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?

 

[Bedrockgames]

Yeah, I can't really articulate things better than @clearstream has.

I know that I brought up the "elephant in the room" but, I did so because the article, as @clearstream so clearly points out, the article only presents colonialism from the perspective of the colonizer. Which is what has been presented in RPG's for a very, very long time. I did mention Keep on the Borderlands for a reason. As @Bedrockgames says, "lots of people play this way". So that makes it okay and it should never be pointed out the problems with this?

1) I don't think the reading of standard RPGs approaches to exploration as colonization is particularly good. It is a reading for sure, but it is not the only reading and I don't understand how it slowly became the sole reading in recent years. We have had this debate too many times to count, but hack n slash campaigns that are about going into dungeons and killing things, and getting treasure, I think there are a lot of steps to get from that to 'it's about colonization'. The article itself is more about actual colonialism as practiced over human history for thousands of years and including that in your world building.

2) On 'lot's of people play that way' when it comes to killing things and taking their stuff, in these games its like shoot em ups, you are killing monsters, not real people. They are there to be fodder so people can swing swords and roll dice, at the end of a long week. If you want to read some kind of morality into that fair, but I think you are overthinking what is going on at the table. They are effectively playing it like the arcade game Gauntlet (I don't personally fret over the pixels dispatched in that game because I get it is just a game)

 

[Bedrockgames]

Here there is an asymmetry: the OP's articles are platformed by and thus implicitly endorsed, and perhaps paid, by Enworld. The horrifically cruel acts and prejudices adopted or constructed in service to colonialism make it a risky topic, one that has a problematic history in the narratives of TTRPG that many game designers and publishers are today conscious of and actively working to redress.

I think most people are getting tired of the constant hand wringing on these issues in media and entertainment. I can sympathize with why the writer would take a lighter hand on this aspect. People can understand there is a dark history around colonialism, just like there is a dark history around war, witch crazes, crusades, etc and still use them as flavor for a game meant to be a past time without worrying about real world political issues. RPGs feature war all the time, handled very lightly with little focus on the ways war impact people in history (and we don't get bent out of shape because we understand when people do that they are just trying to have fun, not say real world war is great). The article is clearly taking an approach that is mainly giving you reasons for colonization and types. Also not all colonization is the the modern kind that people are equating all colonialism with in this discussion. Carthage was a Phoenician colony for example. The writer specifically identified a category of evil colonialism which I think that is being filed under. My only quibble there is the date around it could be expanded a bit. But it is there. Not saying other forms of colonialism in the past have been without issues, but I think what people are thinking about when they get upset over mention of the term is European Colonialism that occurred in from about the 1500s on.

Also in the article he barely gets into what role the PCs would be. But he does mention having the players be the colonized as one option. There is only one paragraph on the role of the PCs and it gets as much treatment as all the other options.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I mentioned Phandelver. Here's an adevnture where the "evil humanoids" are raiding and are all the bad guys. Why aren't the Cragmaw Goblins presented as the rightful owners of their territory?

Oh, right, because as soon as we start recognizing things like that, suddenly the adventures need to be completely rewritten.

I actually think an adventure where the goblins are the rightful owners, or presented as such would be cool. I haven't played Phandelver, but adventures where evil humanoids are raiding and the bad guys, I don't see the harm in this. You can have both. The issue I am taking with your position isn't you pointing out it would be interesting to take other approaches. But not every campaign, module or setting is trying to bring that kind of real world sophistication to the scenarios. Sometimes people just want to kill monsters, it doesn't mean they want to dehumanize real people. It is a game. It just seems to me people have gone a bit off the deep end here in constantly taking this one lens to the game and not accepting that some people simply aren't approaching it with that lens (nothing wrong with using that lens, but that lens is just one way to look at the medium, not the only way)

 

[aramis erak]

Interesting ideas, but I'll suggest one revision: the notion of a "Pure Imperialist" colony - one without any economic, strategic, or other benefit to the home country - only works well in a setting where the antagonist is twisting his mustache and needs no reason for his evil schemes other than that he is evil. I think this dimension of colonialism is best applied to one of the others as a mode of treatment of the locals or view of self when it comes to the colonial power. The historical example given doesn't work - 19th Century colonial/imperialist powers did not seek and maintain control of foreign lands and peoples out of ego or "evil."

Like I said: this could work fine in a pulpy setting where motives and rationales aren't closely examined, but if you're looking for some verisimilitude or nuance, don't use that one by itself.

Pure Imperialism goes by another several names historically: Manifest Destiny. Divine Right. Divine Mandate.
Or, in some cases, "Advancing Civilization"... which is attributed to Rome... Civilizing the Britons. And the Aramiac-speaking peoples (Israelites, Samaratains, Cannanites, etc). And the Arabs. And the 17th to 20th C dealings with the various American, German, Austro-hungarian, UK, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and UK colonies. The Economics were the claimed motives, but given the frequent rebellions, it's clear that it was more about pride than money.

