D&D General How do you make your nature-aligned characters more compelling than “Radagast, but with a bow?”

[Bitbrain]

My dad always plays his nature-based characters as angry, bitter, and borderline antisocial.

EDIT
After reading through the OP, I guess that I just have the villains be actively malicious.
Druid may not give a __ (insert expletive of choice) about anything except leaving nature untouched, but he will help other people if those same people are keeping him alive against an evil dragon that wants to kill him, burn his forest, and then poison the land so the trees never grow back again...

 

[Tony Vargas]

A druid sees threats to his woods as evil, no matter if the threat arises from a marauding orc horde burning down his trees or from loggers cutting down to many of the trees for cleared areas and building material to expand the city.

Ugh.
OK, maybe a 19th century Druid Revivalist who reads Thoreau in his study decorated with original Bierstadts.

 

[Coroc]

Ugh.
OK, maybe a 19th century Druid Revivalist who reads Thoreau in his study decorated with original Bierstadts.

Ahm, then how in your view does the archetypical druid see said threats?
"Orcs are bad but that's the way of nature"?
"The loggers cannot see the power of Gea yet so they make mistakes"?

Please elaborate on how you would characterize the views a druid might have.

 

[ccs]

So help me out here. How do you go about making a ranger or a druid with meaty plot hooks?

Same way I do any other character. I consider the character I'm writing up. How they fit into their starting area, their friends/family/goals/beliefs etc. Sometimes their class is a key element here, other times it's a result.

And from the GM's side, how do you allow such a character to become central to a campaign's conflict?

Well, to start with, my campaigns rarely have a single overall conflict. Instead most are strings of individual adventures each spanning a lv or three. Some things overlap or might be affected by earlier adventures. Some things are entirely player generated though.
This is not the story of Storm Kings Thunder. It's a chronicle of the adventures of {this particular party}. SKT is but one of the chapters.

But really, the same way I do with any other character. I take what the player provides - either in their backstory or through play & I use it.
For ex: Tonight we learned that the Teifling Warlock, prior to falling into the adventuring life alongside the Paladin & Cleric, hails from the Octopus Islands. One large central isle & 8 smaller oblong & arched surrounding ones. She fled to the mainland to avoid local customs of marriage.
Not sure what I'm going to do with this info, & it won't be immediate, but it'll come into play.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Ahm, then how in your view does the archetypical druid see said threats?

It terms of the threat they pose to his tribe/people/culture.

Please elaborate on how you would characterize the views a druid might have.

The issue I have with the tree-hugger stereotype of the Druid is that it's wildly anachronistic, even for D&D, and doesn't accord the forces the Druid mediates with the proper respect. I mean, it's one thing to have a rapier in a supposedly medieval setting, but conservationism didn't even get rolling until mid/late 19th century, when industrialization was in full swing. Outside of a setting like Eberron, completely out of place.

The Druid or other nature-oriented class wouldn't see rampaging orcs or an expansionist city-state as a threat to Nature, because Nature is this vast, spiritual/divine/animistic power far beyond mortal ken that could crush them. He propitiates, seeks to understand, and in times of need calls upon that power - in a more granular emulation of the sources of inspiration, probably not without risk.

It's the idea that "Nature" is the delicate thing that all-powerful/all-knowing mankind must restrain itself to avoid damaging, or take a custodial role in. That's completely at odds with the view point of a tribal or animistic or polytheistic iron-age society, let alone a nature-Priest with those same roots.

As usual in D&D, the exception is those darn wizards. If some mad wizard is bringing down another rain of colorless fire or invents defilement and starts rendering every living thing in range to dust for mana, yeah, nature's gonna need some protecting - but, really, so is everyone/thing else.

 

[Undrave]

As usual in D&D, the exception is those darn wizards. If some mad wizard is bringing down another rain of colorless fire or invents defilement and starts rendering every living thing in range to dust for mana, yeah, nature's gonna need some protecting - but, really, so is everyone/thing else.

Bloody Wizards ><

 

[Frankie1969]

Probably not what you're looking for, but I had a grand time playing a druid who strove to balance the four classical elements...

Since there's a lot less fire in the world than air, water, or earth, that meant his primary activity was to set things on fire. Did you know there are many wonderful plants whose seeds only spread during a fire? For true balance, 1/4th of all life should be pyrophilic.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Ahm, then how in your view does the archetypical druid see said threats?
"Orcs are bad but that's the way of nature"?
"The loggers cannot see the power of Gea yet so they make mistakes"?

Please elaborate on how you would characterize the views a druid might have.

Any of those, or none.

You sit six people of faith down in a room and you will get at least seven different viewpoints.

 

[jgsugden]

Ranger and druid can be a calling, but not the core of a character.

A LG Glasyna Tiefling Ranger - she was cast off at birth and cared for by a druidic circle. She was an orphan with no family history or idea of from where she came... until she spoke to an elder elven druid who used magic to discern her origins. She was a direct descendent of an Archangel. Her great, great, great, great, great Grandfather was once the mightiest and holiest of the Archangels. She lived her youth believing this truth as a fundametal element of who she was, shaping her into the arrow of purest holy service in the order of druids and rangers... until the day she realized that her ancestor Archangel fell and took on the name Asmodeus.

Since that day she has struggled to deal with what she perceived to be the duality in her ancestry. She comes from the most noble of bloodlines, but it is a bloodline that fell and needs to be redeemed. She uses the skills she learned from the druids to be a ranger, protector and missionary. She seeks to redeem those that she can persuade to follow a righteous path, and send the unredeemable to Hell with messages for Glasnya and Asmodeus, encouraging them to look for the light in their bloodline, using her journey as proof that her bloodline can be redeemed.

This is a character that is a ranger, without being just a ranger. They have a story to tell, and motivations that align with what they might obtain from their training, but they are not just a CTRL-C, CTRL-V of Aragorn.

 

[MarkB]

How about playing your character as a sort of espionage agent, sent out by the local druidic circle to mingle in civilised lands, learn of any plans they have that will affect the nearby wilderness regions, and occasionally be assigned specific missions to thwart or redirect any particularly egregious encroachments.

Radagast with a bow-tie, if you like.