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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DrunkonDuty" data-source="post: 3897759" data-attributes="member: 54364">I've had Dwarves in my current campaign undertake big commissions to build thing for their human neighbours. Best example: a line of defensible towers to help protect the coastline from raiders. One of the PCs is interested in architecture et. al. and trap making (for defenses) so he was all very excited about it. The other PCs went along and ran a bar for the Dwarven workers (and made a killing selling good Dwarvish beer at highly inflated prices.)All in all it was kinda like a mini-economic invasion. And all that money just went out of the human kingdom and into Dwarven coffers. At the time I didn't run with local (human)merchants and workers being outraged by the foreign "invasion" but if something like this came up again I would. I also figure that this human kingdom benefits from superior Dwarven made weapons that they buy at comparitively low prices. As they're vikings (actually they're the Fruztii from Greyhawk) they do appreciate good sword smiths as friends and neighbours. And the Dwarves like a good market for their metal goods. Not to mention that the ships of the Fruztii can carry goods for sale as easily as plunder. All up I see the two kingdoms having a very good relationship.And the Fruztti are benefitting from all this to become the pre-eminent human kingdom in the area.Of course this all very Northern European in flavour. Very deliberately so: I've gone for a strong Norse campaign, right down to borrowing stories from the Eddas. My non-Eurocentric campaigns over the years have all been very human-centric. The Karatur games I ran all those years ago had mostly human PCs and non-humans tended to be minorities within the human cultures. So I haven't really thought about how interactions with these older, more technologically advanced (magic is also technology in this sense) non-human races has influenced other cultures. But if it comes up it will happen  in much the same way as I outlined above.And if the non-human cultures are spread evenly around the world, and are all equally advanced, then I can see that the human cultures they come in contact with will benefit from this. So I'd agree that a wave of colonisation as IRL is unlikely to succeed. BUt there could always be colonisation after the model of the ancient Greeks and Phoenicians. Vastly superior technology and the devastation of native popualtions by disease were not factors here. But both were very successful at spreading their cultures across the Mediterranean. But the resulting colonies were very different from the colonies of the 18th-19th C western European empires. They were independent cities and free to act as they pleased. Usually good relations were maintained with the home cities but there was no centralised governmental mechanism. Nor did the colonies dominate local populaces (at least not immediately or to the extent that happened in modern times.)Oops, work calls. Maybe finish this waffle next time.</blockquote>

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