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Aquatosic
2013-04-16, 10:26 PM
This is the new thread to discuss druid morality in the same manner as my previous Paladin Code Intellectual exercise thread:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=279535

BWR
2013-04-16, 11:45 PM
For those interested, a wonderful example of what a Good druid can look like is the kuakgan in Elizabeth Moon's "The Deed of Paksenarrion".

Rhynn
2013-04-17, 01:53 AM
For those interested, a wonderful example of what a Good druid can look like is the kuakgan in Elizabeth Moon's "The Deed of Paksenarrion".

Since we're plugging the same great sources, Nwm in the Tales of Wyre (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?58227-Tales-of-Wyre) is a great druid. He's a cross between Oscar Wilde and Timothy Leary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Leary), and is a "hippie druid done right." Completely awesome.

Calmar
2013-04-17, 01:29 PM
To me druids are priests of the gods and forces of nature. Druids protect people from nature, not vice versa.

Janus
2013-04-17, 04:15 PM
In a splatbook for the EverQuest pen and paper game, I read that there's a huge section of forest between the orcs and elves. This forest is full of giant spiders and both the orcs and elves would love to just burn it down so they can get at each other more easily.
But the druids will go ape-poop if that happens because the spider webs are so dang pretty.

If you're not only willing to allow giant spiders to live but actively protecting them, you need to reevaluate your priorities. *nod*

Sith_Happens
2013-04-17, 04:37 PM
This is the new thread to discuss druid morality in the same manner as my previous Paladin Code Intellectual exercise thread:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=279535

While I appreciate the idea, it's just not the same for a class that doesn't have two paragraphs of vague RAW on the subject for people to argue about.:smalltongue:

Rhynn
2013-04-18, 10:30 AM
To me druids are priests of the gods and forces of nature. Druids protect people from nature, not vice versa.

That's an interesting take - I think I might use that in my setting.

So far, I've figured a Lawful-Neutral-Chaotic system, where the main (human) religions are a vaguely Zoroastrian dualistic religion (with the Good/Light/Eros/Creation side corrupted into a "Church of Light" that bans all other religions; and a lot of the Evil/Dark/Thanatos/Destruction side being sociopaths), with druids as the Neutral outsiders, an "old faith" of animism found in or near rural communities.

Making druids the protectors of those communities from nature, rather than protectors of nature, could work out great. Their job is to limit the effects of storms, forest fires, predation, etc., without wiping out nature (exterminating wolves, clear-cutting, etc.).


While I appreciate the idea, it's just not the same for a class that doesn't have two paragraphs of vague RAW on the subject for people to argue about.:smalltongue:

So true. Druidic moral questions would probably be a little more complex and nuanced than paladin questions usually are...

JusticeZero
2013-04-18, 10:49 AM
Looking at the forest type people of the world, we see that there are cultures that actively cultivate and tend to "natural" forests; they get rid of deadwood, clear up the occasional problem, and so on.

This includes, yes, "saving spiders". They don't do this because the spiders are ooh so pretty, and so much less valuable than the silly military people on either side, they do this because a tended forest keeps everyone in their culture well fed much better than an untended forest, and because if those silly people on either side go marching through, they'll make a mess of things, ruin their food supply, and then probably go killing their wives and daughters and sons for fun while on the way to go skewer the folks on the other side. So this is a completely sensible thing for them to do!

Janus
2013-04-18, 11:42 AM
I remain of the opinion that giant spiders are a greater blight on the world than an elf/orc war could ever dream of being.

Calmar
2013-04-18, 12:33 PM
That's an interesting take - I think I might use that in my setting.

So far, I've figured a Lawful-Neutral-Chaotic system, where the main (human) religions are a vaguely Zoroastrian dualistic religion (with the Good/Light/Eros/Creation side corrupted into a "Church of Light" that bans all other religions; and a lot of the Evil/Dark/Thanatos/Destruction side being sociopaths), with druids as the Neutral outsiders, an "old faith" of animism found in or near rural communities.

Making druids the protectors of those communities from nature, rather than protectors of nature, could work out great. Their job is to limit the effects of storms, forest fires, predation, etc., without wiping out nature (exterminating wolves, clear-cutting, etc.).

I think the separation of clerics and druids and the development of the latter towards the "protector of nature" concept often seen in fantasy fiction is misleading. There is likely no fundamental difference between, say, a Egyptian priest performing the necessary rituals to ensure a sufficient inundation of the Nile, a Sumerian priest performing a ritual against drought, or a Celtic druid performing a ritual for a deadly winter to end end springtime to arrive (Here I assume a campaign world that works more of less like real-world Antiquity to early Middle-Ages).

