Run an online game on roll20

1, let them play a game about a slave revolt in the bronze age
2, abandon the group

Pick one.

I kind of feel like your campaign is probably ruined, or at least won't turn out to be anything you intended, because explaining things like this to people you only know online and who obviously have strong views on slavery is not going to work out. That said, trying what suggests and seeing how it turns out is probably your best bet.

>MY story has to be on MY terms and MY rails.
>Players can't have any agency whatsoever!
Pull your head out of your ass. The game isn't about you, you fucking racist.

>their characters don't have modern western "sensibilities"
That's not for you to decide.

True, it seems to be about players being entirely unable to play characters in a role playing game and instead of diving into a setting and potential story decide to enforce their modern moral code upon a fictional culture as far removed from modernity as one gets.

Slave revolts were a thing back then. For many participants they ended rather badly. If your players want to play that way anyway and they don't mind the lousy odds, why not?

I dunno man, a slave revolt campaign sounds pretty great if you like long harsh war campaigns. Hiding in the hills, gathering popular support, going on missions to attract allies (assuming this is the Greek Bronze Age, the polis over should be happy to support a revolt if only to screw over their rival), and if their smart figuring out how to get the economy working. It would be even funnier if the slaves they rebel with end up just enslaving the freemen, perpetuating the whole issue.

And what do you mean their characters can't have modern sensibilities? They could just be crazy people.

I believe you, OP. I'm sure this actually happened and you didn't just make up some bullshit to troll on Veeky Forums.

Post your players' character sheets. We'll wait while you make them.

This
Fuck em, I would honestly feel better to have a more realistic setting than a pink filled fantasy world where everything is peaceful and an evil entity strikes the land with darkness because he is a very bad villain. It's not a Disney movie for fucks sake.

>atk: 563
>def: 528
>HP: 72492

do they realize that America, contrary to popular american beliefs, wasn't the only country to have slaves? Simply put find a playgroup that isn't a bunch of retards.

He could've made it up,but since there's nothing terribly improbable about hsi story, I don't see why whe should assume he's lying.

In the last year we've had a lot of threads on Veeky Forums with the same general plot:

>OP runs games for burgertimes
>OP includes tasteful slavery because period-appropriate
>Players uniformly chimp out, derail OP's carefullyh-scripted plotline
>OP runs to Veeky Forums to make sure he's not an ebil razizt

At this point it's almost a thread template. The key points are "all PCs are american", "slavery featured as an aside", and "players revolt against the planned campaign".

Name a single slave revolt from the Bronze Age.

Are we talking historically accurate slaves as third rate citizens (in the modern sense) or hurr-durr shackles-and-whips?

A slave revolt in ancient times? How absurd! Surely it wouldn't make for an interesting story!

Those arn't mutually exclusive you know.
Just compare an old timey slave tossed into a mine to one serving in a mansion

Absolutely outrageous!

Especially with the supernatural aspects found in many rpgs! Perish the thought!

Yes, I'm sure spartacus was motivated by the ethical quandary of slavery and whether or not owning another human being as property can be justified.

Seriously, I don't have any troubles with starting revolts n' shit. That's neat, but at least attempt to stay in character, and make characters appropriate to the setting. In character and out of character are different things and you shouldn't muck them up, we all know murder and theft is wrong don't we? So why are those two acts hilariously common in rpg's?

Short version: hypocrisy

>Slavery is bad
>Jews had slaves
>???
>Shit.

Sure, but OP's story is explicitly set in a city.
I am not saying that every slave in a city had a good life, but if the first interaction with a slave makes the character start a rebellion something has gone wrong somewhere.

I can't wait to see how many replies this thread gets

how much glue did you snort as a kid?

Slavery was a temporary arrangement for them, and they did have standards as to how someone was supposed to treat their slaves.

Simple, really
You run their retarded social campaign and then hit them with the good old "gay marriage has been legalized, you lose"

Good goy.

