Monday, July 19, 2021

How to Re-Colonize D&D in 7 Easy Steps

There's been a lot of smart, insightful, upstanding, loquacious, thick-hipped and big-dicked people posting about colonialism in D&D, and how to un-colonize the game. Maybe you followed all their advice and were left wondering: "Hey, where'd all my colonizing go?! What am I supposed to do now, get in a polycule with the orcs and donate all my gold to an orphangae!? In the game?!".

If so, this post is for you. Here's 7 easy steps to get the 'colon' back in 'colonialism', and the 'colonialism' back in Dungeons & Dragons (& Colonialism):

Step 1:

Everyone has to wear one of these things:

Not the British man, the thing on the British man's head. Some call it a pith helmet, others an English safari hat. Tough luck on the Euro Cup there, eh limeys? Viva Italia.

Anyways this is the most important step as it will get everyone in the proper frame of mind.

Step 2:

Enemies in the game must be "people" - in the sense that they are sentient and form relatively organized societies (though still savage relative to your characters' society) - else there will be no sport in killing them and nothing of value to liberate from their holdings. Their skin colour should be different from both your characters' and your own. To minimize ethical issues, I recommend using Italians.

Step 3:

When intra-group chatter quiets down, chip in with a cool catchphrase like "Deus vult!" or "nits make lice!". Something that shows you're 'with it' and irreverent of progressive orthodoxy. Everyone will think you're really cool every time you say it.

If you are playing over discord or some other online service, consider making your avatar a Pepe, or Groyper, or Apu.

Step 4:

Arrange the worldbuilding such that the religion of your player characters is objectively correct, and that the savage pagans worship demons, fallen angels, false idols, etc. Make the religion have a bad afterlife for non-believers so that you're justified for extreme ends to convert them.

Step 5:

If you must go No. 2 during a game, use a squat toilet. If you do not have a squat toilet, squat upon whichever toilet you possess. This will deepen the feeling of being in an exotic vista, and is better for your ass.

Step 6:

Race is old hat. We've now got many more biological categories in which to sort and valuate people. For each of the 16,777,216 possible combinations of 3D6 attributes rolled in order, assign a haplogroup and cranial dimensions.

Step 7:

Get billions of dollars of funding from the United States of America. This is the second most important step in modern colonialism, and probably the most difficult. I'm not even sure how you'd get the USA to go against its national interest like this. Maybe try privatized espionage and blackmail, or getting a base of evangelical support. Disproportionate influence over media and academia might help too.

Anyways, these are 7 easy steps to re-colonize your Dungeons & Dragons games.

Disclaimer: Please do the opposite of all of these*.

* Except for the squat toilet one.

3 comments:

  1. This had me giggling to myself at work today, very funny :'D If your campaign is set in the 60s-through-90s, you could achieve no.7 by having the party oppose an elected foreign government that has vaguely socialist policies - just a thought

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