Serious question: What value do slaves actually have to your average PC? Like, I've never seen any PC / group actively engage in slavery because there never seems to be any substantial reward worth the effort. It's like crafting or running a business, there's just no *point* in engaging with the mechanics because the rewards are puny.How could you make it actually appealing to players? It's not like they can load up a ship and sail off to the ivory coast.
>>97797671What game and what system do you speak of?How worth it any activities are depends deeply on the system/game you are running. So you need to list what game you are talking about to get anything of value.
>>97797671Why would you want to?
>>97797671Hedonism and or power-flex, also side-bitches.
>>97797671What game? What are its rules about slavery?
>>97797671Local lord offers a reward to bring back a group of "misplaced" "serfs for a spiritually" uplifting amount of money. The seeding season is near so he's in a bit of a hurry. He offers coin and favour in exchange to bring back his peasants. Also, you can use this to force the players to go to the forbidden forest or something where the serf went.
>>97797671I mean it is useful having a servant as an adventurer, but a slave presents a bigger escape risk when it's just you and your three to five bros out on the road, no homo. So like what, are you gonna bring an overseer along too? At that point you're better off with an actual servant that you pay. So slavery as an adventurer only makes sense as a venture that's happening mostly off-screen. You own slaves, but that just means somewhere in the world you're operating a plantation. Or the adventures themselves could be slavers. There is no more orc baby conundrum after you've cleared out a dungeon, just load the survivors into your wagon and sell them once you get back to town.
>>97797688>>97797678I strongly suspect OP doesn't actually run a game and already fucked off.
>>97797671Basically >>97797679 is the reason why. Games tend to be a social experience and you'll have to out yourself as a weirdo among other people.Also people prefer playing good characters and there's no good reason to participate in slavery.The only reason someone would bother is for the sick kicks.
>>97797694Do we have any information regarding OP's sexual preferences?
If we are just talking of rewards, in an old board game Barbarian Prince slave girls can function as high value gifts that can be exchanged for favors from powerful characters. I do think the mechanic makes practical sense too - it is easier for a traveling part of adventuring hobos to haul around a dainty young woman in a leash than it would be transport a heavy chest of gold, but that dainty young woman has an equal value to right patron.
>>97797768Is the supposed to be Sango and Kagome?
>>97797671You might need one for people to believe that you are a free person yourself, I understand.
>>97797779I just picked some SFW slave girl picture from safebooru, but now that I checked tags yes.
>>97797671In slaine (based on D&D 3.5 iirc) I played a druid, and had a small train of slaves follow me to act as a battery pack for my magic, if I ran out I'd quickly do a ritual sacrifice to recharge the tank.
>>97797768>it is easier for a traveling part of adventuring hobos to haul around a dainty young woman in a leash than it would be transport a heavy chest of gold,I don't think that's the case. A slave is about as heavy as the gold, and can't be stuffed in a chest. You don't have to feed gold. Gold won't try to escape. Gold won't shit or piss or need air. It's much harder for gold to be damaged (losing much of its value). You can only consider a slave girl "easier" to carry around if you ignore all the difficulties, and if you do that might as well just ignore the weight of the gold too.
>>97797671Slavery was invented as an alterntive to genocide. Some bleeding heart libtard said "Hey we don't have to sacrifice all of these captives, we could just let them grow wheat or something isntead."We need to go back to hewing the limbs of defeated foes upon pyres of cedar until they are clean consumed. If you don't kill all of them, eventually your pussy descendants will feel bad for them and release them and then they'll hate you forever (for not killing them) and ruin your neighborhoods and steal your bikes. The wheat isn't worth it, just kill them.Cut the hearts out of your enemies. TOTAL extermination. No mercy ever. Strangle them all from the youngest to the oldest (and in that order) and strangle anyone who dissents.
>>97798016Sounds like a quick way to spend an inordinate amount of time killing people who could have provided labor, become public enemy numero uno because you're a murderous psychopath, everyones hate you, you get jumped by all your neighbors, then die.
