Nature's Role in Your Campaign

[Electric Wizard]

Sounds like a lot of people agree! Let me try to keep the thread interesting...

As much as I like nature itself as an antagonist, I admit that I haven't been able to use the idea effectively in D&D. My players have been stranded in swamps and lost in the mountains and forests. In lieu of typical monsters, I threw storms, landslides and earthquakes at them. Most of them escaped unfazed after one or two saving throws, and those who were affected walked off their ability damage in a matter of days. There were all on the higher end of low level.

I don't want to turn my game into Dungeons and Donner Parties, but I do think that the wilderness survival rules in the 3rd and 4th edition books are pretty tame. I'd like the wild to be something daunting enough to equalize the very powerful and the very weak. It shouldn't matter how long you've been fighting monsters or learning spells if you're stranded in the tundra and running low on food.

Has anyone used variant wilderness rules or survival scenario "encounters" that were nastier than usual? I'd prefer later edition-compatible rules because that's most likely what I'll run when I get back to the states.

 

[Umbran]

D&D worlds do seem to be fairly urbanised, compared to medieval Europe. But, as you say, the natural world in D&D isn't weak - it's full of monsters!

There's a strong argument that many/most of the monsters are not "natural", such that those who represent nature are as opposed to them as anyone else. I think you have to do a good bit of rewriting of most settings (and ecology) to have things like undead and aberrations be a part of the natural order.

As I noted up-thread, by comparison to the monsters, nature itself is pretty benign.

 

[S'mon]

Feywild stuff like owlbears is 'natural' in 4e, though, right?

 

[Umbran]

Feywild stuff like owlbears is 'natural' in 4e, though, right?

Owlbears come from what is, essentially, another plane of existence, so I'd say not. But that's me.

The 4e MM owlbear lore says, "Owlbears are dangerous predators of the Feywild that made their way to the natural world long ago."

So, by core rules they are not of the "natural world" per se. They are an invasive species. Your setting may vary.

 

[GhostBear]

I don't use nature as a force for good or evil; it just is, much like nature in our world. Nature is all about survival of the fittest - trying to find enough to eat while in turn trying to avoid being eaten.

I like nature and the wilderness to be largely an unknown place, aside from secretive druid covens and those few rangers who are brave (or stupid) enough to test their mettle out there.

I also like the idea of nature constantly pushing back against the expansion of civilization. If a town is for some reason vacated then it's going to be swallowed up by vines, small trees, tall grasses, etc. over time. And who knows what might have decided to claim someone's house or barn as a den.

Not because it's evil though, or because it's good. "Nature" is there to expand and survive and protect itself, just like civilization.

That said: I get really irked by encounter tables that include things like wolves and bears. Attacks on humans by wolves, bears, lions, sharks, etc. are really quite rare, and when someone is running a game and I'm getting attacked by yet another pack of wolves the third night in a row (wolf packs DO have territories and ranges, bears are actually quite non-confrontational) I just kinda want to puke.

Yeah, I know, fantasy world and all, but if every single animal - even the mundane ones - is out for blood 24/7 then they're all going to end up dead in a matter of days.

Fighting is dangerous - especially if you don't have the benefit of healers or simple bandages. A simple bite can carry disease, break a bone, or otherwise render you incapable of finding food at best. A wild animal with any significant injury is pretty much screwed - it's suddenly much more difficult to survive in an already dangerous, unforgiving situation. Add on top that it will be left behind by its pack/herd, if it happens to have one. Fighting just doesn't make sense a vast majority of the time.

Animals which have a strong urge to breed will fight over females but even then rarely is it a fight to the death - the smaller guy is smart enough to back off way before he gets hurt that badly. It is more posturing and intimidation than anything else because again, nobody really wants to get hurt. You get hurt, it's harder to survive, you're screwed.

So when a DM says to me, "You find a wild bear, and it attacks your party!" then there had better be some cubs or a den very close by (and even in the circumstances of cubs, unless you're standing right on top of them it's more likely that the bear will send her cubs up a tree, then try to scare you off instead of fight).

