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[stickadtroja]

yes, im okey with that. my suggestion for slavery wasnt the most thaught out ever. there HAVE been some intresting takes on how it would affect the game in this thread though. and i think those deserve better counter arguments than "the raws forbids it". but yeah. im not improving this discussion very much by these post so... ill stop now.

[Deepblade]

First off, no one in this thread that is pro for this feature can be elected to government now ha ha.

What can we potentially do with prisoners?
1. We could sell/give them to other civs
2. kill/punish them
3. ship them off to a prison camp
4. integrate them equally into society
5. release them
6. enslave them

I personally believe that the Dwarves, per the raws and stories, are against 6. If they're against 6 they'd be unlikely to do 1, unless a civ threatens war/requests a prisoner is turned over to stand trial for crimes/war crimes.

So, that leaves 2, 3, 4, and 5
Dwarves seem to be a pretty lawful bunch, so having the individual go to trial and be judged makes heaps o' sense. For crimes against Dwarf kind I can also see them being exported to the Mountain Home to stand trial. If you are the Mountain Home I can see it skipping straight to a send to a secret prison fortress, where the worst of the worst are housed until they are put to death.  For the ones who have fewer counts against Dwarf Kind, or  aren't leaders in the offending civ, it should be possible find out their desire and release them or integrate them into Dwarven society.

I gotta ask. Why would a slave be unable to skill up? If they do work they're gonna become better at it, that's just natural.

On a different note, for those for an apprentice system. It's commonly accepted that Apprenticeships were a form of contractual slavery. Where, for 7 years the apprentice was considered the Master's property. Sometimes the apprentice would run away and would be returned just as if they were a slave. They did have it better though, usually. Being released from the contract after 7 years, getting room, food, and money, if they did good work.

[assasin]

I personally believe that the Dwarves, per the raws and stories, are against 6. If they're against 6 they'd be unlikely to do 1, unless a civ threatens war/requests a prisoner is turned over to stand trial for crimes/war crimes.


So, that leaves 2, 3, 4, and 5
Dwarves seem to be a pretty lawful bunch, so having the individual go to trial and be judged makes heaps o' sense. For crimes against Dwarf kind I can also see them being exported to the Mountain Home to stand trial. If you are the Mountain Home I can see it skipping straight to a send to a secret prison fortress, where the worst of the worst are housed until they are put to death.  For the ones who have fewer counts against Dwarf Kind, or  aren't leaders in the offending civ, it should be possible find out their desire and release them or integrate them into Dwarven society.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The way I see it, while the majority of dwarves may agree with you, its unrealistic to assume all dwarves would be clones of all other dwarves. So I'm assuming that there'd be some evil dwarves. Plus ethics is based quite a bit off of upbringing and enviroment. So if your parents are evil there'd be good chance they'd indoctrinate you into being evil. Now what happens if enough evil dwarves gather together and found a new mountainhome. Since they're evil slavery would be allowed.

On your other points, theres still a lot of variation where ethics are concerned. I personally don't see any problem with POWs being put to optional work in exchange for payment until a release agreement is signed. A dwarf civ might not see payment as nessesary because they are prisoners. Another dwarf civ might see any work done by prisoners as unethical. etc.

[Deepblade]

The default Dwarf civ is against slavery currently, so that's what my thoughts were on as far as "What would a civ do with prisoners if they were against slavery."

I'd of course love to see Dwarf civs with different policies and ethics. This would leave to amazing Dwarven wars(like the War of the Three Hammers from Warcraft). I believe you can even get Dwarves that are "evil" right now if they are kidnapped by Goblins. It's just a matter of time on Toady's part. But, the ethic he will weight Dwarves toward at the beginning of world gen will, most likely, be strongly against making it unlikely to get it. So, as it's easier to decide what a civ could/will do with slaves, wouldn't it be better to discuss what Dwarves would most likely do prisoners if they are strongly against slavery?

[CaptainLambcake]

if not slavery, then i'd like a way to try them for their crimes, instead of just chaining them in some dark room and having my soldiers beat the shit out of them.  i like the idea of keeping them prisoner if they've done something bad, and I currently have a few goblin weaponmasters chained up in the depths of my fort, sort of like a prison.  i'd like that to be possible.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Assume for a moment that you're right and Toady's game at the initial release was all DF was going to be at that point, minus fairly minor features.
You're still wrong, because if Toady didn't think dwarves should be opposed to slavery he wouldn't have made them so opposed to slavery. And for each player asking for slavery, there's two or three more explaining why it shouldn't happen.
Besides, dwarven psychology and culture isn't exactly the best for the development of a slave trade, even if they hadn't outlawed it.

uhhh... you still not really adressing my point. you seem to say "cuz toady says so" and i just wonder how much those things are written in stone. where and when whas it decided that dwarfs should always be opposed to slavery? also why inst dwarven psychology and culture fit for it?

Right there in the raws. If Toady wanted most dwarves to be fine with slavery, he would have made them fine with slavery.

i can say the same thing about multiple z levels. "if Toady wanted multiple z levels he would have made it this way to start with."