Where the forces of nature are dangerous, where gods are real and supernatural dangers prey, people thus depend on the wisdom of priests to guide them against the perils of the world surrounding them.

I don't see druids a ecologically aware vegetarians, or hippies, or eco terrorists that fight against farmers. To me, druids must show respect to the forces of nature, but not out of smugness, but because they know the dangers of doing otherwise.

JusticeZero
2013-04-18, 12:35 PM
That's because you dont live on the battlefield.
Druid: We know where the spider is, it eats leftovers and other stuff that annoys us, and it keeps those idiot pointyears from burning down our farms and houses. Awesome! See if we can grow more.

JusticeZero
2013-04-18, 12:46 PM
Mumford noted stages of civilization. (Many, including Mumford, have expressed that this was a bad idea for most of the people involved.) Druids are the live in nature types that work with the forest and turn it into a lush and human-friendly (if you know them) place.
Clerics are more related to the people who burn the forest, enslave the peasants, and tax them to build armies and fancy cities for dead people (living people are left to eovels on the outskirts).

Rhynn
2013-04-18, 01:26 PM
I think the separation of clerics and druids and the development of the latter towards the "protector of nature" concept often seen in fantasy fiction is misleading. There is likely no fundamental difference between, say, a Egyptian priest performing the necessary rituals to ensure a sufficient inundation of the Nile, a Sumerian priest performing a ritual against drought, or a Celtic druid performing a ritual for a deadly winter to end end springtime to arrive (Here I assume a campaign world that works more of less like real-world Antiquity to early Middle-Ages).

Well, the thing with D&D is the weird evolution of... everything. Clerics were originally Lawful and definitely crypto/pseudo-Christian. Anti-clerics were Chaotic and worshipped demons and devils. Druids were Neutral but were also not a character class at first, but a human "monster" (in Blackmoor IIRC).

Obviously, pretty soon (first Deities & Demigods) clerics became priests of any deity... but druids already existed as a separate thing by then.

In AD&D 2E, druids have a bunch of kinda-weird abilities and a weird advancement system, but otherwise they're just clerics with different sphere access.

VeisuItaTyhjyys
2013-04-18, 03:44 PM
I never really got why druids can't wear metal armor. Metal is in nature, even alloys are essentially as "natural" as leather is, and they can wear armor made of wood, so it's not like they object to damaging the environment to get it. What's the deal?

Frozen_Feet
2013-04-18, 04:02 PM
Only a few metals actually exist in pure form in nature - mostly gold, and the rare occasion of meteoric iron.

All other metals need to be refined from ore. This needs big fires. If coal is not abundant, those big fires are going to be made by burning wood, leading to deforestation. If coal is abundant, it needs to be dug out, requiring upturning untold tons of earth and polluting the surroundings.

And then there's the mining required for getting the ore itself, and the various poisonous by-products of refining the ore... suffice to say that for any sect interested in protecting nature, protesting against metallic items makes tons of sense.

TheCountAlucard
2013-04-18, 04:17 PM
Except they're just fine with metal weapons.

VeisuItaTyhjyys
2013-04-18, 04:31 PM
Also, couldn't they just create all the fire they needed with no fuel whatsoever, being druids?

Rhynn
2013-04-18, 04:35 PM
I never really got why druids can't wear metal armor. Metal is in nature, even alloys are essentially as "natural" as leather is, and they can wear armor made of wood, so it's not like they object to damaging the environment to get it. What's the deal?

It's bizarre nonsense. They can also explicitly use metal weapons, like sickles and scimitars.


deforestation

That'd be a matter of scale. I'm pretty sure bog-iron* smelting pits didn't even begin to deforest ancient Finland...

Plus, you know, irrelevant. Druids cannot use metal armor created with wall of iron and fabricate.

* Bog-iron being iron you get out of a bog with, essentially, a dragnet. No mining involved.

Frozen_Feet
2013-04-18, 05:44 PM
Except they're just fine with metal weapons.

Yeah, yeah, I know. That part's just stupid. :smalltongue:



That'd be a matter of scale. I'm pretty sure bog-iron* smelting pits didn't even begin to deforest ancient Finland...

It's because the trees outnumbered us hundred to one. :smalltongue:

nedz
2013-04-18, 07:57 PM
Only a few metals actually exist in pure form in nature - mostly gold, and the rare occasion of meteoric iron.

All other metals need to be refined from ore. This needs big fires. If coal is not abundant, those big fires are going to be made by burning wood, leading to deforestation. If coal is abundant, it needs to be dug out, requiring upturning untold tons of earth and polluting the surroundings.