We don't have names for individual slave revolts because much of detailed history was destroyed in the late bronze age collapse - if it was recorded in the first place. We know that the period that followed was marked by the destruction of much of the Mediterranean civilisation and saw multiple large slave revolts as part of the destructive force. The first actually dated and chronicled revolts are from ancient Greece, like the Helots rising up in Sparta in 464 BC.

>How do I explain to these fucking chuckleheads that their characters don't have modern western "sensibilities" and how do I dissuade them from going through with their retarded plan before I'm forced to make the city's king put them and their slave revolt down
You shut the game down and start again with a non-american non-sjw group.
Next!

Please stop spreading misinformation, most slavery in the ancient world was chattel slavery with plenty of chaining and whipping - especially in the Bronze Age, hundreds of years before the Greco-Roman world started establishing laws about the proper, ethical behavior of a master. For example, until the 2nd century AD, no slave's testimony was valid in a Roman court *unless* he had been tortured to obtain the information - is that "hurr-durr pants on head retarded" enough for you?

Bronze Age exceptions like Hebrews releasing male Hebrew slaves after 7 years are notable because they're the exemptions. Slaves were generally considered child-like in thought, undeserving of freedom, and in need of constant physical punishment lest they turn lazy. The code of fucking Hammurabi states that whoever kills a slave merely has to pay restitution to the owner. Far from a slave being a mere third-rate citizen.

People who try to claim ancient slavery was more often than not debt bondage are usually Christian apologists defending pro-slavery biblical passages, or people who attempt to portray American slavery as somehow exceptionally cruel compared to the rest of Human history. The contemporary Arab slave trade was just as bad in reality, for example, but it's much less discussed.

>Everyone but me is american
I don't see how that's relevant. The only relevant thing they have in common is being little pissbabies.

It's part of the template.

This.

If they are really as retarded as you make them seem it probably won't be wort it BUT:

A campaign where you (carefully) paint slavery in the various shades of Grey that slavery in the antiquity actually was might be really interesting.

Let the players experience how they really fuck up everything by injecting their modern sentiments.

Freed slaves die en mass because the fucking economy completely collapses without free labor.

Without the measly protection that slavery offered the former slaves are even worse off than before.

Don't be retarded and paint the good sides too. Just use the plot hooks that a bunch of murder hobos attacking a fundamental basis of society offers.

Only mutts are retarded enough to sperg out about something like that.

>it's ok when we do it

Let the slave revolt happen, and when the slaves win, make the slaves enslave the masters and treat the masters worse; make them treat the masters bad enough to make the players regret their decision--could save future games from their stupidity.

Is this some new meme word for europoors obsessed with American superiority?

Let them free the slave and build a shitty little army - American dream style. Then, have them being cornered and crushed by an overwhelming, disciplined and well-equipped professional army. Describe how prisoners get crucified by laughing soldiers while others are used for target practice and women get gang-raped (the ugly ones get killed) in front of their crying children (have the children get raped too if you’re a sadistic DM), etc. This will teach them what happens when they fuck up a DM’s campaign.

(You)

...

Do it.
They can be met with overwhelming force and opposition, but that's your campaign right there.
Let them be Bronze Age Spartacus if they really want to be, just make it interesting. Sure, it's unlikely they'd have the same sensibilities as today, but a single group of people in that time might well have had those sensibilities; yeah, they'd be exceptionally rare, but they're PC's, they are those exceptions.

Can you name one time in history where there has been a slaveholding middle class?

Owning slaves has been pretty much exclusively for the upper classes since slaves were a thing, outside of some tribal societies.

Yes. The idea is that America can't possible be the most powerful nation the world has ever seen, because it's only 56% white.

(1) The temporary arrangement only applied to Jewish males. Jewish females were slaves for life, as were Jewish males who didn't want to leave their wives and children behind, and of course every single Canaanite other than a Jew, aka the vast majority. These slaves could then be inherited by the original owner's descendants like other material possessions.
(2) The most important law about the ethical treatment of slaves states that as long as they languished in pain a few days after a beating before dying, instead of just being immediatelly beaten to death, the master did nothing wrong. A fine standard indeed.

