Cultural Shock

See here.

Felt the above was worth having a look at, since it's core to my personal ideology of game setting.  I was going to say something more slavery.  As yet, it's not even incorporated into the description of the setting's identity, though it's implied.  Slavery has been a part of human culture since the bronze age (that we have any evidence for, at least) ... but somehow the institution failed to possess the stigma that began to appear in the minds of Europeans just prior to my game's chronological date (1650).  For the Egyptians and Mesopotamians, for the Chinese, for the Greeks and Romans, even throughout the middle ages, slavery was a class ... one from which an individual could rise and obtain respect, with society acknowledging that the individual's past had no relevance with regards to the individual's present.  But that ceased to be so with the American experiment (and here, I refer to both continents of America, not the country of the United States alone).

So, in D&D, it's tricky.  Players exist with the stigma version in their heads.  It would therefore be sensible to abolish the whole practice, vine and roots together, arguing that it had never taken place in history at all.  Or maybe that it happened only long, long ago, and had been abolished around the Dark Ages or some such.

This strains reality quite a lot, however.  It's easy enough to pretend that witches were never burned, that only applies to some tens of thousands of victims, spread over many centuries.  But at any time in human history there were millions of slaves; and their collective labour built the world.

Additionally, it's hard to vouchsafe that orcs, ogres, hobgoblins and such wouldn't enslave their enemies.  Or that there isn't a tremendous benefit in the gamespace of player characters working diligently to free slaves, or destroy slavery-based institutions.

Still, no doubt, most DMs would prefer it this way.  No slavery.  Clap hands, problem solved.

I am not one of them.

Reasons for this can be assigned to the usual things: I'm a white male, I was born nearly 59 years ago, I can't possibly understand what it was really like, or what the repercussions were.  But for those who take me for standing on the wrong side of the tracks in the real world, let me stress that this is not how I feel.  How I really feel about slavery, CRT and the 1619 project, and the insidious proliferation of racism that continues to be expressed from parent to child, I can't say it better than Tim Wise.  Watch all of it, and keep in mind that I agree with all of it, before you rise to condemn me for something I do in a D&D game.  Where no actual person gets hurt.

My best argument is the one that's made on the wiki page.  The 17th century was a very different world.  Very.  And better than the exploration of fantasy, better than pretending to be something we're not, better than waving make-believe wands to make magic, I feel the strongest experience players can have is to visit a real place that's very different from the place we are now.  Because a real place is a thousand times more effective at conveying to the player that he or she is doing something that other human beings used to do, and without condemnation, because once upon a time it was acceptable to do those things.

The cultural shock of this when the player realises what it means in the larger picture of their lives, as they comprehend the horrible past of human folk, having spent a little time wallowing in it ... is, I feel, instructive.  It sends a message that those people were not us.  Those people lacked awareness.  Those people were uncivilised.  Those people, our forebears, were monsters.  Not people to be put on pedestals.  Not people to be respected and worshipped.  Not good people doing the best they could in their time.  But people who were ignorant because the things they should have known hadn't been conceived of yet.

And what, we need to ask ourselves, would they have been like if they'd known what we know?  If they carried some of the empathy and morality we carry?  If they had not been monsters in a monster's world?

That, my dear readers, is what's answered by a player participating in that world.  That is where much of my fascination as a DM lies, as I want players puzzle out and resolve what they're willing to do, and what they're not willing to do, when faced with the power to do anything.  Not because I'm shaming them, and not because the general community behind dungeons and dragons would shame them ... but because, being free to act, they choose to decide for themselves.

Laudable?  I don't care.  I do care that in a society that praises free-will and personal experimentation, there's still a game where this is possible with human culture and history.  Even if it gets dirty and unpresentable.

At least, while I'm still running games.