And then there's the mining required for getting the ore itself, and the various poisonous by-products of refining the ore... suffice to say that for any sect interested in protecting nature, protesting against metallic items makes tons of sense.

Mining requires lots of wood for pit-props, shoring, stope revetments, etc.


I'm pretty sure bog-iron* smelting pits didn't even begin to deforest ancient Finland...

Bog iron is iron oxide which means that it still has to be smelted, with fire.
In fact most iron in nature occurs as iron oxide and returns to that form given half a chance. Rust is the thing here. Meteorites are different being mainly iron/nickel alloys.

Water_Bear
2013-04-18, 08:23 PM
Druid Dilemma;

There is a cataclysm coming which you and your fellow adventurers plan to prevent, one which could potentially threaten the cosmic balance itself. Knowing that the crisis is soon at hand, your party has spent the last year raising resources and winning allies (which coincidentally both happen to involve dungeon-crawling). Even more importantly, the hard won experience and treasure from these quests have made your party a force to be reckoned with; high-level adventurers who are ready to face the fight of their lives defending the world...

...except for you, because this is a 2e game and there can only be one 15th level or higher Druid in the world. And unlike the last two times this sort of thing happened, you can't even beat them up; to become the Grand Druid you need to actually convince the old Grand Druid to step down forever and take their role as leader of the world's Druids. A role which, since you are going to be busy (and quite possibly off-Plane) for the foreseeable future, you cannot possibly fulfill. Not to mention the fact that becoming a Grand Druid requires the last one to appoint you, so dying while 15th-16th level means possibly ending the line permanently.

So here's the conundrum; do you throw the Druidic Order into anarchy for at least the next few years, knowing that without a strong leader in the coming storm much of the natural world will suffer, or do you handicap yourself fighting a multiversal imbalance to preserve the Order?

Frozen_Feet
2013-04-18, 08:39 PM
Become the big honcho of druids, then take all the other druids with you to combat the threat. Hey, if I'm endangering existence and stability of my order... :smalltongue:

Aquatosic
2013-04-18, 08:56 PM
I remain of the opinion that giant spiders are a greater blight on the world than an elf/orc war could ever dream of being.
Unless they are actively malevolent, they are just nuetral animals with a role in the food chain. The scenario said that the spiders were keeping the orcs and the elves from going to war by being in the way, not that the spiders were attacking their villages. Just because an animal is terrifying and dangerous if provoked does not mean it is a demonic blight on the world.

Aquatosic
2013-04-18, 08:58 PM
The idea of evil druids confuses me. Enlighten me?

JusticeZero
2013-04-18, 09:04 PM
An evil druid protects and manipulates nature as a tool or means to an end. When the forest swallows the ghost town that was abandoned when the food went away, it is a druid picking through it..

Deophaun
2013-04-18, 10:12 PM
They don't do this because the spiders are ooh so pretty, and so much less valuable than the silly military people on either side, they do this because a tended forest keeps everyone in their culture well fed much better than an untended forest
Right up until someone invents agriculture, then a slashed-and-burned field keeps everyone fed better than a tended forest.

I do, however, have an idea for a craftsman who is a druid because the wood in the surrounding forest makes the most exquisite-sounding instruments. I think that boat-builder guy in the recent Vikings series would also be a good archetype for a druid.

Sith_Happens
2013-04-18, 10:22 PM
The idea of evil druids confuses me. Enlighten me?

Leeky Windstaff will enlighten you. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0344.html)

Aquatosic
2013-04-18, 10:33 PM
Leeky Windstaff will enlighten you. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0344.html)

I was thinking of him and he confused me.

Janus
2013-04-18, 10:49 PM
Unless they are actively malevolent, they are just nuetral animals with a role in the food chain. The scenario said that the spiders were keeping the orcs and the elves from going to war by being in the way, not that the spiders were attacking their villages. Just because an animal is terrifying and dangerous if provoked does not mean it is a demonic blight on the world.
Turns out I was wrong on the spiders' placement- there's a huge thicket maze between the orcs and elves which local druids protect. The spiders are off in a corner on the continent where they slaughter anyone that enters, but druids love to sneak in because "oh so pretty."

See, these spiders aren't native to those woods. They invaded it and covered it in so much webbing that all sunlight is blocked.
If they've destroyed so much there, where else will they go? Giant spiders are known for their cruelty, so much so that not even the druid hippies can reason with them!
They're going to kill us all unless we contact the local (and maybe not so local) wizards guilds and unleash great balls of fire upon them.
Oh, did I mention that the spider matriarchs are 15' in length?

