Crafting a new campaign where nature tries to kick civilization's butt

[Teacher Man]

Elves are more forest orientated than city orientated. Maybe Gnomes or Halflings would be a better go between.

And there was a Celtic God of the forest from the original Deities and Demigods that might work as well. He is true neutral and the ultimate tree hugger.

Or if you really want to have some fun make the PCs the go-between's in the war between the two/three factions, complete with betrayals, ambushes, intrigue etc...

 

[Neonchameleon]

Is anyone else thinking Erathis vs the Primal spirits?

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

And there was a Celtic God of the forest from the original Deities and Demigods that might work as well. He is true neutral and the ultimate tree hugger.

Which one?

Or if you really want to have some fun make the PCs the go-between's in the war between the two/three factions, complete with betrayals, ambushes, intrigue etc...

Yeah, ultimately I'll allow the PCs to figure where they want to fit. The conflict is going to start off as much, much bigger than they are, and for a while events will be in motion that they'll be unable to affect except on a small scale. After a few "Chapters, when it becomes a more overt conflict, they might save a village, but meanwhile somewhere else a city is destroyed. Eventually as they level and discover more plot they'll have a greater effect.

Is anyone else thinking Erathis vs the Primal spirits?

MY google-fu is weak, something about Forgotten Realms, goddess of civilization, and the Far Realm? Where do I find more info on this?

 

[Neonchameleon]

MY google-fu is weak, something about Forgotten Realms, goddess of civilization, and the Far Realm? Where do I find more info on this?

4e/Nentir Vale cosmology. In the Dawn War, the Gods rose up and drove out or destroyed the Primordials who had ruled creation (shades of the Greek Gods rebellion against Chronos, and others). And in passing they did it as if they were teams of adventurers taking down powerful monsters. The spirits of nature/Primal spirits used the opportunity to lock the door and prevent the Gods manifesting directly within the Prime Material plane (although they can project power there through their worshippers). The Primal Spirits are not themselves deities so much as manifestations of the forces of the world.

Erathis is the Neutral (Lawful Neutral under 9 point alignment) Goddess of Civilisation. And no one else knows what the hell she is up to for good or ill or the goals of her often glorious and often cruel experiments. They just know that they'd rather have her on their side.

 

[nijineko]

hmmm, a friend of mine consulted with me in building a customized druid prestige class for a campaign we were in, and it is exactly about this sort of concept. he called it the Forest Lord, and one of the abilities was that of reverting an area of civilized structures back to the natural elements they came from. aggressively.... sound right up your alley.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

I ran an apocalyptic campaign two years ago with similarities. Something most people tend not to really think about is that you have the PHB races, then you have dozens of other demi-human races in a setting and most of them have their own gods. In that campaign the premise was that ALL the evil/monster/barbarian/uncivilized/non-humanoid pantheons joined forces to beat back the PHB races.

Suddenly the PHB races were hit with both a divine plague powered by ALL the pantheons of the "Evil/Monster/Non-Humanoid" races. With an extra helping of barbarian hordes as alerted by their gods to what was going on they all swarmed in to crush the weakened "civilized" races. Not co-operation but the various forces tolerating each others independent operations and presence for the moment because their gods had spoken and they could go back to fighting once "the humies" were dead. Chromatic and Metallic dragons ignoring each other to raze cities, Orc hordes headed to burn out the Elves letting Kobolds headed to dig out the gnomes pass by unmolested. Etc.

It was a glorious yet horrible campaign. One of the players was a druid and he lost half his family to the plague and had to kill the other half then Reincarnate them into "monster" race bodies. Which meant it took several times for some of them even with the extended reincarnation chart in use. The wizard spent all his time polymorphed, and had to Polymorph Other two other PCs to prevent them falling to the plague once they figured out how it worked. The Cleric's God ended up mass shapechanging ALL his clerics into lycanthropes unwillingly to save them from the plague and commanding them to turn others to save them. They wandered from one pocket of failing broken civilization to another gathering a following as they tried not to fall afoul of both the panicked civilized remnants and the "barbarian" races.