Yeah. I think there’s an interesting space between history as it was and history as it was perceived to be and history as it was passed down as.

I think most boardgames that hit on colonial themes (and I have a bunch of them: Viceroy, Conquistador, Source of the Nile) tend to do so by modeling history as it was passed down as. I don’t have a problem with that per se. But it does mean there’s plenty of room for games like Archipelago that put a different spin on it.

Interestingly there are a bunch of other games that often have mechanics in the same general space as these colonial games…like say Brittania, or Chariot Lords that don’t illicit the same reflection.

Clearly there’s some statute of limitations on compassion, because most people don’t have the same reaction to Romans or Saxons or Normans or Assyrians moving in, killing the locals, taking their shit, and getting to the civilizing.