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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ixal" data-source="post: 8327465" data-attributes="member: 7030132">This article is strange as expansion seems to be only defined by placing your population somewhere else into colonies or move them into lands you do not own through migration.That might work for the ancient period when you had empires and tribes who indeed colonized and migrated everywhere in part because there actually were many empty or nearly empty places in rather nearby areas.It makes sense in a more race war type of setting or in a setting where the primary antagonists are monsters.That changed in the medieval period as most land was already settled and the way ownership was defined changed. In the feudal system there were no defined empires, but allegiance was determined by oaths of fealty in the feudal chain all the way up to the king. So the kingdom of France was defined by all the land owned by nobles who, directly or indirectly, swore fealty to the king of France.This allowed other ways of expanding your empire, simply by switching lieges, trading lands with other nobles or becoming a king yourself. For example the root of the 100 years war between France and Britain was that a French duke conquered England and took all his possessions on the continent with him when he became king, thus making them English and not French.It also allows expansion through marriage. The Habsburgs were masters in arranging marriages which allowed them to control half of Europe (Spain, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bohemia) even through their military successes were rather mixed.Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube – ‘Let others wage war: thou, happy Austria, marry’.It also resulted in them probably being the source of the inbred noble stereotype as achieving this sort of hegemony required several close kin marriages.And of course regular conquest (as we understand it today) became the norm. Instead of displacing the existing population and putting your own people there you simply declared that the existing population now belongs to you. Especially with the feudal system that often only changed who people paid taxes to and didn't affect their life much.In other times though it required them to assimilate and adopt the new owners faith and customs at the threat of pain and death or otherwise subjected them to near slavery kind of treatment.Yet this is the kind of conquest who initially allowed the Spanish to create a foothold in Mexico when the Aztec vassals banded together and supported Cortez in overthrowing their masters. And it was also how most wars in Europe was fought, both within the same religion and between religions, for example when Muslims conquered the Byzantine Empire (And forced them to assimilate).Another way to "expand" was to simply declare that something belongs to you. That of course doesn't work if there is already a established and recognized kingdom to object, but it was often done in America when European powers simply declared that large tracks of land belongs to them without ever setting foot on them and the natives already living there not even knowing that someone claimed their land.So how does this translate into D&D?It highly depends on who you are conquering land from. When you clear it from monsters then you need to bring your own people in like it ancient times. If they are sentient you might instead assimilate them after enforcing their allegiance.This of course ties directly into the ongoing debate about colonialism and what is a monster you need to drive away and who you can subjugate...The marriage aspect is very underused in D&D and RPGs in general. Most RPGs hardly even bother with defining nobles apart from a token king and maybe a baron who either a patron or the BBEG who wants to depose the king. But you hardly have a working feudal system, let alone defined families which have multiple nobles in it or marriage ties to other defined nobles.If you spend the effort to create such a system it could imo be quite interesting. For example a family like the Habsburgs who expand through marriage could be quite scandalous as they would have a lot of half breeds in them what others might frown upon (or not).There is also the question what to do with infertile marriages and so on.</blockquote>

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