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[ArtOfLight]

I believe you assume (and this might be due to misrepresentation on my part) that I want to try and suggest that mistreatment never happens. That is not at all the case.

My problem stems from the fact that the RP community, as a whole, has highlighted all the mistreatment, abuse and ugliness that happens in slavery and brought it to the forefront so that it seems like it's this rampantly spread, extremely common occurrence - which it's not.

I think most of the problems you're describing has more to do with the application of the role than the role itself. Mustache twirling villains and slave-capsuleers can be done well if applied in an appealing manner with many dimensions.

Yes, this would be the "handled maturely" thing I spoke of at first. I don't mind people playing out the atrocities attached to slavery (they do happen, after all), the problem is that it is very seldom done with any character depth or consideration. It's tossed around casually and highlighted over and over again like a bad record.

As for the blackmail role, I know at least one character that is playing out something similar to it and doing it well and with reasonable responses, motivations and character depth. I'm not suggesting none of this can happen, I'm saying that sadly it very seldom seems to happen with any depth and maturity when it comes to the topics of religion and slavery.

[Seriphyn]

Like, to give an example, I've been in one-on-one RPs with about 4 Amarrian RPers with Gwen, and three out of four of those had them wanting to attempt to enslave her, out of which only one mailed me in advance to ask if I was interested in pursuing the plot thread.

Gahahahahahaha, that's hilarious (and unsurprising). Cripes, see, that's why I just don't bother with Amarr/Minmatar RP. All this slavery stuff with BDSM undertones/overtures (when it's done between PCs). Gwen's the perfect shy submissive type for it, too. That's why I don't like player-slavery. It makes a joke of both BDSM and the fiction material IMO. God almighty. It's fine with people RPing that in private channels, but I wince a bit when I see that in the Summit...

Anyway, it's just a case of "RP EZ mode". Slavery is bad IRL, it is bad in-universe and always will be. Same with Gallentean stereotypes. Democracy (especially US/UK) is perceived to have lots of gaping flaws right now, and obviously this translates into the same exact problems twenty thousand years in the future, with stuff like technology to aid it (how did social media help the Arab Spring? how can implants and neocoms help democracy in the Federation?). So it's easy to knock because of IRL, both slavery and democracy.

I'm not sure we can really knock RPers who come into the game and RP with this simplified approach. Not all of us are social experts or political scientists. Some just want some real casual stuff that doesn't require deep anthropological study of various topics, so when such things are brought up, they just mention a simple opinion just because they feel obliged to, and are subsequently torn apart by those who take the topic seriously, when the target never had the intention to to begin with.

[ArtOfLight]

A good post Seriphyn, with some solid points.

[Ghost Hunter]

Like, to give an example, I've been in one-on-one RPs with about 4 Amarrian RPers with Gwen, and three out of four of those had them wanting to attempt to enslave her, out of which only one mailed me in advance to ask if I was interested in pursuing the plot thread.

Gahahahahahaha, that's hilarious (and unsurprising). Cripes, see, that's why I just don't bother with Amarr/Minmatar RP. All this slavery stuff with BDSM undertones/overtures (when it's done between PCs). Gwen's the perfect shy submissive type for it, too. That's why I don't like player-slavery. It makes a joke of both BDSM and the fiction material IMO. God almighty. It's fine with people RPing that in private channels, but I wince a bit when I see that in the Summit...

Anyway, it's just a case of "RP EZ mode". Slavery is bad IRL, it is bad in-universe and always will be. Same with Gallentean stereotypes. Democracy (especially US/UK) is perceived to have lots of gaping flaws right now, and obviously this translates into the same exact problems twenty thousand years in the future, with stuff like technology to aid it (how did social media help the Arab Spring? how can implants and neocoms help democracy in the Federation?). So it's easy to knock because of IRL, both slavery and democracy.

