Worlds of Design: Colonies

If you’ve developed nations in your campaign, you will probably have a world that involves colonies.

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

World-building offers an opportunity to explore a variety of social, political, and historical concepts, including colonization. While the real-world history of colonization is fraught with imperialism and exploitation, it's important for world-builders to understand its different aspects and the potential implications of including colonies in their fictional worlds. This article is not meant to justify colonization, but rather to provide a framework for world-builders to make informed choices about the structure of their worlds.

Why Colonies Happen​

There are several reasons nations establish colonies:

• Commercial Expansion (Greeks and Phoenicians/Carthaginians, Portuguese, etc.). Finding more “hinterland” to trade with. E.g. Greek Massalia (now Marseilles) was established in part to trade with the people of Gaul (now France). The Greeks, especially, had no interest in controlling the native populace. The Carthaginians did come to control some of southeastern Iberia. Keep in mind that these trading places involved many permanent residents, they were not merely small establishments like trade depots.
• Population Reduction (Greeks and Phoenicians/Carthaginians). City-states can quickly become overcrowded/unable to feed their population, colonies provided an outlet.
• Military Control (Roman “colonies”). This is unusual. Retired Roman legionnaires took land in colonies located in newly-conquered territory in Italy, to help control the inhabitants. So they were “colonizing” land already inhabited by people not so different from themselves. Related to this are towns established in a newly-conquered area (Ireland, by the Normans?) to help control the populace. The “home country” must have a pretty strong government in these cases.
• Commercial Exploitation (European 16th 17th century). The Mercantile Theory of the time said a country should only trade with its own colonies to maximize earnings. It should not allow other countries to trade with those colonies. To have lucrative trade you had to have colonies.
• Specialized Settlement (European 16th 17th century). This is different from population reduction, perhaps seen more as a way of getting rid of misfits. The Puritans, for example, for England, the Huguenots for France, the prisoners sent to Australia. This markedly affected the colony.
• Population reduction to avoid disaster (18th 19th c). There were times, for example during the mid-19th century potato famine, when emigration helped people such as the Irish who would otherwise starve.
• Pure imperialist colonialism (19th c. imperialism). This is a land and people grab, pure and simple, for prestige, to help nations claim to be “Great Powers,” to “find a place in the sun.” This is the evil face of colonization. And in most cases, it involved few people actually leaving their home country, it’s about controlling populations of distant places.
• Missionary/Religious Proselytization motives rarely cause colonization, but can certainly follow it, especially in the 19th century.

Why do People Move to Colonies?​

There are a lot of reasons why: economic advantage, fleeing social stigma of some kind, hired to do it, free land, food shortages, religious persecution, better climate, you can think of many more motives.

If a colony is motivated by economic advantage, it's essentially a trade depot and likely to be a seaport or on a river farther inland. Transportation becomes paramount. If the colony is established to accommodate big populations, it’ll start on water but others will move inland for fertile (free) farmland, most likely along rivers.

In a fantasy world filled with monsters, escape from invading hordes of monsters is also a likely reason. Humans sometimes migrate to escape other humans, in the real world (such as the migrations of the Goths in Roman times, fleeing from the Huns). Running from the old country that’s about to be overrun, to existing colonies, may not be a motive to create such colonies, but it may be enough incentive to create one nonetheless.

If you like to make a series of campaigns with differing themes, rather than a years-long single campaign, colonies may show up sooner or later. Player characters could be colonists arriving in a new place, or might be pathfinders who explore an area to allow colonization from the mother country, or they could be locals who find that the colonists are monstrous (think goblinoids or giants) and have to defend their territory before the new neighbors move in.

YOUR TURN: What part do colonies play in your games?

 

[Hussar]

Hardly... many borderline atrocities never get discussed. Such as the depopulation of a number of Aleutian Islanders during WW II.
Or the emptying of many of the Tropical Pacific islands by the US and UK. Yeah, many have heard about how locals were forced off Diego Garcia... and some about Bikini Atoll. But a dozen other islands were also forcibly depopulated. Many of them uncompensated. A few, like Bikini Atoll and Midway, still off limits.

Even worse, those Micronesian atoll residing nations are losing landmass... And so are many North Pacific islands... Climate Change, raising waterlevels.

Many Unungan villages and some Yupic and Inupiaq ones are having to move uphill... and they don't have much "uphill" to move to... because the permafrost under their waterfronts are melting, and portions sliding below the waves. THey were oppressed a bit by the Russians; A lot by the US when it bought the land from Russia. And still, they are oppressed for feeding themselves the way they have for centuries...

