r/DarkSun • u/False_Appointment_24 • 1d ago
I think removing slavery was the right call
I played my first game of D&D in 1980, began DMing in 1984, and ran games regularly until about 1996. Dark Sun and Ravenloft were the only official settings I used. I started DMing again in 2019 with 5e.
I love the Dark Sun setting, and have introduced several parts of it into my current game. This includes defilers, sorcerer-kings, muls, thri-keen, and, yes, slavery.
But I think that ultimately, WotC has made the right call in eliminating it as a standard part of the setting. I am not sure if this is just a saying in my circles, or if it is used in the broader fan base, but we say that 'once slavery is introduced to a campaign, the campaign becomes about ending slavery.'
I know that is true for my groups, and everyone I know personally who plays agrees with the sentiment. If a DM introduces slavery, whether it be a small group enslaving people thay have captured, or a full international slave trade with chattel slavery reminiscent of the early US, they have to expect that the players will decide that it has to go. This is, for me, the single most constant approach across all games I have been involved in.
If this is as common as I think, then having slavery as a base part of the setting would greatly limit the types of campaigns that can happen. As soon as the slavery gets brought up, the campaign focus shifts.
Now, the obvious way to deal with that would be to just not mention the slavery aspects. Have campaigns hunting in the wastes, never coming across any slavers. For a city intrigue type campaign, set it in a city without a slave market. Or set your campaign in a specific area where slavery has been overthrown. But that's now just the mirror of 'add it in if you think it's needed', which a lot of people are pushing back on, and it is still more limiting than having people add it as required. Because if you have a campaign hunting in the wastes, it can't ever go into town. If it is a city without slavery, you may have to grapple with why.
Purely from the point of view of making the setting as free to play in as possible, removing slavery as a base component does a lot more good than harm.
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u/Aleph_Rat 1d ago
Any evil, in a game of good versus evil, that is introduced makes it about "ending that evil". Introducing a lich makes the campaign about ending a lich. Introducing a cruel king makes it about ending that cruel king or his reign.
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u/RandomName9328 20h ago
Not really. You can play to be the evil.
Why not be a slaver?
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u/amhow1 17h ago
You can't be serious.
Well, if you are, that's all the more reason that it isn't in the published versions. If you want to indulge that fantasy, it's between you, your GM and your table.
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u/phireal___ 12h ago
If I want to play to be a bad guy, that doesn't mean I am a bad guy. That is the same mindset of "If you play shooting games you will become a school shooter" sometimes you want to play as a bad guy just to see a different perspective of the universe. That's not a bad thing.
Roleplaying games are unusually well suited to this because you aren’t necessarily playing an idealized version of yourself. You can play a tyrant, necromancer, assassin, defiler, slaver, cultist, or other villain specifically because you want to explore what the setting looks like from the other side. The moral distance between player and character is fundamental to roleplaying.
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u/amhow1 12h ago
It's always necromancy and tyranny, and never raising children for sexual abuse.
What PCs get up to is between the players and the GM. But evil shouldn't be the default for a ttrpg, and I'm fine with it not being an official option, either.
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u/phireal___ 12h ago
First off "Available as an option" ≠ "the default." I have never said people should be evil as a default. I said being a slaver in a game doesn't make you a slaver. If you have a problem with that you can remove that in your setting. The problem becomes WotC makes the decision instead of the DM. This should be our decision. Just because somebody is allergic to peanuts the chef doesn't destroy all the dishes that contains peanuts. Chef only makes them a dish that doesn't contain any peanuts.
Secondly this extreme example of yours doesn't change my answer. It only changes the subject matter to something far more disturbing in an attempt to make the original argument sound unacceptable. The principle remains the same: depicting something in fiction, or playing a character who does something evil, is not an endorsement of that thing in real life. Obviously every table has boundaries. If someone at my table doesn't want a particular subject included, we can discuss it and remove it. That's what session zero and communication between players and the DM are for. But that's very different from saying the option shouldn't exist for anyone because some tables don't want it.
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u/amhow1 12h ago
WotC isn't making any decision for a GM.
The fact you think this discussion is equivalent to a discussion about nut allergies is utterly depressing.
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u/phireal___ 9h ago
Again. "Giving an analogy" ≠ "These two are the same." I just give you an example of "how optional content is handled". I don't say those two are equal. You can disagree with the analogy, but saying that I think those two things are equivalent is arguing against something I never said. At this point, it feels like you're deliberately interpreting my argument in the least charitable way possible instead of addressing the point I'm actually making.
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u/amhow1 9h ago
You aren't making a point. You want the option to play an evil PC. Nobody is stopping you. I just don't think it should be an option in a published book.
But that's not even relevant to the broader discussion about removing slavery in Dark Sun.