I'm not sure we can really knock RPers who come into the game and RP with this simplified approach. Not all of us are social experts or political scientists. Some just want some real casual stuff that doesn't require deep anthropological study of various topics, so when such things are brought up, they just mention a simple opinion just because they feel obliged to, and are subsequently torn apart by those who take the topic seriously, when the target never had the intention to to begin with.

I disagree and would like to know your reasoning for postulating it will always be bad 'in universe' - other than your supplied logic of casual players.

[Merdaneth]

Most of the world's women are still virtual slaves to their husbands and family. And while a portion of them are abused, most are not and certainly many don't have any problems with their own 'enslavement'.

Current cultural norms makes, etnocentrism, stereotypes and a lot of other predicatable and logical human behaviour makes any RP discussion about slavery hard. Pirates are cool, religious slavers are bad. That's the prevaling RL perspective which gets transplanted to EVE.

Slavery in EVE is bad because it is associated with the African slave imports and plantation work (and abuse) as popularized by modern media.

When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished.  If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property.  (Exodus 21:20-21 NAB)

Slavery is and has been and considered quite normal for most of our history by most societies, including many passages from the Bible.

In any case, Merdaneth has never attempted to enslave other capsuleers. That would simply be stupid. And I do think for some of the BDSM crowd slavery is used as an convenient expression of their fantasies about that topic.

I like slavery as a topic specifically because it allows me to address many RL slavery parallels and I try to engage players to think about this issues a little bit further than 'slavery is evil'. Eve allows me to pose as a slaver and try and defend very impopular points of view as an exercise to get other people to think in a manner that wouldn't be possible IRL because people would mistake me for a proponent of slavery and 'evil man'.

[Ulphus]

If as a society you defeat a bunch of people in combat, you will very probably have lots of prisoners.

If you don't have a huge food surplus, you sort of have three choices.  Either you kill them, you let them go, or you enslave them.

Letting them go, for a society that is fighting for something other than lines on map, and in an environment where they can go back to being combat effective in a short space of time (say, spears and leather vests) is not always a good option.

Killing people in cold blood is apparently quite hard for lots of people.

Slavery might be seen as the least bad option.


Somewhat from memory, the term "Slave" came from the term "Slav", the people living in bits of central Europe. Norse "Vikings" would do a grand tour involving visiting Russia, sailing down the Dnieper to the Black Sea and then Constantinople, sell all the stuff (furs slaves, etc) for gold, silks and spices, buy a new boat, and sail back to Norway/Sweden via the North Sea. Originally, they might have captured some of these people in battle, but after a while, intentionally taking slaves to sell for gold was a popular way for a young man of good family to get his start in life.

I did a fair bit of reading of the sagas and as much history as I could find about Vikings (about 15 years ago now) and I'm aware that some of the currently accepted stuff has changed, but I'm not entirely sure in which areas.

My memory is that when the Vikings took slaves home (though this may have been specifically Iceland), there were accepted rules of treatment. The owner had to set a slave price (being the price paid, or the price the owner could have got) when they took the slave, and they had to give the slave enough land to run their own garden plot. After the slave had done their usual hours for the day they had to be given time to work on their own plot. The produce from that plot could be sold and the slave could keep the money (perhaps as credit) towards buying themselves out of slavery.

It was said that a very dedicated and competent person could buy themselves free in a year, an average person in two, and someone with any capacity to work at all could buy themselves free in three.

After they were freed, the previous owner owed them some duties. Since most of the laws depended more on patronage and friends than legal institutions, to get any sort of justice, you needed someone to support your cases in the law courts. Since someone brought to the area as a slave didn't have those networks, the person that brought them there was required to do it for them.

This is a very different picture of slavery to the standard Africans exported to the US model, and I sometimes think of Amarrian slavery that way when I think of Holders who aren't being bastards (except for the whole buying themselves free thing).

[Note that I couldn't give you references, and my memory is going... Oh, is that the time? Lunch!]

[Makkal]

I disagree and would like to know your reasoning for postulating it will always be bad 'in universe' - other than your supplied logic of casual players.

Because EVE is dystopian sci-fi.