No, most do not know the stories... because far too many are never told. If I live long enough, I hope to go back to the Archives and depersonalize some of the documents in the Mount Edgecomb Residential School... a place of horror for over 50 years... a calculated destruction of a dozen local cultures... one broken spirit at a time. The horrors imposed upon the Polynesian, Micronesian, Alaskan and Hawaiian peoples are undertold.

I think that’s @clearstream’s point. That the fact that colonialism is horrific is rarely placed front and centre.

 

[Hussar]

/snip
I just think the critics of the article are overplaying how much this stuff is done. I think everyone here is aware of the history of colonialization and the game community itself has talked about these issues rather a lot for the past ten or more years. What people are abut tired of is the nonstop focus on things, even valid historically inspired setting details, being labeled probablamatic or posters insisting other posters must play them a certain way or be lectured about how to do so. I liked the original article. But I don’t need the writer telling me how I should navigate the real world moral issues on a topic. It feels very paternalistic when RPGs do that IMO

I think if anything it's WAYYY underplayed and just barely talked about. Good grief, WotC published this August of 2022:

Several hundred years ago, a wizard visited Yazir, the hadozee home world, with a small fleet of spelljamming ships. Under the wizard’s direction, apprentices laid magic traps and captured dozens of hadozees. The wizard fed the captives an experimental elixir that enlarged them and turned them into sapient, bipedal beings. The elixir had the side effect of intensifying the hadozees’ panic response, making them more resilient when harmed. The wizard’s plan was to create an army of enhanced hadozee warriors for sale to the highest bidder. But instead, the wizard’s apprentices grew fond of the hadozees and helped them escape. The apprentices and the hadozees were forced to kill the wizard, after which they fled, taking with them all remaining vials of the wizard’s experimental elixir.

With the help of their liberators, the hadozees returned to their home world and used the elixir to create more of their kind. In time, all hadozee newborns came to possess the traits of the enhanced hadozees. Then, centuries ago, hadozees took to the stars, leaving Yazir’s fearsome predators behind.

Which was quite rightly absolutely pilloried. This is colonialism to a T. And this wasn't from years ago. This was published two years ago. By WotC.

The idea that "colonialist narrative" is overplayed is simply not true. Paternalistic? Good grief. Obviously there are publishers out there that didn't get the memo that you apparently got that said that people are tired of things being problematic.

But, to be 100% clear. Because is a lie that gets repeated over and over again. NO ONE is "insisting other posters must play a certain way". Zero. Not a single person. You can do whatever you want in your home game. I could not possibly care less what you do in your home game, any more than you care about mine. And that's absolutely what it should be. But, again, and here's where the lie comes in, no one is talking about your home game. Not a single person in this thread has referenced your home game @Bedrockgames. Not a single time. Not once.

The absolute most amount of "lecturing" has been, "Hey, ummmm, colonialism is bad mmmkay? Maybe if you are going to include colonialism in your game, you might want to take 30 seconds to think about the implications of your game."

Oh the horror. Oh the paternalism. Oh, the insistence.

 

[Waller]

I think that’s @clearstream’s point. That the fact that colonialism is horrific is rarely placed front and centre.

I don’t know where this weird narrative came from, but colonialism is endlessly and repeatedly described as awful. Not one person in this thread, reading this site, or in the world, is not very aware of this. The narrative that this is somehow not forefront in society’s consciousness of the subject is kinda bizarre. Nobody here is shining a light on suppressed information. It’s very, very common knowledge and portrayed as such widely.

Now when are we going to give America back to the native Americans? Oh, right. Never. We’re too comfortable living here on colonized land and lecturing others about how bad colonialism is.

 

[Bedrockgames]

But, to be 100% clear. Because is a lie that gets repeated over and over again. NO ONE is "insisting other posters must play a certain way". Zero. Not a single person. You can do whatever you want in your home game. I could not possibly care less what you do in your home game, any more than you care about mine. And that's absolutely what it should be. But, again, and here's where the lie comes in, no one is talking about your home game. Not a single person in this thread has referenced your home game @Bedrockgames. Not a single time. Not once.

I am totally open to being wrong on this. And am happy to go back and review. My memory is several posters were casting judgement on those who didn't approach it in the way they were describing

 

[Bedrockgames]

Oh the horror. Oh the paternalism. Oh, the insistence.

If you want people who disagree with you to engage with your points, they will, but not if you are posting like this

 

[Bedrockgames]

The absolute most amount of "lecturing" has been, "Hey, ummmm, colonialism is bad mmmkay? Maybe if you are going to include colonialism in your game, you might want to take 30 seconds to think about the implications of your game."

