Designing an Asian Colonial-Era Sandbox - Part 1 (Broad Strokes)

LONG-ISH INTRO:

 I have a White Whale: ever since I read Richard G's take on a Counter-Colonial Heistcrawl, I've wanted to write a simple ruleset and sandbox-creation toolkit for a game revolving around the experience of Colonialism in South and East Asia. I want to engage with some of the ideas Richard raises, and make something that engages with the narrative space around colonialism, something that relies on stripped-down New-School-Revolution type game-play that players can easily engage in.

It wouldn't aspire to historical accuracy at all, in the same way that D&D doesn't aim to emulate eg 13th century Italian medieval culture, but is a hodgepodge of hundreds of years of McEurope tropes.

And I want it to take place in a play-space that has as its backdrop the massive upheavals of 17th and 18th century colonialism, in the same way that D&D relies on the backdrop of European feudalism, American Manifest Destiny expansionism, and centuries of heroic poetry mashed together.

Book references / Side note: I've been reading The Anarchy by William Dalrymple and Imperial Twilight by Stephen Platt, both excellent books. To the extent that history is really a kind of narrative structure imposed on the past, I've always felt that modern treatments of colonialism tended to subsume entirely different experiences under a simplistic heading. 'Colonialism' in the Americas, in Africa, in East Asia and South Asia, all get lumped together. Thus, in the popular imagination, colonialism in all its forms becomes a straightforward plundering of unsuspecting foreign civilisations. In this narrative, the colonial project is driven on the one hand by white-man's-burden type theories of racial superiority and on the other by the judicious application of Enlightenment-era gunpowder technology against proud-but-ultimately-sclerotic native armies.

There's a reductive danger with these tropes, because if you engage with colonialism using this lens, then you have a couple of options if you want to represent colonialism in a D&D-style RPG:

1. The PCs play your standard murderhobo game but - surprise! - they're actually invaders harassing hapless natives. 

2. The PCs play as members of the colonised races and engage in power-fantasy where they unite the tribes and throw out the hated oppressor. (This style of play might also feature Noble Savage natives, with access to the spirits of the land or ancestral ghosts or similar Disney-Pocahontas nonsense.)

3. The PCs engage in heroic-but-doomed gameplay as they play through the steady defeat of the colonised peoples

This is a problem because it's really just replicating the paradigm of oppressors-vs-victims. You can dress it up by making the victims less sympathetic - ooh moral complexity! we saved these natives, but it turns out they practice suttee! - or by making individual oppressors more sympathetic - ooh, this governor genuinely wants to help the people, but he represents a foreign power! - but you're really still placing colonised peoples in the passive position of having/resisting things done to them. Colonialism is a kind of semi-divine apocalypse, arriving from outside.

What this ignores is that the experience of colonialism in Asia (particularly India and China) is really the experience of the downfall of empires. Both the Mughal Empire and the Ming/Qing Dynasty were, at the point of contact with European traders, hugely rich and powerful civilisations. And both these empires collapsed slowly, over decades, as much because of internal divisions, mismanagement and weak political systems, as because of European aggression. European colonialism becomes the catalyst that accelerates the process of decay, with wealthy traders backed up by national militaries taking advantage of local conditions to expand opportunities for profit.

So what you have is a powerful empire at the point of maximum disequilibrium, with multiple factions taking advantage of a breakdown of established order, the introduction of individuals from widely disparate cultures trying to seize local advantages, and huge amounts of wealth changing hands.

This is a cracking premise for a game setting. 

BASICALLY:

I want to write and play McAsian New-School-Revolution D&D, and put the shifting upheavals from the time of 18th/19th century colonialism front and centre.

I want Zedeck Siew's Lorn Song of the Bachelor, but a genre, and without the simplistic colonialist-bad / natives-oppressed discourse that dogs so much of modern conversations about colonialism.

I want tea-houses and fishing villages and merchant junks, and I want frog-men and accursed gunpowder and humid jungles. I want the opulence of Qing Dynasty China but without the assumptions of exoticism. I want Outlaws of the Marsh. I want the PCs to seriously contemplate buying a war elephant and putting a machine-gun on it. 

BROAD STROKE PRINCIPLES:

I want to keep thinking about this. It'd be easy for this to spin out and become so complex that 1) I'll never make anything and 2) nobody will actually engage with it except a history-nerd GM out there somewhere. I'd want something as simple to run as Electric Bastionland, but with structures in place that will naturally lead to the kind of play I'm thinking of.

In no particular order: 

- Cultural exchange alongside cultural chauvinism - Culture is complex. Both colonialist and local empires have individuals who believe in the superiority of their own nation. Locally, cultural contact results in fusion as well as conflict. Foreigners 'go native', locals adopt foreign dress and seek foreign knowledge as part of attempts to modernise. 

- Locals are not scientifically illiterate, exotic, or mystical - Locals are unable to compete because they lack the industrial base / are too fragmented, not because they're ignorant. By this point, locals are able to replicate foreign military technology / tactics on a small scale. Locals have access to magic, but so do foreign empires.

- Colonial indifference, profit motive, and rivalry - Colonialist empires are fragmented: there is no single invading army, but there are individual trading towns, merchant companies and military detachments. The colonial theatre is an afterthought in comparison to vaster conflicts elsewhere. Colonial empire moves are always rooted in small-scale grabs for profit or advantage, or to play out inscrutable national rivalries.

- Colonial power - Colonialist empires are powerful. A single squadron of ships-of-the-line can wipe out a major port city. What stops this from happening is that 1) the status quo is too profitable 2) empires can achieve their goals through other, less drastic means and 3) other powers can send an equally powerful fleet 

-  Unstable power dynamics (trios are the most unstable) - There are 3 major colonial empires, each operating through merchants and proxies. There are multiple warlords / princes / chiefs with competing interests. There are multiple factions in the local empire's court. 

- Local collusion as much as local resistance - Princes hire foreign detachments to press their claims against rivals. Colonial empires back particular factions at different points. Local overseers run plantations and mines for foreign merchants. 

- Collusion occurs vertically across social class - Local princes might align themselves with a foreign power. Local soldiers serve in sepoy companies. Local merchants form the bulk of the economy in a  foreigner-run trading town. 

- PCs are given ample opportunity to collude - Collusion is far more profitable than resistance. Choices made to collude now result in unforeseen consequences. A job to rid the foreign-owned mine of ghouls means a rapid expansion in the use of low-paid labourers. Clearing the sea-lanes of pirates leads to an influx of brash foreign merchants. 

- PC freedom of movement - Sandbox play designed around multiple islands / piratical PCs to allow them to go where they want easily. Major powers often don't pursue vendettas to the death: PCs can change sides (though not without consequence)

- Colonial actions lead to local suffering - In aggregate, colonial control is about maximising short-term profit. Funding for sepoy regiments leads to brutal taxation. Conscripted factory labour leads to famine as fields lack workers. Foreign merchants establishing trade monopolies bankrupts local artisans. Unrestricted free trade leads to the sale of opium, alcohol.

- Colonial actions lead to local stability - In aggregate, colonial control brings an end to violent chaos. Bandit gangs are eradicated. Trade routes are made safe. Dangerous creatures are eliminated. Violent war between local factions is ended in favour of one side or another.

- Wider events lead to local opportunity - Random world events drive opportunity for the PCs. A rival prince is assembling a treasure fleet. An intelligence war between two colonial powers leads to spying opportunities. The destruction of a prince's army means an ancient dungeon is now unguarded. A mutiny of local soldiers means a new warlord - with a large bounty on his head.