>>97798016Slavery is natural selection. If you enslave rather then kill your enemies, you come with extra plunder from every fight (in the form of slaves). So those who enslave have a clear advantage over those who don't. They also have easier fights (because enemies that know they'll be slaughtered to the last never surrender).So over time, slave-keeping societies will simply outcompete genocidal ones. Evolution in action.
>>97797671Traveller and ACKS both have slavery prices.Traveller honestly doesn't make it worth the cost though, you can apparently buy an erotic and exotic pleasure slave for less than the price of a second hand car.
>>97797671>How could you make it actually appealing to players?The systems that use goons appropriately doesn't have overpowered PCs and that makes each working hand count.
>>97797671>oad up a ship and sail off to the ivory coastIronic choice of words- megellan, the first man to (almost) circumnavigate the world, used enslaved translators
>>97797737We know that you must be gay if you're this upset at talking about game concepts in abstract.
>>97798302TranslationNot actually talking about games at all and certainty not playing them.
>>97798180What the fuck else was he supossed to use lol?
>>97797671Really varies on the forms of slavery in the area and how much morale sort of rules you're using in your game. Straight up chattel slavery re the americas is not the default despite it being the main focus of most contemporary media, there's a bunch of degrees of slavery with differing historical contexts. Generally having ways to make use of war spoil humans that aren't full enfranchisement. In relation to the PCs of the current game I'm running, the main use of slaves is uh, sacrifice to the ancient horrors of Carcosa but I don't think that's typical. I would figure most parties tend to be small enough scale that slavery isn't very useful or has enough complications that hiring is easier so they'll do that.
>>97798706i would figure your typical adventuring party wouldn't really need unskilled labor for anything. at best they'd need a pack mule or something and then they can just, well, buy a pack mule
>>97797671I found it best to mask slavery behind the guise of owning a monster pet. I gradually reveal their sentience.
>>97798670You COULD pay the guy. The other option is to drop by a local king you can communicate with and negotiate that they send a diplomat with you who can speak the language of wherever you're going next.
>>97798872I'm pretty sure he did that pretty often. I have Antonio Pigafetta's account of his journey. Many times he describes how they have to work around not having a translator.He navigated through dozens of islands and kingdoms and many of them had their own language. It was simply impractical to get a new slave translator every single time- when they didn't know the language, how would they even find one? Randomly shout at people in Portuguese in a slave market until they found one that spoke it?
>>97798893Yes, it was traditionally the standard approach. Especially when you need to trade with the locals anyway and can pick up whoever you need in a local port, presumably without abducting them and forcing them to work against their will. They were mutinous and incompetent spaniards though, so maybe they were too lazy to actually find a guy and just grabbed the first person they found
>>97799028They weren't lazy as much as insanely guillible. Magellan himself died because some random king got him to fight his enemies by converting to Christianity and then telling him the guys next island were evil satanic worshippers. He went in there with his forces thinking himself invincible, got shot to death with arrows in the places his armor didn't cover, and died there in some random island in the Pacific like a bum.
>>97798726Even assuming slavery is unskilled labour still falls into the trap of american style chattel slavery. There have been a variety of slave statuses, some quite educated or specialized.
>>97798706The Barbary slavers never existed, anon. There were no slaves except for American chattel slavery of Africans (who ALL universally opposed slavery and did not practice it, ever) - no other ethnic group were ever enslaved, ever, and all slave owners were straight white men.
>>97797671My main group has zero problems with slavery (we are not Americans) and sometimes engages in it. For example, my current Genesys game is set in late 3E Morrowind, a couple of years before the events of the game and one of the characters owns around a dozen of slaves. Three of them are his brainwashed bodyguards (he is a very squishy pure mage specializing in that kind of magic) and the rest are his personal servants - he is quite hedonistic. The same group happily practiced slavery, torture (Liquid Pain for crafting of magical items) and human sacrifice on planar scale in a long 3.5 campaign I run back in early 10s.
bait thread
>>97803306nou
>>97798016Your skin is astoundingly brown.
