the rp surrounding it is mediocre at best, and it's sad to see characters and players that would otherwise have shone brightly getting mired and occasionally obsessed with this weird system that lets them collect halflings/elf girls/human-not-lovers-promise and fall into basically just looking like a weird sexual predator IG and OOC.

Which, just to be clear, is still the vibe I feel like most people who aren't super into the slavery system get, it definitely comes up anytime I discuss it with people privately.

[Definately Not A Mimic]

I've seen slaves played very well and I've seen slaves played horribly. But you know that can be said over any class or mechanic. Many who push for the mechanic part of the system to be gone and just rp it either don't get that you can't just rp being a slave if you are not an outcast since that is the /only/ way to start a 'lesser' race in the underdark OR that if you are playing a 'lesser' race from above you have to convince everyone that you are a slave or get killed regularly for being a spy instead.

Yes, slave gives mechanical benefit of having the hub portal. Can it be done without that portal? Yes. But it is a huge pain and most times whoever you're serving won't wait till you sprint to the saltspar for a portal, won't fund you a stack of portal lenses or what have you. Being left out of things just because you can't have that collar that lets you use the hub really sucks.

It is also hugely disappointing to read that because people in the past have used the mechanic to do things people deem as icky means that obviously anyone who chooses to try and play a slave or own one must be the same. It happened with gnolls till this interesting race was barely played because the stigma that came with it. If people are doing such a thing, report it, ban them, or even still set a rule that if you are caught doing that the character is deleted and you are no longer able to take that path at creation.

It has been said before, many times, if you don't like the system then don't interact with it. Keep in mind not every single person who plays something, be it a slave, an owner, a gnoll, a half dressed elf, a giggling hin sitting on laps. It doesn't mean that the next person who plays the class/race/mechanic is going to be like that.

[garrbear758]

I despise the slavery system. I've seen it cause so many issues that it's made me avoid Andunor entirely. I completely agree with getting rid of it for all the reasons people stated already.

[garrbear758]

I've seen slaves played very well and I've seen slaves played horribly. But you know that can be said over any class or mechanic. Many who push for the mechanic part of the system to be gone and just rp it either don't get that you can't just rp being a slave if you are not an outcast since that is the /only/ way to start a 'lesser' race in the underdark OR that if you are playing a 'lesser' race from above you have to convince everyone that you are a slave or get killed regularly for being a spy instead.

Yes, slave gives mechanical benefit of having the hub portal. Can it be done without that portal? Yes. But it is a huge pain and most times whoever you're serving won't wait till you sprint to the saltspar for a portal, won't fund you a stack of portal lenses or what have you. Being left out of things just because you can't have that collar that lets you use the hub really sucks.

It is also hugely disappointing to read that because people in the past have used the mechanic to do things people deem as icky means that obviously anyone who chooses to try and play a slave or own one must be the same. It happened with gnolls till this interesting race was barely played because the stigma that came with it. If people are doing such a thing, report it, ban them, or even still set a rule that if you are caught doing that the character is deleted and you are no longer able to take that path at creation.

It has been said before, many times, if you don't like the system then don't interact with it. Keep in mind not every single person who plays something, be it a slave, an owner, a gnoll, a half dressed elf, a giggling hin sitting on laps. It doesn't mean that the next person who plays the class/race/mechanic is going to be like that.

It happened with gnolls to an extent that they were moved to an award solely to help avoid it, and I've seen way worse from slavery than anything from gnolls.

Slavery isn't a system you can in any way opt out of interacting with, unless you avoid significant portions of the server.

Just because I wasn't involved doesn't mean I can "opt out" of stumbling into slave castration rp, rape relationships, graphic beatings in public areas, etc.

[Ork]

Slavery as a concept can be played without this mechanical system. I know Grumpycat doesn't agree with this point, but truthfully we encounter those events all the time even with mechanical-based systems. We push something out and players can choose to accept it or not. That is true universally, mechanic system or not.

It needs to go. I've played significantly in the underdark and have 0 roleplay experiences with the slavery system where I though "I'm glad we have this". (other than being able to teleport them behind a locked door and kick their snuggybear.)

[Watchful Glare]

This is the thread, as opposed to the "Slaver Manuals Should Expire" thread, where everyone gets to put in their two cents about the slavery system. I have titled it thusly because my experience has been largely eeeeh. Here's a Cliffnotes version of my points.

1. On my Underdark character, I purchased a slave because they specifically requested for me to purchase them. I thought it would be a fun way to sort of manually bring some RP to myself if the individual in question was willing, and it was! However...

Alright, that's good on you to try to give people RP. Nothing to say on this.

