Slavery ... as in claiming ownership of a person ... would be wrong under any circumstance. On the other hand, imprisonment is a valid punishment in any society, and in most of those societies prisoners can be expected to perform labor as part of their sentences. So imprisoning a raider and sentencing him to X years of hard labor as restitution for his crimes is probably better than simply putting him down if it is possible, but that's usually not feasible. Bullets are cheaper and less complicated.

Not exactly an expert on that, but from what I remember inmates volunteer for such work. It's a chance to get out and about, and earn yourself some luxuries (from drinks to shoes). And the low wages go to a prison commissary. Frankly, since it costs around 20 grand a year to keep a person locked up, they should have to pay for their own stay.

LOL! I love how quickly these conversations become serious, sometimes.

There is very little difference between "slavery", prisoners being forced to contribute "community service", and people that are subjugated into "indentured service". In actuality, the resulting situation is the same. Morally, of course, it's always "wrong" to do that. But what's the alternative? Kill them? Exile them and make them someone else's problem? Provide for them out of other's pockets? Do nothing?

So "slavery" happens all the time, every day. It's also necessary in many ways for modern society to function the way it does. If there were no people forced into doing jobs in order to survive, then MOST of those things would never be done. That's the price of capitalism. The alternative is some form of socialism, in which EVERYONE will be a slave for at least some portion of their life. (That's the way most of the world functions, actually.)

So, back to Fallout 4, should heinous murderers and thieves be trapped and forced to labor for the people they tried to kill and steal from? I guess so. It's only logical to use a resource if it's available. Even if it's people. That's what we've done throughout history. Makes even more sense in a survival situation.

Think of it as community service.

Pay good attention to Raider camps. Raiders are far far worse than just killing and stealing... I would love if all they do is just killing and stealing. Would be easier to justify them.

Of COURSE enslaving people, any people, is wrong! Ask them!


It was karma that made slavery work in FO3. Bad karma made your character a champion DC dike. If being a slaver didn't sting a little, anyone could do it.


(IMO it was too easy anyway, sending naked and unarmed people to Paradise Falls on a trip that I needed armor to survive. I believe those slaves should have required an escort with no fast-travel allowed. The purpose of that would have been to make the slaver listen to the crying and whining and bargaining and offers of six and drugs and threats of violence from everyone going into the slave pens.


Every step of the way to Paradise Falls.


At least the player would earn that 200 caps.)

In the context of the game, I think it is an accepted part of life. If the game world had issues with it, then the RR should be trying to do something about it, in any form for humans and synths alike. I didn't vote because I don't think it matters as I know of no one who thinks it acceptable in RL. When I described the DLC that allows us to capture and "tame" animals and people to fight in arenas to my wife she made a horrified face. Her response was that it was exploitation, and it totally killed the limited enthusiasm I had for that DLC ( I'm looking forward more to Far Harbor than either of the first 2 DLCs). Now I will feel like a total you-know-what if I try to "tame" anything more than a mole rat.

Now if we could capture and imprison people in the game and assign them tasks in our settlement, I would be okay with that as I view that as them earning the 3 hots and a cot provided to them , and for not punishing them with a death sentence. The death sentence could always be imposed should they not "reform"...

Remember one of the very first missions you get in Fallout 1? Where the father asks you to rescue his daughter after she's kidnapped by raiders?

I absolutely LOVED that mission.

If you go straight away and it turns violent...you will be slaughtered. So the game lets you enter into dialogue, and you have to take the option to leave while being mocked and laughed at by the raiders. If you really piss the raider leader off, first, he makes you pay them to let you leave. I believe he starts counting down from 10, meaning you actually have to run to get away. And all the while, the daughter is in a cage begging and crying for you to get her out...not to let them hurt her anymore.

You have to leave her there in order to survive. I was so frustrated by this, initially. Weeks later...I showed back up, armed and armored, companions and Dogmeat in tow. (I mean, I actually felt a bit of real anger when I realized I could probably handle the quest, now.) I said, "Hello again," by emptying an entire clip on auto-fire in one turn. Put down the entire base without a word and brought the daughter home. That felt so vindicating.

