ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Every time I go through there, I feel incentivized to murder them all (getting the saved them all reward too), because they drop artifacts. I got 2 this run.

It'd feel better if it wasn't mechanically balancing:
"Do nothing, do nothing" vs "Kill them, get artifacts".

I guess its like the drowning people do, but that's more driven by difficulty level startup as I understand.

This is like how many things drop stuff that doesn't make sense for them to have. Normally, creatures in games drop specific things set to that creature but here we can get heavy armor from a snake or some nonsense.

But the free slaves also just stay in the dungeon. They never leave. They should at least leave.

If there were a morality system and doing evil acts changed your aura so the whole world noticed, you couldn't get away with certain things. Like if you massacred slaves and then tried to go in a village, they would all be like, "an evil is approaching!" and attack you, not do business with you, etc.