2. I think when people see the words "slavery" they tend to unconsciously base their slave or slaver PC's behaviour on the patterns of the Atlantic slave trade, given that most of our playerbase is American and that's the big Slavery Thing that happened a lot closer to our present day. To me this kind of seems ripe for opening up a Pandora's box of unfortunate implications that may verge away from our content rule (but the content rule is kind of all over the place, let's be real)

I have no idea what this meant to say, could you phrase it in a different way?

3. I think the lines of "consent" to slavery can be kind of blurry for new(er) players especially when they realize the monetary cost of freeing themselves or that little FOIG quest. This is especially relevant if they liked the RP at first with their master but then it progressed in a way they didn't like, whatever that may be. (Note: "Just roll the character 4hed" is not a helpful answer to this question.)

The NPC that puts a slave/prisoner collar on your character tells you about this. If you don't like the direction RP is going talk it out with them, just the same way you've talked with them at first because OOC consent is a requirement. The owner will find a reason to sell the character to another person, or put them up with the slavemaster again. Problem solved.

If they break rules, you report them.

This is however different if the slave character has acted in a way that merits consequences, much like anything else in the game, and that has nothing to do with slavery or it's mechanics. Much like when you choose to play a monstrous race, when you choose to pick a slave you compromise to understand the kind of thing you are roleplaying, and the in-character implications of it.

4. Common trends I see in discussions about slavery:

* RP with their master was good but when aforementioned master wasn't around, others in their associated faction would basically use them as a crafting bot

Asking a slave to craft something for you on their free time differs from literally keeping them 5 hours in front of a crafting station telling them if they move away from it they will be killed on the spot while they leave two orogs with red bananas on their head and gonnes staring at them so they keep working. That's an hyperbole.

Much like with any other type of RP, sometimes you get it sometimes you don't. It does suck when you don't, not a whole lot you can do there as you can't force people to RP with you. You can get in touch OOCly though, or seek it out yourself.

Being straight-up bought as a crafting bot

Prospective owner [Tell]: Do you consent to my character purchasing it?
Slave character [Tell]: I'd rather get a feel for their relationship first, we can say the slavemaster is still sorting out papers/acquiring the lease from it's previous owner. I wouldn't be interested if I'm only going to be doing crafting and little else, honestly, I'm more into RP.
Prospective owner [Tell]: Oh alright, well that's good to know.

"Collar or die"

Really no different from being attacked for being in the wrong place. If you don't like it, escape, just like you would if you were a monstrous race caught in the Elven Quarter. If you die, you die. Then you hit the respawn button.

Super evil PC [Tell]: Are you interested in slavery?
Super virtuous PC [Tell]: Not really.
Super evil PC [Tell]: Alright!

Being used as a status symbol and getting very little RP

Slave PC [Tell]: Hey, do you think it would be possible for me to get more RP with your character or the faction?
Owner PC [Tell]: Sure, what kind of RP were you looking into, stuff like interpersonal conversations and character development, or getting involved into plot stuff?

-Alternatively-

Slave PC [Tell]: Hey, do you think it would be possible for me to get more RP with your character or the faction?
Owner PC [Tell]: NO. YOU STAND THERE IN THE CORNER AND LOOK PRETTY.
Slave PC [Tell]: I'm not really having fun with that, though I appreciate the RP so far. Do you think we could find an IC reason for your character to sell mine off please?
Owner PC [Tell]: Oh alright.

-Alternatively-

Talk in-character with other prospective owners that could potentially buy the character.

There has not been a single slave character I played in which I didn't OOCly communicate with any possible owner, or they didn't communicate with me to see if I was cool with things, or how I felt about it. Not even talking about the eventual owner, any potential owner got in contact OOC to check on how I felt about things. And the same has happened with any slave character my character has owned. Heck, just read the kudos threads.

I do have a grievance of my own, but it's more of a comment: I find it difficult to play any slave character, in the underdark, without having eight out of ten people they meet wanting to free them or being a worshipper-of-a-secretly-good-deity-in-disguise out to help them. Which is alright, but if you're going into it expecting adversity and your character having to improve or prove themselves or go through the gauntlet to earn their freedom or a position as a slave, or be respected through merit, you better go into it with already a thought out reason as for why your character would not accept to be helped and/or released by a really sizeable amount of the people they'll meet. Effective immediately, not like they would screen them for a long time to get to know them, to know if they can really be trusted with being offered help and... Nope.

So what happens is you join in with a character expecting adversity and having to overcome it, and you immediately get coddled gifted things and treated super nicer than you even would if you were playing a free character. I would expect that from a surface slave in which you are exposed to plenty of good-aligned characters, but from an evil place it's pretty defeating.

I didn't use to be like that either, from what I remember.