No one here is saying it isn't bad. And the article addressed that it is a fraught topic, as has been mentioned:

World-building offers an opportunity to explore a variety of social, political, and historical concepts, including colonization. While the real-world history of colonization is fraught with imperialism and exploitation, it's important for world-builders to understand its different aspects and the potential implications of including colonies in their fictional worlds. This article is not meant to justify colonization, but rather to provide a framework for world-builders to make informed choices about the structure of their worlds.

I get that you want it to go deeper. But not every article on every horrible thing in history that makes it way into games needs to do so. I think it addressed the issue adequately enough that it is clear what the writer's position is (it certainly isn't a defense of colonialism), but he wants to write primarily about a quick overview for world building purposes. Not everything needs a cautionary tag.

 

[Hussar]

I don’t know where this weird narrative came from, but colonialism is endlessly and repeatedly described as awful. Not one person in this thread, reading this site, or in the world, is not very aware of this. The narrative that this is somehow not forefront in society’s consciousness of the subject is kinda bizarre. Nobody here is shining a light on suppressed information. It’s very, very common knowledge and portrayed as such widely.

Now when are we going to give America back to the native Americans? Oh, right. Never. We’re too comfortable living here on colonized land and lecturing others about how bad colonialism is.

Really? Then how do you explain the Hadozee mistake from only two years ago? If this is endlessly repeated and everyone is aware of this, then, why should it be a problem to suggest that people take a couple of seconds to think of the implications of using colonialist narratives in their game? Why the huge push back?

 

[Hussar]

No one here is saying it isn't bad. And the article addressed that it is a fraught topic, as has been mentioned:

I get that you want it to go deeper. But not every article on every horrible thing in history that makes it way into games needs to do so. I think it addressed the issue adequately enough that it is clear what the writer's position is (it certainly isn't a defense of colonialism), but he wants to write primarily about a quick overview for world building purposes. Not everything needs a cautionary tag.

And that's totally fair.

Remember, I brought up the "elephant in the room" and my exact words, when I did so were:

Colonialism is something that's ... difficult to add into the game without it having some very uncomfortable resonances. It's pretty rare that establishing colonies was done for purely altruistic reasons and certainly rarely had purely positive results.

Again, I am so sorry that bringing up the fact that colonialism is a fraught topic and might be something you want to take thirty seconds to think about before bringing into your game. The original article left off the "elephant in the room", and that's why I brought it up. To me, talking about colonialism without talking about the bad stuff is kinda like talking about any other horrific example of history - slavery, genocide, etc - while barely mentioning any of the moral implications. It's something that's been done in the hobby for decades.

So, yeah, I'm going to bang this drum when I see the moral implications being glossed over. The moral implications are the important bits. That's the stuff that should be in the first paragraph of any discussion of colonialism. I mean, the OP's stated goal is:

This article is not meant to justify colonization, but rather to provide a framework for world-builders to make informed choices about the structure of their worlds.

How do you provide a framework to make informed choices while ignoring the horrific results of colonialism? If we're all about making informed choices, shouldn't taking thirty seconds to reflect on implications be a key part of that decision making process?

 

[Bedrockgames]

How do you provide a framework to make informed choices while ignoring the horrific results of colonialism? If we're all about making informed choices, shouldn't taking thirty seconds to reflect on implications be a key part of that decision making process?

I think we just come at this from very different points of view. I don't necessarily want or need the writer giving me these kinds of moral guidelines. I can do that myself, with my own moral compass. Nine times out of ten, when articles do try to give me moral guidance, I find I am not in full agreement with them (not because I disagree on core issues but because we may handle some of the nuance of it differently in terms of how something ought to be handled in an RPG). To me articles that do that feel, as I said, paternalistic, like a kindergarten class or watching Mr. Rogers. I can handle the morality myself with my own group of players. I think stating that it is a fraught topic and that he isn't intending to justify colonialism is sufficient here for this reason.

 

[Tun Kai Poh]

Notwithstanding the morals or ethics surrounding colonisation, there are worlds of interesting plots and drama coming from the viewpoint of the colonised.

Scrappy underdog resistance, roiling internal local politics, collaboration and cultural change... who doesn't want that kind of juicy material for their campaign? Would games like SPIRE even exist without the viewpoints you "don't need?"

I think we just come at this from very different points of view. I don't necessarily want or need the writer giving me these kinds of moral guidelines. I can do that myself, with my own moral compass.