When Slavery Works

With the full expectation of pissing off just about everyone - Let’s talk about slavery.  Worse yet, let’s talk about the morality of slavery.

Forget what you might think about the trans-Atlantic slave trade of the Age of Discovery.  You have to think farther back, because slavery is not as easy as a racial issue in most fantasy worlds.  Anyone can become a slave regardless of race or ethnicity.

In Fletnern, slaves typically come from war.  But they can also come from other origins.  The most obvious right now is the earthquakes on Hughijen.  Massive earthquakes in the desert region near Lympeid have been causing the wells in the villages to collapse.  This in turn forced refugees to go to other places where the resources were already spread too thin.  Those with the money to escape chose to escape.  The problem is that they chose the wrong folks to help them escape.

Centaurs sail the open seas in huge ships, trading whatever they can or even venturing into piracy.  They were some of the first on the scene in Lympeid, and they made all sorts of offers to the refugees.  New homes, new careers, in a safe and water lush new homeland.  But they didn’t mention the chains that went along with all of that.  The centaur warlords were in need of workers for their sweat shops, and they were happy to use the Dethebs.

Now one of the accepted principles of sea travel through the Anglic Straits (where the centaurs had to sail) is that if you are transporting slaves, the Myork Navy will sail up and sink you.  They might be able to save the slaves (or not), but they are not going to let the slavers through.  So why did the Navy let all those centaur ships through when they knew they were hauling Detheb slaves?

Now we’re into the morality of it all.  The current powers in Myork had a decision to make.  What to do about all the Detheb refugees?  If they brought that many Dethebs into their lands, there would be major cultural issues.  While they could absorb the refugees and even produce enough food to feed them, they couldn’t do it without giving up some of who they are.  The resulting culture would be an amalgamation of the two.  They were not willing to do that.

The other option was to sink the centaur ships and stop people from carrying Detheb slaves.  But that would doom the Dethebs to death, and in fact doom more than the number of slaves.  It had all happened before.  Problems in the desert lead to people overwhelming the resources and all the people die, not just the refugees.  So if it’s a numbers game, then Detheb slaves survive, the people of Lympeid survive, that’s a win-win, right?

That’s where the morality of slavery often comes to:  death or slavery, which is worse.  If the centaurs did not move large populations of people to where the resources could handle them, then a larger number of people would die.  What happens to the slaves, even if they all died, would be a greater “good” than an even larger number of people dying.  Granted this messed up “logic” also justifies slaughtering people during a famine, but we’re really not going there right now.

Let us please be clear:  Slavery is never morally right.  We are not arguing that slavery would be morally right, ever!  But in the minds of people pushed into really bad places, it might seem better than the alternative, especially if you expect the alternative to be death.

Let’s switch examples:  The elves of the Slyvanian Forest believe that death is better than slavery.  They are one of the few legal systems in Fletnern that allow for abortion.  The nearby Rhorics are absolutely against abortion.  They are so against it that if a poor couple winds up pregnant, they will often sell the baby to the plantation slavers.  Their morality tells them that selling (and really, it’s far more like giving) their child to the slavers means the child will have a chance to grow up on a large farm doing hard work, but living.  They see that as the far better outcome.  They couldn’t feed their baby, but the plantation will.

Let’s go back to the Dethebs escaping Lympeid.  While the greater good could be served by the Anglics of Myork allowing the refugees into their lands to work as low paid agricultural workers who could earn their keep, they are not willing to do that.  Their sense of patriotism (that is how they see it) tells them that doing so would weaken who they are as a people and this would endanger the world.  It doesn’t help that the Dethebs are stereo-typed as being lazy and willing to cheat anyone in order to make their lives easier - and there is a nugget of truth in that broad cultural stereo-type.

It would also be the greater good if the centaurs would pay the Dethebs a living wage and allow them to leave if they so choose.  But then why would they be willing to ship them across the sea?  Where’s the profit in that?  Without question, the centaurs who are running Detheb slaves are not moral people.  They are immoral people, and they like profiting by the easiest means.  So they know they are the bad guys, but they are OK with it.

So let’s sum up:  The Dethebs want to live.  Many of them, given the choice of slavery or death would choose slavery.  There should be other choices open to them, but right now there are not.  The Angles have chosen to allow the Dethebs to be sold into slavery in order to avoid a massive death toll in Lympeid.  There are other options open to them, but they believe those options to be more dangerous.  The centaurs are the bad guys, and they don’t care that slavery is immoral.