"Slavery can be RP'd without the mechanic"

It happens already that slaves get treated hostile because "They could get out of the collar if they really wanted to, they want to be slaves" as meta from the OOC knowledge that you need to have consent. And the same with prisoner collars and the 'take it off or die' or simply refusing to RP with the character because they know they could take it off any time. As Grumpycat has said, and they're right.

[Watchful Glare]

I've seen slaves played very well and I've seen slaves played horribly. But you know that can be said over any class or mechanic. Many who push for the mechanic part of the system to be gone and just rp it either don't get that you can't just rp being a slave if you are not an outcast since that is the /only/ way to start a 'lesser' race in the underdark OR that if you are playing a 'lesser' race from above you have to convince everyone that you are a slave or get killed regularly for being a spy instead.

Yes, slave gives mechanical benefit of having the hub portal. Can it be done without that portal? Yes. But it is a huge pain and most times whoever you're serving won't wait till you sprint to the saltspar for a portal, won't fund you a stack of portal lenses or what have you. Being left out of things just because you can't have that collar that lets you use the hub really sucks.

It is also hugely disappointing to read that because people in the past have used the mechanic to do things people deem as icky means that obviously anyone who chooses to try and play a slave or own one must be the same. It happened with gnolls till this interesting race was barely played because the stigma that came with it. If people are doing such a thing, report it, ban them, or even still set a rule that if you are caught doing that the character is deleted and you are no longer able to take that path at creation.

It has been said before, many times, if you don't like the system then don't interact with it. Keep in mind not every single person who plays something, be it a slave, an owner, a gnoll, a half dressed elf, a giggling hin sitting on laps. It doesn't mean that the next person who plays the class/race/mechanic is going to be like that.

It happened with gnolls to an extent that they were moved to an award solely to help avoid it, and I've seen way worse from slavery than anything from gnolls.

Slavery isn't a system you can in any way opt out of interacting with, unless you avoid significant portions of the server.

Just because I wasn't involved doesn't mean I can "opt out" of stumbling into slave castration rp, rape relationships, graphic beatings in public areas, etc.

I agree with everything Mimic has said. However they've also said something that is relevant to what you have said yourself Garr. How long ago were those things you experienced? Are those things, those players still around? Things like that happened once, like with many rulebreaks. And though they may have shaped your opinion on those things, I really don't think we've ever seen them since and we have move on from that as a community, like with any of the more eggregious rulebreakers they just get banned eventually.

If I had to guess, I would say some of that happened some four years ago at the least.

[Red Ropes]

I think slavery absolutely can be done without mechanical basis. I think creating a "mechanical skeleton" for it allows us (as developers) to make it more interesting and meaningful than make believe (its basically a variable we can use to make NPCs react, or apply penalties, or whatever).

But I am 100% in accord with a lot of people's issues with slavery, how it plays out in game, and with no mind to the "weird stuff" we all know about I think it could be salvaged if we first go over a lot of the issues some people have mentioned here, purely in player-to-player, player-and-setting.

How "SLAVERY" works:

1) The decision is basically permanent (unless you know how to get out and work really hard) and is tied into about of mechanical/quasi mechanical stuff. It is discordant with the idea people can decided to move on or run away, if you end up having some OOC issue or break down with an "owner" you have to literally get the DMs involved. That's just janky and too resource intensive.

2) Those mechanical systems are not really flavor. They grievously affect your character, you are not warned on the limitations to property or whatever, and NPCs for the most part do not react to your status. There is no meaningful way to as players or settlement leaders to engage with slavery - either expanding it, disregarding it, or regulating it.

3) Its almost entirely tied to the UD and is weirdly ingrained into making it easy for the slaves to do writs, collect UD portals, and all kinds of things that make it super attractive as a way to make xp/take a vacation and furthermore creates an actual OOC desire to do it. Not to mention that the one road to freedom paradoxically gives you MECHANICAL BOONS to /not/ set yourself free, lol.

4) Who your owner is is plain for everyone to see, requires 0 RP, but instead a skill that hides the fact you're a slave at all defeating the purpose of the system in the first place. Next to this it allows any random person to, unless you were already in a warded area, summon you for merely knowing your name to rooms you can't escape from.

^--- the above design is complex and a lot of work was put behind it and I will not pee-pee poopoo on those efforts. Whoever(individual, group), who put it in wanted it to be used to flavor the Underdark and give some sort of cool opportunity to have fun/flavor stuff/tell stories. But it's kinda aged, it kinda defeats the purpose of narrative (for everyone), and has too many mechanical quirks.

