Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > GURPS

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 10-25-2018, 06:38 AM   #61
Tomsdad
 
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Brighton
Default Re: Killing Slavers

Quote:
Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
Honestly I suspect most slave owners are no worse than most employers. Maybe better - it's not like slaves can't take the starve option in the choice between work or starve too, they're just "lucky" enough to have somebody who thinks their labor is valuable enough to try to stop them....
Right only when it comes to stopping them most slave owning societies tended to have a variety of unpleasant ways to incentivise recalcitrant slaves that kicked long before work or starve did.

An employer won't pay me if I refuse to work, so I may starve as a result of that. But my owner can remove and sell my children, beat, whip or torture me, geld me, rape or kill me* (or do all that to my enslaved family members), sell me to something worse. Maybe not all slave owning societies enshrined all that in law (but most had some or most), but very few had meaningful ways for their slaves to protest behaviour that wasn't condoned anyway.

If nothing else in theory as a worker I'm free to go and pursue other forms of employment (or sources of food). Slaves however don't get that choice.



Now of course some employment contexts crossover the boundaries in different ways at times (some fo the more extreme forms of indenture). But in general it's "you have to do what I say or I'll punish you" vs. "If you choose to do what I say I'll pay you" so no not maybe better.


*this last being more a warning to others in terms of eliciting work!
__________________
Grand High* Poobah of the Cult of Stat Normalisation.
*not too high of course

Last edited by Tomsdad; 10-25-2018 at 06:50 AM.
Tomsdad is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-25-2018, 06:45 AM   #62
Tomsdad
 
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Brighton
Default Re: Killing Slavers

Quote:
Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
Yeah, the racial element of colonial age slavery is historically quite strange, and carried into a lot of slave systems you see in games, where it interacts quite strongly with the use of "race" to label different humanoid species.

It's also a bit unusual for being industrial in nature. Though slavery in large empires often has at least some of that. You do need a trade economy that will support large plantations or mines for that though, so it tends to be a bit out of place in sort of fantasy and post-apocalyptic settings that are fragmented and monster plagued enough for wandering adventurers to make much sense.
Yep, systems of slavery like everything else where born from their surrounding context. It unlikely a fantasy style slave system would look like US plantation chattel slavery, unless it also has many other similarities.
__________________
Grand High* Poobah of the Cult of Stat Normalisation.
*not too high of course

Last edited by Tomsdad; 10-25-2018 at 07:22 AM.
Tomsdad is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-25-2018, 07:15 AM   #63
vicky_molokh
GURPS FAQ Keeper
 
vicky_molokh's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
Default Re: Killing Slavers

Quote:
Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
I don't think that's quite a sound comparison. There's a difference between reading stories written in a past era, or a different culture, where people had different values and mores, and the writer just accepted those as the way things were; and reading stories written here and now, but set in a past or an imaginary society that has different values and mores, where the differentness is part of the appeal to the reader. Homer didn't put slavery into the Iliad (as a central element, in fact, in that its conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon stems from a dispute over who has the right to own a captured Trojan woman) because he wanted to challenge the reader to understand the motives of people in a slave-owning culture; his audience understood those motives perfectly well, as they lived in such a culture. But it was more of a challenge for Margaret Mitchell to have slaveowners in Gone with the Wind, and it would be even more of a challenge now.

I'd also note that reading ANY literature from past eras is a skill that has to be acquired, and that a lot of people, at least in the present-day United States, seem not to acquire. The Odyssey may stay in print, generation after generation, in a succession of new translations, but it's not a bestseller like, say, the Harry Potter books, or (in their day) the novels of Charles Dickens.

You have to identify the intended audience for a work before you can judge the content and presentation of that work.
I brought up the Iliad specifically because of that conflict necessarily hinging on a slavery-related scene, and because, being a mandatory work in the school programme, its target audience covers everyone who got past middle school. So it may not be a bestseller (year-to-year reuse of books is a big way to reduce sales), but it's a story that everyone either has read or pretends to have read in order to get past the exams during the compulsory phase of education.

I don't recall any classmates concluding that 100% of the cast of the Greek epics are villains because they support slaveholding societies, nor do I think that the Iliad 'does not work'. I expect roleplayers to be more used than schoolkids are to exploring societies and situations different from our own and reacting appropriately.
__________________
Vicky 'Molokh', GURPS FAQ and uFAQ Keeper
vicky_molokh is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-25-2018, 07:29 AM   #64
Tomsdad
 
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Brighton
Default Re: Killing Slavers

Yeah I generally speaking run historical stuff, and some of that has involved settings that had some kind of slavery or other systems that near enough for this thread's purposes. And well different PCs & NPCs have different views on it. Just as I suspect did real people in these societies did. Not every Roman was fine with the form of slavery they had (Roman slavery wasn't just one kid fo slavery either) and so on.