JusticeZero
2013-04-18, 10:53 PM
Right up until someone invents agriculture, then a slashed-and-burned field keeps everyone fed better than a tended forest.Research has found that to not be the case, actually. Agriculture is really inefficient, but it's easy to meter and tax. Metering and taxing is better for the guy who wants to sit around all day sending his thugs to abuse the peasants while he builds vast palaces for the dead.

Deophaun
2013-04-18, 11:06 PM
Research has found that to not be the case, actually. Agriculture is really inefficient,..
Forgive me if I question the conclusions of this research.

Metering and taxing is better for the guy who wants to sit around all day sending his thugs to abuse the peasants while he builds vast palaces for the dead.
Using a workforce that apparently has less food, according to your research, and so wouldn't build nearly as vast palaces for the dead as they would if they didn't use "really inefficient" agriculture instead of the bounty of the forest.

Yeah, not buying it. History would have been drastically different if true.

Janus
2013-04-18, 11:11 PM
Forgive me if I question the conclusions of this research.
I have to agree, especially considering how quickly humanity abandoned the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

TuggyNE
2013-04-18, 11:45 PM
Turns out I was wrong on the spiders' placement- there's a huge thicket maze between the orcs and elves which local druids protect. The spiders are off in a corner on the continent where they slaughter anyone that enters, but druids love to sneak in because "oh so pretty."

See, these spiders aren't native to those woods. They invaded it and covered it in so much webbing that all sunlight is blocked.
If they've destroyed so much there, where else will they go? Giant spiders are known for their cruelty, so much so that not even the druid hippies can reason with them!
They're going to kill us all unless we contact the local (and maybe not so local) wizards guilds and unleash great balls of fire upon them.
Oh, did I mention that the spider matriarchs are 15' in length?

OK, so at what point do druids support invasive exotic species over, y'know, everything else? Gotta say that just doesn't add up.


Research has found that to not be the case, actually. Agriculture is really inefficient, but it's easy to meter and tax. Metering and taxing is better for the guy who wants to sit around all day sending his thugs to abuse the peasants while he builds vast palaces for the dead.

I have to say, the way this "research" tars all agriculture with one brush is pretty impressive. Also, more than a little puzzling; if hunter-gatherer lifestyles are so great and efficient, why didn't the tribes that stuck to that expand beyond their tiny areas?

(Because it's only efficient for a very limited population density, of course. You are enlightened.)

Frozen_Feet
2013-04-19, 12:57 AM
Early agriculture was not much more effective than hunting-gathering or nomadisms, which is why people didn't just abandon those lifestyles. (Seriously. Multiple nomadic and hunting-gathering cultures persisted looooooong after agriculture was invented.) Emphasis on early.

But regardless of what advantages early agriculture *did* have, it did seriously impact human health... in a negative way. This is pretty much uncontested in modern archeology: stationary lifestyle made people much more vulnerable to diseases, and problems caused by grain-based diet continue to afflict people to these days.

Once people got past the slash-and-burn stage and to more effective forms of farming, then agriculture eclipsed other forms of subsistence. But that required several other innovations on top of simple farming, such as fertilizers, better plants, plows etc.

TuggyNE
2013-04-19, 01:08 AM
Once people got past the slash-and-burn stage and to more effective forms of farming, then agriculture eclipsed other forms of subsistence. But that required several other innovations on top of simple farming, such as fertilizers, better plants, plows etc.

Fair enough, and that might be what rubs me the wrong way about those sorts of claims; hunter-gather lifestyles are basically a dead end, because (as far as I can tell) there's not a whole lot you can do to improve them beyond a certain point.

Rhynn
2013-04-19, 03:04 AM
Bog iron is iron oxide which means that it still has to be smelted, with fire.
In fact most iron in nature occurs as iron oxide and returns to that form given half a chance. Rust is the thing here. Meteorites are different being mainly iron/nickel alloys.

:smallconfused:

I know how bog-iron is smelted. I don't know what you think you read, exactly... I said the smelting-pits (involves burying a smoldering pile of burnt wood, basically) didn't begin to deforest Finland...


...except for you, because this is a 2e game and there can only be one 15th level or higher Druid in the world. And unlike the last two times this sort of thing happened, you can't even beat them up; to become the Grand Druid you need to actually convince the old Grand Druid to step down forever and take their role as leader of the world's Druids. A role which, since you are going to be busy (and quite possibly off-Plane) for the foreseeable future, you cannot possibly fulfill. Not to mention the fact that becoming a Grand Druid requires the last one to appoint you, so dying while 15th-16th level means possibly ending the line permanently.