>>97798016>tranime
>>97805256Reddit is 4 doors down, champ.
Slavery doesn't "work" in most tabletop systems because most tabletop systems have shied away from PCs managing large groups of henchmen. Most campaigns take place in Western Feudal setups where slavery isn't practiced - serfdom and peasantry are quite common, of course, and that's a form of slavery, but anon is likely asking for Roman-style chattel slavery where you outright buy someone and have them follow you around.Wait, did I really just stray from my point within a single sentence? Dammit. Point I'm trying to make is that slaves are pointless because the need for them in tabletop is pointless, and if you *really* need someone to do work for you than you either hire somebody or get a peasant.
>>97797671According to My group, about 45 silver pieces. They bought a gnome slave at an auction once and used him to watch their cart/equipment, but he escaped when they got into a fight and the horses pulling the cart fled the scene with the gnome still on the cart.>It's like crafting or running a business, there's just no *point* in engaging with the mechanics because the rewards are puny.What game are you playing with mechanics on slavery? Genuinely curious. I can't imagine it'd be much different from the standard follower/hireling rules in most games.>How could you make it actually appealing to players?Historically, slavery was more of a luxury than anything else, and not very economically practical. If your players are good or at least meant to be the 'heroes', they probably won't want to engage with it for ethical reasons, and even if they're evil, the practical concerns will probably outweigh the perceived value of it.Aside from a mundane task like cart watching, I can't think of much value your average character in any system will get out of having a slave.
>>97802933This is true because I read it on the internet
>>97798726Skilled slaves aside, the biggest drawback to having hirelings and the like is to have a goldmine and manning for a goldmine to keep players adventuring
>>97802933Good goy, I'll allow you a loan of 50k shekels at 300% interest now
>>97805338Chattel slavery is Semitic, not Roman. Nice try tho schlomo
>>97797671That's kind of the same reason why slavery fell out of fashion in real life. In the modern world it's cheaper to pay workers a miserable wage than to feed, house and clothe them their whole lives to only do one single simple task over and over again. Besides, if they are free and earn their own money to spend they are contributing way more to the economy.Much like in RPGs slavery is just not worth the hassle irl save for very specific exceptions.
>>97806967Well, in the modern world there's a lot of mechanization and industrialization that's cut down on the labour required for a bunch of really important productions. One dude in a tractor and one dude with a chainsaw can get a lot more done in the modern world than half a dozen guys in a pre-modern world.Working in a grain mill or a mine in pre-modern times was probably simple, sure, but it was not really an easy gig.
>>97805338The first part is basically it. It doesn't matter if you run a setting where slavery is common if you're running a system where the PCs aren't expected to have dozens of hirelings and mercenaries working for them.
>>97797671Some form of unfree labor existing offscreen is why a class of murderhobos is able to exist in the first place. Even if the murderhobos aren't the ones who directly own or control the laborers they still need someone to grow the food while they spelunk in dungeons.
>>97806912source: voices in my head
>>97807929Or his ass.
>>97797671tangible value? pretty much as a porter/camp follower like irl. carry shit, cook meals, wash clothes, watch after the animals. possibly as a hard asset beyond liquid wealth like currency or precious items, depending on the setting. I don't really see how an adventuring party would benefit from having more than one or two though unless they're just playing Slave Trade Simulator 1492 or something like that.as for the in character benefits? idk man, I'm not a cop, priest or your mom.
>>97807929More like all of recorded history, with the bonus of world wide distribution of disgusting unedited Jewish behavior
>>97805338Now I'm wondering how far I could push a DM with this concept.>Buy slave.>Feed them well. Cloth them well. House them well.>Their job? Follow me around. Not help. Not converse. Not companioship. Just ... follow me around.
>>97808048And then the stalker's guild is enraged by unskilled slave labor.And ... so ... the adventure begins ...
