D&D General Divine Invasion: A Proposal for an Anti-Colonialist D&D Setting

[Malmuria]

High fantasy is a potentially perfect genre for a dnd game that is about fighting colonialism. I would go through and add some nuance to your factions: maybe there are aasimar that are opposed to the colonial project, and maybe some genasi are collaborators? For those that are collaborators, do they really have a choice, or are they doing what they need to do for survival? etc.

 

[Mirtek]

and kill the would-be settlers (who are conveniently all men whose families are waiting back east to get the message to come to newly-constructed settlements).

You should really include some strong women who are trying to blaze the trail for their husbands waiting back to the east

 

[Mistwell]

Is there a reason to focus on what you don't like when you can spend that word count on what you do like?

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Is there a reason to focus on what you don't like when you can spend that word count on what you do like?

. . . Did they not spend the word count on what they do like? That's kind of the point of them making this thread in the first place, discussing what they do like and subverting the typical tropes that they don't like.

Is there a reason to post in this thread criticizing something you don't like when you could have not said anything or posted something constructive?

 

[Cadence]

B2 is the patient zero of settler colonialism in dnd. It mimics, in fantasy terms, the ethos of American settlers in places like Wisconsin and their false ideology of manifest destiny. Its genre is as much the Western as it is anything medieval.

<insert something I've probably said in other threads about colonialism in D&D and about B2>

Anyway, here's the idea I floated as a temporary game for my current group while our GM preps the next arc, based on the Goodman reissue of B1 and B2 for 5e with a splash of B/X and Dying Earth. Waiting to hear back from them:

The ages have shifted under the red moonless sky and the forces of "Law" are split into Order, Justice, and Mercy, and the forces of "Chaos" into Aberration, Immortality (aka Undeath), and Temptation, with a plethora of saints, devils, spirits and whatnot making pacts and answer prayers, but no gods. And with a lot of "people" just wishing they'd leave them alone. The pelgranes and sandestins of past ages have mostly been hunted to extinction. Of particular note, the forces of extreme Law along the border are being championed by humano-supremacists (with demi-humans being "ok").

The party members could be anything from Kobolds to Warforged (have the Volo, Eberron, Ravnica, and Tortle races), either "civilized" or not so much, and are racing to the newly opened Borderlands to recover objects and accomplish missions before other competing groups of various motivations do so. Some magical disguises to start with might aid in a bit of infiltration or just getting along when needed, although some of the party might chafe at altering their usual smells, diets, and accents.

[DMs note: "People" includes the humanoids. And of course the people in the keep, B1 area, and B2 area all have varying motivations too -- with many of those running the Keep not being particularly any "better" than some in the back left corner of the caves, for example, and being notably much worse than some of the inhabitants of other parts of the caves.]

 

[Malmuria]

<insert something I've probably said in other threads about colonialism in D&D and about B2>

Anyway, here's the idea I floated as a temporary game for my current group while our GM preps the next arc, based on the Goodman reissue of B1 and B2 for 5e with a splash of B/X and Dying Earth. Waiting to hear back from them:

The ages have shifted under the red moonless sky and the forces of "Law" are split into Order, Justice, and Mercy, and the forces of "Chaos" into Aberration, Immortality (aka Undeath), and Temptation, with a plethora of saints, devils, spirits and whatnot making pacts and answer prayers, but no gods. And with a lot of "people" just wishing they'd leave them alone. The pelgranes and sandestins of past ages have mostly been hunted to extinction. Of particular note, the forces of extreme Law along the border are being championed by humano-supremacists (with demi-humans being "ok").

The party members could be anything from Kobolds to Warforged (have the Volo, Eberron, Ravnica, and Tortle races), either "civilized" or not so much, and are racing to the newly opened Borderlands to recover objects and accomplish missions before other competing groups of various motivations do so. Some magical disguises to start with might aid in a bit of infiltration or just getting along when needed, although some of the party might chafe at altering their usual smells, diets, and accents.

[DMs note: "People" includes the humanoids. And of course the people in the keep, B1 area, and B2 area all have varying motivations too -- with many of those running the Keep not being particularly any "better" than some in the back left corner of the caves, for example, and being notably much worse than some of the inhabitants of other parts of the caves.]

awesome!

It could be made more 'medieval' too. I remember traveling to Wales a few years back and seeing so many beautiful castles. And then realizing, oh those were English military outposts, and there are so many of them because that's how many it took to subdue the local population...

 

[Mistwell]

. . . Did they not spend the word count on what they do like? That's kind of the point of them making this thread in the first place, discussing what they do like and subverting the typical tropes that they don't like.

Is there a reason to post in this thread criticizing something you don't like when you could have not said anything or posted something constructive?

I didn't criticize, or say I didn't like something. I asked if there was a reason, and you took it as criticism?

 

[Malmuria]

Is there a reason to focus on what you don't like when you can spend that word count on what you do like?

I don't get the reasoning of this question.
I think OP is just identifying something that is a problem for them (colonialism in dnd) and spending the majority of the 'word count' on their solution, i.e. focusing on what they do like.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

awesome!

It could be made more 'medieval' too. I remember traveling to Wales a few years back and seeing so many beautiful castles. And then realizing, oh those were English military outposts, and there are so many of them because that's how many it took to subdue the local population...

Well in defense of the "English" there, the most famous of those castles were from a time when the rulers and ruling class of England benefiting from such structures of oppression (literal and figurative) were in many ways less "English" than they were a whole separate culture and ethnicity of "Anglo-Normans" who would rather have nothing to do with that dirty peasant language we're conversing in the derivative of. Which draws us to the fact that world history is just invasions and subjugation all the way down, and the history of the British Isles doubly so.

 

[Mistwell]

I don't get the reasoning of this question.
I think OP is just identifying something that is a problem for them (colonialism in dnd) and spending the majority of the 'word count' on their solution, i.e. focusing on what they do like.

Because walls of text are a disincentive to read something, and it seemed cutting to the chase and diving in to the idea itself would be a better use of the brief attention you can usually ask of a stranger. But maybe there is a good reason to spend that attention on why you dislike the part you're addressing, so rather than assume I asked him.