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Long time fan here as well and not moving forward with slavery existing in Golarion is not just fine by me, but a welcome change. Slavery isn't a "bad thing" that happens. It isn't even death. It's a horrible generation destroying abuse that commodifies life and should never be treated as anything other than a nightmarish thoughtless tragedy; repugnant fails to grasp the magnitude. It isn't "a tool of the baddies," when they are taking slaves to sell to someone. Markets exist for them, and when you start breaking down every person involved from slaver to merchant to town officials sanctioning it to buyers to even citizens at the market giving tacit approval through their inaction... it becomes a lot harder to say, "Well, it's only to demonstrate how evil the bad guys really are."
Don't let me or anyone else stop you from putting whatever you want in your games. But at the same time, there's a very strong reason why slavery is going the way of the chainmail bikini and damsels in distress.
EDIT: I mean, there are a million and a half ways to demonstrate that someone is evil! If you need "owns another person" to be that defining character trait, than that's laziness - especially when the issue was how wide-spread and accepted slavery has been throughout the setting.
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Generally, slavery is a shorthand for “This guy is REALLY evil”, and not something your average person inherently supports.
The problem is that when you state that, the next thing that happens is somebody asking "so you think George Washington was evil?".
Unlike most things evil villains do (killing, kidnapping, sexual assault, genocide, etc etc) where there is something of a consensus on these actions being evil, slavery has a substantial group of people who will vehemently oppose painting it as something objectively bad, at which point a can of worms opens that quickly starts hurting people who still suffer from various long-term knockoff effect of slavery.
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You can still put slavery in your own games as a plot device to rail against, and it can even turn out well.
The default setting doesn't need it, because it's so repugnant large groups of people don't even want to have to fight it in their fantasy games. Same with things like sexual assault. For too many, it's too real.
Also, you seem to have not had the poor fortune of running into the kinds of players who very much do *not* treat slavery as abhorrent as they should. These are the same people begging for it to stay, and they use the same arguments you do, then turn around and start their players as slaves, treat slave owners as Neutral or even Good, make slaver characters, or engage in their disgusting fantasy of owning people in various ways.
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I'm down for having slavery in games when people as a baseline read more history books, we're not there yet.
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Please don’t take away the stuff that makes your game interesting for fear of ‘giving offense’ where none is taken.
I also just have to note here that this isn't an issue where one freelancer has spoken out, but rather something that has come up again and again. That you don't take offense doesn't mean that it isn't offensive. That's just such an unbelievably narrow viewpoint that boggles the mind.
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You can still put slavery in your own games as a plot device to rail against, and it can even turn out well.
The default setting doesn't need it, because it's so repugnant large groups of people don't even want to have to fight it in their fantasy games. Same with things like sexual assault. For too many, it's too real.
Also, you seem to have not had the poor fortune of running into the kinds of players who very much do *not* treat slavery as abhorrent as they should. These are the same people begging for it to stay, and they use the same arguments you do, then turn around and start their players as slaves, treat slave owners as Neutral or even Good, make slaver characters, or engage in their disgusting fantasy of owning people in various ways.
I remember there was a whole issue with people playing slavers in PFS when I first started playing, they needed to explicitly ban having profession (slaver), or something along those lines. People really can treat it very flippantly. I agree with what others have said - it's definitely horrific, definitely would show someone to be evil, but it's also not something that needs to be focused on in the setting. It's the same as how there are acknowledgements of other utterly horrific things that shouldn't be presumed as appropriate for the average table - it allows people to opt-in to the topic if it's something that their specific table wants to explore.
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I'm fine with creators doing whatever they want with their setting. If they're trying to make it less offensive for more people that's not a bad thing. If I feel like having the party get shanghaied and escape/thwart their captors for a story hook or particular story arc, I dont need a setting with institutionized slavery to do it. This thread is illuminating for me for the simple fact that if I ever did throw a situation like that at the players it's probably a good idea for me to make sure if something like that is ok at session zero.
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Not to engage with the guy with two posts who has never had a presence on the forums until this very thread, but...
No one is forcing anything. Quite the opposite? Literally Erik Mona has come out and said, "Wow, yes, this is bad and we're doing away with it," and suddenly it should be kept because...?
It gets so exhausting to hear, "Ah, yes, but you play games with killing in them, but you don't want slavery in them?" as if the general population (in western cultures) isn't still dealing with the fallout of slavery and the systems left in place that marginalized large swaths of people. You should also catch up with many of the evils that you have brought up are also not in print material anymore because of it's ties with real world issues that players contend with.
Fiction is fiction, but not everyone signs up to suddenly get thrown into a nightmare because they wanted to play the make-believe storytelling game with their friends.
