D&D 5E Animism in D&D

[Haldrik]

I am wondering if

• living natural features = fey nature spirits

A tree and or a forest is a spirit. A wolf and or a pack is a spirit. Sometimes a collective concept can be a nature spirit distinguishable from an individual concept. It depends on what seems "significant".

• nonliving natural features = elemental spirits

So the sun is an elemental, an iceberg is an elemental, and so on. Of course, in the mind of animists, everything is a "living" being.

The problem is, these feys and elementals are right here in the Material Plane. There is no other plane elsewhere.

Animism is this-worldly. There is often not even a concept of "somewhere else".

Also there seems to be no meaningful difference between the spirit of a human and the spirit of a mountain and the spirit of the sky and the spirit of a plant. Indeed, even the spirit of a human can leave human life behind and become a spirit of a natural feature instead. Vice versa. Nature spirits can "immigrate" sotospeak. Immigrants are rare, but stories mention examples of them, leaving one community of spirits and becoming members of an other community of spirits. Note the "marriages" between members of different kinds of natural features. Often one spouse is an immigrant and becomes as if a different kind of nature spirit.

For D&D, the biggest challenge is to decide what is happening while the player character is being a mountain.

 

[TheSword]

I dislike the terminology of "genius loci", because it is synonymous with "local gods", the god of a particular location, which is polytheism, thus in some ways the opposite of animism. For example, a Greek nymph is a goddess, and has nearby local humans who worship it.

Still it is an aspect of polytheism that preserves some proximity to its ancient animistic origins.

It is extremely important to understand, that there is no "worship" in animism. The relationship between a human and a nature spirit, is moreorless identical to the relationship between one human and an other human. Some humans might be more eccentric than other humans, but these are fundamentally human relationships.

The D&D references to genius loci that I referenced have nothing to do with worship. You may be considering it in the Ancient Greek and Roman sense. I was pointing you towards the modern fantasy version.

That said I think I was answering a question you didn’t ask. Not how to run them as an encounter but rather some form of mechanic in your game for players as well. The examples I gave would be too powerful for player characters.

 

[Haldrik]

I am saying "mountain" as an ongoing example, because it normally just sits there, and is a clear example of the challenges of how to make it playable. But a nature spirit can be anything, even a cat, even the spirit of a natural human, even a house. The tv series Tales of the Loop feels animistic to me, but our culture it is machines − even abandoned car parts − that are gaining a "personality" of their own.

Say the psionic mountain manifests as a human (or some comparable heritage). I assume psionic-magic transparency. Mental magic is just an other method of magic. This human is a magical construct. Thus antimagic field would dispel this human, or perhaps suppress it. This human might not be able to enter the space of a Circle of Protection spell! Maybe unless invited in by the caster.

And so on. Being a character that is a magical construct could have fun implications. At the same time, some interactions with the game rules that might be problematic need fixes.

 

[jgsugden]

The key features seem to be:

• The thing is granted power because of cultural significance. The more well known and the more considered it is, the more powerful it is.
• It is not worshipped. People do not ask it for anything. They do not expect anything of it. They may know the spirit exists, and that it is tied to the thing that is so important to them, but there is no faith involved.

I would go with a Fey Spirit. I'd tie it to the Feywild, so that the being itself is within the Feywild and their manifestation is in the Prime Material Plane. I'd feature the whimsy of the Seelie Court ibn many of these spirits, making them something to be feared for their unpredictable nature, but not feared for being malicious. It would feed off of the awe and respect of intelligent creatures.

 

[Marandahir]

I think the Warlock might be an interesting way to model an Animist or Shaman, connected to and drawing power from their duty and communion with the ancestors carved into the landscape and living through the memory and story rather than an active mover-and-shaker in the cosmos. Bard, Cleric, and Druid all give a taste of this concept too (especially the College of Spirits Bard recently playtested).

 

[Azzy]

Really, I'm not seeing the need for actual game mechanic representation. A lot of this is simply story and background elements and DM handwavery. You could reskin just about any extant race (or, with Tasha's coming out soon, build a cutom race to hit the notes you want) using your chosen story elements.

