Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, this is going around in circles, but I do want to put one more thing into this thread because it keeps being ignored...

Slavery exists when there is an economic value to slavery.

Slavery goes away when that economic value goes away.

There's a reason that the rural agrarian South of the United States had slaves and the urbanized North did not - you couldn't have slaves in a factory.

It's not that there weren't menial jobs in a factory - believe me, there were, but you couldn't trust a slave with anything expensive. 

In the rural South, slaves would always leave their farm tools out in the fields if not explicitly ordered not to - it was a minor form of rebellion they could perform, and if the tools rusted in the rain, it would be a small economic sting to their captors.  And they always tried to find some small way to rebel. 

When you make someone a slave, you make them your enemy for life. They will dedicate the rest of their life, and make it their point of pride, to undermine you in every conceivable way they can.

So... you want to trust those slaves near the magma forges? You want to trust those slaves to haul your food supply? You want to trust those slaves to carry around that golden statue past the magma forges? Near the stockpile with all the weapons?

Make no mistake - they *will* find a way to undermine you, they *will* find a way to make valuable things disappear, they *will* be willing to wait patiently for the time when your most valuable legendary dwarves are nearby before they "snap" and go into a suicidal berserker rage and start by shivving your best dwarf. 

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.

Anything else would be an injustice to how slavery actually took place.

[Tsuchigumo550]

Agreed. Right now it's just a processor hog without value for anything but thematics- yes it would be awesome to command the recent captured childstealers to stand guard on in the fort walls, but why, unless I was a fledgling fort with no dwarves that could do the same thing?

And oh yeah, slave rebellion is a big thing. I could see a mechanic where one or two slaves together wouldn't bee too hard to maintain, but if they group at all, riots will form even if they're surrounded by 80 military dwarves.

[NW_Kohaku]

No, like the way that murders don't get reported until someone notices them, you could just have slaves steal things, and dump them in the magma without anyone noticing, or just leave them smashed.  You don't get a notice it's happening, you just look around, and you can't find your masterwork stuff anymore.  (If it's not noticed for a few weeks, the crafter will suddenly get angry that someone stole the masterwork whatever, anyway... and if it's found smashed, then they'll be outraged at that time.)

They do it when you're not looking, like a vampire.

Dwarves could suddenly "trip" near a chasm, as well.  If it wasn't seen who was with who, then it doesn't get reported until the body is discovered.

Slaves might unlock doors you would rather have locked, or pull levers.

Slaves don't report things - they'll let a snatcher walk right by or if they see a dead dwarf, just use that as a chance to loot their room before anyone else notices the death. 

You have to have guards watch them all the time to prevent any mishaps, even if there's just one or two, because if there's nobody watching, there's nobody stopping the mischief. 

[stickadtroja]

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."
but hey now im just arguing for the sake of it.

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.

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.

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.

[10ebbor10]

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."
but hey now im just arguing for the sake of it.

If you had make a suggestion, back in the 2D times, to add a third dimension, I think that the reaction you would have gotten would have been deserved. The suggestion forum is not intended to force your opinion on Toady, but to suggest implementations of ideas that would be fun. So far, no sensible nor fun implementations have been suggested.

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.

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.

However, without any notion of an economy, or debt, it's highly unlikely that this'll happen. Just restating for the umpteenth time. We're not against slavery, we're just against the nonsensical, slavery for the evils version that was originally and still quite often suggested. Without a framework to build on, you can't implement this decently.

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.

Why would you. Besides, why can't you do that right now. Just use burrows to designate some dwarves as slaves, and prevent them acces for several luxurygoods, and dump them into their slave gettoes.
TADA: Suggestion accomplished without needing to implement an arbitrary hardcoded suggestion.

[Kruniac]

Yeah, being able to capture intelligent creatures and put them to work would be really nice. The same way animals can be trained to be assigned to a dwarf, it would be nice to be able to "train" (probably resulting in physical damage) an elf or goblin to perform menial tasks for a specific dwarf.

So Urist has a war dog assigned to him, and an Elf slave. The war dog berserks on hostile creatures, and the Elf slave fetches food/drink, perhaps.

Also, on the entire topic of "Dwarves being against slavery" - sure. So we change the ethics in the raws, and now it's okay with them. Dwarves probably would find it unethical to topple the safety of an entire fortress in order to get a mermaid bone factory up and running, or to build a giant toilet out of a mountain, or any number of insane and awesome thing people do around here.

The point of DF is to go ballistic, be insane, and revel in the chaos that follows. Slavery is just another warped thing we could do for extra fun (and/or Fun).

