A few months back I
asked a question of one of the Facebook Traveller groups that I read. I have a
scenario in mind where the PCs are exploring an abandoned habitat. No specific
setting, no specific arrangement. Just some kind of colony. The idea may have grown
out of the tables in Stellagama's Pirates & Privateering source book, which
lists abandoned space stations as a random encounter.
The question was: Why
did the colony fail? Much to my delight,
the answers poured in. I have collected here the bulk of the answers
(deduplicated for near identical answers) and arranged them in a D66 table. To
roll D66, roll 1D for the 'tens' digit and a second 1D for the 'ones' digit.
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| Clearly something has gone dreadfully Wrong here. |
If you have any ideas that don't appear on this list, share in the comments!
D66 Reasons why the Colony Failed
11 Pilgrimage
site for some religion that was later deprecated as a forgery
12 Fast-acting
or slow-acting contagion (bacterial/viral/fungal/parasitic)
13 Mining
site, better yield found elsewhere and everyone moved.
14 Mining
site, ore vein tapped out
15 Colony
set-up was a scam. Shells of buildings only, no infrastructure.
Scammers on the run.
16 Environmental
factor not initially detected caused health problems (i.e. death)
21 Temporary
facility during a war, abandoned in peace time
22 Resource
point for a project nearby, abandoned when resource no longer needed
23 Hostile
neighbors
24 Predatory
animals attacked settlement
25 Research
base- abandoned when research was concluded
26 Mass
murder by a resident killed too many to continue running the colony
31 Solar
flare/radiation spike forced evacuation.
32 Financial
backer was bought out, new owner did not want to continue funding
33 Philosophical
colony rejected childbearing and died of old age
34Cult
of personality. Followers abandoned the colony when leader died or
was disgraced.
35 Chemical
weapon attack by hostile force
36 Crop
failures or death of livestock
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| Honey, who left this window open .?. . WHOOSH |
41 Youth
depart for better living in cities. Old folks die off.
42 Avalanche
or mudslide buries the colony, flooding submerges it.
43 Water
supply fails.
44 Fire.
45 Supply
ships do not return in time (cargo cult?)
46 Colony
made economically redundant by another nearby colony (still extant)
51 Penal
colony, closed by administering municipality.
52 Monstrous
creature kills or drives off residents.
53 'Ghost
story' scares everyone away.
54 Piratical
raids steal resources.
55 Piratical
raids kidnap populace.
56 Sabotage
by rival colony.
61 Internal
strife between colonist factions.
62 Alien
abduction.
63 Poor
leadership caused general collapse
64 Affected
by ongoing local war (whether party to it or not)
65 Low-level
psionic disturbance drove colonists away/insane
66 No
specific reason, colony failed financially
Here is a link to the
discussion thread on Facebook:
Image credit
Great list, Mr. Weaver. Quite thought provoking too, just like nearly all of your columns! I've been having fun linking historical examples to each of the list's entries. In many cases, two or more reasons come together to doom the settlement in question.
ReplyDeletePlease consider this list stolen, just like so much of your work! ;)
34 was close to what happened to the Popham Colony. Unlike the bloody-mindedness that led at Jamestown, the entire colony with one exception survived the first year. It was the death of the founder and discontent with his successors that lead to them leaving. However, the information led to the founding of modern Bath, Maine upriver, reducing the exposure to the elements.
ReplyDeletePopham is a great example, Mr. Thompson. Here are a few others which came quickly to my mind:
ReplyDelete- Darien, the Scots colony in Panama, failed due to a combination of #12, 15, 16, and 36.
- The US' "mountain west" region is full of ghost towns which failed or were abandoned due to a combination of #13 and 14.
- As part of the Great Awakening, the antebellum US saw hundreds of utopian communities founded by various religious and/or philosophical sects. Nearly all failed within a generation or two due to some combination of #23, 33, 34, and 41.
- Depending on which theory you like, Croatan was lost due to #45 or 55.
I came upon this recently; although there surely are other pages/sites like it.
ReplyDeletehttps://uncoveringpa.com/abandoned-places-in-pennsylvania
as a source of inspiration for the exact type of structure or location that's been abandoned.