Slavery, Include Or Not?

Ouch, that's a tough one. You kinda screwed yourself when picking that time/setting. I'd normally say no, never put the player in the position of buying slaves unless it's a fantasy or science fiction game. But people who go for historical games like that dislike inaccuracy.

What sunandshadow said. Suliman, consider the educational game "Playing History 2: Slave Trade." Just Google
the title, and read about the "Slave Tetris" controversy. If you're making slavery a fun activity, expect
to get a lot of reactions of various types. There is such a thing as bad press.

Well that game is in quite bad taste! My game is a financial / business game. Nothing will be "extra fun" with slaves as a commodity in the boardgame. It would be a commodity like sugar or cotton. There could even be event cards like epedemic on a slave ships, or slave rebellions. That revenue of income could when slavery becomes outlawed close to the end (around year 1800).

But me I always thought it was strange that there WASNT a discussion when games like "sid meiers pirates" or "colonization" or "port royale" completely skips the whole slave issue.

Games such as rome total war includes genocides / population extermination / prisoner massacres. That seems to be ok:) Becouse that is also historically correct.

Im not sure myself what style im going for. Im just saying that including nasty stuff that acually happened isnt immoral in itself. This is what baffels me with "moral outcry". If anything it seems immoral to perpetuate the myth that europeans amassed all that wealth simply from entrepreneurship or "hard work".

And then you get a pat on the back when making a story where everyone is friends and nice to eachother. That borders falsification of history (if you use a historical setting i mean :)

But me I always thought it was strange that there WASNT a discussion when games like "sid meiers pirates" or "colonization" or "port royale" completely skips the whole slave issue.

I would recommend that you also skip the slave issue.

During that time there where a lot of commodities for sale, I doubt you will use all of them so just put slaves on the don't use list. If for some reason slaves are important to the game mechanics, if they are needed for powering a ship, then call them workers.

Im just saying that including nasty stuff that acually happened isnt immoral in itself.

Including it controversial topics into your game by itself isn't immoral, however people will then look at your game with a critical eye to see what your intent is. The worst part is that any creation reflects it's creator, if you treat slaves as just a commodity then people could start to think that is the way you look at slaves, like they where not human just some object you could use and trade with.

Slavery is such a complex topic that if you include it in a game you can't just add it in as some offhand thing, unless you spend a large part of your game explaining your stance on slavery people will start interpreting every detail to get an idea of where you stand. Games are like clouds, different people will see different things.

If you wanted to cover slavery in a serious historical way, your best bet would be having a viewpoint character who was a slave. But that doesn't fit with your game concept.

I guess it matters more about your implementation than the actual subject manner. Assassin's Creed Black Flag dealt with slavery and plantations, but it was done in a tactful way, it may have also helped that they included an ex-slave as a friend to the main protagonist. I don't exactly remember there being much of an uproar about it, and I as a black man didn't see anything wrong with it. Giving the player the ability to own and trade slaves may be a tough thing to sell. Even though it would be historically accurate, I don't know of many that feel like historical based games are missing the ability to own slaves. It seems like one of the issues where people are okay with ignoring historical accuracy to maintain their own moral compass.

It's definitely a decision you have to think about carefully.

Personally, I think including slaves, and depicting slavery harshly, can make a game more intellectually interesting.

But it's a difficult balancing act you can't commit to halfheartedly:

- Slavery needs to be depicted...

- ...but not glorified. You don't want players to play the "Dark Side Jedi" and gleefully participate ("I'm only roleplaying!/It's only a game!").

- ...but the game itself still needs to be fun and enjoyable, and not too somber.

- The cruelties need to be explored and demonstrated...

- ...but not glorified. You don't want some people to enjoy the portrayal of domination and subjugation feeding their fetishes.

- ...but not minimized. Slavery, while commonplace in that time period (and today as well), shouldn't feel 'normal' to the players.

You have to balance being preachy and ham-fisted, with not indulging people's fetishes, not accidentally teaching that slavery is profitable (despite that being the reality), but also not minimizing or treating it casually.

I remember reading about a teacher teaching a class about the African slave route, and had students load up their boats with "humans" and give each person a name and family members on the crew. Then they began crossing the Atlantic, and (by rolling dice), named slaves were thrown overboard, died from starvation, died from disease, etc... etc... with the end result that few made it to the other side.

