Experimental Features: Zombie slave derail

Game Talk The Bunker
61

You can wirelessly hack robots with the special hackinator laptop. Turns out the govt used WPA, doh.
Rewiring and repairing should be a thing too.

It leads to entirely appropriate connotations.

Because it’s the correct word. Why are you so against calling it what it is? All I’ve seen so far is a vague assertion that the word has baggage, and that it might make some people feel uncomfortable. It’s supposed to make people feel uncomfortable, it’s not a nice thing to do, and it shouldn’t have a nice name. It’s like having a hyper violent game but pretending it isn’t because you palette swap the blood so it’s green.
At the risk of necroing a derail/flamewar, I’ll note that I stated the reason I’m intolerant of this kind of bowdlerization here. In short, I’m sick of having this kind of pretend make everything nice crap shoved down my throat.

62

I’m against it because it doesnt make people uncomfortable because of the subject matter, but because it’s flippant. “Zombie Slave” would in my mind be a lot better than “Zlave”. Zlave is a humorous play on words - hardly something meant to have negative connotations. The subject matter does, but that’s the problem - it’s a casual and flippant approach to something bad.

There’s no bite to in regards to the content it names, just questions about “who thought it would be a good idea to name it something like this?”

It’s not about making it “nice”, it’s about not trivializing it and sugarcoating it and making it seem less bad, which is exactly what the term zlave does (while still connoting bad things, I think the reaction people are having is because it simultaneously makes them sound not so bad)

I’d much prefer Zombie Slave to Zlave for that reason, although none of my recommendations for names have been intended to “sugar coat” and I still think they are better. Zombie Friend and my other suggestions along that direction were because disconnect=>horror. Giving something a nondescript and intentionally bland and inoffensive name that is clearly not an accurate descriptor is an intentional rhetorical device used to accentuate the horror. It’s subtle, but good horror tends to be, and you need a disconnect between outward appearances and what is true for that to work.

Pack Zombie was because it was a more accurate description - despite what you’ve said, the zombie you do this to isn’t anything like a slave. You can’t give it orders or commands, you can’t set it to tasks. It simply does what it does, and you make use of that. The use you make of it is… using it to carry you stuff. In order to actually get a zombie slave (and actually, this is an inaccuracy in the term Thrall too), you’d actually need some sort of device that would allow you to control it instead of just limit it and then make use of its natural tendencies. The zombies under the effect of the pheromone are MUCH closer to slaves than the creature you’re creating here, since even if you can’t command them they act on your behalf. Bound Zombie, Crippled Zombie, those would also work as descriptive but more accurate names.

I think Thrall just sounds better, and has the connotation of being physically bound, which works well here for descriptive purposes.

Again, my primary opinion here is that Zlave is really, really weak, especially if you want to go for the sort of thing you’ve described in this thread in terms of the purpose of the name. Zombear? That’s fine, it’s a joke. The discomfort people are experiencing here, I would guess, has a lot less to do with it being a slave, but with the idea of it being a slave being made into a dumb joke.

And it doesn’t seem like you want “dumb joke” to be the takeaway of this process on the players end either, so honestly, better name would be better.

63

I agree wih Kevin. I don’t see anything wrong with calling zombie slaves zlaves, and trying to make it better is being harder than it actually should be. Some people need to sit down and stare at what you’re playing. Especially you, Turtle.

64

You can wirelessly hack robots with the special hackinator laptop. Turns out the govt used WPA, doh.
Rewiring and repairing should be a thing too.[/quote]
Oh man, I didn’t even realize this. Do they work as packmules too, or is it just fight-conversion? Now I need to find some tank bots. :V

65

You can wirelessly hack robots with the special hackinator laptop. Turns out the govt used WPA, doh.
Rewiring and repairing should be a thing too.[/quote]
Oh man, I didn’t even realize this. Do they work as packmules too, or is it just fight-conversion? Now I need to find some tank bots. :V[/quote]

Last I played, they only worked as figters. But I’m sure putting two duffle bags on a tank bot wouldn’t be so hard to do…

66

I mean it’s not even the right word really…

1: a person held in servitude as the chattel of another

2: one that is completely subservient to a dominating influence

3: a device (as the printer of a computer) that is directly responsive to another

I mean 2 maybe, but if it’s resisting then it’s not really a slave, if we’re going by “It’s the right word.”