 

[Reynard]

In fantasy, we are afforded the opportunity to imagine better worlds. One way that can manifest is through making the ideal the reality -- and that can mean dispensing with the cruelty and greed that drives expansion and replacing it with purer motives.

That is to say that even if colonialism in reality was always an evil, in our fantasy stories and games that need not be so.

Play the game you want to play in the kind of world you want to play in. And if someone tells you that you are wrong for that, tell them to mind their own damn business.

 

[Hussar]

I actually think an adventure where the goblins are the rightful owners, or presented as such would be cool. I haven't played Phandelver, but adventures where evil humanoids are raiding and the bad guys, I don't see the harm in this. You can have both. The issue I am taking with your position isn't you pointing out it would be interesting to take other approaches. But not every campaign, module or setting is trying to bring that kind of real world sophistication to the scenarios. Sometimes people just want to kill monsters, it doesn't mean they want to dehumanize real people. It is a game. It just seems to me people have gone a bit off the deep end here in constantly taking this one lens to the game and not accepting that some people simply aren't approaching it with that lens (nothing wrong with using that lens, but that lens is just one way to look at the medium, not the only way)

Yes. You are absolutely right. We CAN have both.

But we don’t. We almost never have one and almost always have the other.

If it was a case where it was a more even distribution then I’d shut up. But it’s not. It’s virtually never presented as a bad thing that the pcs are the colonizers.

That’s the problem. Fifty years of adventures and advice and columns that tell world building DMs that colonization is perfectly acceptable- your “shoot em up” examples and virtually nothing the other way.

It’s not that people are tired of the narrative being all one way. It’s the fact that the narrative has been incredibly one sided for decades and even now when it’s suggested that tables should show the slightest self awareness, out comes all the same old arguments.

 

[Hussar]

In fantasy, we are afforded the opportunity to imagine better worlds. One way that can manifest is through making the ideal the reality -- and that can mean dispensing with the cruelty and greed that drives expansion and replacing it with purer motives.

That is to say that even if colonialism in reality was always an evil, in our fantasy stories and games that need not be so.

Play the game you want to play in the kind of world you want to play in. And if someone tells you that you are wrong for that, tell them to mind their own damn business.

But are we allowed to criticize a public article like this one that perpetuates the same tropes of colonialism that have dominated the hobby for fifty years?

 

[aramis erak]

N

In fantasy, we are afforded the opportunity to imagine better worlds. One way that can manifest is through making the ideal the reality -- and that can mean dispensing with the cruelty and greed that drives expansion and replacing it with purer motives.

That is to say that even if colonialism in reality was always an evil, in our fantasy stories and games that need not be so.

Play the game you want to play in the kind of world you want to play in. And if someone tells you that you are wrong for that, tell them to mind their own damn business.

I doubt any colonial power ever considered that they might be the bad guys at the top levels.

And fantasy allows us the opportunity to ignore the negatives of colonialism every bit as much as it enables a setting free of it. (But no realistic setting can be free of imperialism and colonialism, since all human history exhibits those features.)

Colonialism also isn't dead; recent headlines clearly show strong signs of imperial ambitions by several nations and cultures.

 

[R_Chance]

But are we allowed to criticize a public article like this one that perpetuates the same tropes of colonialism that have dominated the hobby for fifty years?

The original article doesn't say much about colonialism being either positive or negative. It's about the types of colonialism and the motives for it. Its existence in settings. It talks about various PC roles including being the indigenes who oppose it (or the colonists or explorers who engage in it). It's about world building not morality. The morale judgment is up to the players / referee.

There are a number of systems / institutions in RPGs (feudalism, absolute monarchy, wars, religion, nationalism etc.) about which players make judgements and referees include in their settings. While you could cut out everything that could be morally "iffy" you would end up with a setting devoid of numerous points of conflict, choice, and interest. All imho, of course.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

the OP's articles are platformed by and thus implicitly endorsed [...] by Enworld.

this is not how public platforms work. to allow someone to use a platform does not imply endorsement - this is literally why section 230 is a thing that can exist.

i can only imagine that you're thinking of publication, not platforming. and i don't know, maybe enworld does publish these articles. but implying they endorse something they simply platform is not something i'd want to try.

[...] writing an article to outline colonialist narratives and prompt folk in the community to contribute their own is in itself rather courageous.

i think the bolded is the root of your confusion - you think the article is about narratives. it's not (well, not directly so, anyway). the article exists to help worldbuilders create colonies in their worlds. so yeah, of course it focuses on the colonizers, because the colonizers are the ones who make colonies - which is the entire point of the article!

i guess you could argue the article should've mentioned how colonizers might try to control, eliminate, or parlay with already native populations. i think that definitely would've been useful, given the topic.

even now when it’s suggested that tables should show the slightest self awareness, out comes all the same old arguments.

...uh, yeah...maybe don't go around to people's tables and try to guilt-trip them into agreeing with you? people generally don't like that.