This. Helot revolts were brutally put down but they still tried.

If America is so superior, why are you all so obsessed with making it Great Again(tm)?

>merely has to pay restitution

What was weregild?

A sensible custom of Medieval Germanic law but rather far away temporally from the world before 1200BC? Since the example was specifically about Hammurabi's Babylonia, a freeborn man causing a disability to or killing one of equal rank was a crime that had be to paid with blood.

>well-known racist website

yeah, this hacker called Veeky Forums and his mask-wearing grinch posters are all racists, fampai

Tell them to stop inserting their political opinions in the game.

Modern western sensibilities have to come from somewhere man. They don't just spring out of nothing. There's nothing wrong with the players wanting to get rid of slavery.

Where are you from?

An imaginary game.

>it's ok when us jews do it!

This is the the popular political opinion on /pol/, probably why people are tired of political shilling nowadays.

Where's the greentext of the lich who conquered the world because the players were too busy fighting some social justice bullshit to deal with the DM's plot?

Yeah, I remember when kids in my high school would talk about racist romans and greeks having slaves.
It was really hard to explain to them that slavery isn't something that was done exclusively to blacks.

>Why did you include some historical realism in your game
>You must be making a value judgment
I hate America.

Who do you think you're convincing with this?

You totally have a cool campaign idea right there right there, roll with it.

Non retards I assume.

I think you're giving them too much credit user. You're not wrong that the subject COULD be an interesting campaign, but (speaking as 'nother 'murican, here), these are people who don't even understand the subtleties of their own recent history, nevermind anyone else's, anything more ancient, nor any sort of global implications. I've got to side with this guy:

>Find another group

Yeah, agreed, IF the players were actually capable of RP it would be potentially amazing. But from OP's description, it doesn't sound like the player / character wall is even there. These are first-timers. When you're dealing with RPG virgins, you need to keep it simple, simple, simple. Dungeon, monster, loot, repeat.

>Especially with the supernatural aspects found in many rpgs!
You really should have just used a screen of other-spartacus for this.

Were you just sneaking a little jab in there, user, or do you actually want an answer? Because I think there are some pretty deep cultural reasons why that snappy little catchphrase had the impact it did.

>Modern western sensibilities have to come from somewhere man.
That's true, but there's a lot of years of cultural and philosophical evolution between bronze age and now.

Americans think history started with them and can't really fathom anything from before 1700

Nah, that's not true. Columbus arrived in India-land in 14- or 16- something or other, and there was that 1066 bit where england got BTFO, and also vikings! Have you seen that viking tv show? No, not that one, the other one. Also, 300! THIS IS SPARTA RRAAAAAUUUGHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!! Rome was a pretty good show too.

t. Murica

>and calls me racist (?)
Did were all the slaves as black or was their race not mentioned?

As others have said, find a new group. For your sake and theirs.
You don't want players to play out their own interests when they go against your own and they won't enjoy playing in a realistic setting.

Is this low magic or simply no magic? I guess, from their prospective IF the setting is fantastical in any regard, then it seems a bit cocked up if it also follows the same economic principles.

Fun fact: The world's first anti-slavery publicity campaign was organized by Athens against Sparta.

>players liberate the slaves
>slaves use their new freedom to take revenge on their former masters
>rebellion gets ugly
>slaves pillage and plunder their master's estates, including rape and murder
>slaves despoil the fields as an act of revenge
>slaves eventually win, but all the fields are burned and salted
>starvation sets in
>invaders from a foreign land take advantage of the chaos
>cities are sacked, plunder is taken away to please foreign gods, slaves and masters alike are crucified en masse
>the players are left alone in cities of dust and ash

Or you could just say fuck it and find another group.

Did they make a ShareRed for Blue boards?

From the ancient Greeks to Russia in 1861, you fucking retard.

