this is a discussion about a topic which arose in a chat tonite:

should we have slaves like the real romans did?

i think yes... but with good rules around it...

my proposal:

1) Slaves are NPC's
2) Slaves have no right to claim citizenship until freed
3) Slaves cost a amount of gold and/or shields and food (yet to be defined how much) per slave
4) There has to be a seperate room in the house where the slaves reside. and enough space there. the room may be in a seperate house on the same grounds as where they work.
5) Slaves can take any job except any administrative or official job for the nation. They can be teachers, businessmen etc.
6) Slaves have no ownership. They own nothing as they are only "Items"

7) Slaves can be freed at any time either:
* by revolt
* by command of the current leader (king, despot, ...)
* by their owner
8) a freed Slave gets normal citizenship and can do anything like a normal citizen
9) Slavery ends with the discovery of democraty


now thats it ... comments? suggestions? it would be good if we get a ruleset for this up and running.

I think it should end with nationalism, because in America we had a Democracy and we still had slavery. Around Nationalism (American Civil War) should slavery be abolished.

I, as stated in-room, love this idea.
People, before we go crazy, remember this: Slavery was common in Rome. Built the colloseum.

good idea

Civ: you are right... maybe nationalism would be best (with dyp it would be clear though :-P ) or is there another "fitting" tech?

Btw:
we should "incarnate" the habits of the romans of letting their slaves only have surnames, no family names.
On freeing, they will be given the family name of their former owner.

Btw2:
Slaves can also inherit freedom (after col... when we get "last wills") and other things. That was a quiete common form of freedom back then.

I agree, very good idea. Will a new caste level be neccessary?

Slaves would make it easier to run big farms. Before we didn't have this. Now we do. Like owning so many tiles of farmland means you have to have x amount of workers, or slaves...

Perhaps owning slaves could increase the food and commerce ammount of a tile (in RPG, that is). When I get this(Land) office going, Id be happy to have that be a factor.

@plexus: good idea. as slaves were in fact a kind of caste in the roman empire (note that they were not cheap!).

for the payment:
in my mind i see
* a fixed payment to the void for each created slave upon creation
* regular payment of 1 food per slave per turnchat to the void

We should have slaves in the game. I am in support of this idea. They should cost commerce to buy and food to maintain.

Originally posted by Civanator
I think it should end with nationalism, because in America we had a Democracy and we still had slavery. Around Nationalism (American Civil War) should slavery be abolished.

No, I would say Industrialization. One of the reasons for the civil war (IIRC from my history books) was that the north was becoming Industrialized, and the south still wanted the slave "economy".

Ah, and of course the selling of slaves should be possible :-) A business idea... :-) Slave markets!

@CT- I agree, Industrialization is what ended wide-spread use of slaves.

CT has a good point. Also, slaves should cost 1/2 food, because they weren't treated too great back then (no offense). maybe the amount of food they recieve can determine how long they live. Like 1 food equals x% more years. and 1/2 food equals x years.

good idea civ... the more you spend on them, the longer they "hold"... we could have different "qualities" for slaves for different buy-prices. defining the "max-age" which is then modified by the spend food maintenance (0 food will get them to die VERY fast, 1 will be 50%, 2 will be 100% of that, %-ages halved after democracy)

EDIT: Sober second thought, not a good idea.

Actually, I think it's kind of a sick idea. If we have slaves in this game, we should have had concentration camps in the last one. Concentration camps were historically correct, weren't they? Or do we only trash Christian's here at CFC?

actually the muslims were an important part of the slave trade, if anything, this is a knock against christians and muslims.

We also should delve into the idea of polygamy and prostitution while we're at it.

But yes cyc, christians are insulted routinely in the off topic, but here Im not so sure.

I agree with Cyc. There is no need to delve into the minutiae of the slave trade. There is certainly no need for rules on how to have slavery. Unless you are going to detail every farmhand and helper NPC then it's just sensationalism to detail slaves.