I think the easiest way to do this safely, is to make players observers and not engages with the slavery, or to reveal after the fact that actions they took furthered some horrendous crime.

In a board game that you replay, I think the deaths and abuses become too commonplace in players' minds, so I'd save those kinds of explorations to single-player games that players usually only play through once or twice.

If you do wish to add slavery, maybe slave traders are a non-player dynamic that's occurring in the world that interact with players but that the players never get an opportunity to profit from. If the game already has the player have crews, maybe name each crew (players draw cards for their crew members) and the crews have different stats and maybe can be upgraded, so players attach to the players, and suppose some of the players' own crew gets randomly captured by slavers, and they find out (three or four turns later) what that person's fate was (what kind of death, what kind of slavery, in what location, from what slave ship), and maybe players have the opportunity at capturing slave ships, freeing the slaves (and risk sinking the ship and drowning the hundreds of slaves chained up in the hull). Or something.

Eh, a quite popular game, Mount & Blade, which spawned sequels (the more polished M&B Warband, upcoming M&B 2) and spinoffs (M&B Viking Conquest, M&B Napoleonic Wars, etc) has "slavery".

You can just capture people at the end of each battle. Sell them to "slave drivers" in the cities, which gladly tell you exactly what they do with the people (ask for ransom, if no relative pays up, sell them as slaves somewhere). Literally no actual consequence beyond maybe some companions (iirc) kinda disliking it. But thats it. Its a nice source of gold in the early game.

No one ever batted an eye at it.

How fucked up is everything that you have to think about including slavery or not in a game about ships, set in the Caribbean, in the 1600s of all times. Of course there is going to be slavery. Thats half the reason those ships are there in the first place! If you want to pretend it never existed I'd choose a different setup or time period, maybe fictitious happy archipelago where all you trade is fruit and rainbows or something. Throw in some gnomes/elves and stuff so no one doubts its fantasy.

Everyone knows the primary purpose of mount&blade's slave system was to force hundreds of forest bandits to join you and do a robinhood playthrough.

At least that's what I did.

I think the easiest way to do this safely, is to make players observers and not engages with the slavery, or to reveal after the fact that actions they took furthered some horrendous crime.

I was going to suggest something like this. Make it obvious that slavery exists in your game, without allowing the player to participate. Give the player the impression that the choices they made at the end of the game might have caused as much harm as good?

It's a double edged sword and you need to tread carefully, as others have said.

Interesting discussion. But i do find it strange that some suggest:

• Include it, but let "others" deal with it, not the player. This would be dishonest. Slavery wasnt done by only "evil men", it was done by almost anyone and every nation.
• Include it, but dont make it profitable. Why? It was VERY profitable, this is why it was so widespread. The economic system encouraged it and plantations wouldnt exist in the way it did if not for slaves.
• Include it, but make the player "the good guy" by intercepting slave ships and freeing slaves. Really? This NEVER happended and would make a very strange trading game.

Im slightly dishearted now. The easiest seems to do just like everyone else who makes a game in this setting and pretend slavery didnt happen:(

This game will not be marketed or sold so maybe it matters less than implied by this thread, but should that really matter for the actual issue?

To clearify:

The portayal (if included) will be rather abstracted. You play on a map of carribia with Europe and (maybe) Africa as off-map locations where goods can be sold and bought by your ship markers. Slaves will be a cargo marker just as sugar or cotton will be. Events like epidemics on a ship carrying slaves may be included but no individual crewmen or slaves will exists with picture, name or background (regardless of white or black skin).

Include it, but let "others" deal with it, not the player.

I think you may misunderstand. The player isn't avoiding it because they "are not evil" and the "others are". They're simply delegating as a good manager should, leaving dealing in this "commodity" to someone with more experience... This of course means that gross atrocities might get overlooked as it's generally dealt with 'hands off' as youre "way too busy to get involved in the minutia and start micro managing"...

Eh, a quite popular game, Mount & Blade, which spawned sequels (the more polished M&B Warband, upcoming M&B 2) and spinoffs (M&B Viking Conquest, M&B Napoleonic Wars, etc) has "slavery". You can just capture people at the end of each battle. Sell them to "slave drivers" in the cities, which gladly tell you exactly what they do with the people (ask for ransom, if no relative pays up, sell them as slaves somewhere). Literally no actual consequence beyond maybe some companions (iirc) kinda disliking it. But thats it. Its a nice source of gold in the early game.