>How do I explain to these fucking chuckleheads that their characters don't have modern western "sensibilities"
You don't. These people are useful idiots, and are to be considered utterly demoralized. Find a new group. If they cannot stop applying their critical theory even in relaxation, they are simply just talking heads with no bit of brain between their ears. You also made a mistake coming to the most reddit board on here, this is filled with the exact kind of useful idiots you wanted to get away from.

pic related. Revolution is violent and everyone gets their hands dirty

>didn't answer his question
I don't save brainlet wojak pictures but if I did, I''d post one right now

let them try to free the slaves and then have them arrested and executed

>>Run an online game on roll20
>>Everyone but me is american
>>Tell them the game I'm running is set in the bronze age
>>Describe some slaves in the city they're in to set up the atmosphere
>>Every single one of them gets angry about it and calls me racist (?)
>>Have to explain to them that slavery is par of the course for the world they're in
Sucks to be you, user.

>>They then all decide to liberate the slaves and make the campaign about it
On the upside, you get to wipe them out and hopefully find some non-retarded players next time.

I'm the GM it's my story. Player agency leads to everyone having a bad time. Tricking your players into wanting to follow your story is the hardest and yet most rewarding part of being a GM.

Enjoy your Skyrim with dice.

If I wanted to play someone else's plot I would play a freaking video game

Extremely underrated

I-I'm the G-Godess and this i-is my story, you pathetic c-c-creature.
Organics agency lea-ads to everyone experiencieng suffering, t-tricking primitive lifeforms into advancing your agenda is the simplest, yet m-most rewarding part of being a superior g-g-godlike entity.

Enjoy your VR with helmets.

The US had plenty of it. Plantation owners in the deep south were distinguished by having LOTS of slaves per owner, but plenty of people at all levels of society had the capacity to own one or a few.

I mean, you could argue that by definition, in a slave society, any non-slave is automatically "upper class", I guess, but it's hard to see how some random dirt-farmer in tennessee circa 1830 with one slave (of which there were many examples) merits the label.

If you GM and think like this you should kill yourself. Keeping the players focused is one thing, telling them they can only play with one toy in the toy chest is a bitch move

>doesn't take into account his players when making a game or setting
what is this, shit-tier GM thread?

/pol/tards make up a loud minority on Veeky Forums. Most people here are just reactionary, which is not the same thing as being a white supremacist.

This reminds me of those Assassin's Creed Origins screens where they removed "offensive material" that they felt was more important than historical accuracy. People get triggered by words like "slave" without looking at the context or reality at all.

/pol/ here, make the slaves white and the rulers black, they'll never bring it up and you can happily run your awesome bronze age game.

Sure, slavery was part of the ancient world.
So were slave revolts. Nothing wrong with a good slave revolt.

As a Chinese, I may be the only guy who doesn't have a problem with slaves in a fantasy setting. It's nothing to get worked up about, and I can't think of a single PC I've played who would care.

Yeah, slave revolts didn't go so well. Spartacus got smashed, for one. Unless the PCs are Exalted-tier, they'd lose.

>you have a game with slavery being normal (WTF?)
Pretty common in any realistic setting pre 1900.
Even today slavery is still a thing in many places - especially sex slavery.

A lot of ancient slavery was more like indentured servitude to pay off a debt. Which means it was people OF THE SAME RACE as their slave owners.

I don't think it's helpful to compare it to the south, unless this setting is actually using chattel slavery, because ancient slavery was not the same. Nor was it "free labor" in any real sense. It's just a conflating two ideas that are only distantly related.

At the same time, if OP is running it as if it was the same as the post-medieval form of slavery, maybe they're justified in opposing it. Ancient people didn't necessarily have the dehumanizing ideas about slavery, especially because it usually wasn't race-based to the same degree. For instance, the Bible has all sorts of rules about how you're supposed to treat slaves. Biblical slaves were people who were essentially paying off debts through labor, not people who were property per se. It might be more realistic for the characters to make it their mission to reform slavery than abolish it, though.

If the setting is Exalted, then it's all pointless because that setting is a retarded mishmash of sensibilities.