----

I think it would work much better if:

1) We gutted almost everything about it that was discordant with player freedom and everything that gave mechanical advantages - what I would do is remove the slavery name tag - turn it into a simple tag that says "this person wears a (demonym) slave collar for someone who is (un)owned". I would remove the slave caller function - it serves no purpose except to prevent rp, disregards involvement of others (scriers, spies, conjurers).

It should be something that makes RP for more people, not just two people. Escape should be easier to do, period, if someone wants to play a conflicted slave they still can. No one, but themselves, can make them be rid of the "flavorful mechanics" of it. It also does not mean all slavery has to be done this way allowing other forms of it to exist sans mechanics.

2) Make it mildly inconvenient again - it should not really integrate you into the writ system. A reduction in the amount of writs you can do (especially if you normally cannot), should be something that happens. Slaves should have smaller bank accounts or none- but their owner pays for their rent/upkeep in any slave property. Slave owners should have to pay upkeep like any other property or lose their slaves to 'the guild' once again. Portals should not be given freely and...

3) More mechanical reactions in the module. NPCs should have their own opinions on slavery, settlement leaders should be able to decide (how) involved slaves are in their settlements. Some NPCs by design should refuse slaves, others might be sympathetic and so forth.

Though no matter what is done, short term, long-term - cleaning up, reforming it, undoing it entirely will require time and effort (which I think would be worthy and not impossible) - as we'd need to clean up old NPCs, gut old code, redesign some areas/mechanics.

I think the easiest first steps would be to do like Sincra suggests in the other thread of just making it cheaper to be free again, removing all mechanical advantages, and clamping down on the lush (absurd to even say this) benefits of slavery. It should suck and be a controversial status.

I also think changing the nametag (meaning who owns you) and the way callers work would be pretty simple without changing how everything currently works as most of that is dialogue/script work.

----

I am more weighing in to stand with "reforming it as a concept" than utter removal. I want to see the whole situation have more routes for organic RP than the entire god-mode "THE COLLAR FORCE CHOKES YOU AND IT HAS INFINITY STRENGTH" sort of RP it avails us to - alongside gutting all of the extremely problematic mechanical advantages it provides for server health and balance.

[VibeKings]

I don't like the system either, but for different reasons I suppose. Its current form I think is:

>Much too focused on Andunor in particular, leaving places that are explicitly OK with slaves, slavery, and the cruel profits that come from this system like Sibayad to be pretty much left out. On the other side of the same coin (?) its evil-Underdark-chattel slavery focus means that it must be the specifically bad type of slavery, weird as it sounds to say. But there are places in the setting where slavery is not always an Evil-aligned (emphasis on the "aligned"...please) thing, like Mulhorand. So I guess you could boil my argument down to the fact that the system is too one-note and only allows for one type of concept, albeit I grant it's the concept that comes primarily to mind when we think of what slavery is.

>Ironically considering my last point, it's not restrictive enough. We talk a lot about how silly level 30 slave wargods are, I suppose, but I think that's a fault of the system in a way -- it doesn't really stop players from doing that. You can still do quests, run for artifact chests, split heads with a scimitar like any other character. It doesn't weaken you in any real meaningful way. There's no actual hardship to rise above except whatever other players mandate of you, and even that requires a certain suspension of disbelief, a "going along with it." This is true of many things, but slavery is one of those things that usually demands a response from "uninvolved" players, and the nature of the system sort of precludes response like that. Which leads me to...

>It excludes power to influence the narrative from bystanders. I believe this is where much of the, quoting Watchful Glare here,

It happens already that slaves get treated hostile because "They could get out of the collar if they really wanted to, they want to be slaves" as meta from the OOC knowledge that you need to have consent.

this mentality stems from. It does make other people feel powerless, because it does require a consent of the enslaved player, but there's no real way for someone else to influence that status in any meaningful way. The onus is always on the player of the (Slave). This is a healthy thing out of character, I must stress, but the system doesn't do any sort of real job camouflaging how it works. All the work on that front has to be done through IC fiat, like "well my character is scared!" (even though they can freely leave/enter Andunor/Sibayad any time they want and there's nothing stopping them, even though they're a level 30 wizard, etc.) or "a magical curse affects my character that means he can't leave the city" (which is not removable in any way for narrative purposes), so on and so forth.

As it stands the system just isn't robust enough to deal with the reality of any narrative with an inkling of complexity without showing its seams in a really ugly, bones-sticking-out kind of way. Unlike many anti-system posters in the thread, I don't think it needs to be removed, but that's certainly a lot less work involved than a redesign on the scale I think is necessary. The question for devs and to an extent the admins is "is the RP we get from the system worth the effort it would take to redesign it?"

[Kenji]

Put a level restriction on all slaves and max out their levels at 26 (disallow them to level beyond that, enslaved characters automatically drop to level 26, but don't lose the exp)

Allow only 1 writ every 19 hours for slaves.