In my mind, the problem isn't that the Amarr are too bad, but that the other factions don't have their badness played up enough.

That said, one thing that irritates me is people making up atrocities for every day of the year that the Amarr have committed. Children put to death because they drew a penis? Amarrian immigrants committing honor-killings? Female genital mutilation as standard for slaves?

I sometimes think people are using de Sade as a source of prime fiction.

[Esna Pitoojee]

I disagree and would like to know your reasoning for postulating it will always be bad 'in universe' - other than your supplied logic of casual players.

I think Seriphyn was being facetious here - i.e., "Here is the logic some people use to justify their treatment of the Amarr as horrible evil 24/7 slaver-torturers: "It is viewed as bad IRL, therefore must be bad in a fictional universe as well."

[Ghost Hunter]

I disagree and would like to know your reasoning for postulating it will always be bad 'in universe' - other than your supplied logic of casual players.

Because EVE is dystopian sci-fi.

In my mind, the problem isn't that the Amarr are too bad, but that the other factions don't have their badness played up enough.

That said, one thing that irritates me is people making up atrocities for every day of the year that the Amarr have committed. Children put to death because they drew a penis? Amarrian immigrants committing honor-killings? Female genital mutilation as standard for slaves?

I sometimes think people are using de Sade as a source of prime fiction.

EVE can be dystopian science fiction, would be my personal approach on the matter. I am not at all interested in depression wrapped up in pseudo-writing. However, I do agree there is a perceptible difference in how villainous the 'good guys' are portrayed. I would prefer the brush to wash it all evenly, but it would probably be best if there wasn't a villainy brush at all.

I too have noticed the examples you have mentioned, and that is simply a fault of players poorly translating travesty into the EVE world. Earthly concepts are the easiest to translate, but not at all the most appropriate in many contexts.

[Rodj Blake]

The important thing to remember is that most slave owners throughout history didn't consider themselves to be evil, considered slavery to be perfectly normal, and did not define themselves by the fact that they owned slaves.

In a similar vein, many people throughout history have considered their own nation's policies of colonialism to be as much of a benefit for the colonised as for the colonisers.   

[Saede Riordan]

The important thing to remember is that most slave owners throughout history didn't consider themselves to be evil, considered slavery to be perfectly normal, and did not define themselves by the fact that they owned slaves.

In a similar vein, many people throughout history have considered their own nation's policies of colonialism to be as much of a benefit for the colonised as for the colonisers.

very much this. I think a major part of the problem is that a certain noisy subset of the slavers all call attention to the fact that they are slavers at every opportunity. If someone holds slaves, they shouldn't flaunt it, it shouldn't be something important enough for them to flaunt. The only reason to call attention to it ICly, is to call attention to it OOCly, and ooh, look how edgy I am.

[Lyn Farel]

I disagree and would like to know your reasoning for postulating it will always be bad 'in universe' - other than your supplied logic of casual players.

Because EVE is dystopian sci-fi.

In my mind, the problem isn't that the Amarr are too bad, but that the other factions don't have their badness played up enough.

That said, one thing that irritates me is people making up atrocities for every day of the year that the Amarr have committed. Children put to death because they drew a penis? Amarrian immigrants committing honor-killings? Female genital mutilation as standard for slaves?

I sometimes think people are using de Sade as a source of prime fiction.

Yes, that's exactly the problem, other factions don't have their badness played up enough.

Also, sorry if I was doing it wrong with that children drawing a penis on a wall and starting a discussion that I found interesting about honor-killings. I could have done it with whatever faction I choosed, but here I had a character with an ammatar childhood. It was also an occasion to play something else than the usual dull "I treat my slaves well like human beings" that a lot of Amarrians do to counterbalance the black strokes the Amarr usually get from people (take Nico for example, she is the perfect good example of what a good Holder can be, a Holder that has a very well thought educationnal slave program but that will never yell everywhere "I AM A NICE HOLDER AND I GIVE COOKIES TO MY SLAVES", she will merely tell you "My methods are efficient and here are the results", pointing at emancipated slaves that live like perfect amarrian citizens, educated fairly but with an iron grip when needed).