I disagree with Cyc and Shaitan. Slaves were an important part of society in most cultures until the 19th century. They represented the lowest rung on the social ladder, and they did much labor for the free people. Almost every major civilization had slaves at some point. This is not a knock against Christians and Muslims, because almost every culture owned them. This would make the RPG much more realistic. I do not support slavery, of course, but we should have it to make this game more realistic and to make it more interesting.

However, just as there is no need to detail every NPC that has an effect on the characters there is no need to detail slavery. If you make rules for slaves then slaves will be depicted in outrageous detail compared to the vast majority of free citizens. If it fits in a story then go ahead and use it. Otherwise why go through all of this?

Why in the world would we need rules for slavery?

Well, if we're going to have slaves, I can't wait untill the 1930's and '40's roll by...

I think it should be enough to assume their existence in our RPG society, and leave it at that. I see absolutely no need for rules regarding slavery, and they would, in fact, violate site rules.

eyrei:
please explain why. but before you explain, read about the slavery which was practiced in rome... and read carefully.

slavery in rome had only very few things in common with slavery in usa for example.
i just dont get where anyone could get an insult out of this... why the christians? or muslims? the slavery in rome was based against all "non romans"... it was not religiously based.
in fact, rome was a very open society welcoming every new god which they found.

i dont want to push this through, but i really would like to know how it could conflict with the forum rules...

ah, and eyrei: be aware that you would have to ban the DYP-mod from this forum if slavery is against forum rules. one part of that mod is the technology "slavery" with natives as a resource :-P

We would need some rules for slavery, just as we have rules for other aspects of the game. They wouldn't need to be detailed, but they would need to exist because otherwise players would just do as they please regarding slavery. I see no reason for this to be against the forum rules, and I encourage eyrei or another moderator to explain why they think that it violates the rules.

Personally, I'm a little iffy on how this partains to the forum rules. So, I'm in the middle grounds here. I think this is something that's based on the context. If you do use slavery in terms of US slavery, then it could be seen as hateful (or racist/defamatory) if taken out of context. Think of Dis's idea in the last demogame RPG. I thought that was against the forum rules, based on the context I knew the word as partaining to. (explicit material). That's the problem with controversial issues. Slaves in the ancient era were more like servents in the Roman Empire (if you want to use Rome). We even called the foriegn workers in DG1 and 2 "slaves". I really think it would depend on the context though.

Sure, you could be politically correct and stretch things like pop rushing as being genocide and saying any mention of pop rushing is against forum rules. I think this is one thing we'd just have to tread carefully on and not let it get out of hand. Any other debate on this would probably be best in OT or Site Feedback... (on second thought, OT might be the worst place for it).

IMO, we can have NPCs appear as slaves, but I wouldn't make a very big thing about it. The ancient Romans didn't. It was not unusual for a slave to become a very influential person - the only "odd" factor being that they were technically slaves.

I don't think we need a complex ruleset for it, and I don't think we need to encourage things like a "slave market", but I don't think we need to shut the idea out completely, either.

dis, I have an extensive background in Roman history. On occasion a slave would gain some influence, but this was rare. For the most part, they were taken advantage of just as slaves in the US were. Again, I see no reason to make a big deal of this. Assume there are slaves, and use them if it fits for storylines, but developing a ruleset for slavery is too close to CFC condoning slavery in some form or another, which is not acceptable.

we could call them "servants" :-P


EDIT:

1) all foreigners were slaves for the romans. slavery was how they defined their "lowest caste" which was worthless. all "no-roman citizens" were in that caste
2) many teachers and mentors of roman families were slaves... mostly greek ones.


now how about the US there? this is a completely different kind of slavery... imho at least.

Originally posted by disorganizer
we could call them "servants" :-P


EDIT:

1) all foreigners were slaves for the romans. slavery was how they defined their "lowest caste" which was worthless. all "no-roman citizens" were in that caste
2) many teachers and mentors of roman families were slaves... mostly greek ones.


now how about the US there? this is a completely different kind of slavery... imho at least.

Yes, but they were denied certain freedoms, which is why they were called slaves. Call them servants if you like, but slavery is too explosive of a word. Personally, I am not offended by it, but many, many people will be.