So here's the conundrum; do you throw the Druidic Order into anarchy for at least the next few years, knowing that without a strong leader in the coming storm much of the natural world will suffer, or do you handicap yourself fighting a multiversal imbalance to preserve the Order?

:smallcool: This being 2E, differences between levels are not so stark anyway, you already maxed out with 7th-level spells at 14th level, and you'd need freaking 1,500,000 XP (going from 1.5 MXP to 3 MXP) to get from 14th to 15th, anyway! So it's not as bad as all that.

Also, there can only be one 15th-level Grand Druid, there can be infinite 16th+ level Hierophant Druids. Presumably they can come back if necessary to appoint a new Grand Druid.

Finally, I don't buy that the druids would be in anarchy - they've got great leadership redundancy. The Great Druids would run things fine, and I doubt even they have much contact with the archdruids, who I doubt have much contact (but more) with druids (the 12th-level ones).


An evil druid protects and manipulates nature as a tool or means to an end. When the forest swallows the ghost town that was abandoned when the food went away, it is a druid picking through it..

I'd say more they embody the cruelty of nature: a good druid (a 3E+ thing, obviously) would try to help a village that's assarting/logging excessively to find a sustainable approach. A neutral druid might just make things difficult for them until they give up. An evil druid would send wolves and bears to kill everyone, or personally murder wood-cutters, or burn the place down. (Nothing wrong with fire - forest fires are healthy.)


I do, however, have an idea for a craftsman who is a druid because the wood in the surrounding forest makes the most exquisite-sounding instruments. I think that boat-builder guy in the recent Vikings series would also be a good archetype for a druid.

A druid in one of our campaigns had a little carpenter's shop (at like 20th level) in one of the Dales (I forget which one), where he wood-shaped furniture...


Fair enough, and that might be what rubs me the wrong way about those sorts of claims; hunter-gather lifestyles are basically a dead end, because (as far as I can tell) there's not a whole lot you can do to improve them beyond a certain point.

Well, there's improvements that could be made (firearms!), but nobody's ever going to make them because everyone has to work pretty damned constantly to get food. By the Middle Ages, agriculture was so efficient a lot of people had time to sit on their asses not being productive. After the Black Death wiped out huge parts of the population, and people could abandon bad farmlands for good (requiring less work to feed the same number of people), it got even better, and we had the Renaissance. And now, in developed countries, the numbers are pretty much reversed (1% of people farm as a job in the US, 2% live on farms), which is pretty much the reason we've been to the Moon in the 20th century, and generally developed faster than at any time in history.

Boy, that got off the druidic track fast...

Frozen_Feet
2013-04-19, 03:15 AM
I know how bog-iron is smelted. I don't know what you think you read, exactly... I said the smelting-pits (involves burying a smoldering pile of burnt wood, basically) didn't begin to deforest Finland...

That's because the trees outnumbered us, damn it! :smalltongue: If you want good examples, look at those places on earth that actually have people living in them. :smallbiggrin:


Well, there's improvements that could be made (firearms!), but nobody's ever going to make them because everyone has to work pretty damned constantly to get food. By the Middle Ages, agriculture was so efficient a lot of people had time to sit on their asses not being productive. After the Black Death wiped out huge parts of the population, and people could abandon bad farmlands for good (requiring less work to feed the same number of people), it got even better, and we had the Renaissance. And now, in developed countries, the numbers are pretty much reversed (1% of people farm as a job in the US, 2% live on farms), which is pretty much the reason we've been to the Moon in the 20th century, and generally developed faster than at any time in history.

"Hunter-gatherers have no free time" is a myth. Early agriculture was, in fact, much more work intensive. Consider slash-and-burn farming. First, you have to fell all the trees. Then you have to burn them and prevent the fire from spreading to unanted places. Then you have to upturn the stumps and work the field. It's not after that until you can get to the actual farming...

... which is swingy based on weather, needs thorough knowledge of the plants you're using, and needs constant babysitting so it doesn't rot or get eaten by wildlife.

Compare this to hunting and gathering. You make a bow and shoot the first suitable thing in sight. If you're lucky, that single day of work will feed you and your extended family for weeks to come.

Take a look at lions. Lions are carnivores, subsisting primarily on meat. So they must hunt pretty much constantly, yes? Anything but. They laze about in the sun 20 hours per day, only working for their meal or 4 hours.

On the flipside, before the Green Revolution, farming still employed 98% percent of all humans. It's only during the last century that farming has become marginalized, thanks to a huge number of innovations lending agriculture a hand.