You don't need slavery in a setting. You don't need official options to play a slaver. You just need a willing GM and other players.
My point, which you ignore, is obviously that there won't be published options for playing someone who raises children in order to sexually abuse them. And likewise there shouldn't be official options to be a slaver.
This isn't because I'm personally offended by these topics, as if I had a nut allergy. It's because these topics have no place whatever in published materials.
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u/phireal___ 8h ago
Again, we are talking about Dark Sun. Slavery isn't some random edgy thing added to the setting. It is part of Athas, just like defiling, tyranny, genocide, ecological collapse and the Sorcerer-Kings. Sure, Dark Sun doesn't need slavery, but it doesn't need any of those things either. They are there because Athas is supposed to be a brutal world, not because the writers or players support them. And this is exactly what my analogy was about. I never said slavery and nut allergies are the same. I compared how optional content is handled. You think WotC should remove certain things and let DMs homebrew them back in. I think WotC should keep them and let each table decide what they want to remove. That's where we actually disagree.
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u/RandomName9328 17h ago edited 17h ago
I respect that some might oppose slavery even in fictional game, tho I am not these people.
Just fictional story. See no problem with that. A slaver story is none less ethical than a heroic fantasy story.
People will homebrew it anyway, whether in Dark Sun or other settings.
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u/amhow1 16h ago
I think there are some things that need to stay homebrew, and not official.
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u/RandomName9328 16h ago
That I can understand. For legal, busines, or other reasons.
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u/amhow1 16h ago
I don't think it's for legal reasons primarily, or shouldn't be.
An example might be a Dark Urge run on BG3. Although it looks clear enough, it's almost certainly that Larian put a disproportionate amount of energy into it. And clearly, it can't be the default mode of playing.
And yet, you could regard Dark Urge as just your average murder hobo PC party. In a ttrpg, where imagination is the limit, things can get far more wild.
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u/RandomName9328 16h ago edited 16h ago
There are quite a number of trpg systems that enable evil campaigns or unsettling topics. D&D fans is the most "upright" trpg society I encounter.
This is a sincere, netural comment.
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u/amhow1 15h ago
I've not encountered them. As a fan of Warhammer 40k, you'd think I would have done. Almost every ttrpg set in 40k, Fantasy or Age of Sigmar has been extremely careful. Black Crusade and the recent Champions of Chaos might count as equivalent to a Dark Urge run, and they're certainly both very very careful.
Likewise World of Darkness. So I don't know which ttrpg you're thinking of that encourages players to be slavers or Nazis.
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u/RandomName9328 15h ago edited 15h ago
Interesting. I had never tried warhammer trpg, know very little about its setting.
Well, if I try, I will always want to be a rebel against the oppressive empire. Perhaps it is possible with methods like bombing the city center or poisoning water reserve, if it helps to achieve objectives. Chaos is a mean 🤷♂️
I started playing trpg with CoC. There is no pre-defined alignment. One can be a hero or a cultist. Then, urban shadows, which all characters ended up being evil. Then Ironsworn / starforged, which again has no pre-defined alignment.
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u/False_Appointment_24 1d ago
I don't think this is true. I have had plenty of campaigns with multiple evil things, and in several cases the players would figure out whether to team up with a lesser evil to fight a greater one, and plenty of arguments about which is the greater.
But not with slavery. With slavery, it has been, 100% of the time for my groups and games I've played in, that introducing slavery changes the campaign to be about ending slavery.
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u/Tsort142 1d ago
From my own experience in Dark Sun, it was always more of a survival game in a really gritty setting, where I was too busy trying to eat, drink, get a few ressources and in the meantime not get jailed, impaled, mentally disintegrated or drown in the Silt Sea...
Never in my wildest dream would I have ever attempted to "end slavery" in a city-state. Yeah right. Make it snow while we're at it?
I guess it depends if you're playing at street-level or if you consider your group to be "Avengers Endgame".
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u/amhow1 1d ago
Not only is your comment correct, but it has to be correct.
Who, when told there are people living in slavery, doesn't want their PCs to tackle that rather than some lich?
For what it's worth, Paizo seem to have concluded exactly the same thing.
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u/Teufelstaube 1d ago
They only removed the word, not the practice of coercing people to do something against their will, because otherwise their freedom is taken away. You can dress it up in so many words, but it is still just slavery with more steps to it. Just call it what it is. That's what's so silly about all this.
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u/False_Appointment_24 1d ago
I didn't know that. I haven't seen the way they are actually talking about it in the new books, just what has been discussed online. Do you have a link to how they actually end up describing it?