Disallow slaves to join the Radiant Heart auxiliary or take the pirate ink. Existing RH Aux or inked Pirates will lose their status and bonuses (such as access to quarters, quests, ring) that come with them when enslaved. They'll regain the aforementioned bonuses once they're freed again.

[Distant Relation]

I absolutely loathe the slavery system.

Not only is the system itself full of weird mechanical contrivances (like RedRopes exposed above), it also serves as justification to some pretty gross and gruesome scenes in-game that are hard to ignore unless you just leave the room and wait until it blows over.

I wouldn't shed a tear if it was removed, taken out back and burned in a pyre. Alternatively, changing the system so that it attracts less joyriders who are doing it for the mechanical benefits primarily would also be welcome.

[Biolab00]

Put a level restriction on all slaves and max out their levels at 26 (disallow them to level beyond that, enslaved characters automatically drop to level 26, but don't lose the exp)

Allow only 1 writ every 19 hours for slaves.

Disallow slaves to join the Radiant Heart auxiliary or take the pirate ink. Existing RH Aux or inked Pirates will lose their status and bonuses (such as access to quarters, quests, ring) that come with them when enslaved. They'll regain the aforementioned bonuses once they're freed again.

I know that this is truly punishing slaves. But, i kind of like this change, if it ever happens.
If you don't choose to play slaves and will want to still play in Andunor, just pick an Underdark race.

[garrbear758]

I've seen slaves played very well and I've seen slaves played horribly. But you know that can be said over any class or mechanic. Many who push for the mechanic part of the system to be gone and just rp it either don't get that you can't just rp being a slave if you are not an outcast since that is the /only/ way to start a 'lesser' race in the underdark OR that if you are playing a 'lesser' race from above you have to convince everyone that you are a slave or get killed regularly for being a spy instead.

Yes, slave gives mechanical benefit of having the hub portal. Can it be done without that portal? Yes. But it is a huge pain and most times whoever you're serving won't wait till you sprint to the saltspar for a portal, won't fund you a stack of portal lenses or what have you. Being left out of things just because you can't have that collar that lets you use the hub really sucks.

It is also hugely disappointing to read that because people in the past have used the mechanic to do things people deem as icky means that obviously anyone who chooses to try and play a slave or own one must be the same. It happened with gnolls till this interesting race was barely played because the stigma that came with it. If people are doing such a thing, report it, ban them, or even still set a rule that if you are caught doing that the character is deleted and you are no longer able to take that path at creation.

It has been said before, many times, if you don't like the system then don't interact with it. Keep in mind not every single person who plays something, be it a slave, an owner, a gnoll, a half dressed elf, a giggling hin sitting on laps. It doesn't mean that the next person who plays the class/race/mechanic is going to be like that.

It happened with gnolls to an extent that they were moved to an award solely to help avoid it, and I've seen way worse from slavery than anything from gnolls.

Slavery isn't a system you can in any way opt out of interacting with, unless you avoid significant portions of the server.

Just because I wasn't involved doesn't mean I can "opt out" of stumbling into slave castration rp, rape relationships, graphic beatings in public areas, etc.

I agree with everything Mimic has said. However they've also said something that is relevant to what you have said yourself Garr. How long ago were those things you experienced? Are those things, those players still around? Things like that happened once, like with many rulebreaks. And though they may have shaped your opinion on those things, I really don't think we've ever seen them since and we have move on from that as a community, like with any of the more eggregious rulebreakers they just get banned eventually.

If I had to guess, I would say some of that happened some four years ago at the least.

I started playing here less than four years ago, and didn't play UD til at least a year after that. I'm an EE baby for arelith and my first several characters were surfacers. I'll admit these weren't super recent, although that is mostly due to me avoiding the UD until literally this week when I decided to give it another try, but they were frequent enough and from varying people, some of which are still playing the same characters, that it soured me on the UD experience as a whole.

I'm not saying every single slavery experience was bad, but I can't say a single one made me think 'wow this system is cool and deserves to exist'.

[Red Ropes]

Good point too kenji about it should exclude access to systems that currently exist that are weird/problematic for it.

---

Another thing that just occurred to me is there is no way for a slave to be bought out of slavery by its own master as well, which would be an amazing award to have the ability to do that. Or be... pressured to do so. A slave owner cannot free their slave, only sell it. lol.

[2d6 emotional damage]

I do not like the slavery system. For the reasons expanded upon in the thread, the system largely robs players of agency.