Phelix-Mu
2013-04-19, 07:31 AM
Druid Dilemma;

There is a cataclysm coming which you and your fellow adventurers plan to prevent, one which could potentially threaten the cosmic balance itself. Knowing that the crisis is soon at hand, your party has spent the last year raising resources and winning allies (which coincidentally both happen to involve dungeon-crawling). Even more importantly, the hard won experience and treasure from these quests have made your party a force to be reckoned with; high-level adventurers who are ready to face the fight of their lives defending the world...

...except for you, because this is a 2e game and there can only be one 15th level or higher Druid in the world. And unlike the last two times this sort of thing happened, you can't even beat them up; to become the Grand Druid you need to actually convince the old Grand Druid to step down forever and take their role as leader of the world's Druids. A role which, since you are going to be busy (and quite possibly off-Plane) for the foreseeable future, you cannot possibly fulfill. Not to mention the fact that becoming a Grand Druid requires the last one to appoint you, so dying while 15th-16th level means possibly ending the line permanently.

So here's the conundrum; do you throw the Druidic Order into anarchy for at least the next few years, knowing that without a strong leader in the coming storm much of the natural world will suffer, or do you handicap yourself fighting a multiversal imbalance to preserve the Order?

Hmm, I always viewed the finer points of the 2e druid hierarchy as, what's the saying, prescriptive rather than proscriptive. It seems well within the abilities of the most powerful Grand Druid to deputize another druid of equal level (as not all powerful druids will be well-suited to leadership...though in 2e it was definitely implied that high-level characters were leaders). Such deputies would be free to advance directly into the echelons of the post-Grand Druid ranks, and would be seen by the order as a kind of SpecOps force for dealing with the baddest of the bad.

The exact workings of the order (should there be one, or several) should be setting-appropriate, in any case. In a high-powered world with many high-level pcs (and maybe even epic-ish level hierophants), 15 might not be the appropriate level for the Grand Druid. That said, the leveling system back then was no simple matter, and druids of atypical races (if they existed) were often hit with massive penalties for advancing past a certain level (hated that rule).

The key aspect of the druids, in my mind, is that they exist to uphold the existing balance that exists on the Prime Material Plane. Many druids view this as "nature" or "the natural world," but equally many druids aren't on some anti-civilization crusade. As long as a "balance" between these forces exist, druids can accept both.

Sadly, the world is constantly in flux, and the Prime Material Plane is ground zero for many interplanar conflicts between beings of great power. Various civilizations, churches, and races all routinely make bids for more power, territory, technology, that might threaten the balance, and many druids count it as their duty to stand in the way of this kind of radical change.

That said, mechanically, druids are a nightmare to integrate into world design. Even low-level druids can be quite effective with little to no support, and a single high-level druid with a taste for destruction could wreak havoc on a scale rivaled only by wizards. In this respect, population-wise, druids should probably be rarer than both wizards and clerics, since both of the latter classes have established practices of having apprentices and acolytes, swelling their low-level ranks, while druids are typically loners that supervise relatively large territories.

A N, CN, or LN druid can arguably cherrypick among the best [good] and [evil] spells, as long as a balance between the good and evil ones is maintained, and in the pursuit of aims in line with the druid ethos. A true Neutral druid can suffer one step of alignment change with no penalty, quite a boon to a divine caster. To balance this, a DM would do well to require slightly more hoops for a druid in need of atonement to jump through, not least because finding another druid is often not simply a matter of visiting the local temple.

EDIT: The relevant bit about agriculture is that, with surpluses, a stable food source allows for rapid population growth, and only availability of land and irrigation really restricts growth. Hunter-gatherers face many more population pressures, and AFAIK, have much more stable populations.

Enter magic. Agriculture is now going to be successful, from deities of agriculture and plenty to gods of tech spreading spells and knowledge of how to be successful farmers. Sure, the odd hamlets and villages in nowhere will suffer, but any organized attempt to do farming will succeed with access to pretty low-level magic. Thus, magic allows agriculture to underwrite high population growth.

High population growth is very problematic for druids.

Kalirren
2013-04-19, 11:00 AM
This thing I wrote earlier is relevant, so I'll crosspost it here for PEACH:


I think the key to playing a sensible druid, especially in a urban setting like Aldhaven, is to realize what druids actually do. They're priests, fundamentally. They aren't protecting "nature". Until very recently in human history, nature hasn't -needed- protection, and this is doubly true in most D&D-esque fantasy. In a world where ideas, silly figments of imagination, can be personified into deities and these deities can grant world-changing power, so can actual natural forces. Druids exist because natural forces are just as important and relevant as supernatural ones are.