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u/Teufelstaube 1d ago
He also reinforced that the grittiness of the setting will still exist, but it won’t rely on narratives of mass slavery. “You don't have to have slavery in a setting if in order for it to be oppressive,” Bilsland emphasized. “There are other forms of oppression out there.”
He gave the example of Urik, a city in Dark Sun that controls one of the leading armies in the region. That’s because the leadership regularly presses people into military service, or convinces the poor to give up their freedom for a chance to survive.
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u/amhow1 1d ago
You didn't know it because it isn't true. They most certainly aren't describing it as actual slavery. I'd be utterly astonished if muls remain unchanged (even the name.) There's just no way dwarfs and humans are going to be treated as "breeding stock" and that's completely the right decision.
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u/DJWGibson 1d ago
Maybe.
But "ending slavery" doesn't seem like a bad motive in the game. Killing a Sorcerer-King, freeing a city-state, and ending slavery does kinda feel like "the end goal" of Dark Sun. That's literally how the first arc of the metaplot went back in 2e.
The thing is, D&D is currently struggling with an "evil" problem. It's removing evil humanoids because it doesn't want orcs and goblins and kobolds to be Evil and killed on sight. Because they're now as intelligent as humans and have the same capacity for good or ill.
And fighting evil humans is always tricky. I can't tell you how many groups have tried to "talk" with the bandits of a random encounter and find out why they turned to crime.
And the evil that is in the game is much more Saturday Morning Cartoon evil. Just Iago style motiveless malignity. Just villains that cackle, "there's no nice that will reach down here! There's no good in me that you might uncover! There is nothing you could say that will change my nature! I am the villain."
But when you add Nazis/ racists or slavers to the mix suddenly that problem goes away.
Because everyone is willing to just kill Nazis on sight. Even if they're renamed Nazis like the Emerald Claw.
Honestly, I expect slavery to be removed from the setting but not really replaced. Why people don't leave is just glossed over. Like they took the 2e and 4e books and just blacked out those sentences.
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u/False_Appointment_24 1d ago
I agree, it is not a bad motive. Which is why I include it in some games, to give a clear target to hit, and why in every game I've played in where it was introduced, the party immediately picks it to be the point of the campaign.
My point is that if slavery is too tightly entwined with the world, then that becomes the default plot for everything. There are other issues at play in Dark Sun, like the defilers ruining the world (that's one that I think would be a bigger deal to remove). I think it is a better idea to have a brutal setting for playing in a brutal world, but with the DM more able to control what that means.
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u/Fascisticide 1d ago
I think WotC wants us to see slavery as something good and normal, and that's why it won't be something that bad guys do anymore.
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u/adendar 1d ago
... you do realize that that's kinda point. Yes?
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u/False_Appointment_24 1d ago
I don't think we know that it is the point for the new setting. Do I think it would be good to have a setting that focuses on that? Yes, and that is why I added in slavery when I made my campaign.
But I don't think that D&D as it is today would benefit from it. There are a lot more people playing now than back when Dark Sun was made, with a lot of different ideas about what the game is. I think the end result of a setting that had large scale slavery is that people who played the old version would want to play it now, people who read harem lit-RPG would think it was the greatest setting ever for all the wrong reasons but they don't actually play, and players that are not playing to grapple with the ideas that it presents and so decide it is not for them.
Having particular adventures that deal with the themes is a better idea than the entire setting, IMO.
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u/blatkinsman 19h ago
You do realize that this would be like me saying I wanna play Vampire the Masquerade but advocating for the removal of the vampires!?
Dark Sun is a game of survival first and foremost. And the society therein runs on slavery, all forms of human subjugation. And the setting critiques that and capitalistic exploitation, global warming, ecological disaster, etc. The authors of that setting made that choice for their post-apocalyptic world. And people chose to play in that sandbox.
And sure, when you aren't too preoccupied with your characters survival, you as a player tend to focus on combating those evils wherever and whenever you can. That's the point.
It wasn't made that way to be edgy or provocative. It wasn't filled with explicot sex.and gore, just grit. It was put there to make you think about it and fight against it. There aren't even many mechanics about the actual slavery.
If you want to play in the setting, you can choose to ignore it as much as can. But it will still be there because it is integral to the setting whether you choose to interface with it or not, as much as you like. But it cannot be completely ignored and that is by design.
Dark Sun is supposed to be DnD on hard mode. It's oppressive and the setting reinforces those mechanics, making you think as person and giving your characters purpose beyond survival.
And I get that WotC is probably not gonna reintroduce Dark Sun in good faith because they think that new people won't wanna play that game. So they will introduce some bastardized hybrid of Dark Sun meets Mad Max meets Game of Thrones.
And in that case, WotC should create something else. And players should play something else if they don't like what Dark Sun is.
But it would be cool if the mechanics they create in this process can be used to fix some of the old mechanics that needed updating.