But what about the rest of the world?  Let’s just focus on the governments of Drentae for a minute.  While they don’t think about it, they have been relying on cheap fabrics made in the centaur sweat shops for a generation now.  Publicly they are against slavery, but they aren’t willing to do anything it.  Trying to “rescue” the new slaves would put a strain on their resources and dramatically increase the cost of certain fabrics.  Just to leave you with one point here - If you think these other governments are evil for allowing slavery and in a way profiting from it by getting cheaper goods, you might want to think about what’s happening in the world today.  There is a direct parallel!

This post was written as part of the soon to be released The Centaur Warlord of Lockney and Other Tales of the Beast Men aka All About Centaurs, the latest in our Small Bites editions.  Each Small Bites book looks deeply at one subject, a character archetype, a race/monster, a style of questing, or some other role-playing/world building subject.  This one details all sorts of centaur cultures, including the centaur warlords who have been running slaves.

To get the full forty page Game Masters’ edition right now, subscribe to our Patreon project.  Otherwise, in a few weeks, we will release the shorter, but free World Walker edition

Secret Societies in Fantasy

Our latest edition of Small Bites is available on RPG Now and its affiliated sites.

Click here to link to it. 
Oh, and it's FREE!!

This is our World Walker edition, which does not contain all of the information, because, after all, these are secret societies.  If we let everyone see everything, where would the mystery be?

To get the full version, we do ask that you join us - join us in game worlds and campaigns that players love to play in.  Click here to join us through Patreon, and a continual thank you to all of our patrons out there!!

The Lifestyle of a Minotaur

As world builders and even as game masters, we have to control and role-play some pretty kooky monsters.  OK, so you are not likely to “role-play” some sentient ooze, but you might have to.  When world building something that feels like it might be like us but really isn’t this can get very hard.  Take for example - minotaurs.

Minotaurs are people, right?  So they’re just like us, right?  Yeah, probably not.  Admittedly, I don’t know any minotaurs.  My best friend is not a minotaur, but there are somethings we should be able to figure out.

Minotaurs are big and strong.  Probably not too nimble, but not klutzy either.  They may not be as smart as humans are, but they aren’t complete morons either.  OK, so how do they live?

 Normally we wait until the end to tell you why this matters, but we’re going to stuff it in here.  Why do you care how a minotaur lives?  Because if minotaurs are only creatures that appear in the middle of mazes or lost in dungeons somewhere, it doesn’t matter to you.  But if you are trying to build a fantasy world, then the minotaurs have to come from somewhere.  Will your player characters ever encounter a minotaur village?  If not, why not?  Do minotaurs breed?  I assume it’s possible that every minotaur is actually an alchemical creation, but that’s not how most worlds see them.

 So assuming they come from somewhere, there will always be a chance that the party will go to that somewhere.  And if they do, what’s it like?  If it absolutely sucks, then you know why minotaurs are more likely to be wandering the world all alone and are easily hired or captured by bad guys.  If it is a lush, wonderful place, then why do they always seem so mean?  Is it because they want to get back there?  Is there a distant island so getting back is really tough?  If your evil priest enemy guy has hired a minotaur as a bodyguard, how easily can the party bribe the minotaur to go away?  Knowing this other stuff helps you figure that out.

 I know a few things about the minotaurs on Fletnern:  They originally came from Koaluckssie, a distant continent.  They were captured, enslaved and brought to Drentae, but eventually they were (as a people) freed.  So now what?

 One of the big questions, is How cow-like are they?  Are they herbivores?  I can’t stomach that.  (sorry)  Are they carnivores?  That seems close, but ... I’ve made them omnivores, BUT!  They prize physical strength, that seems right, so they pursue physical strength, and that takes a lot of proteins.  So while they are omnivorous, they focus on proteins. 

Back to how cow-like are they?  Do they feel an affinity for cows?  Most humans see eating apes as creepy and disgusting.  We don’t really see ourselves as apes (most of us don’t) but that feels way to close to cannibalism.  Is it the same for minotaurs?  Yes and no.  Minotaurs do feel a little creepy about eating cattle, but they justify it by saying that they respect steers and horses for their strength and feel animals that are eaten should not be as noble as the steers and equines.  So culturally, no cattle ranches for the minotaurs, but they will still enjoy pork, poultry and fish.

Where most of the minotaurs live in Fletnern now is a coastal region hemmed in by forests.  Minotaurs don’t strike me as the hunters of the woods (especially when the satyrs are right there too).  But, put those massive muscles to work on a fishing net, and the minotaurs could be hauling in an ample supply of fish from the sea, small lakes and some rivers.  They are bigger than humans, so they must eat more than humans, and if they are not farming, then they need to provide food somehow.  This seems to work.