[stickadtroja]

If you had make a suggestion, back in the 2D times, to add a third dimension, I think that the reaction you would have gotten would have been deserved. The suggestion forum is not intended to force your opinion on Toady, but to suggest implementations of ideas that would be fun. So far, no sensible nor fun implementations have been suggested.

uhhh this is just getting dumber and dumber... who said anyting about forcing? i just made a suggestion what i thought would be an improvement. among other (much more useful) arguments there is this, "dwarfs dont allow slavery.". that is not a argument against my suggestion! its merely a statement that the current game doesnt allow it. of course i know the game doesnt allow it! why else would i suggest it?

so yeah basically what kruniac said.

[10ebbor10]

If you had make a suggestion, back in the 2D times, to add a third dimension, I think that the reaction you would have gotten would have been deserved. The suggestion forum is not intended to force your opinion on Toady, but to suggest implementations of ideas that would be fun. So far, no sensible nor fun implementations have been suggested.

uhhh this is just getting dumber and dumber... who said anyting about forcing? i just made a suggestion what i thought would be an improvement. among other (much more useful) arguments there is this, "dwarfs dont allow slavery.". that is not a argument against my suggestion! its merely a statement that the current game doesnt allow it. of course i know the game doesnt allow it! why else would i suggest it?

You don't get it, which is quite clear.

Point is: Dwarves don't do slavery. Toady don't wants them to do Slavery. (Info to be found not only in the raws but also, I think, in Threetoe's stories.) 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. (Because that's what it is. In the entire discussion no sensible argument for the useability of slaves has come up.)

[Larix]

The "it's just ethics" argument _is_ pretty dumb, sorry. Dwarfs have the strong sentiment against slavery as part of their cultural identity. A creature not considering slavery a crime worthy of death is not a DF dwarf. You could just as well suggest something that incidentally required the removal of alcohol dependency for dwarfs.

The game technically allows slavery already, all you need for it is to play a species which finds slavery acceptable - to wit, humans and goblins. Once those species become playable in fort mode, you could have forts which would find it perfectly acceptable to have slaves. Slavery would still need a meaningful implementation, and i haven't seen particularly good suggestions in this thread.

[assasin]

Ive got an idea. Why not suggest changes to mechanics which would make slavery viable and then argue about ethics. Its going nowhere and it might give the discusion a bit more of a point.

Say, a system where you can have your milatary dwarves beat up other dwarves if they decide to take too many breaks. I know how often I've gotten annoyed waiting for dwarves to do their jobs.

Or maybe better social management tools where you can assign different things to different levels of society. Worried about booze levels, assign the booze to non-slaves and forcing the slaves to either steal or drink water. Same with rooms. SLaves get dormitories and other dwarves get their own bedrooms.

( guess other general game mechanics could be changed, but changing them just for slaves seems a bit pointless, so I'm not sure about them. At the very least there'd need a way for these things to be done efficiently without slavbes so players could weigh up the pros and cons and be able to decide for themselves which one they'd prefer.

Say adding more labour intensive jobs. Possibly cleaning could be made a more active process. Maybe feeding non grazing animals

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Back to the ethics debate. Historically there have been several types of slavery. Maybe some dwarves see some types of slavery as preferable to others.


owning other sentient beings would probably be the rarest outside the more evil races. The standard, common defintion of slavery.

debt slavery is probably an option in mount communism.

community service for criminals may be an option. If a player has more control over the legal system he could set up laws around what crimes are punished by forced labour and what forced labourers do. I guess it could be an option for prisoners of war as well. If a human or dwarf can take control of a goblin civ I'm sure goblins could be encouraged to provide labour for dwarves.

[NW_Kohaku]

Assassin: Type "[ hr]" without the space.  It makes a line that doesn't create a scrollbar because you put 1,000 consecutive underscores.


Also, I'm just going to point out that this thread is really going in circles, as even the attempts to move away from the ethics is repeating what was already suggested about mechanics for social behaviors and slavery types that would need to be in place for this suggestion to make sense.

[stickadtroja]

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.

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.

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.

[Fniff]

Because Toady wrote it, and that's his opinion on the matter until someone asks him directly and it is confirmed or rejected. Raws are the building blocks of the game, saying slavery should be in is like saying that tools should be designed around the four arms dwarves have: they don't have four arms in the raws and arguing that it could be changed at some point isn't a very good argument.

[stickadtroja]

poor analogy. it would be more like if someone suggested that dwarves should have four arms, the response would be that they dont have four arms in the raws.

[Fniff]

Okay, now the analogy is if someone suggested four arms, because it would be cool if dwarves could hold mugs of ale or highfive four separate dwarves without telling what uses this could have or suggesting how the rest of the game should be adjusted for the fact that dwarves have four grippers now, just because the idea of four arms is cool.