I tell this story to highlight the interactivity and meaningful connection to enemies that Beth only hints at. I wish they did something to actively make you hate raiders or super-mutants, or even better, do something to make you sympathize with them (ala The Forsaken in Skyrim). The sickening story told through environments is a nice touch, but not as great as the actual situations you encountered in Fallout 1-2.

Human skull next to your bed IRL? I'm sorry, but that's just creepy.

Ugh, thats generally what the slavers used to think about African Americans.


I highly dislike your comment.

Agreed. If slavery were to be introduced (again), I just hope that the game would go into these considerations. It would make perfect sense to take raiders as slaves, and to kill them is wasting a set of good hands. I think the idea of reform (introduced in Fallout 3 with two characters in Megaton) is actually a given.

I think people in the modern day associate "slavery" only with the "slave trade" of the Americas, where humans were treated like animals. "Slavery" throughout history was usually a matter of honor and debt for enemies captured in war. Yes, they were sometimes treated horribly, which is mostly unrelated. (People don't need to be slaves to be treated horribly.) But most of the time, they were simply a part of that new society. It was passing common, in Ancient Greece, for example, for masters to have slaves made into Greek citizens, marry them, or raise them to honored positions in their own family.

Is it's name Yorick by any chance?

Yorick. I knew him, Howittsio.

Let's see the facts.

Murder and forcing a living beeing to something against their will is always wrong.

Self defense is something a bit tricky. Lethal self defense should only be done, when there is no other choise. So if you have to save your own right without no other way to avoid your own dead.

The raiders, well they are simulated living beeings. I consider their mental state as highly ill. They are drug-addicted in a very strong way and very dangerous. Letting them run around freely is danger for other simulated persons in Fallout 4.

My normal reaction would be, that it is nessesary to protect others from them, but when they are defensless, they should be consideres as such and should get as much aid as possible, by simultaneously protect the surounding from them.

I personally believe, that a living feeling beeing should be threated with respect and not be enslaved by somebody else.

(By pets its something different. If you have a dog or a cat and the pet is allowed to run around freely and return, what normaly happens, it is not slavery or against their will. Its their free will.)

My result for Fallout 4 is:

I mentioned living feeling beeings. The raider and everybody else is only simulated in Fallout 4. It isn't even a PC sitting behind them and controlling them. So if you shoot them, if you enslave them, or something else, you won't hurt any feeling, living body. You would only play around with a situation. Because of this, i don't see any reason to act respectful towards them. One of the reason i will have my fun with the second DLC. Aswell with the first one, when i build robots. Hope they will be able to fight in the arena aswell.

Are your settlers able to leave voluntarily?

From my experience with settlements the settlers are far more like serfs, a feudal name for slavery.

Serfdom is nothing like slavery. It was a symbiotic relationship -- the serf worked the land, and the lord protected him. Serfs had many rights, and some were even more wealthy than their freeman counterparts. Let's not forget to mention they had over 150 days off a year including all religious holidays.

By the way, slavery did exist in the feudal system, but it was the lowest class of the serfdom. Usually, but not always, slaves were taken in war or traded from other countries, especially in the middle east at the time. In England, it was disbanded in 1102. In other countries such as France, it was disbanded in the late medieval period. Feudalism ended in 1500 with the rise of absolute monarchy, taxation, and banking taking over.

Are you kidding? These are people desperately searching for a safe haven to band together against the Wasteland. That's hardly the same thing as a feudal system.

What would be interesting, though, is incorporating governmental concerns and unrest, relations between different settlements, overpopulation and unrest, crime and punishment... These are all things that could be added. Choosing one form of government over another would create one major advantage with a bunch of smaller issues that need to managed.

In the context of the FO setting?

I don't think its wrong.

If you did do the crime, you can do some time.