Everyone knows the primary purpose of mount&blade's slave system was to force hundreds of forest bandits to join you and do a robinhood playthrough. At least that's what I did.

I think why it worked for Mount and blade was because it was a versatile mechanic. It started as a way to make a small amount of money or as a way to gain recruits you couldn't hire. Later in the game the capture mechanic is used to ransom kings, this had it's own advantages and disadvantage as ransom kings could later be recruited by your king creating a enemy or friend depending on your actions.

In the end not many people used the capture system in Mount and blade to make money, because there where a lot of more profitable ways to get money.

Include it, but let "others" deal with it, not the player. This would be dishonest. Slavery wasnt done by only "evil men", it was done by almost anyone and every nation.

Slaves where held by both fair and dishonesty men, however only the cruelest and heartless captured and shipped slaves.

It's believed that at least half if not more slaves died during transportation by sea. Livestock trade by ocean is expensive, even more so when they are fragile two legged humans who eat the same food and can spread disease.

Slaves where often left to starve to allow the crew to eat, the sick where killed to prevent epidemics, the crew was brainwashed and taught that the slaves where less than human to prevent mutinies and the woman where some times used to reward the crew.

Then there was the dilemma of keeping your "stock" in good condition as malnourished slaves would die and with out physical exercise they would be worth less; slaves kept under good conditions rebelled against there captors.

These are hard choices to make, the good people died in the middle of the ocean because they refused to treat people as just commodity for trade.

Include it, but dont make it profitable. Why? It was VERY profitable, this is why it was so widespread. The economic system encouraged it and plantations wouldnt exist in the way it did if not for slaves.

Slave trade wasn't that profitable for the slavers.

Besides the conditions mentioned above, slaves would often commit suicide by starving them self and had to be force fed. Others would throw them self, and there children into the ocean to drown. On land the slaves died of dysentery in the hundreds, tried to escape and rebelled.

In a shipment of 600 slaves only 150-180 would arrive at the destination, in such a poor condition that selling them was difficult.

Things only got worse for the traders when plantation started selling there excess slaves. Plantations needed large amount of slaves to be built however less slaves where needed to maintain the plantation. These slaves where better fed and stronger than the slaves sold by traders.

Then things got even worse as plantation slaves had children born into slavery, these new young slaves where accustomed to living as slaves and were healthy and strong.

In the end actual trading of slaves where done by neighbors and neighboring towns, with actual slave trade accounting for less than 30% of slaves trade.

Keeping idle slaves where considered a risk, so selling slaves where important that is why it was so wide spread because slaves and land was cheap, spreading slavery like a disease.

Considering the fee needed to pay a crew, the cost of repairs and taxes; slave trade wasn't that profitable for traders when better plantation slaves where sold.

Most slave trade vessel bought better trading licenses and others realised you could rob the people your killing and became raiders.

Owning slaves and selling what they produced was profitable, so the rich get richer.

Include it, but make the player "the good guy" by intercepting slave ships and freeing slaves. Really? This NEVER happended and would make a very strange trading game.

When some of the African war chiefs and kings learned how the slaves where treated, they stopped selling there prisoners of war and launched small ships to fight against slavers.

The problem you face is that unless you include every detail of how slavery was you will be misrepresenting how profitable slave trade is.

Considering that slave where less than 3% of the goods sold in the 1600s - 1800s it's not worth it unless the goal of the game is to highlight slave trade.

Hmm

If your looking for a historically accurate game, they need to be in.

If your looking for a business transaction game,they don't absolutely need to be in. (maybe theirs mango trading, and other fruits, do u really need multiple goods down to the detail if they serve the same functions, and are just another type of good?)

The question you need to ask yourself is do you want your game to have a message, or do you just want a simple light source of entertainment?

It all depends on your end goal in making the game, and what you want your player to take away from a session. (How deep you want it to be?)

Good mechanics and design reinforce messages and are consistent.

My suggestion:

What if You make Slaves a wild card option? or an additional side mechanic?

Allow the player to decide if they want to have it in. Not in a sense that you poll your community, and abide by their wishes,

The other question is who is your target audience?

That will determine if it's an opt in or opt out situation.

Say that Adding in Slaves is a chaos variable that may or may not help the players.

