Slavery as game mechanic

[Clord]

Imagine a game where you are a slave master or maybe even the legendary slave master.


Anyway, you would go around buying/gathering criminals who have been turned slaves due they broke the law. They would form your party similarly as if they were pokemons for example.


Your goal would be to redeem them by making them facing various monsters etc and leveling them up. That way they would have "served" their sentences and restored back to their society as a free (wo)man.

 

[Eschaton]

ಠ_ಠ

I'd imagine it would require personnel-managing mechanics like the ones seen in a tactical RPG, or Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker and MGSV.

 

[Clord]

If we want to go really deep into it, who provides their food? How expensive that food would be? Will they get serious equipment due they technically are doing their "sentences"?


Also unfortunately, it would probably require all the characters to be white.


Now especially in anime style, it isn't unusual every character to be white but it also dodges a bullet if something like this got made.

 

[Eschaton]

Here's how I would do it:

Personnel-management needs to be passive; managing a bunch of GUIs between dungeons/quests/missions is boring. The player has to pay for their upkeep in gold, which pays for everything between food and housing. Going to an actual shop and buying provisions as an item every increment of time sounds super-boring.

The upkeep needs to be deducted from your gold automatically every increment of time, every dungeon, whatever…

Things like the level of skill for your personnel, how strong they are, maybe even how loyal they are should factor into this upkeep.

Customization of the personnel at the individual level would call for menu-navigation, such as equipping them, or choosing their skills.

 

[Clord]

Maybe someone with low loyalty could rebel against your party and cause you bunch of problems. Equipping your slaves too well could make them able to challenge your "leadership." Some would not just want to reform that easily and decides to try free themselves by other means.

 

[woootbm]

Also unfortunately, it would probably require all the characters to be white.

Now especially in anime style, it isn't unusual every character to be white but it also dodges a bullet if something like this got made.

Is the idea that this is supposed to be agreeable? If the tone is "slavery is cool if you're nice!" it's a bullet regardless. But if you wanted to have a darker tone where "hey, slavery ain't right" is the theme that the characters come to discover then you got yourself a dramatic topic and a challenge for making a heavy hitting story as you have to avoid being ham-fisted.

OR I would simply not call it slavery and try to make it not look like slavery. If Pokemon is the example, usually the good guys treat their Pokemon well, yes? So, forcing them to fight aside, the relationship is good; they're not "slaves," necessarily. There's any number of reasons a person could become indebted to another, or feel some manner of duty to that person. In your criminals example, it could be a voluntary program and the handlers could have a code for how to treat their dudes.

 

[Eschaton]

they don't need to be white. Maybe the player character isn't human? Or you're a human enslaving elves or demons?

 

[Bastrophian]

If you dont make a game with this idea, i will O_O ....sorry. As for my answer: as with anything, i would depend one how you do it.... :/ .... Though personally, i wouldn't make them only criminals. If you wanted to make the protagonist have anti-slavery values you could have him/her go around buying slave to set them free later. Maybe they would take a liking to the protagonist and want to stay....besides, if they left wouldn't it be possible that they would just be captured and made slaves again anyway. If it was me, i rather stay with the guy who was willing to set me free and help him make a place i and other people could truly be free. 

EDIT: Making them only criminals kinda makes it harder for me to feel remorse for them. Ok yeah, maybe some of them didint deserve to have been thrown in jail, but many probably did right? Why would i want those criminal that did deserve it to be free?    

EDIT2:But another good angle! What if the protagonist WAS pro-slavery, but through a series of events comes to feel remorse and goes on a slave freeing crusade, while fighting against otherworldly forces!!!!!!?!

 

[Clord]

Sure, if I find a cheap bust artist to prototype the idea.

 

[Chaos Avian]

Making the slaves all white is just as bad as making them all black to avoid offending/ treading on a delicate issue. Personally if they are human make them interracial. Heck Prisons all around the world are mixed. If it means anything I'm black and I'd advise against the all white slaves route lol... It doesn't even have to be criminals, orphans, homeless, ones who lost their way, etc. There's a few things you can work with here. Personally I'd find it interesting to see someone work with this topic. You always see this sort of thing from an outside perspective, seeing the inside workings would be a interesting (if somewhat controversial flip, I like controversy :3).

 

[Clord]

Okay, I have written three characters, describing them and some of their backstory.


I try to include even male characters even though they are not really my cup of tea.


Currently they are meant to wear "Steel Metal Collars" as signs of their slavery.


Though even normal citizen will wear a collar, however slave collars has name plates to tell others that they are not free. Any commentary to our society is purely coincidental.

 

[tlst9999]

No need for steel collars actually. The ancient Romans just pierced the ears of their slaves. That way, all you have to do is just check their ears. Much cheaper than making steel collars and much easier to draw. 

And slaves don't really have names. Their names are given by their masters upon purchase.

 

[Clord]

Well, I'm making this oppressive Empire/Government story. They treat their entire population like if they were oppressed.