What druids actually do is protect and preserve the relationship that civilization has -with- the wilderness. Disputes over the character of this relationship form the central divide that separates druids of different alignments. A close and well-regulated (Lawful) relationship results in a managed landscape. A separatist relationship (Chaotic) results in the presence of both extremes, of pure wilderness and of pure urbanization. Good druids stress the convergence of interests between people and the environment in which they live, and Evil druids stress the conflict of interest between them.

This is why druids have to be some flavor of neutral. Holding an extreme alignment in the above debate (LE, CE, LG, CG) means that you have ceased to revere nature, because all four extreme alignments constitute a unilateral philosophy regarding nature. ("Nature should be managed/sequestered because (it's good/bad for people.)//(people are good/bad for it.)")

JusticeZero
2013-04-19, 11:14 AM
Using a workforce that apparently has less food, according to your research, and so wouldn't build nearly as vast palaces for the dead as they would if they didn't use "really inefficient" agriculture instead of the bounty of the forest.
The thing is that the people in the forest have more food, but you can't tax them of it, you can't force them to stay in one place. There's lots of food for the taking, but not much surplus because when they stop being hungry they stop working and if you try to tell them otherwise they go "lol". So you can't really get powerful nobles.
But if you can convince them to grow a bunch of inefficient monoculture land with fixed addresses, you can harass them to no end and take all of what little surplus they have to feed your army of jackbooted thugs and your gold-encrusted temple to your dead mother. So even with it being inefficient, it's a great deal for SOMEONE.

DiscipleofBob
2013-04-19, 11:20 AM
Except they're just fine with metal weapons.

This reminds me back when I played World of Warcraft. I tried a Night Elf Hunter despite my intense hatred for Night Elves, and when I got the main NE city, I started looking around for someone to start teaching me the professions so I could make myself guns (I wasn't a very nice Hunter). I then found out that Blacksmiths and I think some other Profession didn't exist in Night Elf Land because Night Elves didn't use evil metal weapons.

This conversation happened while standing next to two Night Elf guards in chainmail bikinis carrying giant, 3-bladed glaives. Apparently they just have really sharp trees there.

Deophaun
2013-04-19, 11:49 AM
The thing is that the people in the forest have more food, but you can't tax them of it, you can't force them to stay in one place. There's lots of food for the taking, but not much surplus because when they stop being hungry they stop working and if you try to tell them otherwise they go "lol".
Except, Winter. Even squirrels know to keep working when they aren't hungry.

Except, Trade. Why sell the inefficient goods of a farm when you can sell the efficient goods of the forest?

Except, Authority. If the lord wasn't happy with how much you were producing, he had you replaced. So if true, it would be advantageous for the serf or peasant to maintain a forest, rather than a field, as they would need to work less to satisfy their ruler.

It sounds like this research is based off the Garden of Eden, not actual living conditions.

Phelix-Mu
2013-04-19, 12:47 PM
There is a small problem with this generalizing, and not to mention our reference to real-world archaeology and anthropology. WARNING: Text wall.

1.) Forest: Yeah, vague. Some forests have lots of food for the taking. Some have...acorns? Almost all of this is seasonal, and often the things that can be gathered have to be carefully rationed to last the winter. Nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyles were part-in-parcel of hunter/gathering societies outside of tropical areas, and thus this way of life is not suitable for the many humans in-game that live sedentary lives (not to mention many world maps don't have dynamics that resemble real-world climatology). If the humans did want such a lifestyle, they'd have to compete with other races where this is the norm (elves, importantly).

2.) Owlbears: In real life, humans in groups with spears had little to fear from most wild animals, with the exception of bears (don't mess with bears), and could run from or avoid those that were problematic. Territories were large, and space was available to coexist with most types of wild animals.

But, in-game, there are slews of monsters that will eat humanoids (with the possible exception of the everyone's-an-archer elves) with impunity, and that are stupid enough to even attack groups of hunters. Without support from a spellcaster of some kind (available based on setting and DM preference), hunting/gathering is often a much less idyllic way of life in-game than in the real world.

3.) Magic v cultural evolution: We can't really reference the real-world development of humans, because the standard D&D setting is substantially divorced from the sociological and anthropological processes that affected real-world societies. The fact that faux medieval is a thing in-game, despite the existence of magic that makes life about 100% easier is proof enough of this; setting-based forces defined only by the DM influence the shape of cultures. While DMs can mitigate this by lowering availability of magic outside the adventuring profession, this can strain believability. Certainly, starving peasants is hard to imagine in a world where plant growth is a thing, not to mention the HHHaversack of other ways to produce cheap food en masse.