They are bound to the whims of a gold sink and another player to be freed, or to do a fairly arduous quest on their own. The quest to free yourself is very personal; there's no reason to involve others, and not a lot of ways other people can help you. Ultimately, for a slave to escape their situation, it's up to them and/or their owner (and a lot of money). Even more, as RedRopes points out, even a master cannot free their slave. Freedom is always chained to satisfying a mechanical demand.

There is no space for other people to be involved, leaving the ways for others, well wishers or skeptics alike, to interact with the system other then reacting to it. Its very frustrating to deal with because I know as a player there is nothing I can do about it unless the player is willing to do, honestly a lot of work, to get free.

I would love to see the slavery system done away with and replaced to be a flavor tag, and renamed to indentured servitude. This is a far more neutral term and can apply to debt bondages, mercenaries, retainers for a noble house, and, also fits thematically with this relationship ultimately being formed off of OOC consent. It should be RP, thematic, and over no mechanical benefits at all.

In exchange, I would love to see the prisoner collar system developed to take the place of the current slave system. I envision a temporary collar you can put on your pvp victims to have your damsels in distress that can be removed by a team of players (perhaps on a skill check?) or by successfully running a gauntlet in the gladiator ring in Cordor, Sibayad, or Andunor. Dying in the gauntlet would force a respawn, but you would at least have your collar off, or it would be easier to remove by your friends. This provides a cool sort of trial for the character to under go to free themselves, or if they cleverly escape, they can run to get help from other players. Maybe it could also make the character immune from yoinks, but also immune to being warded against scrying. This way you always can find where they are, but can't just yoink them out. This would let player still have a "consequence" for getting caught, but it's a really cool consequence that's temporary.

[KT28]

I have very mixed feelings on this topic. I have quite a lot of experience with the slavery system (mostly on the owner side) and those experiences have ranged from being very rewarding, to frustrating, to stifling. Some good stories have come out of it for me, but equally I've had a lot of bad ones to the point that my PC doesn't buy slaves anymore excepting rare circumstances.

Here are some things I've noticed through years of playing in the UD. And I am going to focus on the negatives because that is what this thread is about, even though I have also had some good slave experiences too. These are not strictly good/bad in a roleplay sense, as any in-character obstacle can be roleplayed around, but I do think it's a valid question to ask whether these kinds of dynamics end up stifling more RP than they create on the whole.

From the owner's side:

1. Free PCs are discouraged from interacting with slaves

As as uncollared character I often find it very difficult to find reasons to interact with other people's slaves. My evil characters generally simply have little to gain from investing in someone who is bound so strongly to someone else and is better off investing time in other relationships. Meanwhile my neutral/non-slaver characters making 'friends' with slaves risk being accused of being a chainbreaker/slave sympathizer (this happened to one of my PCs once or twice). This results in a rather large portion of the UD population that my characters simply have very little reason to interact with. This is both a lost opportunity for free PCs and contributions to feelings of loneliness/isolation for slave PCs (which I will expand on later). I think this is problematic because we should be encouraging interaction as a whole, not discouraging it.

2. Both natural outcomes (escape and assimilation) to a slave's story are costly

Narratively it is unlikely that most characters will want to remain a slave forever; for a character to grow they will probably gravitate towards either assimilation or chainbreaking/escape depending on their experiences as a slave. However, as an owner my character is discouraged from participating in both of these narratives: having your slave chainbreak is costly in terms of reputation (as it should be if we want slavery to have weight), and assimilation is literally costly in the sense that it costs 2,000,000 gold which very few people can afford. My PC now does not buy slaves excepting very rare circumstances because he knows that eventually they will either chainbreak, or if they end up being a great asset he will have to pay 2,000,000 to free them (what a weird dynamic; avoiding giving people a chance because it's so costly if things go well!). Once again we see cases of the mechanics and dynamic discouraging people to interact with the system.


From the slave's side:

I have only played a small handful of slaves but my experiences have been pretty "meh" on all of them. I do think the slave experiences is very much what you make of it and maybe it just doesn't agree with me, but here are the issues I experienced while playing a slave.

1. Character development can be challenging while playing a slave

All of the slaves I played were slave-start characters. I found it very hard to develop personality/depth to my brand new character when all of my interactions were conducted under this layer of being expected to act submissive/act like a slave. On top of that, it was generally hard to find people to interact with in ways that would result in character development due to issues discussed above (free PCs have very little reason to interact with slaves owned by someone else, much less interact in a way that allows for much character development). Maybe some people find these restrictions conducive to creativity but for me they were absolutely stifling and I had trouble connecting with all of my slave PCs.