[quote=“FunsizeNinja123, post:63, topic:6900”]I agree wih Kevin. I don’t see anything wrong with calling zombie slaves zlaves, and trying to make it better is being harder than it actually should be. Some people need to sit down and stare at what you’re playing. Especially you, Turtle.[/quote]This is needlessly antagonistic just because I disagree with you.

67

In violent agreement, as usual :slight_smile: I’m totally onboard with changing it to “zombie slave”.

Did I miss those or are they new? Those are decent suggestions.
Here’s my quandary, the instigating factor here IS trying to bowdlerize the game, and I HATE that, so regardless of acceptable alternatives being available, I don’t want to compromise. There’s no good reason for avoiding the word slave (to be clear if redundant, there IS a good reason for zlave => zombie slave)

That’s your point, and I agree with it, but that’s not a rationale anyone else has expressed. The other suggestions have been even more cutesy, and people (possibly just turtalicious, not keeping score) are directly targeting the “slave” appellation rather than claiming it’s being misused.

You can wirelessly hack robots with the special hackinator laptop. Turns out the govt used WPA, doh.
Rewiring and repairing should be a thing too.[/quote]
Oh man, I didn’t even realize this. Do they work as packmules too, or is it just fight-conversion? Now I need to find some tank bots. :V[/quote]
Last I played, they only worked as figters. But I’m sure putting two duffle bags on a tank bot wouldn’t be so hard to do…[/quote]
Only usable as combatants at the moment, but I’d guess they’re something like 100 LOC away from being usable as packmules.

68

Thrall also means exactly the same thing, not like calling vibes a novelty sculpture, but literally the exact same meaning, and I’d prefer it over the other.

69

I think that you can enslave only humans and other sentient? beings. We do not call working animals our slaves - not yet anyways… :smiley:
Zombie is reanimated corpse, less than animal in my eyes. Any morale penalties should be only because of what it once was, i.e. living person, and should be diminished in same fashion as killing zombie children is.

70

ZOMG, i came to look up on new features for last week just to read 5 pages of people feeling ok about killing, cooking, eating, and enslaving other people in the video-game, but not feeling ok about CALLING it zlave (not even slave) in that video game.

Someone would be shocked to find out they had their precious game installed on second IDE HDD in slave state.

P.S. That emoticon comes from a guy of “Eastern Slavs” enthno-linguistic group. You do know, how termin “slave” appeared, right?

71

[quote=“Crador, post:70, topic:6900”]ZOMG, i came to look up on new features for last week just to read 5 pages of people feeling ok about killing, cooking, eating, and enslaving other people in the video-game, but not feeling ok about CALLING it zlave (not even slave) in that video game.

Someone would be shocked to find out they had their precious game installed on second IDE HDD in slave state.

P.S. That emoticon comes from a guy of “Eastern Slavs” enthno-linguistic group. You do know, how termin “slave” appeared, right?[/quote]This is a false dichotomy, and you know it.

The options aren’t “Be offended by every term of slave used ever, or be offended by this one term.” There a multitude of options, and equating one to the other is both insulting to your intelligence as well as mine.

72

Yeah, I’m not really trying to argue anything but that. My major problem with the name is that I think it’s just a weak name. Technically inaccurate (it’s not really a slave in any meaningful sense of the term), flippant when basically anything other than flippant (dry description, obvious rationalization of horrible truth, description of function, evocative) would be better, and (although this is the first time I’m mentioning it) I just hate the sound of it in my head. Zlave. Sounds like what someone would call their uber-extreme-glaive or whatever.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter that much though, so :shrug:. I actually think Thrall is kinda bad for most of the same reasons (I do like the connotation of physically bound thrall has that slave doesn’t, which is at least more evocative), but it’s still better than Zlave.

Also, at some point we should add a Robot Slave Zombie Thrall, because then it means “Slave Slave Slave Slave”. :wink: Really drive the point home!