This way you:

1. Allow people to play historically accurate in goods.

2.Allow people to just do resource management nd trade if that;s all they want.

3. Puts it in the player's hands to decide (Just because you provide the option, doesn't mean you endorse it as the right thing to do.). .

If done carefully and smartly, you could get the best of both worlds.

And wouldn't it as a wild card variable be also in it's own way historically accurate, as evidenced by this discussion alone.

The bible has Slavery written right in their, and most good book people manage to live with themselves in owning a book that depicts the ills of humanity. We don't say bible thumpers endorse slavery by owning the book and saying it's the word of god.

The down side of course, is it's more work all around.

It's also well known that some games, and some players really like their chaos variables,so you have to be careful in how the mechanic is actually implemented. If a person decides to play with the slave mechanic over and over, just since it's a chaos variable, you might accidentally fall into a feedback loop, to where the base game without the Slave wild card becomes boring, significantly less exciting, or anything else that might get critical players thinking slaves is how the game is meant to be played, and no slaves doesn't compare.

Slavery, like religion or race, is one of those things that will always be instrumentalized by someone. Often, the extent stays "harmless" to your business, but sometimes it does not, and you only know afterwards.

If you don't like risking that, you should stay away from the topic alltogether.

Personally, I think it's OK to have slavery because it's just a fact of life. Even in the 21st century it is, let alone the 16th. You should just try not to make it too much the "fun driving center" of the game or some weird concoction such as slave ship tetris (like the game Tom Sloper pointed out) since that will inevitably aggravate people.

That slave tetris game is problematic on so many levels, but I think that was not intended at all. It begins with such a bizarre negro carricature of the main character that you almost fall off your chair (both laughing in despair and thinking: Wow, that is... really courageous, or stupid). But if you look at the white characters,they don't look that much different. The (predominantly white European) characters in the sequel (yes, there is one!) look just the same, so I guess it's just the artist's style, and not intended. Then of course, that tetris game... not only is the tetris inventor well-known to love going to court, but doing it with bodies (... bodies of gross negro carricatures in contorted positions) is just asking for trouble. Well yeah, it's not far from the truth, but that doesn't mean people want to play it for entertainment. The sequel ("Plague") has the same minigame with dead plagued, and a few others (place the leech) which are kind of... well, odd.
All in all, I think the developers either have a weird sese of taste or were just being a bit stupid. I don't think there was really an intent of insulting someone or such. But what you're intending is not necessarily what you get.

well, we can't deny slavery existed, but if we talk about in a educated and expose it as a bad feature maybe can be included without problems. Many great games included slavery so personally I dont see any problem, a game its a game after all.

Well, the 1st part of ^ makes sense, but then you completely undermine it with the 2nd half of the sentence.

You can either treat a game as an artistic, philosophical lens to examine our world

OR

You can say their nothing more than inconsequential pastimes of entertainment.

Each individual game can be one or the other, but saying a game is one, and then saying it's the other when thins get sticky is a very common misstep IMO

Whatever you choose, to leave it in or take it out, I would suggest dedicating a section of your rules manual to the era in regards to slave history. You can explain a bit of the background of the games setting and the terrible nature of the slave trade, and justify your choice. Explaining that either you wanted to leave it in the game, because you felt like ignoring it and pretending it didn't happen didn't do those who suffered at it's hands justice. Or how you took it out, because you felt that it would be disrespectful to treat such a sombre subject so casually in the game.

I get the feeling more and more that this is why settlers of catan is based in a fictional world

In a honest and realistic game about triangular trade, the player has to be able to trade slaves, and trading slaves has to be a major part of any good strategy (because there aren't enough other commodities that can be exported from Africa). This gives the players a choice between being evil in the game's fiction and losing the game.

If you don't want a grim/educational game in which slavery is a moral issue or a callous game in which slavery is appreciated as a smart business plan, the main way out of the dilemma is not making the game about ship trading after all, to avoid the use of slave trading as a move within the game. For instance:

• The popular Puerto Rico boardgame is about developing an American colony with city facilities and plantations. The masses of slaves working at whatever the players build are completely implicit: "workers" in the game arrive by ship in small numbers, and represent (with some ambiguity) European emigrants and big shots.
• A game about pirates robbing random ships would make the players not responsible for loading a particular ship with slaves, and rules about humanely and usefully recycling captured slaves as pirates, colonists etc. instead of selling them might be reasonable