I've been looking a lot lately into the d20 version of Conan the RPG (2nd edition, mainly), and it has some small chapters devoted to slavery distributed among some of the rulebooks. I think the most complete one is in "Tito's Trading Post", pg 83 (its a 1st edition book), and it is interesting because you can compare it with the core book's Leadership feat (that gives you a second character to play with, essentially). What can this meager 4-5 pages add to the slave section of Arenamontanus' file? Mostly a reference for stats and cost that would need to be ported from a d20 game to EP. Also, Conan's rules are oriented to the player characters using the slaves (there are no need for rules to control slave mechanics for NPCs there, after all). The most insteresting parts are as follows: - The costs are level-dependant: it can be translated to a direct relationship between the indenturee's/slave selling prize (remember you can sell indenturement contracts if needed, or it can be used as a guide for what is considered appropiate to offer to that indenturee) and the amount of creation points they have. It should be noted that, in case of indentured workers and slaves, it is best if they are created with less than 800 CP, and are specialized in a few areas. In a lot of cases, that comes from outdated skills since the NPC has been "on ice" since The Fall. - There are differences in prizes depending on the "class" of the indenturee/slave: while in the d20 ruleset it is as simple as stablishing a difference between the class of the NPC (commoner, noble, and scholar, with an extra 25% cost if the slave is female in Conan), in EP it can be a little more tricky, but can be nailed to "without any interesting skill", "with some connections to the rulers and movers of its time", and "experts", ignoring the extra gender-related cost. - Docility: slaves/indenturees more eager to flee, or get the best of their situation are cheaper than those "broken" into submission/passivenes. - Slave Attributes: this is not relevant in EP's creation process, since attributes are here related to the amount of CP of the character (essentially, the "level"). The same chapter also includes a "hiring hands" section, but in EP it is not as necessary, I think. Personally, I think that hiring someone might amount to (skill level) x100 in credits for short-term services (things that can be solved in 24 hours or less of subjective time), ten times that amount for stuff that requires more time, triple it for illegal services (like "unlocking" a Planetary Consortium's CM), but for the indentured workers it is a question of how much money/favours are your players using, and how much are the monetary value of "lost souls repositories" (with hundreds of egos storaged), because you don't want your players to get their hands into one of those and get four to ten times the amount of money they invested!

Decivre wrote:

I love the write-up, excellent info. There was only one thing I saw that I think should be addressed. According to the books, the indenture programs actually started [i]before the Fall[/i], not after as your write-up states. My guess is that these indenture programs were a little less harsh than the modern ones, and were mainly intended to recruit people for various space projects while we were still just dipping into colonialization. This is in a sense very similar to the birth of indenture servitude historically, which really came about during the colonial era as a means to coax laborers into leaving their homelands and traveling to colonies on their contract-holder's dime.

I'd think that the "indentured contracts" of before the fall were related to the workforce in orbit, essentially a "go to space, work for us, and earn your status" instead of the AF10 "you want a body? Work for us". Change the "work for us" that is used in PR programs for "sell your soul to us" to be more accurate, but...

Great writing! I'll definitely use some of this in my campaign. Btw. what will make you write more of these essays: if I blatantly praise your work or confront you and provoke you to write more? :D

Typo p. 4 "If the GM is presenting candidates, this can be handled as a COGx3 test, a SAVx3 test and an INTx3 test, where or Profession: HR can" What is the name 'Bolimen' from? You may want to define what a 'zero' is. Overall I loved it. very sharp. The bit about slaves makes me imagine 'villains' who are on suicide missions for their masters, in hope of helping a distant or non-existent family.

Xagroth wrote:

I'd think that the "indentured contracts" of before the fall were related to the workforce in orbit, essentially a "go to space, work for us, and earn your status" instead of the AF10 "you want a body? Work for us". Change the "work for us" that is used in PR programs for "sell your soul to us" to be more accurate, but...

If it's anything like classic indentured servitude, the attraction was the fact that you got to be a colonist without being rich. So it's more like "Want to be a space colonist? Get a four-year contract and go there free!" Indentures in the post-fall era get it far worse, because their options are servitude and cold storage.

Decivre wrote:

Xagroth wrote:

I'd think that the "indentured contracts" of before the fall were related to the workforce in orbit, essentially a "go to space, work for us, and earn your status" instead of the AF10 "you want a body? Work for us". Change the "work for us" that is used in PR programs for "sell your soul to us" to be more accurate, but...

If it's anything like classic indentured servitude, the attraction was the fact that you got to be a colonist without being rich. So it's more like "Want to be a space colonist? Get a four-year contract and go there free!" Indentures in the post-fall era get it far worse, because their options are servitude and cold storage.

Not really, the main selling point would have been Earth being overpopulated, if not I doubt the space colonization program were even considered, since it requires investing and risking resources, and at least today's mindset is to profit wihtout risk (and looking at the Planetary Consortium in EP, I'd say it is pretty likely the mindset before the fall was similar).

"Unskilled people increasingly moved into hard-to-automate service jobs or a sizeable class of jobless, while skilled people remained in a creative class living on their ability to be smart." Really Arenamontanus? ;) That is extremely out of touch with reality or slight trolling ;) And I say that as holder of two university degrees(MA and BA) and two language certificates-who after three years of unemployment works now in soul crushing, suicidal inducing call center job in UK where every day is a day nearer a heart attack or a stroke(and getting that job required mobilizing all of my family, contacts as well as selling a house to get money for relocation). As far as I remember 1 in 3 CC employees now has a degree. Well I guess I am dumb and unskilled :) Otherwise-it is a good material and very interesting for EP. Something that should be probably in Rimward or Player's Guide describing economy. Still, it did give me a thought me how despite its dystopic appearance, EP is optimistic. It envisions a future where most people have jobs of some kind. That doesn't seem so likely in our world, where peak employment seems to be happening. I guess the mass extermination of humanity helped a bit, but still, realistically with such technology as in EP not a lot of people would find work. In our future I guess within 50-100 years we will have to deal with unemployment levels of around 50 if not 80%(Peter Watts in his novels describes this more). But that of course is a topic for completely different discussion.

Extrasolar, while I don't like to handwave everything with the same small set of details about a setting, remember The Fall involved AIs gone rogue, AGIs are illegal in some habitats (and property in others, or discriminated in almost all), and people do not trust bodies with cyberbrains (despite Basilisk Hacks being able to affect biomorphs). In short, The Fall traumatized transhumanity, and people don't trust machines for the time being. Add to that the illegality of creating alpha forks and you get to the point where mass producing AGIs is not legally possible, and LAIs require supervision and guidance. On the other hand, there are uncounted "lost souls" in cold storage that can be put into indentured service, with the plus of them not being up-to-date in the society and stuff. Meaning they can be lied to easily, and they are unlikely to be able to riot, sabotage or betray their exploiters.

Anarhista wrote:

My thoughts exactly!!! Majority see this as dark, horror SF setting while I see future worth living for! (ASSuming we don't die out as a species... ;)

I'd say Eclipse Phase takes place in "interesting times". Now, let's keep in mind that is an old chinese curse XD

Very nice, I'm sure I'll be making use of it in the near future. One little question though: a slave infected with a strain of the exsurgent virus is only one price level lower? That seems...off.