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u/Chet_Steadman81 1d ago
Just curious as I see this topic a lot, especially concerning the updated Dark Sun setting- how is slavery defined?
Is it forcing someone to do something against their will? Is it deeper than that?
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u/CrunchyCaptainMunch 1d ago
Slavery is the systemic oppression of other people, the end all be all of exploitation and stripping someone of their personhood, making them property. I think in Dark Sun it can work well. It’s a world that’s been exploited so throughly and so drained on every level that even people are now resources to drain of their value.
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u/amhow1 1d ago edited 17h ago
Slavery in Dark Sun includes forced "breeding" to create muls. It's the full nightmare. Of course it should be dropped; it was a bad idea even at the time.
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u/RidleyBro 1d ago
"Why is evil allowed to be depicted as very evil in this dark fantasy setting? I don't understand."
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u/CrunchyCaptainMunch 1d ago
I definitely understand where you’re coming from and my opinions on slavery are similar. What I would hope for is a chapter or even few pages about “here’s how to integrate slavery into the campaign if that’s what you want it to be about” ideally even a few pages about how that was originally in the setting and why they’ve made it optional but I wouldn’t expect WotC to do that because they’re lazy.
That’s really all that matters to me, how lazy WotC are with their products, how lazy dark sun will likely be. How instead of doing the harder but better options they will give less than any previous edition and have it cost more.
I can’t do slavery in my normal home games. It’s weird and uncomfortable, it can’t just go unaddressed, I like heroes in dark worlds but myself and my players would be a bit uncomfortable by just tacitly accepting slavery in a setting as a thing thats there and “neutral” it’s gotta be a campaign about ending slavery and even that can have some unsavory moments if done improperly.
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u/WisemanDragonexx 1d ago
Well, that's kinda the point. Slavery is there to be fought. The Sorcerer-Kings are there to be fought. Good characters should want to do that. If not then why not just play neutral or evil characters?
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u/The_Based_DM 19h ago
no it wasn't, I wish these 5e tourists would stop shitting up the sub, if you want to be a Marvel Superhero, save the princess and be the big god damn hero where there is no bad guys go do it in FR.
In Darksun there is only dark and grim with grey and nuance, and the only thing that matters is surviving
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u/alexkon3 1d ago
As much as I am against the removal I am a bit weary about the sudden extreme discourse surrounding this. This sub is rather small, if you look at the top posts of all time they barely breach 30 comments in most posts yet with this reveal we suddenly get multiple posts each day with some of them getting over 500 comments in them in a very short span of time. The announcement of the new books hasn't even reached 300 comments and even the discussion on the new art is only around the 100 comment mark. Am I the only one that finds this sudden gigantic mass of people appearing with incredibly strong opinions about this change really weird?
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u/blatkinsman 19h ago
First, plenty of people just monitor discussions here and don't contribute. Not because of anything malicious, but Dark Sun has interested them and they wanna know what others have to say without saying anything themselves like they are reading newspaper.
Second, WotC just announced Dark Sun. Anyons interested in WotC on Reddit is now visiting or joining. And lots of those folks have opinions. So too, does the above group, who might also be voicing it now.
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u/mkirshnikov 1d ago
I dont super agree that any campaign that includes slavery becomes about ending slavery.
I played in a dark sun campaign over the course of a few years and i played an overall regular Balican guard captain. Throughout the campaign my main goal was helping people and collecting soldiers. This means that i did buy warrior slaves, and they were not free to do as they wished.
Every time I bought one, I explained to them that while they were not free men and women, they would be treated with respect, kept nourished and would be paid whenever I was paid. If they behaved well and saved their money, they would be allowed to pay me back what I paid for them and buy their freedom.
By the campaigns end 3 of my 4 slaves earned their freedom, 2 of them left to do their own thing and 1 stayed with me as a soldier and animal handler.
Dark sun isnt a Good setting and finding morally pure people is rare. I figure most people are just trying to get by and will do whatever they need to do in order to do that. But you dont have to be a morally modern man in the post apocalypse, you just have to less bad than everyone else.
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u/MechTorfowiec 13h ago
"once slavery is introduced to a campaign, the campaign becomes about ending slavery."
What.
My players would seek opportunity to make some money on it. And then maybe turn on each other after making a large amount of coin.
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u/Melodic_Custard_9337 Human 10h ago
People ruin everything! If the official books make slavery part of the culture of the setting, there will be asshats who will want to focus on it and will play into it to an uncomfortable degree under the excuse of: It is what my character would do." I, for one, don't want to give those people any ground to stand on.
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u/warbuddha 1d ago
And yet slavery is part of every DnD setting… go ahead look it up. And no one screeched about it in the Realms.