Slavery....in Space!

[Whipsnade]

Dysentery is real too, but don't expect it in any of my games.
Slavery is icky. While plausible, count me out ...

An understandable sentiment.

My players got ill more often than they were shot, but I didn't linger on the details of the "Tionale Trots". I just imposed the time/money costs of getting well and the game moved on.

Similarly, my players did occasionally bump into shanghaiing operations and even more rarely the far more icky slavery in all it's versions but that was only so the players could shut such activities down.

If a player in my game suggested slaving to their group as a way to make their ship's next mortgage payment, I'd dust off Prison Planet and prepare a nice big hot Reality Sandwichtm for them.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Prison Planet, oof, that was a rough one.

 

[PFVA63]

I always thought that maybe all the supposed reports of alien abductions and such on Earth might actually be due to some advanced alien race having discovered that as their empire has grown, the bureaucracy necessary to maintain it has grown even faster, resulting in the need for more and more low level bureaucrats and civil service type workers, leading them to kid nap suitable specimens from other planets that could act as workers in the Department of Motor Vehicle offices (or whatever might be equivalent for them). It might help explain why a lot of the people I see here on Earth working in such jobs don't really seem all that happy to be there.

 

[Jame]

I always thought that maybe all the supposed reports of alien abductions and such on Earth might actually be due to some advanced alien race having discovered that as their empire has grown, the bureaucracy necessary to maintain it has grown even faster, resulting in the need for more and more low level bureaucrats and civil service type workers, leading them to kid nap suitable specimens from other planets that could act as workers in the Department of Motor Vehicle offices (or whatever might be equivalent for them).

Not the worst explanation I've ever heard. It IS what happened to the Vilani, after all.

It might help explain why a lot of the people I see here on Earth working in such jobs don't really seem all that happy to be there.

True, but don't forget having to deal with the rude and ungrateful specimins mixed in with the ones who are just impatient to do their thing and get out. (The second are better than the first because they can be reasonable. Can be. And I work in retail, which is close.)

 

[sabredog]

True, but don't forget having to deal with the rude and ungrateful specimins mixed in with the ones who are just impatient to do their thing and get out. (The second are better than the first because they can be reasonable. Can be. And I work in retail, which is close.)

Plus you could get sued. B5 had an episode that started with an aline being sued by the relative of someone who had been abducted and was suffering from PTSD or something as a result.

 

[DangerousThing]

Similarly, my players did occasionally bump into shanghaiing operations and even more rarely the far more icky slavery in all it's versions but that was only so the players could shut such activities down.

If a player in my game suggested slaving to their group as a way to make their ship's next mortgage payment, I'd dust off Prison Planet and prepare a nice big hot Reality Sandwichtm for them.

I agree with you, but I wouldn't be that nice. The slaves would get free somehow and take over the ship, killing the PCs. Then the players could play on using the slaves as characters, if I let them.

Or, no matter how good a plan they had, they'd get caught before they could do anything, and hello prison planet. If I was nice. Depending on where the characters were, the version of Imperial Marines could do all sorts of things to them. In one polity IMTU, they'd be fed publicly to shoggoths. Heck, I might do both. Let them run prison planet, and when they get aboard the ship, one at a time they go missing...

I run games to give my friends a chance to play as heroes, not as slavers.

And yes, I've had characters executed before in an SF game. Well, it was supposed to be one character. But two of the other PCs, despite knowing that he was a murderer, helped him escape and they all got on a train...

The characters grabbed some extra tickets, and the conductor punched them. The PCs asked when the next stop was, and the conductor replied there's only one stop for this train. They looked at the other passengers and screamed.

Meanwhile, in the morning, the three were missing, and the trackers were puzzled, because the tracks went right to the remnants of an old train track... The characters were never seen by the living again.

I tell people that I expect the characters to be the heroes as part of the info-dump I give them before they play.

 

[Carlobrand]

I very much agree on the adventure part.

White Slavery was, is, and probably will be vastly profitable though.

Fit a surplus scout out with just a few low berths hit a mining colony, rich patrons, (al la A***h). Blonde, blue eyed buxom women still go for quit a price.

For that matter the "Mob" makes huge profits on high end call girls...

Forget class A and B space ports if it's to tough. Use the backwater star-ports or NO star port. Small-craft landings, air rafts reach low orbit, etc. Blockade run and smuggle. It's risky but that's why the profits are there. Adventure? sure thing!