>>97797671Human(oid) slaves? Nothing. Unless you're in an incredibly low magic setting, a few spells can do the labor of a large number of slaves without the cost of maintaining them.Constructs, undead, or binding powerful magical creatures to your service is another matter. An army of tireless laborers or an incredibly powerful fiend under your control may be worth the effort and doesn't always carry the same stigma as whipping the serfs in the field.
>>97808032The single greatest slavery campaign of all history was Spanish and Portuguese led
>>97810651By the people whose holy book says that goyim were crafted in the shape of men so that jews wouldn't have to be served by beasts, right?
>>97797671It's adding another mechanic to keep track of. While mainstream of the hobby seems to all about simplifying the bookkeeping to bare minimum - time tracking, food&water, ammo, etc. getting either abstracted or circumvented with handy spell or magical item. Also it's "problematic" and large enough portion of the hobby now targets people who care enough to act offended about it.In Vampire: Dark Age game we've been collecting "remorseful sinners" - brigands and similar mundane human enemies that were spared on oath to join order of penitent monks. But it was mostly just a feel-good "flavor" thing, workforce we could throw around toiling fields, building roads, and similar "goodwill" projects, but I don't think we've ever seen a single coin out of it.>>97805665Poor Cecily can't catch a break.>>97805665World of Darkness (various splats, not just Vampire) / Exalted lets you collect slaves, though how useful they will be depends largely on your storyteller.Also Black Crusade, where you're expected to be the baddies, and human lives are just another resource to be spend as convenient.
>>97797671Slavery is very common in my setting, particularly human slaves as they are very easy to enslave, but for the PC’s the slaves they’ve acquired are mostly there to be “toys” basically, they just pull them out when they want to mess with someone for funsies
>>97797671>Monetary value.Depends on their nature and quality.>Personal value.Depends on the location.Civilized and developed societies hold to the Roman form of slavery, in which you're obliged to treat them well, you act as their slave one day a year, and reward them with freedom if their service is long and/or meritous.Third world societies and evil societies treat slaves as sentient meat to abuse, rape or break under millstones at their leisure. But this is objectively a bad idea as it leads to reduced productivity overall, rebellions in long term, and greater hazards for the owner, hence why these places almost always remain third world.
>>97811050
>>97797671I've had a few cases of PCs occasionaly partaking in slavery, but it was more of an opportunistic case of "hey, we managed to take those enemies alive and already interrogated them. might as well sell them to those local slavers for some extra buck instead of just slashing their throats or whatever". If you want to engage with it beyond that, it basically becomes running a bussiness really, which is not something you generally want PCs to spend much time on to avoid making things boring
>>97814164Your pic actually reminds me that giants are the primary slavers of my setting, since humans can't really meaningfully resist them without hyper-specialized training or very heavy equipment no slave is going to be able to get their hands on.
>>97797671>What value do slaves actually have to your average PC?Pretty low, for dundee or similar games. If you reasonably can't take into a dungeon and use it to fight monsters there, it's not gonna be a high priority.This is true of being a landowner as well, which is probably where most wealth it's at in those worlds.Also, OP, if you want to slaveplay, there are better games.
>>97814262What would a giant want great quantities of slaves for? Mass enslavement is for manual labor, which would be deeply silly for them to get from humans. Giants should want a few highly skilled slaves to work in specialized jobs needing small stature. They should treat human workers like humans would treat fairy workers.
>>97814288>What would a giant want great quantities of slaves for?Same thing humans would want halfling slaves for. They're good for both farming, domestic servitude, and industry. Sure, each human is individually weaker than the giant they serve, but that's always been the case for slavery, a Spartan hoplite was stronger than his helot slaves but he wasn't going to till the fields. Ultimately, slavery isn't about putting everyone in the role their physique is most suited for. It's about the strongest people realizing they can get weaker people to do the work they don't want to do themselves.
>>97798302There is no such thing as in the abstract. Either you're discussinga specific game, or you're not discussing games. Argue and I'll ban you.
>>97807822So farmers who sell food for money and aren't slaves.
>>97808048why would that push anyone? what does that mean?
