Forum

Just a general question which has kept me perplexed, in the rules you can choose to play as a slave and refers to other npc slaves and yet when you develop your ark through projects there is a slavery "upgrade" available.

So is slavery only available once you have the project completed and means only then the slave PC becomes available or is slavery there from the start maybe at a smaller scale?

Also who makes up the slaves amongst other mutants? Criminals are the only ones I can think of.

What is other people's take on the whole slave thing as its left me confused.

I'd also like apologise for all my questions I've been posting!

Bosses rule the Ark and bosses prey on those that are weaker than them. If you don't have anything to take, they can still prey on you, because they can always force you to work for them. Playing a slave is simple someone who has in his early life ended in the hands of a boss. Slaves are not something that you can simply buy or sell in the Ark (other than what I just explained), but with the slave market, the acceptance for this slavery has increased and you can buy and sell slaves. In that case, slaves might also come from the zone, other arks.

In the 4th edition of the game (digital only) they changed the name of the role to Grunt instead. A grunt and a slave probably do the same type of work in the ark (NPCs, not PCs, PCs are the main figures of the piece). So with this change, there are not slaves available until the you build the slave market.

When we played our campaign (before the 4th edition change) we skipped slaves because:
1) They are very unbalanced in the Swedish version (less so in the English version). The drawback to being a slave was the social life, but in the mutant world, that is not that big of a sacrifice to be so OP (again, less so in the English version).
2) We didn't like our Ark to have slaves before slave market.

If we would play today, we would use the new role name (SWE: arbetare eller knegare) and I would also use the English version of it since that is less unbalanced. Slaves could still exists through a slave market, either in the PCs ark or an other ark (enemy ark perhaps).

Yet again another interesting and great answer.

I would briefly summarize it lile this:

Before the slave market, "slaves" are simply those who are weak enough to be used by the more powerful mutants in the ark, usually against their will. The new name "grunt" is a better descriptor of the role then.

After the slave market is built slavery is institutionalized in the arks society. You can start buying and selling slaves within the ark and with outsiders. Think kind of like the southern slave trade.

If we would play today, we would use the new role name (SWE: arbetare eller knegare) and I would also use the English version of it since that is less unbalanced. Slaves could still exists through a slave market, either in the PCs ark or an other ark (enemy ark perhaps).

I was just curious, in what way do you think that the swedish version is more unbalanced? I checked both my swedish and english pdfs of the game and to me they looked like they worked pretty much the same.

In the Swedish version, the skill is Agility based instead of Strength based like in the English version. That might not look like a big deal, but it is.

An English slave that make a skill roll to avoid damage to Strength (if attacked for example) can of course make a skill roll to see if he can avoid taking that damage. He can push that skill roll. If he push the skill roll, he risks taking damage to his Strength (since the skill he is pushing is Strength based). This means that he, when pushing will risk getting damage to his Strength, the thing that he just tried to avoid. Also, the more damaged in Strength the English slave gets, the lower his chance for actually successfully avoid damage he have. It is a spiral down. Strength is by far the most dangerous attribute to damage. It is the only one that actually can kill you and it is the hardest to heal, it needs grub. You have to find grub, it doesn't exists everywhere.

The Swedish slave that is about to take damage to Strength (if attacked) can of course also make a skill roll to see if he can avoid taking that damage. He can also push the skill and any damage he takes for pushing his skill, will hit Agility, not Strength. This means that the Swedish slave doesn't risk taking more damage to his Strength when he pushes since the damage from his pushes will hit Agility. Damage to Agility is not that dangerous. It can never directly kill you and is the easiest attribute to heal, it needs only water. Water exists everywhere (sure it might be contaminated, but still it is water).
.

Oh my god I didn't even notice that the english slave was based off of strength. That one small change would have saved me so much of an headache when we were playing The Road to Eden. I am absolutely playing by those rules from now on.

Just a semi-related question, on the (gone but not forgotten... unless I’m looking for a specific topic) Google+ forum there was a variant/house rule to Shake It Off that had the PC roll their Shake It Off skill+(the attribute suffering trauma) instead of always using Strength. How do you think this would this compare to the English version?

Wage slaves. People who have to rely on others to get food and water and have to work to get it, but don't have any particular skills to rely on (such as the tinkerers and bruisers).