Now, D&D has some pretty big creatures, call them "Major Apex Predators", and I can see that attacking humans for food because it has a very reasonable expectation of killing a group of humans with minimal risk. But even then, I don't see why they would bother when a herd of dear is even less of a risk.

Unless they're desperate; imagine a wounded owlbear with a gimpy leg. Hasn't eaten in weeks. It can't move fast enough to catch a deer anymore, normal bears can smell it coming and they get the heck away, but may be desperate enough to see if it can snatch that halfling. Or, perhaps it has rabies. Something. Anything.

My current DM can be a slave to his random encounter tables. Myself and a fellow party member are trying to break him of this habit, or at least use his tables a little more intelligently.

DM: *Rolls Dice* Um, okay. You see a zebra! And it's charging towards you!
Party: A zebra? In a forest? Does it have a halter on it, as if it were an escaped, exotic pet?
DM: Nope, it's just a zebra...
Party: No brands or anything? No? Weird, okay, well maybe it's just hungry and thinks we'll feed it, because wild zebras don't hang out in forests.
DM: It attacks the halfling! Hooves flailing! It whinnies! Ten points of damage hoof damage!
Party: *Kills the zebra* Maybe it was mind controlled... There must be some crazy ass druid out here... Or... Oh god. A Zebra-o-mancer!
DM: Guys, no, please stay on track with the story...
Party: A wild, lone, carnivorous zebra in a forest sounds like a plot hook to me!
DM: Oh god...
Party: You brought it upon yourself, tee-hee! C'mon guys, let's go find the zebra-o-mancer!
DM: I hate you all.

As far as fey are concerned, I'm personally not fond of them in general and I use them only rarely, but I can see why some people really like them. They're cool flavor for certain settings. And, if you go by RAW they can be extremely lethal if they want to be - and players tend to know this - so they'll be very wary of making the fey angry.

Sorry to ramble / rant. I do that sometimes. Feels good.

 

[nedjer]

Harry Harrison's Deathworld meets Poison Ivy is good with me.

 

[Greg K]

That said: I get really irked by encounter tables that include things like wolves and bears. Attacks on humans by wolves, bears, lions, sharks, etc. are really quite rare, and when someone is running a game and I'm getting attacked by yet another pack of wolves the third night in a row (wolf packs DO have territories and ranges, bears are actually quite non-confrontational) I just kinda want to puke.

It might help to not think of encounter tables as meaning something for the players to fight, but rather things the party comes across/spots in the area.

 

[GhostBear]

It might help to not think of encounter tables as meaning something for the players to fight, but rather things the party comes across/spots in the area.

Tell that to every DM I've played under in the past 5 years. Personally, I don't use them except in specific circumstances.

 

[nedjer]

Tell that to every DM I've played under in the past 5 years. Personally, I don't use them except in specific circumstances.

I've no hesitation in turning a party's cross-country hike into a bit of an ordeal, but monster fight after monster fight - not enough options for story, pacing or mixing it up in there for me. I suspect these DMs are maybe of the my monsters v's your PCs variety?

 

[David Howery]

'nature is good'? Not in my DM days, it wasn't. Rangers being good made sense, since they were essentially modeled after Aragorn in LOTR; people who protected people not from the wilderness itself, but the bad things that live in the fantasy wilderness. I always figured them as being wise in the ways of normal critters, focusing more on things like humanoids and monsters that threatened to come out of the wilderness and attack innocent farmers and villagers. But for the PCs adventuring in the wilderness, I never pulled any punches. I had quite a few home-brewed rules for things like finding food and freezing in snowstorms (I'm also the guy who invented rules for jungle fever when you drink the water in a swamp)... when the WSG came out, I gleefully applied the rules from it to make life even more of a hell for the trekking PCs. And of course, one of the best things about adventuring in the wilderness is those wide open spaces... no turtling up in a 10' wide corridor. Attack from all sides, no worry about how a fireball fits into a room, etc. I usually drew up my own encounter tables to be heavily oriented towards herbivores (always more common than predators, and also more useful to hungry PCs) and had monster types a lot more rare. Nature was never 'good' in my campaigns, and getting through it was usually an adventure in itself...