Z-levels took actual programming work to add. If Toady wanted dwarves to keep slaves, he could modify the relevant segment of code in a minute or two, tops. It's completely different levels of programming.

still think that turning those goblin prisoners into haulers would be sweet.

Why? Why is that better than using the hordes of effectively unskilled cheesemakers and such who migrate to your fortress?

it isnt. it's just a way to turn the prisoners into something useful.

How could they be useful? Sure, you can make them work...but you would, realistically, need guards, and anyways if you already have more of something than you need more won't help.
Many people have so many dwarves-without-useful-skills that they make megaprojects just to keep them busy. Why would slaves be valuable at all?

NW_Kohaku:
nice now things start to take a more creative turn.
one point though. i think someone, maybe you, pointed out that there is differents kind of slavery. if someone in ancient greece had to turn into a slave to save her family from debth or something, im not so sure she would constantly try undermine the slave owner.

Pretty much any kind of "slave" that deserves the label would be willing to "undermine" the slave owner.

also i think this

You better redesign your whole fort around the notion of "slave-allowed areas" and "no-slave allowed areas", and keep the slaves far apart from anything valuable.

would add a lot of interesting elements to the fortress design. i would have a lot more fun building a super segregated fortress, with  slaveghettos, working class districts and nobles upper class apartmens, than the utiopian everyone-is-equal-and-sleeps-in-the-same-bedroom stuff that is going on right now.

Perhaps, but that's an economics thing. And also requires dwarves to have slaves.

i havent read any of threetoes storys so yeah, if they say that dwarfes are opposed to slavery, its a different matter. is those stories where you guys learned all you know about the "cultural identity" of the dwarves? beacuse one line in the raws dont say that much to me.

That "one line in the raws" says little, but it says so clearly: Dwarves punish slavery with capital punishment. This can lead one to infer that slavery is a crime. This can lead one to infer that dwarves don't keep slaves (except perhaps some criminals, but probably not proportionally significantly more common than similar criminals in the real-world United States or other countries with prohibitions on slavery).

Your opinion is that despite that, he should just change the raws, and the idea Toady has in mind for dwarves, just so you can do slavery pure for the evils.

yes? why do you make it sound like a bad thing? having slaves would be fun. i want the game to be fun. therefore i'm suggesting it.

Because...Toady shouldn't change his image of dwarves just so people have slavery sooner?

uhhh while i was typing assasin wrote a much more constuctive post and then kohaku wrote a post that makes mine look dumb. so i just say that im very suprised that the ethics in the raw files are seen as such a guide to how the game should develop.

The raws are one of many sources we have which state Toady's image of the dwarves. That's all I, at least, am arguing here.

if not slavery, then i'd like a way to try them for their crimes, instead of just chaining them in some dark room and having my soldiers beat the shit out of them.  i like the idea of keeping them prisoner if they've done something bad, and I currently have a few goblin weaponmasters chained up in the depths of my fort, sort of like a prison.  i'd like that to be possible.

Something like that would be nice, but is not germane to this discussion.

I'd like to remind people of a point that said people seem to keep forgetting: I'm not against slavery, period. I was simply pointing out that we should wait until a vanilla DF game would have a chance to run into slaves before implementing them. This means that I would not be against slavery when one of the following events occur:
-Civilizations which tolerate slavery such as goblins or humans are rendered playable in fortress mode (outside of mods, of course)
-Dwarven civilizations or other playable dwarven groups can be okay with slaves
-Toady has a change of heart and says that dwarves are fine with slaves.
Hopefully it won't be forgotten this time.

[stickadtroja]

duude... do you really want me to answer to all that, so that we can have a second (or a third or fourth) go at "this would be cool! No it wouldnt!"-type of discussion we had so far?

You arent even consistent. You argue that Toady has a view of dwarves that forbids slavery.  But then how would this ever happen:
"-Dwarven civilizations or other playable dwarven groups can be okay with slaves
-Toady has a change of heart and says that dwarves are fine with slaves." ?

If you are waiting for that to happen, and think that slavery would be cool in that case, why the hell are we arguing? Thats exactly what i want too?!?

also
Writing very patronizing things in a large font doesn't really help the discussion at all, and makes you come of as a snarky person
Hopefully you will start contributing to the discussion now and stop this nonsense.

[Beast Tamer]

He's not arguing for it to happen, and he's not arguing against slavery in DF. Gold is stating several realistic reasons why slavery MAY or may NOT be implemented.

"-Dwarven civilizations or other playable dwarven groups can be okay with slaves."

He's referencing previous posts that suggested an ethics drift system that could give rise to Dwarven Slavery.

"-Toady has a change of heart and says that dwarves are fine with slaves."

He's saying that Toady might change his mind, which isn't all that shocking to comprehend. People can change their mind whenever, we're not limited to one method of rationale for our lives. If Toady was opposed to change, chances are DF wouldn't be as large as it is today.

Can we please stop sniping at each other and stop all of this nonsense? This discussion has been civil up until now, and I don't want to give Toady reason to lock this thread. I can understand why people would want slavery, and I can understand why people are opposed to slavery. Can we please agree to listen to each other before insults start flying?