73

And this is a true verbiage (twaddle), and you know it.

74

Long-time lurker, first-time poster here.

1st, I think the gelded zombie is an awesome mechanic which adds a great deal of thematically-consistent flavor to the game. I actually exclaimed out loud when I first read about it. What consistently amazes me about the DDA Dev Team is how they not only incorporate virtually everything that I would think of doing in a real-world Cataclysm, they regularly add things that are totally reasonable that I haven’t even thought of doing. This is ine such example. Also, precedent in fiction: Katana lady from The Walking Dead.

  1. It appears to me that the announcement of a brand-new, playable in the experimental, game mechanic quickly morphed into an argument over whether the use of the word “slave” would ever be appropriate for C:DDA.

  2. FWIW, I vote for “zombie slave,” although “gelded human” or “gelding” wouldn’t be the worst. I would have a problem with flavor text making a crack about the color of the zombie’s skin, or anything which would add racist overtones to the mechanic, but nothing resembling that has been suggested. Cataclysm is a grim game set in a grim world where for all intents/purposes hell has assaulted earth and established a beachhead with intent to occupy. The PC stands alone, afraid, likely alive by coincidence alone, in a situation which imminently threatens not only their personal survival but the survival of humanity and our earth as we know it. Beset on all sides by shambling, shrieking, pus-dripping horrors straight out of the nightmares of Humanity’s collective consciousness, our lone survivor has, to appropriate a phrase, the deck stacked against him/her, owes the house piles of money, and doesn’t even know how to play cards. It is in this awful context that a man or woman, perhaps middle-class before the Cataclysm, perhaps with a 9 to 5 in a cubicle and a dog and an infant child (all gone, now), in this new and horrifying milieu, this person maybe with no history of violence or criminal activity, traps the goo-rabid, frothing, black-eyed husk of a(nother?) Ex-human, perhaps a former friend, or neighbor. They trap it and restrain it to prevent it from sating its hunger on our intrepid survivor’s warm flesh, and piece by piece over several hours, our Survivor uses knives and saws and clamps and a variety of tools previously only found in hardware spurs and garages to chop and slice the flesh and sinew and bone of a moving human body into a tragic living coat-tree, a constant reminder of the lengths to which the Cataclysm has driven our Survivor. And why? Because the difference between the weight and bulk of a backpack full of gear and no backpack full of gear can mean the difference between life and death in this new paradigm. I know that. Our Survivor knows that. That’s why she’s on her hands and knees covered in blood and gore which mixes with the sweat when it drips down her neck and splashes audibly on the floor of the sweltering toolshed where for two hours she’s painstakingly cut off every convertibly dangerous piece of what looks like a former barista. She hopes her new slave, christened “Fabulous Fred,” didn’t have the hep, because she got some of his blood in her mouth.

So, given that’s what we’re talking about, I would say "slave"is extremely appropriate terminology.

1 Like
75

Huh, this is a cool feature… as to the name discussion, I think sticking a Z in front of everything isn’t that clever (I’m looking at you Zoose.) However, I don’t so much care about the social implications and discomfort some people have with adding ways to disable or restrain (non-lethal options can be interesting, more ways to reasonably avoid that morale penalty for killing.)

Lets face it, at some point certain factions are probably going to go full Ceasers Legion; enslaving without pity the rival Bandits and Mutants, much less Zeds. Fallout New Vegas was a triple A brand and they got away with an entire, JOINABLE faction being old school slaving Neo-Romans who kicked the shit out of less civilized tribals, crucified profligates and keep their women in the kitchen.

Anyhow, as to actually being able to… restrain a zed, they are fairly mutable by nature, yes? This could be a serious problem, regardless if you’re just trying to keep tabs on an old friend or family member (out of sentimentality, hopes for treatment, ect), attempting to keep/capture research subjects, or just wanting them to haul shit. Finding some way to suppress their infection level may be in order if you don’t want them biting you with their ribcage unexpectedly, suddenly spitting acid, or delivering a lethal kick from their now hyper-developed legs.

Still, in the short term; a pair of thick gloves, a muzzle/mask, and some cable/rope/chain/manacles/wire are probably enough restraint for your most basic of hauling needs.