 Alter that question a bit and How smart are they?  While there must be some manner of priests or shaman or something, they aren’t highly magical.  Again, they respect physical strength, so smarts aren’t as important.  But they aren’t dumb goons either, at least not in their homeland.  So while I’m not putting in any universities (magical or otherwise), they do need to have some industry.  Industries that rely on physical labor are things like mining.  But now we have a real issue that I believe will separate the game worlds:  Are minotaurs lovers of nature or just folks willing to exploit their environment?

 In Fletnern, they are not nature lovers.  This matters a lot, because minotaur miners seem more like the strip mining types; they just wouldn’t easily fit into underground mines.  But strip mining, logging, similar labor professions don’t normally go hand in hand with the nature lovers.  So at least in Fletnern, they’re happy to rip some minerals out of the ground.

OK, so they eat a lot, mostly fish, but also other proteins like nuts, pork and some other meats.  Those not providing food can be miners, stone workers, lumberjacks, lots of stuff that could give them exports to trade for some things they don’t produce.  But what about them, their families, their homes?

Well, if they are logging and cutting stone, then they should be living in some solidly built homes; homes as tough as they are.  No tepees or thatched huts here.  Admittedly, not all of this has been figured out for Fletnern, so I’m just going to leave you with some questions you can determine for your own minotaurs:  Are they monogamous or do they live in harems?  This could be why many male minotaurs go off to other cultures, but not so many of the females.  Do the fathers stay with their baby-mamas or do they leave the women folk to raise the kids on their own?  This again goes towards how cow-like are they.

 Do they wear clothing?  If so what?  I mean, trying to put a shirt on a minotaur would be expensive, because that’s a lot of real-estate.  We’ve seen a lot of movie minotaurs that decorate themselves.  Do minotaurs go in for tattoos?  ritual brandings?  scrimshawing their horns while they are still attached?  Are there certain things they won’t do because they resemble cattle?  Like would they refuse to pull a plow or a wagon?  Do they grow beards?  Can they or do they shave?  I mean goats grow beards, but cattle don’t (said by a kid who grew up in Chicago and has no idea how to raise any animal!).

Summing up again:  This stuff does matter.  If minotaur culture is such that the mother raises the kids alone, that changes who the minotaurs met in the outside world are going to be like and may justify certain personalities.  Assuming there are no minotaur military academies, then again, we’ve justified why they are axe users and not more disciplined soldiers.

 If someone (good guy or bad guy) goes to a minotaur village looking to recruit some mercenaries, we now know that there are going to be sturdy stone and wood homes.  The females will probably be acting as most females (in a fantasy era) do:  raising children, tending to the home, preparing meals, etc.  (That is NOT sexism, it is a historic fact used to justify a fantasy world.)  There are fewer young men around because the older adult men have chased off some of the younger guys to avoid having to compete for their harems.

You could just as easily have had your minotaurs living on the plains in tepees where their main resource is the buffalo they hunt.  There’s nothing wrong with that, but clearly knowing whether the minotaurs live in stone houses or in tepees is going to matter if you plan to have the party attack them in your campaign.  This is why, even when your game is focused on combat, you still need to do some world building.

This post was written as part of The Centaur Warlord of Lockney and Other Tales of the Beast Men aka All About Centaurs, the latest in our Small Bites editions.  Each Small Bites book looks deeply at one subject, a character archetype, a race/monster, a style of questing, or some other role-playing/world building subject.  This one details all sorts of centaur cultures, including the centaur warlords who have been running slaves.

To get the full forty page Game Masters’ edition right now, subscribe to our Patreon project.  Otherwise, click here for the free World Walker edition.

What’s a Beast-Man?

Sometimes splitting hairs on definitions is actually a little bit important.  Sometimes, a rose by any other name would be a completely different thing.  Sorry Willie.

So what’s a “beast-man” and what’s a chimera?  And how do you pronounce chimera?  We’ll leave that one to a later time.  But most of all, why does it matter?

Here’s how we see it, and we absolutely admit, there is some room for argument!  A beast-man is part animal and part “man”.  A chimera is more than one animal joined together in some way.  So a centaur and a minotaur are both beast-men.  Part horse, part man, or part bull, part man.  But a griffin is a chimera - part lion, part eagle.  I wanted to use a pegasus as an example, but I’m still debating what that other part is - goose?  swan?  eagle?  does it matter?

Let’s go with that question:  Does it matter?  It does!  Beast men are men, people.  Chimeras are monsters.  They may not be evil.  They might even be herbivores, but they are monsters and they are not people.  That matters because just as you wouldn’t see a dog or a tiger as an NPC, you wouldn’t see a hippogriff as a playable race.  But could you play a centaur?  Seemingly of course!  After all, he has a fully formed human head, capable of speech and likely the casting of magic.