From either side. From Slaver, Buyer for transport, all the way to private abolitionist zealots. They're all there for the playing.

The cocaine trade is vastly profitable in the modern world, but I wouldn't advise it for the adventurous spirit. That kind of business tends to be for the desperate and the utterly ruthless.

You want to run rescues? Heroic, but expect these people to know their jobs: come with your wits in full gear or you will not like the outcome. You want to play the dark side? Vastly profitable clandestine enterprises have vastly powerful, vastly dangerous and vastly paranoid people protecting their territories. Unless you already have an in with the right people, you're most likely to end up dead with your expensive ship signed over to one of their trusted men - all nice and legal-like, 'cause signing over the ship before you're shot is much less painful than another surge of electricity from the wires clipped to your ...

This ain't smugglin' whiskey past the revenoors. This is the slave trade. It doesn't get any darker than this. One of my players wants to dabble in the dark side, I will - with great sadness, and after due warning - introduce him to the dark side.

 

[Blue Ghost]

*much snippage*

I tell people that I expect the characters to be the heroes as part of the info-dump I give them before they play.

What's interesting (as an aside here) is that when a lot of MMORPG went online, notably Diablo and Ultima, the designers of the game had this notion that people would want to play heroes, but in game people turned out to be just as nasty as in real life. Even to the point of ganging up to kill Lord British many years back.

I think writing or creating adventures for characters to do good and be a positive force is a good thing. I'm not in the icky slavers camp, but only as long as my players are there to put an end to such an infamous practice.

Repressed rights of any sort, in this case slaves, makes for great gaming and story telling.

 

[rancke]

If my players expressed an interest in playing slavers, I'd just tell them that I didn't want to ref such a campaign. I certainly wouldn't lead them on and then abuse my ref powers in an adversarial railroading manner to punish them for their icky taste.

I wonder, is it the squick factor of slavery rather than the moral outrage that generates these "they MUST be taught a lesson!" reactions? I've never seen similar outrage expressed against players who wanted to play pirates, even though that is at least as morally repulsive as slavery.


Hans

 

[Blue Ghost]

With pirates you're essentially playing robbers with military grade hardware on the high seas / space lanes. With slavery you're forcing someone to your will to do all kinds of things.

 

[DangerousThing]

If my players expressed an interest in playing slavers, I'd just tell them that I didn't want to ref such a campaign. I certainly wouldn't lead them on and then abuse my ref powers in an adversarial railroading manner to punish them for their icky taste.

I wonder, is it the squick factor of slavery rather than the moral outrage that generates these "they MUST be taught a lesson!" reactions? I've never seen similar outrage expressed against players who wanted to play pirates, even though that is at least as morally repulsive as slavery.


Hans

I would do the same thing with players who wanted to be pirates. I would tell them that this isn't the kind of campaign I like to run, and there would be repercussions. After that, they have been warned.

And I *did* warn the character who choose to be a murderer before he actually shot the victim down. And I gave him a chance to take the action back, because it was not only stupid, but there were lawmen in the bar.

So far nobody I've played with has wanted to go pirate. I've had several players that wanted to hunt pirates. And nobody has wanted to try to be slavers either.

I don't mind a bit of smuggling, depending on what is being smuggled (I did have some players who were smuggling doctors and high-tech meds to a red-zoned worlds to help people).

 

[rancke]

I would do the same thing with players who wanted to be pirates. I would tell them that this isn't the kind of campaign I like to run, and there would be repercussions. After that, they have been warned.

It's fair enough if you[*] don't want to referee the campaign your players want to play. I've been on both sides of that problem and in both cases we decided to terminate the campaign with no hard feelings.

But if you agree to run a campaign, you're obligated to allow your players the same chances of beating the odds as you'd allow then in any other kind of campaign.

[*] Generic you.​

And I *did* warn the character who choose to be a murderer before he actually shot the victim down. And I gave him a chance to take the action back, because it was not only stupid, but there were lawmen in the bar.

Well, that's different. And the other two PCs went about their rescue attempt so ineptly that you'd've treated them the same way if they had been trying to save an innocent man, I assume? That all sounds fair enough. Personally I wouldn't have given the murderer a chance to take the action back once I'd already warned him.

Of course, that has nothing whatsoever to do with the moral implications of his action. I'd've done the very same thing if his killing had been perfectly justified (if, say, the victim had been a scumbag slaver ) and there were lawmen around.