I merely wanted to illustrate what can happen on backwater worlds and found the story interesting. Actually I was quite content with it, since it was full of shades of grey. Unfortunately, I did not have the time to finish it on the Summit since it started an interesting discussion just after. It's too bad because i only had the time to tell about the dark side of the story. I had something in the lines of "Plantation" in mind when I started the discussion.

Make up your mind, do you want stories only about nice holders, or do you want stories only about evil slavers ? I thought somewhere in the middle, with shades of grey would be better, but apparently people are not happy when it is once again potraying the Amarr in a dark way. At least I played my part by potraying them like that, unlike many factions that, as you say, are not enough painted in black by their own RPers.

[lallara zhuul]

Casual Amarrian/Minmatar roleplayers tend to be trolls.

Don't feed them.

[Logan Fyreite]

Second, PF touches upon slave mistreatment and abuse in the Empire (and the Kingdom) but it also makes it quite clear that it's a minority, not a majority and that the Empire actually looks unfavorably on it. Vitoxin is used on less than 10% of total slaves and most of those are ship-crew slaves. Slave abuse seldom happens because if it gets out that a Holder is mistreating their slaves, the constant power struggles between nobles would shift when other nobles brought it to light and caused that Holder to lose favor with the throne and church. The Amarr DO believe in ethics and morality and DO have expectations on how to treat their slaves.

If this is true then I have honestly missed the part in the PF where it says that slave mistreatment is a minority problem. Could you enlighten me as to where you got that information from? I've derived just the opposite information from the slavery pf. I suppose there is a teetering line between what the Amarr consider "mistreatment" or "Abuse" and what the Amarr would consider "discipline" and "punishment" vice what the other cultures would consider between those two extremes.

Perhaps The Amarr pf shows that abuse is only in certain circumstances and otherwise the methods used to control slaves, like microcontrollers, Vitoxin/Vitoc, slaver hounds, whips etc are just considered part of the slave experience and not counted towards mistreatment and abuse. Would be interested in reading more about that either way. Thanks

[ArtOfLight]

Happily Logan.

http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Slavery#Amarr_Empire

Slavers undergo extensive training in the proper methods of gathering and indoctrinating fresh slaves. Because the task is considered sacred by the Amarr, slavers are highly monitored by members of the clergy. They are expected to refrain from unnecessary cruelty, the needless killing of slaves, or other acts that unduly harm slaves.

Transcranial microcontrollers have seen limited use throughout the Empire. However, they are considered controversial in the Empire, as many believe they undermine the religious reasons the Amarr keep slaves.

The Amarr view slavery as an essential part of their society, from the lowest commoner all the way to the most powerful Holders. Some outsiders believe the Amarr take pleasure in the suffering of slaves, particularly commoners who are thought to bear their own misery only against the greater pain of those enslaved. While this may be true in isolated incidents, the majority of Amarr do not view slavery in such a way. Instead, the idea persists that slavery is a sacred duty of all Amarr.

http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Vitoxin

Across the Empire, the Vitoc Method is thought to be used on less than 10% of slaves. While this is a small percentage, it still amounts to a few billion individuals and thanks to intermittent peace deals with the Empire and the Mandate, and the actions of freedom fighters, there are also substantial numbers of former slaves in the Republic who are still ruled by the Vitoc regimen.

Regarding the use of Vitoxin:
Most slaves in the Empire are controlled simply by violence or the threat of such. Overseers constantly patrol slave populations, making sure they are doing work and not misbehaving. Slaves who are not doing as they should may be beaten, isolated, denied sufficient or high quality food and water, or punished in some other methods. However, some slave populations, such as those working on space ships or in dangerous mining colonies, or particularly troublesome and rebellious slaves, require more stringent methods.

I'd recommend reading the first reference pretty thoroughly as it discussed a great deal about slavery in every nation (not just the Empire) and has cited references to its information.