So that’s the underlying difference - monster or man, but is that enough of an explanation?  Let’s focus on “man” for a moment.  I was really tempted to make the centaurs of Fletnern half horse, half elf.  Why? because the elves and the centaurs come from the same place.  It seemed like it worked.  But I went back in the world’s history and the answer came to me pretty easily.

The question of human or elf came down to how were they created?  Are they natural?  Well, yes, they are natural, in that they, like nearly every other animal, monster or race, were created by the gods.  When the gods of horses created centaurs, they were competing with the gods of men (probably titans, but at least one of the races of men).  So they would have crafted their centaurs to be men instead of elves.

But what about the chimeras?  Are they natural?  Yes, for the same reason, at least most of them.  Very few chimeras were actually created by people; most were created by the gods.  Therefore, they are as natural as you can get in a fantasy game.

If this all seems unimportant then I’m not yet explaining my main point:  There is a major difference between a centaur and a pegasus.  Both are half horse and half something else, but one is a sentient being and the other is an animal.  Beast-men can think, form civilizations, be player characters.  Chimeras are very interesting and very “fantasy/myth” monsters, but as clever as they might be, they are not people.  They will not form civilizations, and they do not make for very good PCs.  Both groups work great as enemies for the PCs to come up against, but they are fundamentally different styles of creatures.

That means it matters when your party encounters minotaurs or one of the other seemingly “monster” beast-men.  Minotaurs can think.  They can use weapons.  They can lay traps.  Griffons don’t do those things.  They use what the gods gave them and that’s about it.

Now, don’t ask us about sphinxes, because that’s one where we’re still on the fence.  I really think they’re chimeras, but they have human-esque faces.  So I guess they’re beast-men?  What do you think?

Tabletop Gaming on a Budget - RPG Blog Carnival

I love this month’s topic from the RPG Blog Carnival, so I had to join in.  I am very proud that my kids have followed their old man and become incredibly cheap in their young ages, so not all of these ideas are my own.  Just saying.

OK, so the way I typically game master nowadays is through the use of a simple white board and dry erase markers.  I know a lot of folks have vastly better resources, but this really works for me.  I don’t just use white boards, but I use some small ones that I found at a school supply store a while back. This means I can easily pick it up, draw and then put it back down, and if there are people at the far end of the table, they can have it handed to them without disrupting figures, etc.  That’s the easy way.

But let’s be clear - figures are cool and cool is fun!  But how much cool can you afford?  The cheap way to do figures is to use these new sets that we found at Toys R Us.  They are effectively toy soldier figures, but in different shapes.  The two sets in the picture here are:  Pirates & Skeletons and Mythic Warriors (normal adventurers and orcs mainly).  These ran my oldest son about $10.  Now, not every style of bad guy can be found in these limited number of sets, so he went a step further.  He got a couple sets of really cheap green army men and then took a lighter to them.  Some were ruined (he uses these as corpses), but the rest became zombies and other generic horrors.  Are they all to scale?  No! but they meet the rule of cool.

 

The next two are not cheap!  They are instead, things that we already had around the house that we can use as figures in a fun way.  The first began when my daughter started playing.  Being a young(er) girl, she had brought some of these tsum tsums to the table with her (I think because she wasn’t sure she was going to like the game and wanted to have a toy to play with).  Well, I was using the white boards and at one point there was a minor debate about where people were.  So I grabbed her tsum tsums and placed them around the white board so everybody knew what was what.  Fortunately, she had male and female “figures” and the younger group of players was having a bit too much fun with using Disney characters as their figures, but oddly enough it worked.  Again, these things are not cheap!  But we already had them, so it worked for us.  I strongly suggest using the smallest of the rubber ones.  Yours don’t have to be tsums, but you probably have something around the house that will work.

 

OK, last one.  Again, this is not cheap!  But you probably already have them laying around your house.  And these can be far more useful than tsums:  Legos!  Yep, the world’s greatest toy (just my opinion), makes the greatest playing field.  Not only can you use the mini-figs for showing where characters are, but you get a larger base and the figures will stay standing up.  Don’t know about you, but when I used lead figures (or whatever they are made of now), keeping them standing up was a problem, especially when people would get up from the table to get closer to the figures and personally move them.

This one can go as big as you want it to.  You could lay out the entire dungeon in Legos and run the party through the whole thing.  We normally don’t do that, but it can be really helpful to place 6-8 Lego blocks on the big plate to show generally where the walls are.  I admit I have built a couple of things from time to time, typically trapped hallways or one time a balistae.  You can even do elevations pretty easily, which I have never had enough stuff to do by other means.

 Looking forward to see other “thrifty” ideas this month!