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I'm fine with creators doing whatever they want with their setting. If they're trying to make it less offensive for more people that's not a bad thing. If I feel like having the party get shanghaid and escape/thwart their captors for a story hook or particular story arc, I dont need a setting with institutionized slavery to do it. This thread is illuminating for me for the simple fact that if I ever did throw a situation like that at the players it's probably a good idea for me to make sure if something like that is ok at session zero.
100% this. If you check out indie gaming circles, there is no shortage of people exploring horrific nightmare topics. In a lot of them, it may actually be the point. Very few of them make those things an explicit part of the setting, though, because trauma.
Using gaming to explore painful topics can be very cathartic and rewarding, but it isn't something that people should be afraid of being exposed to on any give random page.
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I'm certainly not trying to make a political or social statement, too.
Take a look at the people coming out to support what you're asking for and then say these words again out loud. Also, you really missed the point of slavery not just being evil for the owner or slaver, but literally the entire system of people that it allow it to happen, even without their direct involvement. Not only that, but this isn't the fun "orc in a 10 by 10 room" villain so much as it is an existing horror for many people.
This is the same line of thought as, "Why don't we have our wedding at a plantation? It doesn't bother me. It's in the past! Why are you upset?"
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Hmm, slavery has always been a relevant part of the setting. It has never been the focus of the setting, and it is not a core part of the setting, but it is an element with a lot of moving parts. There even is a little diagram about slavery, with who reinforces it, and who fights against it in the Inner Sea in LO: Legends.
There’s the Council of Liberated Slaves in Osirion, the Bellflower Network in Cheliax, the Steel Falcons from the Eagle Knights. Ulfen lands have thralls, Droskar is a deity of slavery (decidedly, among other things) and Milani is the deity of fighting against slavery (decidedly, among other things). Liberators, of course, liberate.
But… This is a tangent, isn’t it? Because this decision was taken as a real life decision, on a real life issue. This isn’t a “Oh, what’s better, if we have the Tarrasque be the big bad monster of the setting, or something of our own like Treerazer” situation, because this involve real life people. In this way, the setting is… Almost secondary, really. But of course, I’m not trying to be disingenuous: The question that this thread tries to pose, from my perspective, is if it’s worth to remove slavery as a narrative element in the setting. And eh, I think it is. This is something that is very terrifying for a lot of people, and very exasperating. Well being of people should take priority over a narrative element that isn't even that important to the setting, shouldn't it?
People that homebrew in Golarion can just add it back with the consent of their group or whatever and, as I pointed out, there is still a wealth of information about this issue on the setting for those that want it. Personally, I do think that it leaves the Liberator in some sort of odd place, especially if they are talking about a completely removal of all slavery and not just state-reinforced slavery. But I mean, there’s still evil kings and queens tyranning over their own people, I'm sure that everything will be easily accommodated.
I’m more interested in how they will do this: If slavery is just going to kapoof from the setting (i.e not be mentioned again), or if the waves of reform and revolution over this issue that have been hinted multiple times of happening will finally take place.
Frankly, to me, I hardly ever have used this as an element, and probably would not with a group of people that I don’t know well, or trust. I’ve also always found it pretty obtuse that the biggest majority of nations with slaves in the setting were the totally-not-non-western-countries, and the nation that has always fought against it despite international consensus was the totally-not-super-america.
And I do hope that if slavery is actually removed narratively from the setting, that it’s mostly done by the people that suffer it, or/and the people of the country. That Osirion finally outlaws all form of slavery thanks to the relationship of the Council of Liberated Slaves and the Pharaoh, that the Bellflower Network and its allies has struck so many times successfully against the slaver institutions in Cheliax that the country has no other option but to ban slavery, that a thrall ends up becoming a linnorm king and strongarms the other linnorm kingdoms into outlawing slavery, etc. No “eagle knights swoop in to save the day”, pretty please.
(But I'm more than fine with it going kapoof as well, to be honest).
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If you need the setting to focus on slavery to have fun, and can't just go fight a dragon or necromancer instead, you are not someone that paizo (or any other reasonable company) is interested in as a customer.
Paizo aren't even removing slavery from the setting - the open letter was a reaction to them ham-fistedly mentioning slavery 126 times in a 400 page book about a neutral-aligned city that is supposed to be a home base for PCs, and they responded by essentially saying that they will stop emphasizing it so much. They messed up and have admitted that they haven't demonstrated the ability to handle the topic appropriately, and that fixating on it so much was unhealthy, so they won't fixate on it so much in the future. It still exists in Golarion for those of you who absolutely need slaves in a story to get any enjoyment out of the game, and for those who want to do a "free the slaves" story or whatever, it's just the rest of us who don't need it to be mentioned on every 4th page of a setting book won't be subjected to it.