Quoting Dis:
slavery in rome had only very few things in common with slavery in usa for example.
i just dont get where anyone could get an insult out of this... why the christians? or muslims? the slavery in rome was based against all "non romans"... it was not religiously based.
_______________________________________________

Talk about reading carefully, Dis. One of the driving factors of Hitler's success in the German political arena was the motivation that non-Germans (true-bloods) were the cause of their problems. It wasn't religiously based, although Jews will tell you they were persecuted for their religion in Germany, it was economically based. If you weren't from the motherland, you were an outcast. You're in Germany now, aren't you Dis? You should know this. It's the same thing, no matter how you look at it.

Maybe we should talk about the slaves who were thrown to the lions for sport on a Saturday afternoon. Was that politically acceptable? I mean those slaves were worthless after all. In fact we should run an experiment, one day we'll throw christians to the lions to be mauled to death in mass numbers, and then the next we'll gas jews and bury them in mass numbers. Then we'll take a poll and find out which phase is the most disgusting. But I'll need some volunteers, let's see, who's first? Don't be shy... :D

Oh, and thank you Immortal (seriuosly) for bringing up the point about the Muslims. Isn't easy for us to group people by religion? There must be a money-related motive in there some how. We can always find ways to separate people from others. Age, sex, color, religion, whatever. And hey, now that we've got them separated, let's make some worthless. That way we can get free work out them while we lay around and do nothing. Hey, I like this. We can even kill them at will. What are they going to do? Complain? I think not, we'd just have to kill more of them. Bah, end of RANT.

I'm just saying if you want the game to be played so that one religion is protected, make so that all religions are protected. You're blind-sided "God" complex is not a good example for the younger players here.

Slaves....heh, you people really need a drink.

@cyc: leave my nationality out of this. im pretty fed up with this stuff :-P

talking again of reading carefully, also many romans were put to the lions those days. as all "enemies" of the rulers.

and also, you should not compare the german doings in wwii with roman slavery, as in rome there never was a genocide against any of the foreign nationalities which were "included" in the empire.
the christians were mainly followed because they meant a threat to the empire because of their fanatic organization not allowing other gods, for example :-P

EDIT
btw:
this discussion reminds me of the dg2 discussion about using the german cross in the flag. those anticipations were only because of unknowingness of historical and present facts.
i really do not know why some want to see an insult in anything...

Why are we making such a big deal over slavery in a Role Playing Game. It shouldn't provoke so much argument. We should have a poll to settle the thing.

@ Dis - Oh, Enlightened One, i was not speaking of your nationality. A blind man could see that. I was speaking of your location. I don't care if you're a martian, living in that environment you should be aware of certain things that others are not. Also, I'm not speaking of genocide, I speaking of degrading humans to a point where there existance is meaningless. There is a direct connection between the Jews of 1930's Germany and the Christian (and others) slaves of the Roman Empire. As you say, they were enemies of the state. Just so you know, the insult is that some here would persistantly protect a religion because it is theirs, but care nothing about others even if they are doomed to the same fate. That's hypocrisy, and coming from people who base their censorship on religius factors, that's just not right. In a democracy aren't we all deserving of the same rights? And I don't know how to help you with your unknowingness of historical and present fact.

And Bootstoots, thats my point exactly. This is a game, why do we have to bring real life sickness into it knowingly?

Is the honeymoon already over? :shocked:

Oh Cyc, great master of the wisdom of the world...
here at the game, we are not at a democraty.
It is in fact a roleplay which should be linked with the civilization we have. As such and as slavery was a basic part of the roman culture, you seem to have missunderstood and misinterpreted the meanings and tendencies of this very request. completely.


EDIT:
also by linking to my location you should have the knowledge that i may have been insulted by nationality. and i believe this may even was on purpose...
but surprise surprise: i am not... why? because it is historical FACT. why should i be insulted? of course it was like that, of course it was bad. finish. why be insulted? i see no reason, nor in the statement above nor any other statement.

i request this discussion to be closed and removed as i dont want to be banned for insulting others :-)