Hans

 

[Fritz_Brown]

To be honest, I do similar things with munchkins. There is always some bigger and badder than you - and being big and bad and arrogant or obnoxiously public tends to draw those people to you.

And, yes, there's a subtle difference between piracy (true piracy) or slave-running and a little rebellion against over-bearing authority by smuggling a few things.

 

[Carlobrand]

If my players expressed an interest in playing slavers, I'd just tell them that I didn't want to ref such a campaign. I certainly wouldn't lead them on and then abuse my ref powers in an adversarial railroading manner to punish them for their icky taste.

I wonder, is it the squick factor of slavery rather than the moral outrage that generates these "they MUST be taught a lesson!" reactions? I've never seen similar outrage expressed against players who wanted to play pirates, even though that is at least as morally repulsive as slavery.


Hans

Maybe some of it's squick factor. For me, some of it's an objection to the TV-cultivated idea that bad guys are collectively stupid, that they can't seem to hit the broad side of a barn in a gunfight, that you can delve into their world and come out thumbing your nose at them. The idiot who robs the Seven-Eleven is stupid, the businessman who dabbles in smuggling is a wannabe, but if you delve into the realm of organized crime, then the game is as serious as any game of Striker - they want to win as bad as you do, and if they didn't have the skills to do it then they'd have been convicted or replaced by a competitor by now.

Players trying to apply dungeon-delving skills to a contest with organized crime are going to be in for a rude shock. That contest is one that requires the same degree of intelligence-gathering, careful planning, and skilled use of resources as any military engagement. Trying to take them on is a real challenge, but it's something to be proud of if you can pull it off. Trying to dabble in their world is like trying to convince a pool full of sharks that you're a fellow shark - you're more likely to get eaten.

I'm a great believer in natural consequence as a means of sharpening skills. Even a Han Solo can find himself encased in carbonite if he's not careful.

And, if my crew went pirate, they'd face about the same set of challenges: how to swim with the sharks without getting bit. I'd quiz them pretty thoroughly about their sharkbite prevention plans before I'd open up that front, because I'd want them to go into it with their eyes open - how are you going to do it without you and your ship ending up on wanted posters throughout the sector, how are you going to fence the goods without getting caught or getting sharkbit, how are you going to get the battle damage repaired without attracting Imperial attention. The first time a player realizes these are the kind of people that might just take him hostage, take his ship as ransom, and then turn him in for the reward rather than take his business, he starts thinking very carefully. Privateering, now that's different.

 

[DangerousThing]

It's fair enough if you[*] don't want to referee the campaign your players want to play. I've been on both sides of that problem and in both cases we decided to terminate the campaign with no hard feelings.

But if you agree to run a campaign, you're obligated to allow your players the same chances of beating the odds as you'd allow then in any other kind of campaign.

[*] Generic you.​

I talk over the type of campaign with my players beforehand. I'm willing to go so far away from what I consider ideal, and no further. If they're influenced by Firefly and want to be good-hearted crooks, that's fine. The trouble comes when they start killing innocents.

Well, that's different. And the other two PCs went about their rescue attempt so ineptly that you'd've treated them the same way if they had been trying to save an innocent man, I assume? That all sounds fair enough. Personally I wouldn't have given the murderer a chance to take the action back once I'd already warned him.

They chose to rescue their buddy. They got on the train rather than just go back to the hotel.

I gave him a chance to rethink things because I was surprised at the severity of the action and wanted to make sure he knew that he was shooting an unarmed man who had just apologized for bumping into him and causing him to spill his drink.

Of course, that has nothing whatsoever to do with the moral implications of his action. I'd've done the very same thing if his killing had been perfectly justified (if, say, the victim had been a scumbag slaver ) and there were lawmen around.
Hans

Hans,

I believe that an RPG, much like life, involves choices, moral or otherwise. Had the entire party chosen like Wabbit did, I would have ended the campaign. I hate to do this but if the players want to go one way and I don't want to do that, going our own ways is best. However, this was three people out of eight and they still wanted to continue, even Wabbit. Three new beginning characters created and all was good.

I run RPGs for my own amusement and have a lot of fun when the players do. My upcoming game is going to be difficult because my wife, Lee, is playing and she has never played an RPG before.

Any hints on running a game with a total rpg virgin?

 

[rancke]

I talk over the type of campaign with my players beforehand. I'm willing to go so far away from what I consider ideal, and no further. If they're influenced by Firefly and want to be good-hearted crooks, that's fine. The trouble comes when they start killing innocents.