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It's funny, this is exactly the same response people had to Folca.
It's funny, this is exactly the same response people had to Folca.
What does the thirteenth king of Rohan have to do with this?
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Not having listed prices for slaves and other "player facing" options related to slavery makes sense. But I can't think of a better way to ensure the return of slavery and similar vile practices than to erase them from stories and the public conscious altogether.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. (George Santanyana)
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I am currently running my players through Age of Ashes, which has two books about explicitly confronting an organization of slavers and another confronting their ally (before the slaver organization would be really known to the characters). The party is having fun killing slavers, and the party's liberator champion (a member of the Bellflower Network) is having particular fun roleplaying his character. However, were slavery not present I am sure we'd find the same amount of fun in another adventure path with other antagonists. It is probably best to move on with the topic for future Paizo products.
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Ruzza had a point that I'll expand on; that slavery isn't just about the slavers, it's about the system inherent in slaving being a viable endeavor. If you have a slaver, you have a slaving market, and then buyers; all complicit. Also complicit are the legal authorities, which ties to the populace in general. Slavery as an institution is a rot that infects a whole culture, not simply the PCs' targets.
If you want a "villain of the week" that engages in such actions, one could call them kidnappers with its narrower paradigm w/o the societal ramifications. But like sexual assault, misogyny, and more, many players don't want such things entrenched in their fantasy. (And readers for that matter, since most fantasy books shy away from such things too, the successful exceptions being notably grimmer.) One can look at how Skull & Shackles toes the line(s) w/ its pirates.
Not that such evils can't be present for those wanting that degree of vile villain! Have at it. And maybe there will be a Golarion version of The Book of Vile Darkness that explores that. That's a book I love, and while I still hear its praises decades later, I'd think most people would shy away from including ALL of it, with each of us drawing our own lines (and hopefully following the book's advice of discussing with one's group beforehand). It just so happens that slavery has long belonged in that optional territory rather than the core material, and Paizo's now addressing that. Cool.
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Switching hats for the sake of exploration, I will miss the efforts of the Bellflowers. What does happen to the deities & groups centered around liberating slaves? (I suppose I'm lucky in that my ex-slave PC escaped the Drow, who I'd think would retain slavery. Or not?)
And while I understand wanting to brush slavery under the rug in a tidy fashion, I think pure silence does a disservice to the setting. Yes, avoid putting the event in the spotlight (which kind of defeats the purpose of the gesture). And yes, it'll be difficult to create a Golarion-wide solution that's satisfying; it being a major change suggests a major event. But maybe The Freeing Flame pulled off a major mega-Wish retcon? And being a retcon of sorts anyway, it might be a future event nobody in the present understands. Memories might even fade? Hmm. Head canon I suppose. Or maybe w/ the existence of Sorcerers and Oracles perhaps arising among the slaves, slavery became too expensive compared to wages (and that's before factoring in powerful PC-types causing mass destruction of slaving infrastructure). The amount of gold spent for the level of protection necessary seems prohibitive in a heroic fantasy setting.
My last qualm is the lack of such things as the classic Slave Lords set of 1st edition adventures. Of course that had evil regions complicit in the crimes and in reflection several grim set pieces. In fact, upon further reflection, the slaves were more backdrops than characters. Piracy or even open warfare could've served the same purposes, given how the slavery itself was hardly addressed.
Qualm withdrawn.
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Question: What happens to Cheliax? They're evil, yet pivotal.
Serfdom? Or would variants like that and indentured servitude resemble slavery too much? Seems the lines blur, both to me and in history. Yet I'd think Cheliax needs its stratification.
That segues to other evil cultures too. And by evil, I mean enemies, where PCs infiltrate enemy territory, i.e. Drow or Duergar cities. These aren't places PCs "visit" so much as assault. Seems any place w/ open sentient sacrifice, torture, and cannibalism might qualify to keep slavery as an aspect. Hmm.
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I do think the absolute total removal of slavery as a factor of the world definitely limits the amount of stories that can be told by raw math, but those stories are honestly old hat by now, uninteresting and honestly desensitizing to what slavery is since no one wants to go into the depth of how horrible and life shattering it is. It's definitely weird to just nix something so massive in scale like slavery, and I don't think it's wise long term to cut out of the world. But I'm not a part of marketing, writing, or any other internal teams Paizo has, so if those guys thinks it's smart, then I'll trust them to carve their own destiny and see how it pans out.
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Well, I guess I'm going to stop quote-replying since I sense a removal-wave coming.
That said, Paizo clearly already wanted to address this issue, but trying to handle it diegetically was clunky and messy. This is really just them shortening the process.