The protagonist known as Sayako the Damned Slave Master is against the system and is secretly working against the Government. She buys slaves to free them later on and they reward her once they are safe.


I will not entirely base it onto real world.

 

[Tai_MT]

Okay, I originally read the initial post and went "full stop!  abandon ship!  Here be monsters!".  My knee-jerk reaction to broaching such a subject would be that it's a very bad idea.  Not because I think the idea is bad, but because of amount of flak I think someone would get if it weren't handled absolutely perfectly.

As such, I would approach the subject carefully and think of all sorts of valid reasons why such a world exists and how it could make sense so that it's not just "about slavery", but slavery is merely a part of it.

The way I would approach your idea is that these criminals, who are now slaves, have to earn something in particular from the guards in question in order to be "freed".  Like say, you take these members on Bounties or other things and upon returning the Bounty, they would obtain a "Merit Badge".  You could have different types of Merit Badges for different kinds of crimes and even different kinds of Quests/Dungeons.  When the slave turned in enough of these to the Guards, they would be forgiven their crimes and marked as free with maybe 50 gold in their hands to start a new life.  Some of these now free people could then be hired on permanently if they liked or respected you enough, or even as a means to help you find more work for your other Slaves.  I would make sure that it is understood that your main character is doing what he/she is doing for the altruistic reasons of freeing and reforming people.  You could probably even throw in plot twists like some freed people end up back as slaves again because they weren't reformed when you let them go, and that maybe doesn't reflect well on you.  Or, maybe, despite all the effort, there are just Slaves the Government won't allow to be free because of how valuable they are as commodities.  In such cases, you could have the Government take possession of them once again as soon as you completed their last job.

Likewise, I would also​ make sure to have several of every possible ethnicity, gender, and even animal as slave.  Slavery would be equal in the society in that it isn't based upon anything other than committing a criminal act, and thus, there's no dominant archetype of criminal.  They come from all backgrounds, walks of life, and even locations.

Even after that, I would still be careful on how to proceed.  It would be real easy to botch such a thing and get an in-box flooded with hate.

 

[Wavelength]

I honestly dislike the idea.  I think slavery would work much better as a story/worldbuilding element than as a game mechanic.

 

[Clord]

I startled to tackle this project. It's actually enough complex to warrant its own design document.

I have no clue how expensive it will be but I would like to be able to re-use my previous game's scripts as a base.

 

[SLEEP]

So, I don't want to get political with this. Let's talk about prison labour. It's Ok to make those people work. They broke the law. Maybe the act was petty. Are their laws designed to put people away for petty crimes? It's debateable. Maybe there's bias in the courts. Gotta make the slaves diverse though, can't talk about bias. In anime style, everyone is for the most part... not Caucasian, they're light-skinned Asian. I don't know much about Asian politics, that's the same thing as being apolitical, right. Gotta make sure every slave has committed a big crime. They're paying back a debt to society. Lets fight them like pokemon. Pokemon are analogous to animals. Let's fight them like animals to redeem them. Gotta avoid the politics here. The work's gotta be good for them after all, right? What are they going to do after they've paid back their debt? Did fighting monsters teach them anything meaningful? Gotta pay back a debt to society. Gotta be big crimes. Did a violent offender learn anything from fighting monsters? What other language is there in this jRPG? In a JRPG, fighting monsters is the most important thing you can do. If slaves don't like where they are, they'll fight you. You're the good guy, you're filling up their redemption meter. You even eventually let them go, you're not bad. You're legendary! Slaves fighting back is bad. Slaves committing suicide, or escaping without rebellion, isn't even worth considering. Slaves will be publicly shamed with collars at all times. Social commentary is purely coincidental. Its just a fun pokemon like thing

 

[orochii]

I don't know why but reading a bit of this topic made me remember Papers Please. Maybe something like that?

 

[Valkyriet]

The concept sounds like a weird mix between the job of a prisoner rehabilitationist and a pokemon trainer.

1. If you look at it from a realistic perspective, making criminals fight against monsters (and acquiring experience points) could be an alternative to a sentence, but it might not necessarily "redeem" them. What could redeem them is if the slave master finds a way to fix their problems before they complete their sentence.

2. "Slave master" doesn't quite sound like a perfect fit for this job. I think you could rectify this if the slave master (a.k.a player) is able to defeat every slave he owns both before acquiring them and before releasing them. That way, they could approve of you as their boss, and might think twice before trying to murder you in your sleep. They were once criminals, after all.

3. If you want a slightly different perspective on such a game, you could include arena elements. A tournament where criminals fight against each other for survival and/or freedom. This concept is exactly the same as Death Race (movie) and Deadman Wonderland (anime). However, I have yet to see this kind of feature implemented in any game yet (might have missed it though).

That's all I can think of at the moment.

 

[Milennin]

As long as we can beat up our slaves I approve of this idea.