Druids are not Hippies!

[Grover Cleaveland]

"Babyface Nelson, perforate him!"

*Babyface opens up with the BAR*

Heh. Yeah!

Druids are gangstas.

 

[Vraille Darkfang]

While this was an aside, the idea of dryads as an infection that trees can aquire is very intriguing.

Yoink!

Treant STD.

 

[Slobber Monster]

I haven't really gotten around to addressing the role of Druids in my own campaign world yet, but it is something that's been bugging me. The problem I have is the "tree hugging hippy conservationist" archetype doesn't really make sense to me in a world where civilization is just a tiny blip in the midst of savagery and untamed wilderness. Conservation makes sense to modern sensibilites because there is so little nature left. In a world with a more medieval or ancient ratio of man to nature the effort to conserve would hardly seem worthwhile with so much left unexplored and untamed. In fact, more effort must be spent the other way - to protect civilization from nature.

I guess writing the above helped me think through the issue - in my campaign world the typical Druid will use their mastery of nature to hold it back and keep it from destroying civilization.

 

[WayneLigon]

How is this even going to happen very often without the labor-saving technologies of today?
If it takes lots of sweat and toil and such to move rock and timber and such to build roads and buildings, wouldn't everything built be needed (or at least planned for it to be used)?

For things like some rich baron deciding he needs a hunting lodge with a 100-foot clearance in the middle of the The Dark Wood just because he wants a convenient place to hunt from. Hacking a road from the side of a mountain because silver has been discovered in those hills and someone wants to get rich. Draining a swamp because it's inconveniently in the way.

Things like that.

 

[Rackhir]

I haven't really gotten around to addressing the role of Druids in my own campaign world yet, but it is something that's been bugging me. The problem I have is the "tree hugging hippy conservationist" archetype doesn't really make sense to me in a world where civilization is just a tiny blip in the midst of savagery and untamed wilderness. Conservation makes sense to modern sensibilites because there is so little nature left. In a world with a more medieval or ancient ratio of man to nature the effort to conserve would hardly seem worthwhile with so much left unexplored and untamed. In fact, more effort must be spent the other way - to protect civilization from nature.

I guess writing the above helped me think through the issue - in my campaign world the typical Druid will use their mastery of nature to hold it back and keep it from destroying civilization.

Don't underestimate the ability of even primative civilizations to damage or destroy the enviroment. There is strong evidence that the Sahara has been created by milenia of grazing by goats. On Easter Island it's believed that they killed themselves off by cutting down all the trees to help build the menhir? (the Giant Stone Faces).

That said, Cure Disease, produce water, control weather and plant growth could fix a host of problems that plagued medieval societies.

 

[DM_Matt]

I prefer the channeler/enigmatic or the human0friendly-nature-magiscientist for PCs, and th eformer for the morally ambiguous, but the hippie druids make the best villains. Extreme environmentalist thought includes the proposition that humans are a plague upon the world whose dominence over other species must be rolled back. Now if someone is so committed to that that they can will earthquakes to happen, shoot fire from their hands, and turn into a bear, they probably really, really hate humanityIn fact, I allow such folk to be CE, and they may even take a modified version of the Vow of Poverty to eschew human inventions.

 

[Mercule]

Is Druidic magic Arcane now rather than Divine?

I've actually been considering switching this in my campaign.

 

[Mercule]

I've met at least one GM who says that anyone who plays a druid as anything but a violent eco-terrorist isn't playing the class right. o.o

This is my real rant. I don't mind if someone wants to play a hippie. I hate it when people seem indignant or incredulous that the class can be more than that. The sentiment that even an evil druid is just a mean, but still bunny-humping, hippy is just plain silly.

 

[Numion]

Druids drive HUMMERs in my campaign, I agree completely

 

[Slobber Monster]

Don't underestimate the ability of even primative civilizations to damage or destroy the enviroment. There is strong evidence that the Sahara has been created by milenia of grazing by goats. On Easter Island it's believed that they killed themselves off by cutting down all the trees to help build the menhir? (the Giant Stone Faces).

I don't doubt the possibility for this to occur, but I think the perception would be different. People would be much more likely to think something like "the gods are punishing us for our hubris" than to think "nature is fragile and precious, we must work to protect it from humanity". Not that I don't see any conservationists in such a world, but I think they're more likely to be crazy hermits than representatives of the guiding ideology of a powerful political or religious organization.