And if you don't want to referee that sort of campaign, you have every right to slam on the brakes. The problem, as I see it (and I'm not saying that was what happened in your case), comes when a GM switches from facilitating adventure to enforcing morals.

They chose to rescue their buddy. They got on the train rather than just go back to the hotel.

And if they had gotten aboard the train to hijack a consignment of medical drugs to save a village from plague? Would you have just told them their characters were never heard from again? Or what if the entire situation had been the same except the victim wasn't innocent?


Hans

 

[Blue Ghost]

A gaming session I did not like involved rescuing a princess from a slave ring. The guy running the thing had sex on his mind, and you can guess what happened to the princess in question.

I didn't like it. And I had severe reservations about that session. We did a smash and grab, and yanked her out of her plight, and blew the place sky high, but the tawdry nature of the adventure, the flavor of it, was pretty unwelcome. I didn't see his take on that theme as being welcome, and really wondered why he put in so much tawdry elements into what was supposed to be high adventure. I mean, once the princess is abused, then our mission is essentially one of recovery. The theme of trying to keep her untouched and unharmed has been trashed. And the setting of the place he painted really angered me because we were in the home of two brothers who were very religious. Not a good judgment to my way of thinking.

Still, the game unfolded that we accomplished our mission, but even if our objective was to see a positive outcome to combat vice on an extreme level, you want to play with people who have your kind of thinking in mind. But that's another topic for another thread, I suppose.

To be honest, slaves and slavery has never been a big component in Traveller. Kind of like space monsters. It might be there, but it's not really exploitable ground as such.

Still, there's some good adventuring to be had.

 

[atpollard]

I quit reading the Gor series of books around the third for a similar reason ... the whole fetish thing grew increasingly uncomfortable to me ... and never really seemed necessary or particularly beneficial to telling the story.

Now an interesting take on slavery came from late in the Honor Harrington series by David Weber (Crown of Slaves?), where the slaves were genetically engineered to perform high tech and high skilled jobs ... people bred for the roles occupied by robots in "I, Robot" (the book not the movie).

To some extent, the future Storm Troopers of the Star Wars Clone Wars offers something similar ... humans bred and programmed for combat.

 

[mike wightman]

Bladerunner replicants are slaves, and look what happens to them if they decide they don't want to be slaves anymore.

This applies to worlds in Traveller since the technology exists to create biological machines - androids/replicants, call them what you will. I've used replicants on many a TL9-11 world IMTU.

Then there are the tank grown in-vitro fertilised second class citizens as presented in Space: Above and Beyond (ignore the war with the chiggs and concentrate on the struggle between humans, tanks and machines and you have quite an interesting setting).

Totally mechanical robots from TL12 with AI (low autonomous) programs could also be considered slaves, especially by a TL17 culture of sentient machines or a post Virus machine based culture.

Then there are minor races exploited as sub-human because their rulers refuse to recognise them as intelligent.

There are many interesting ways to get slavery of some sort into Traveller.

I had a group once play in a campaign which began with them taken by slavers (influenced by Enemy Mine) and forced to work on hostile worlds.

 

[Timerover51]

A gaming session I did not like involved rescuing a princess from a slave ring. The guy running the thing had sex on his mind, and you can guess what happened to the princess in question.

I didn't like it. And I had severe reservations about that session. We did a smash and grab, and yanked her out of her plight, and blew the place sky high, but the tawdry nature of the adventure, the flavor of it, was pretty unwelcome. I didn't see his take on that theme as being welcome, and really wondered why he put in so much tawdry elements into what was supposed to be high adventure. I mean, once the princess is abused, then our mission is essentially one of recovery. The theme of trying to keep her untouched and unharmed has been trashed. And the setting of the place he painted really angered me because we were in the home of two brothers who were very religious. Not a good judgment to my way of thinking.

Still, the game unfolded that we accomplished our mission, but even if our objective was to see a positive outcome to combat vice on an extreme level, you want to play with people who have your kind of thinking in mind. But that's another topic for another thread, I suppose.

To be honest, slaves and slavery has never been a big component in Traveller. Kind of like space monsters. It might be there, but it's not really exploitable ground as such.

Still, there's some good adventuring to be had.

Rather than playing, why did you not simply get up and walk out? That might have communicated something to the individual running the game. I.E. that what he was running was a bit out of line.