There is a difference between running games in a setting that includes slavery, and running games that are more centred around slavery in that setting.

Either way, IME possible to run successful games with varying focus on slavery and it repercussions.

But as ever personal perspective is key, I wouldn't run a game that involved slavery if a player wasn't comfortable with either the way I presented it in the setting, or dealt with it in game
__________________
Grand High* Poobah of the Cult of Stat Normalisation.
*not too high of course
Tomsdad is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-25-2018, 07:34 AM   #65
malloyd
 
Join Date: Jun 2006
Default Re: Killing Slavers

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tomsdad View Post
Now of course some employment contexts crossover the boundaries in different ways at times (some fo the more extreme forms of indenture). But in general it's "you have to do what I say or I'll punish you" vs. "If you choose to do what I say I'll pay you" so no not maybe better.
The maybe better part tends to kick in when you do choose to work. A slave owner then has reason to make some effort to take care of you, as a piece of capital equipment. An employer can figure if you get damaged or die, eh no extra cost to him, he can hire somebody else for the same thing he was paying you.

I suspect genuinely unregulated they aren't so different in a plentiful labor market - the owners who would badly abuse their slaves will probably be just as willing to abuse employees and vice versa. Its only when labor becomes scarce enough that leaving for another job is a serious option that things get different - the free laborers now *can* leave, so you need to treat them better, and conversely the slave owners now have to start cracking down more because slaves start thinking there is something the could run away *to*. This is probably part of why industrial slavery tends to be worse than the more domestic or small scale agricultural versions - an economy that will support buying and shipping slaves in big lots is probably not one where labor is in oversupply.
__________________
--
MA Lloyd
malloyd is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-25-2018, 08:06 AM   #66
Tomsdad
 
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Brighton
Default Re: Killing Slavers

Quote:
Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
The maybe better part tends to kick in when you do choose to work. A slave owner then has reason to make some effort to take care of you, as a piece of capital equipment. An employer can figure if you get damaged or die, eh no extra cost to him, he can hire somebody else for the same thing he was paying you.
thing is you can also buy more slaves (long term in some systems slaves also make more slaves for free*). Now in terms of initial outlay a slave might cost more than say a months wages, but you have to keep on paying the wages (obviously there are upkeep costs for laves but they will be less than workers wages). Plus of course you can sell slaves as well. They are to be tone deaf about it a fixed asset as opposed to an employee who is an expense.

*although you have to feed them for while before they can work, but equally you can sell them when they're more manageable and susceptible to indoctrination.


Quote:
Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
I suspect genuinely unregulated they aren't so different in a plentiful labor market - the owners who would badly abuse their slaves will probably be just as willing to abuse employees and vice versa. Its only when labor becomes scarce enough that leaving for another job is a serious option that things get different - the free laborers now *can* leave, so you need to treat them better, and conversely the slave owners now have to start cracking down more because slaves start thinking there is something the could run away *to*. This is probably part of why industrial slavery tends to be worse than the more domestic or small scale agricultural versions - an economy that will support buying and shipping slaves in big lots is probably not one where labor is in oversupply.
I take your point, especially in a truly unregulated employment system* with an oversupply of labour. But in reality the different freedoms allowed in terms of slave owners over a slave compared to employer over their employees will mean coercion will be worse and stronger.

So equally such a society that relies on industrial scale slavery will have less issue with making examples of individuals as each individual slave is worth proportionally less. Plus of course any society that is so reliant on slaves to have them in such large numbers will also be keenly aware of the threat of one slave revolt away from hanging from branches themselves. And so will do their best to discourage it.


*but even then generally speaking free people even without employment rights, tend to have overall better legal protection in terms freedom of action and recourse than slaves.
__________________
Grand High* Poobah of the Cult of Stat Normalisation.
*not too high of course

Last edited by Tomsdad; 10-25-2018 at 08:38 AM.
Tomsdad is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-25-2018, 09:19 AM   #67
whswhs
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
Default Re: Killing Slavers

Quote:
Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
I brought up the Iliad specifically because of that conflict necessarily hinging on a slavery-related scene, and because, being a mandatory work in the school programme, its target audience covers everyone who got past middle school. So it may not be a bestseller (year-to-year reuse of books is a big way to reduce sales), but it's a story that everyone either has read or pretends to have read in order to get past the exams during the compulsory phase of education.

I don't recall any classmates concluding that 100% of the cast of the Greek epics are villains because they support slaveholding societies, nor do I think that the Iliad 'does not work'. I expect roleplayers to be more used than schoolkids are to exploring societies and situations different from our own and reacting appropriately.
I don't think American high school students routinely read the Iliad even back when I was that age. In any case, a work that's part of a compulsory curriculum isn't likely to be read with the same attitude as a work that people actually want to read. It may not be read at all, or be skimmed, or be read without thinking about what's actually happening in it in any depth.