76

And this is a true verbiage (twaddle), and you know it.[/quote]

I explained how it was a false dichotomy in the next sentence, and you can always google the term.

Anyways, I’m obviously not in the majority here, and while a simple fix it seems pretty clear it’s a foregone conclusion that you guys are just going to do whatever. That’s cool man, but I’m going to be honest, off forums it’s going to look kind of odd. I’ve talked to people about it on SA, and the general agreement is that changing the name would go a long way from changing the connotation of the whole situation.

I’ll just say that to the average person who plays this game, having your slave with a leash and jingly bells is going to look weird.

77

Yeah, I’m not really trying to argue anything but that. My major problem with the name is that I think it’s just a weak name.[/quote]

This is also the only real objection I’ve got to the name, I understand we were sort of going for a thing here with the Zoose and the Zolf and now the Zlave, but I don’t really like those. There are other options we could go with for the name, in keeping with the whole Name theme of humanoid zombies.

Mutilated Zombie conveys the point of what you did, but doesn’t really convey the function of doing it. I’m not a fan of this particular one.
Disabled Zombie conveys that you have also purposely cut up a corpse for a purpose, still doesn’t help you with knowing what it is. (And jerks like me will end up making jokes about zombies in wheelchairs)
Enslaved Zombie has pretty much the same moral objections that people are raising here, but at least the name isn’t stupid.
Pack Zombie is probably more palatable, but I don’t like it.

I PERSONALLY LIKE the idea of calling them Pacified Zombies. It tells you that you’ve removed a zombies ability to harm, but doesn’t rule out that they may be able to regain this ability. It still doesn’t tell you what you can do with this zombie, but it’s hard to convey everything in two words.

These are options if people don’t like the idea of calling them Zlaves or Slaved zombies or whatever.

Belt also has a good point, although I think it would fit more in a Zombie Master trying to target your packmules first when it comes to them upgrading zombies.

Edit: Turtlicious, It’s not leashing them I’m pretty sure, the point is that you’re cutting off their jaw and arms, and letting their stupid goo brains still try to chase you down.

78

This might actually be one of the best things to do. IIRC zombies tend to mutate a fair bit faster when exposed to harmful conditions (such as you mutilating them), so non-harmful guards like gloves or a muzzle might actually work better at keeping them restrained for long periods then mutilation would.

As for the terminology I actually like zlave because it’s kinda funny as a pun (as opposed to zolf or zoose, which just sound weird IMO). I’m pretty sure that we are all adults enough here to realize that just because you keep slaves in a game doesn’t mean that you approve or should go out and keep them in real life. The fact that I might have a zombie butler slave with a funny name in a game doesn’t mean that I approve of it happening to real people, nor does it mean that I’m ignoring the issue of real slavery. It just means that I have a funny zombie slave that I like to call Higgins, and I understand the differences between a game and reality.

79

That’s exactly what i am talking about, “killing and eating is ok, enslaving is not”. THAT is weird. If you make a cookie human-like (Shrek movie, for i.e.), would it be cannibalism?
It wasn’t looking weird in F:NV, Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, Rome: Total War, millions of fictions for some reason.

As for the ontopic - giving player ability to name a thing when he creates it, would suffice, IMHO. Just like naming PC in generating process or making carvings on other things.

UPD: Spelling corrections.

80

That’s exactly what i am talking about, “killing and eating is ok, enslaving is not”. THAT is wierd. Not to mention, that zombie, thechnically, is not a human (sentient) being. If you make a cookie human-like (Shrek movie, for i.e.), would it be cannibalism?
It wasn’t looking wierd in F:NV, Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, Rome: Total War, millions of fictions for some reason.

As for the ontopic - giving player ability to name a thing when he creates it, would suffice, IMHO. Just like naming PC in generating process or making carvings on other things.[/quote]

Yo I’m not being rude, but it’s spelled weird, and technically.

On-topic, naming the thing might help mitigate it a bit as well, but I personally think anything but Zlave or Slave would be good so what the hell do I know?

As for those examples, the subject was handled pretty tastefully, which can make all the difference.