2. Slavery = stagnancy

Being a slave is boring. I'm not just talking about being used as a crafting bot; I'm talking about the fundamental lack of dynamic narrative growth that comes from these opposing forces of evil free PCs being invested in keeping slaves disempowered/keeping the status quo/treating them as commodities to be traded, and slave PCs themselves wanting to grow and change as all characters should. Sometimes great stories can come out of this! Especially stories of adversity/chainbreak and all the RP that can come out of that; it can give "Good" PCs a reason to exist, give them someone to despise, and someone to help… or there can also be great stories for slaves who wish to prove themselves and pursue freedom/Andunor citizenship eventually. But I also think this is why so often we see slaves who are struggling for interaction/character growth; the system itself encourages stagnancy and the very essence of the word "slave" is generally thought of as something permanent and not easy to change. For drow in particular slaves are canonically treated as being very disposable.

it's sad to see characters and players that would otherwise have shone brightly getting mired and occasionally obsessed with this weird system

I also have felt this exact sentiment before. Sometimes I look at slave PCs and I feel like there's a huge opportunity cost being paid by the community. The slavery system is so restrictive and repetitive that it's unfortunately rather rare that something interesting happens with it. Yet nevertheless it's an integral part of Andunor's culture and can't truly just be ignored.

Andunor is a harsh place. It makes sense that since we have a slavery system and slavery is part of the culture, slave PCs should get treated like slaves. But in an ideal world I'm not convinced entirely that the current slavery system is appropriate for characters who are played by players and aren't just NPC sewer workers. It's not a great system for the reality that PCs need to change and grow over time. I would rather have slavery be a flavor/background theme in Andunor rather than a central theme that characters can interact with so intimately.

So in summary, my personal takeaways/recommendations:

1. I would not be opposed to seeing the entire system get axed. I am actually kind of curious to see what kind of impact the removal of this system would have on Andunor's culture/community.

2. If a system absolutely must remain in place I would rather see it replaced with some kind of retainership/sponsor system which is consensual in-character as well as OOC. The main difference would be this system would have a clear objective purpose which is eventual assimilation/naturalization of the retainer. I think this would resolve a lot of the issues around consent and character agency which otherwise lead to the stagnancy discussed above in the slavery mechanic's current form.

3. At the absolute bare minimum the 2,000,000 price tag for freedom should be reduced significantly. This was a bad change. I understand this change was intended to make slavery have more weight, but I think this change doubled down on mechanics that were already problematic and just made it even more difficult to tell an interesting slave narrative because naturalization is prohibitively expensive.

[Imperatrix]

My biggest issue with slavery is that whenever I am playing a character that is required to care about slavery from a moral standpoint I need to jump hoops around the fact that almost every slave doesn't want to stop being a slave on an OOC level. Furthermore, most of them are evil and are just using the system as an Andunorian passport. It's basically a running joke.

On the rare occasions that a slave actually wants to be freed, I need to engage with an incredibly arduous and unfun system in order to get them free and, frankly, there's always the slight resentment in knowing that the player consented to making everyone they know have to care about and deal with it.

If the system remains in place I'd go so far as to say that any non-commoner class should be level gated at 20 or so, and only commoners should be permitted to level further. It's absurd that war gods and epic mages are bound by a collar.

[Richrd]

It happens already that slaves get treated hostile because "They could get out of the collar if they really wanted to, they want to be slaves" as meta from the OOC knowledge that you need to have consent. And the same with prisoner collars and the 'take it off or die' or simply refusing to RP with the character because they know they could take it off any time.

That seems absolutely ridiculous. Never been directly involved in any of the slavery mechanics / RP but if I caught someone being the way that you described there I'd just report them. This level of OOC motivated stuff is beyond just being immersion breaking.


Now to not just leave an opinion like that but to also add some substance to the whole slavery system discussion from an outsider's point of view ...
For one, I think it should be up to the slave and the slavemaster to decide how they wish to RP their case. Indentured servitude or serfdom, be it to have their slave fight in the arena for them, abuse them for physical labor or have them carry your shopping bags as you waltz around in Andunor. The possibilities to be creatively evil and despicable are nigh infinite.
Now that said, reading some of the mechanical limitations and also advantages of the whole system is a bit shocking. On one side I agree that the advantages need to be curbed down drastically. But there being apparently a 2.000.000 cost to get rid of a slave collar is ridiculous. Knowing this I would now never accept being dragged into slave-RP and rather eat the killbash express to the fugue.

Lastly I just want to say a thing that could totally offend some people and I understand why. But I'd ask especially those who feel offended to read this as many times as they need to understand what I am trying to say here.
It's that what we need to really distance ourselves from this decades old video game and what happens in it and not try to find a real life equivalent in every event that occurs. Slavery is a touchy subject to some, especially folks from the North American continent. But do try to understand that, just the same way that you killing a dirty necromancer in game is not equal to taking the law into your own hand and murdering someone IRL, you can not put a drow having a halfling mini-slave all collared up in a videogame to many years of oppression that black people had to endure in real life. Just the same way Joey from accounting becoming a total murderhobo in your weekly DnD session won't mean that he'll shoot up his place of work the next day.

