Cityscape ToC

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

To you, an "urband druid" is a variant druid class.

Well, and to other people on this thread who brought it up and specifically cited the one in the Dragon Compendium.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

What humans are would be represented by civilization and structure and edifice, not a druid with a city coat of paint.

How about Feng Shui as an underlying concept of urban druidism?

 

[Cthulhudrew]

They don't have their own eco-systems. No city that has ever stood on the face of the Earth could feed itself without the addition of the countryside, and having one in fantasy would be a unique fantasy construct of its own. Cities only feed themselves by organized influence on the environment, civilization. That doesn't, to me, suggest anything like a druid.

Well, to be fair, the druid as PC concept isn't really all that much like a RW druid anyway, so I suppose it comes down to definitions of what you're supposed to be representing.

 

[JustKim]

Human cities are not comparable to anthills or termite mounds. Even fire ants serve a crucial ecological role, and ants have adapted to living under nature, such as building toward the sun to keep egg chambers the perfect temperature. Without ants and other decomposers we would probably be knee deep in dead bodies, and in a setting with a lot of murderous monsters it would be worse. Beehives are responsible for the survival of about half the plant species on earth. Termites are adapted to eat fibers that most animals can't digest, decompose dead growth and replenish soil nutrients. Humans do not do these things. We've never adapted to give anything back because as soon as a behavior becomes difficult to continue, we use our intelligence to make it less difficult.

Human cities are very destructive to environmental cycles. They strip soil nutrients. They close or restrict water flows. They stop resources and minerals from going where they need to, cause beaches to erode, and even in a dark ages setting pollute air and water locally on a destructive scale. Human waste and burial customs mean that consumed nutrients are usually completely wasted. The only living things beside humans which thrive in cities are opportunist species that thrive wherever native species cannot compete with them. I could go on for pages.

I don't really have an opinion on the urban druid, but this "human cities are ecosystems too" is absurd.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Humans are hardly unique in their destructive behavior on environments. They're just REALLY, REALLY good at it, but they're not doing anything that beavers and locusts haven't done before them, albeit at a lower level of proficiency. Humans are animals and are acting on the same impulses that drive most other species.

And many species thrive in cities that did just fine in the wild. The Asian rock dove adapted to human cities thousands of years ago and is now known as the common pigeon. The European sparrow has made a similar progression. Today, coyotes, various birds of prey and other species all live in cities. To call them "opportunistic" seems strangely judgemental of them responding to the biological imperative to survive and breed.

Nature is not a benevolent engine, it's red in tooth and claw. Humanity's teeth and claws are just particularly red.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

So, anyway, anyone got the book now? Willing to go into more detail about it?

 

[JustKim]

Opportunistic species is the biological classification for a species that moves in wherever an ecosystem has been disrupted and competitors have been removed. I do know what I'm talking about!

I picked up the book today and thought I'd come to the thread to discuss it, only to find human civilizations being compared to anthills. I had no choice but to start an internet argument and defend earth's noblest creatures. I haven't read much so far, I was mostly hoping to see what others had enjoyed so I knew where to stop skimming. I'm not going to have time to read the whole thing and give an overview tonight, but I'll be up for a while if anybody has specific questions.

 

[Felon]

Human cities are very destructive to environmental cycles. They strip soil nutrients. They close or restrict water flows. They stop resources and minerals from going where they need to, cause beaches to erode, and even in a dark ages setting pollute air and water locally on a destructive scale. Human waste and burial customs mean that consumed nutrients are usually completely wasted. The only living things beside humans which thrive in cities are opportunist species that thrive wherever native species cannot compete with them. I could go on for pages. I don't really have an opinion on the urban druid, but this "human cities are ecosystems too" is absurd.

Yeah, I agree. This notion that cities aren't a corruption of nature, but rather just a new facet of it--well, that sounds very hip and post-modern, but the logic is rather spurious and antithetical to what a druid represents; a bond with the world in a natural state, as the gods or spirits of nature would have it be. In traditional fantasy, the reason why druids, elves, fey etcetera oppose urbanization is because the act of cutting down trees for lumber and carving stones into masonry severs their ties to nature. Pointing to the vermin that subside off of civilization's refuse (which is pretty much what? basically pigeons and rats and roaches?) and calling that an ecosystem seems like reaching, especially considering that those vermin only exist in inverse proportion to how aggressively city-dwellers attempt to exterminate them.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Pointing to the vermin that subside off of civilization's refuse (which is pretty much what? basically pigeons and rats and roaches?) and calling that an ecosystem seems like reaching, especially considering that those vermin only exist in inverse proportion to how aggressively city-dwellers attempt to exterminate them.

As opposed to out in the forest, where rabbits only exist in inverse proportion to the number of wolves?

 

[Felon]

Yep, exactly; as opposed to the rabbit/wolf scenario, where the whole "circle of life" thing takes place. Note that the fewer small prey there is, the less food there is for the wolves. It's self-correcting.

No circle of life in the city vermin scenario, where the vermin don't even help eliminate refuse by consuming it, they just add more filth.