Consider this. Long term imprisonment costs resources. There is no tax base to provide for this. This is a huge part of FO's premise. So, unless you just string every criminal up, they need to provide something.

Call it forced labor if you want, but that's pretty much slavery.


And before anyone cries "but how do you know if they're guilty?" This thread is framed around them actuall being really,bad people. It's implied.

To be honest, I don't really care for slavery in games.

I am a strong supporter of Caesar's Legion anyhow.

Considering it is odd that I am a strong supporter of the Railroad as well.

Yeah! And that's why choice in games is fun. There should also be options to make slavery illegal and even fight to abolish it in the Commonwealth altogether. (I was so ticked while playing Morrowind to discover that the Twin Lamps didn't have a questline.)

Bethesda's environment story is enough for me to hate Raiders with a passion in Fallout 3 and 4. For example, there's a Raider clan in Fallout 4 that seems to do two unique things to their victims. 1: Use them as living bait to catch those mutated dolphins. 2: Drown to unconscious... Over, and over again until they finally die from water-torture. Not too much when compared to what other Raider clans seems to do but still... Raiders has proven their low intelligence, their lack of a 'soul', etc time and time again in the games. They are a threat to everyone else around them. They have no feelings for humans in general, no moral. Nothing. At best, they might care about each other in their clan but otherwise, no. They're a flat-out threat and as long as they are able to harm, then they should be killed on sight.

Plus, trying to 'save' a Raider is nearly impossible to do in the first place.

As far as I'm concerned, after playing through all the Fallout games, none of the organizations in the game are particularly noble, and most seem very self-serving, except for the Ghouls, who just want to survive, and who were ostracized from their communities for being a "mutant." One could make an argument that the Raiders are a summarization of all the rage and vileness of humanity in the Fallout universe, no different from the NCR or Brotherhood or New Reno Gangs. Except for their lower status, they are the same.

It's hard to see who's worse, the raiders or the water merchants. I wonder if we should simply shoot them on sight too.

For good or ill, Society, through the agency of government, ALWAYS defines what is "good", what is "bad", and what the consequences of being "bad" will be. (Interpretations of Law subject to change upon receipt of appropriate bribes tendered to the right people.) "Bad" is what we make laws that forbid certain behavior or actions. The endorsemant of Society is tacit by the simple observation that Society allows the laws to be created and enforced. Many/most people may find certain laws to be abhorrent -- like the Death Penalty still applied in several States -- but unless those that object can convince others to make changes, the laws in place are the laws that Society chose to leave in place.

What constitutes "good" or "bad"? Check the Law books.

Because of my career, I can lend some perspective on the first part of this issue (not on the chain-gang thing, which I agree is intolerable in a civilized nation).

I supervise prisoners in a housing unit, which includes signing them out to their work assignments and supervising those who work in the unit, basically as janitors maintaining their own living areas. The alternative to this would be either letting them live in filth (inhumane) or paying outside janitorial staff to come in and clean up after them- expensive and impractical considering the security risks of bringing civilian cleaners into a prisoner environment. I and some others like me are currently in a battle with our administration because the porters' pay rates have not been changed in over 10 years in my state. We try to make up for this by paying generous overtime for the harder workers and so forth.

Outside the unit, they work in the kitchen, they are employed as plumbers, skilled maintenance men, electricians... when they get out of prison, they will be able to list this as job training on their resume. For many, it's the first paid job they've EVER had. Others are paid to go to class and get G.E.D.s. Many work in the greenhouse and gardens, getting paid for basically a hobby.

While you may feel their pay is low, remember that they have free room & board, their clothing is provided, they get heavily subsidized medical care and free prescriptions... so it evens out economically. I'm not saying I would want to live in their situation, but considering they've been convicted of felonies, I don't feel they're unjustly treated if they have to work for their keep (and get paid for it).

True dat.

"Banking"; is this another euphemism for "slavery"?

I have a mortgage that sure feels like slavery come the 1st of the month. (It's definitely not feudalism, because the bank won't protect me in return for my monthly tribute...)