[Distant Relation]

The IC/OOC dissonance is real when it comes to slavery.

I remember encountering a young svirfneblin slave when I was playing my LG svirfo cleric. Myself and my constant companion, a svirfo druid, spotted this slave being abused and mistreated in the hub. We quickly found a way to isolate her and, out of compassion, we took her and guided her to safety.

We arrived at the grotto, and quickly a meeting was set up to decide what to do with this slave. Everyone present wanted to free her, and the slave herself mentioned hating her station, wanting to be free. Our druid, who was extremely rich, offered to buy off her slavery immediately and set her free.

That immediately brought the proceedings to a hold as the slave player asked us OOCly not to free her slave. This is the storyline the player wanted, to be a svirfo slave in the UD. At this point we had to awkwardly pivot, come up with all kinds of IC excuses as to why we couldn't free this slave (who at this point was already in safety, in the very heart of the svirfneblin community, with three people offering her a home until she got settled proper).

So we just let her go, and for the next couple of weeks we spotted her being abused, tortured, mistreated and humiliated in the hub. Then the player rolled, because it turns out it was just a 26-and-roll druid.

That experience really stuck with me, and its the main reason I Just pretend slaves don't exist these days.

[TurningLeaf]

From a newb perspective the system is kinda like... yeah.. not ready for prime time as the saying goes. But at the same time everybody tends to be here for a more bespoke experience; none of these NWN servers are massive MMOs. So the concerns tend to be different.

Anyways history points to a rebrand as a potential option, for ex here in the U.S. we had this slavery-adjacent racket called "indentured servitude".

[Party in the forest at midnight]

There's a lot of aspects to the issue of slavery. It's a tangled mess and I'm not sure how to really approach it, so I'll try to describe some of the issues.

If someone's friend is kidnapped and enslaved, then it makes a lot of sense that people will want to go and free their friend. BUT, someone might want to do a slave capture story arc, and don't want to be freed right away. These two things conflict with each other, and sometimes people get mean about it. Like the prisoner collar issue that came up, people go "You could take it off at any time" and don't treat it with any weight. The only idea I have is if people make up excuses to have it, "They said they'd go after everyone I care about if I remove it, I'm going to work towards being free and not have everyone die" is the best I could come up with. If people don't respect that, they're jerks. People should have the right to have a slave arc if they want it.

On the opposite side of this is that as a surface player who usually does cloak and dagger RP, I'm often presented with people going "Oh no! So and so has been enslaved, we need to save them!!!" And it gets really exhausting to encounter this situation over and over. Especially back when it only cost 500k, there was this expectation that SOMEONE would pay it up. This is the only good thing about the cost raising to 2 million, there's no more pressure to pay up anymore.

I'd rather not get dragged into peoples' slavery story arcs. It's very time consuming and I don't find it fun. I try to find reasons to dismiss it and not get involved. "If the slave wanted to be free they'd be working towards it, instead they're just sitting here socializing" is what I usually go with. It's cruel but I'm not sure how else I can avoid interacting with the system. I also try to put more focus on slave owners rather than slaves themselves, that way people who are RPing being a slave can continue to do so while slave owners get the heat for it. Distant Relation's story about slavery is another example of awkwardness with the system. It's really awkward playing a character who should care about freeing slaves, while also recognizing that people want to have slave arcs.

This leads into KT88's thing about slaves not being able to find RP. Since slaves are so underdark-centric, any slave on the surface who is loitering around player hubs is obviously spying. So why would my character go and interact with them? An argument could be made that "Oh you could go and feed the slave fake information!", but that's a single specific instance of RP. Overall I don't really care about the underdark or what happens in it. I don't care about underdark politics enough to feed slaves fake information. I just avoid them.

Overall, I hope peoples' attitudes towards the prisoner collar improve. And that players are encouraged to report people with bad attitudes about the prisoner collar. I'm ok with people wanting to have a slave story arc, but I don't want to be pressured into having to deal with it. And I think players should be more accepting of people wanting to do a slave story arc and not killbash people for having a prisoner collar.

Lastly I think it would help if slavery was expanded to be on the surface more. Because as it is, it's only fully supported in the Underdark. The chainbreaker quests are in the Underdark. If you're a slave, you're going to be interacting with the Underdark in some way, shape or form. If the system is going to exist, it should involve the surface somehow, so that certainty wouldn't be there. There'd be more incentive to RP with slaves on the surface if it was a normalized surface thing.