 

[Haldrik]

I think the Warlock might be an interesting way to model an Animist or Shaman, connected to and drawing power from their duty and communion with the ancestors carved into the landscape and living through the memory and story rather than an active mover-and-shaker in the cosmos. Bard, Cleric, and Druid all give a taste of this concept too (especially the College of Spirits Bard recently playtested).

At least the reallife shamans that I read about, the source of ones power is the shaman oneself. For example, when a shaman goes into a trance and sends ones mind outofbody to visit nearby nature spirits, that is their own personal magical skill. The shaman is innately magical, personally. Humans and nature spirits do the same kinds of magic in the same kinds of ways. Everyone is capable of doing magic, even if some seem more talented at it.

That said, I have in mind a reallife shaman from an anthropological study.

When the young man was learning how to be a shaman, a particular nature spirit visited him and offered to show him how to do magic. Sometimes the spirit would show up as a young woman his age, sometimes she would show up as a winged tiger, and sometimes in other guises. They established a kind of teacher student relationship. Many of the visits had some lesson about magic in mind. But by the time of the study, the shaman is a competent wielder of magic. He still keeps in touch with the spirit every now and then. But he has learned, all the techniques that she showed him how to do.

It is one expert teaching a student. Now the student is an expert oneself, and can teach other students how to do it.

Generally, the job of a shaman is as a peacemaker, to make sure that everyone in the community is getting along. Sometimes a fight breaks out between humans and the shaman might help reconcile them, or arbitrate a dispute. Sometimes the fight is between a human and some part of the landscape. Sometimes the fight is between two nature spirits. And the shaman can try to help to prevent the situation from escalating.

Note, just like one human can magically charm an other human, one nature spirit can magically charm an other nature spirit. One incident has a different shaman who was unable to foresee the future of a certain situation. So she charmed a nearby nature spirit to get it to foresee the future for her.

 

[Haldrik]

Really, I'm not seeing the need for actual game mechanic representation. A lot of this is simply story and background elements and DM handwavery. You could reskin just about any extant race (or, with Tasha's coming out soon, build a cutom race to hit the notes you want) using your chosen story elements.

I think "narrative adjudiction", covers alot of the situation, since most of it seems outside of combat. There some mechanical things that are interesting.

Likewise, a player needs to have a good sense of what the character can and cant do when switching back and forth between mountain form, disembodied spirit form, and human form.

 

[Imaculata]

I have to say, I love this concept. It is perfect for a player character or an npc. I feel tempted to play a character like this the next time I play in someone's campaign, because it is such a neat idea for a backstory.

I imagine when such a spirit dies, it turns to stone and moss, and flowers spontaneously appear around the body. The mountain instantly knows its avatar is dead, and it starts raining on the mountain, as the mountain weeps. The rain fills everyone in that area with a feeling of sadness, making strangers weep without knowing why.

Such a character wouldn't need to have any special powers. The heroic attributes that any pc has in D&D are enough of a gift. But it would inform how such a character sees the world, and talks about their experiences. A druid or any kind of spellcaster would fit this sort of character nicely. They would probably have high wisdom and charisma. Any druids should also be able to recognize the character as being a spirit of the mountain.

I wonder, would such a character also have the memories of the mountain, and of past selves?

 

[Tonguez]

In 3e I used “Genius Loci druid” with a Treant servitor to represent the concept and then overlayed it with narrative, eventually a PC ranger became the new Servitor.

PF also has Loci spirits in its Occult Adventures rules.

Personally as someone from an Animist culture, I’d consider warlock as a close approximation. My tribe refer to the mountain directly overlooking town as “Grandmother”, her husband is the taller snow capped peak behind her. We beleive it is she who prepared the land and called for people to come. Our ancestor successfully entered her domain and she gave the waters which nurture us - our name for the area translates as “breast milk”. In DnD terms I’d be happy to consider her to be my ‘patron’ and to learn from her.

We recognise that humans are the last born of creation and that we relate to everything else as a younger sibling in need of guidance. A ’Expert/Priest’ is someone who has learnt to interact with these spiritual elder siblings in accordance with proper tradition and respectful protocols that were established by the ancestral heroes...