And in any case, those students are not Homer's target audience. Homer was writing for a bunch of ancient Greeks who took slavery for granted, both in that they might well own slaves and in that they might become slaves through misfortune. Achilles and Agamemnon's dispute was no more exotic to them than air travel or casinos were to James Bond fans. Those students are, if anything, the target audience for teachers who are trying to teach them to read a work written in the historical past for people in an unfamiliar culture by an author who made no effort to explain his story to non-Greek readers. That's a secondary use of the work; it wasn't one that the author could have foreseen.
__________________
Bill Stoddard

I don't think we're in Oz any more.
whswhs is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-25-2018, 09:32 AM   #68
whswhs
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
Default Re: Killing Slavers

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tomsdad View Post
I take your point, especially in a truly unregulated employment system* with an oversupply of labour. But in reality the different freedoms allowed in terms of slave owners over a slave compared to employer over their employees will mean coercion will be worse and stronger.
Before the Civil War, there were significant numbers of black people who risked their lives to leave the plantations and travel to the North or to Canada to lived in freedom. The traffic in the other direction was negiigible. I think that's a pretty compelling case of "voting with their feet" in favor of the risks and hardships of freedom over the security of slavery. And if the South hadn't maintained fugitive slave patrols to capture runaways and take them back, there might well have been a lot more such votes; plantation owners certainly feared that this would happen.
__________________
Bill Stoddard

I don't think we're in Oz any more.
whswhs is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-25-2018, 10:00 AM   #69
Andreas
 
Join Date: Mar 2014
Default Re: Killing Slavers

Quote:
Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
I don't think American high school students routinely read the Iliad even back when I was that age. In any case, a work that's part of a compulsory curriculum isn't likely to be read with the same attitude as a work that people actually want to read. It may not be read at all, or be skimmed, or be read without thinking about what's actually happening in it in any depth.

And in any case, those students are not Homer's target audience. Homer was writing for a bunch of ancient Greeks who took slavery for granted, both in that they might well own slaves and in that they might become slaves through misfortune. Achilles and Agamemnon's dispute was no more exotic to them than air travel or casinos were to James Bond fans. Those students are, if anything, the target audience for teachers who are trying to teach them to read a work written in the historical past for people in an unfamiliar culture by an author who made no effort to explain his story to non-Greek readers. That's a secondary use of the work; it wasn't one that the author could have foreseen.
I don't think this particular example is hard for modern readers. It is a well known fact that slaves were often taken in ancient warfare and that general attitudes about slavery has changed greatly since then. The story involves a dispute over a slave between two people. The context of people arguing about who will get something desirable is something which even a child far below high school age can understand. You don't need to know exactly how slaves where seen at that time for that.

Last edited by Andreas; 10-25-2018 at 10:11 AM.
Andreas is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-25-2018, 10:30 AM   #70
whswhs
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
Default Re: Killing Slavers

Quote:
Originally Posted by Andreas View Post
I don't think this particular example is hard for modern readers. It is a well known fact that slaves were often taken in ancient warfare and that general attitudes about slavery has changed greatly since then. The story involves a dispute over a slave between two people. The context of people arguing about who will get something desirable is something which even a child far below high school age can understand. You don't need to know exactly how slaves where seen at that time for that.
I'm not talking about "hard to understand." I'm talking about "hard to accept morally"; that is, would a bunch of gamers be willing to play an ancient Greek who had captured a bunch of Trojans and was in a position to turn them into slaves? Or, for that matter, an ancient Greek bard living among people who took slaves? Or would they feel the need to declare war on those slave dealing monsters, as some comments here have suggested?

There can be strange gaps in understanding of the past. For example, I'm a fan of the manga series Otoyomegati (usually translated as A Bride's Story, though Brides' Stories would be more accurate to the content). When I looked at reviews of it, I was perplexed to see the recurrent comment that it was an attractive story but had no conflict. I was seeing all kinds of conflict in the first issues: Amir is married to Karluk, and desperately in love with him, but she's twenty and he's twelve and not ready to consummate the marriage, and she's struggling with herself to wait till he is, and also her relatives are saying that marrying her to this town boy was a waste and they should take her back and marry her to a powerful older man who beat his last wife to death! But when I talked with a friend who's a huge manga/anime fan, she said that what was going on was that many readers assumed that every arranged marriage was also a forced marriage, and that any woman would rebel against such a marriage, and reject her husband, marriage, and her society; and when they didn't see that rebellion they took it as "there's no conflict" instead of seeing the conflicts of a woman trying to make the best of a situation with good and bad points. Or, as Bernard Shaw put it (in lines that Heinlein quotes), "He is a barbarian, and thinks the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature."
__________________
Bill Stoddard

I don't think we're in Oz any more.
whswhs is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Tags
slavery

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 01:36 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.