Thus, while some humans surely do survive by hunting and gathering (barbarian tribes, frontiersmen, etc), it is established by the setting that the vast swathes of humanity exist on food provided by farming. Even if we ignore the racial element, and generalize to "civilization," the colonization and conversion of wild areas to supply large populations is an established dynamic in most game worlds. Orcs need wood, so they cut down trees. Humans need land for farming, so they cut down trees, build towns, etc. Dwarves, more or less the same. Only elves really have a reputation for intentionally not developing societies that draw heavily on natural resources.

4.) Population Dynamics: Sans the common apocalyptic conflict that plagues many game worlds, the population dynamics of different races strongly effect how they interact with nature. Since elven population dynamics don't demand resource intensive lifestyles, and since magic is established to be part of the culture of even fairly poor elves, elves can afford to maintain a high level of sophistication even while engaging in hunting and gathering. With the span between generations being many times that of humans, and with the number of children per family being limited by birth rate, elves can live in-sync with the natural world. Gnomes can also be seen to behave in this manner, but they engage in widespread mining and invention that can put them in conflict with the natural world from time to time.

Contrast elves (and to a lesser extent, gnomes), with humans and orcs. Multiple births are fairly common in the latter races, gestation times are reduced, back-to-back pregnancy is very common (as fertility is higher...elves and dwarves usually have to try to get pregnant, with humans and orcs, it's a matter of trying not to get pregnant), and inter-generational gaps are measure in little more than a decade. The overall effect is that human and orc societies can quickly expand to exceed resources present in their current surroundings.

Orcs fix this by raiding and conquering new lands (along with the built-in population control of endless internal and external violence), and humans solve this problem by specialization (or, more broadly, by learning how to maximize the productivity of their surroundings or expanding to new areas...simply put, innovation and exploration). Human culture in-game is established to be the most morphic, varied, and flexible culture of the standard races, and this is because of their talent for adapting to new areas and learning how to change their practices to enable survival and a more comfortable lifestyle.

Whew. In short, I think one has to look more at how the unrealistic aspect of the game world influences cultural interaction with the natural world, rather than look at historical references. Any resemblance to the historical world in the game is pretty much unsubstantiated, while there is enough details about how the races behave and interact to extrapolate how their culture would tend to interact with the natural world. Even in-game humans are hard to relate to real-world humans, mainly due to magic being a thing and there being setting-based restrictions on what can be gained from technology.

JusticeZero
2013-04-19, 01:34 PM
Except, Winter. Even squirrels know to keep working when they aren't hungry.Farms are no less seasonal than a forest - farms are MORE seasonal than a forest. Forest is polycultural. There are several things "in season" at a given time.

Except, Trade. Why sell the inefficient goods of a farm when you can sell the efficient goods of the forest?All a farm produces is food. That's actually hard to sell when you're in a farm community. The only decent wealth creation is happening in mines and the like. There's a reason why you talk about "Dirt farmers" - they're poor.

Except, Authority. If the lord wasn't happy with how much you were producing, he had you replaced. So if true, it would be advantageous for the serf or peasant to maintain a forest, rather than a field, as they would need to work less to satisfy their ruler.Here's the thing. If you're a serf and live on a farm, your lord has easy access to you. If you live in a forest, you slip into the woods and then the lord has to turn the entire countryside upsidedown trying to find you.
Lords don't like people living in forests, no madder what the production value is. Lords want starving serfs that they can shake down at will. They'll take lower productivity every time as long as it makes the bureaucracy and micromanagement of the people easier to manage.
The book "Seeing like A State" (among others) covers this in a lot more detail.

Deophaun
2013-04-19, 02:31 PM
Farms are no less seasonal than a forest - farms are MORE seasonal than a forest. Forest is polycultural. There are several things "in season" at a given time.
Which is why cossacks in the 1900's living in forests in the Urals never faced starvation when their modest gardens of rye fell prey to frost.

Oh wait, they did.

A whole bloody forest to "efficiently" support them, and that almost kills them. There's a reason I'm not buying what you're selling.

All a farm produces is food. That's actually hard to sell when you're in a farm community.
Yup. All trade is local. Europe, for instance, never traded with China until the development of the airplane. Fact, that is.

There's a reason why you talk about "Dirt farmers" - they're poor.
There's a reason why "farmer" is qualified with "dirt" there. Otherwise, we'd just call poor people "farmers."

Here's the thing. If you're a serf and live on a farm, your lord has easy access to you. If you live in a forest, you slip into the woods and then the lord has to turn the entire countryside upsidedown trying to find you.
No. This plot of forest is land I'm giving you. Oh, you aren't making it productive? You're off, and I'm giving it to someone else. If he finds you trespassing, he kills you. End of story.

I, your former lord, do not have to hunt you down: the new person I made responsible for that land will do it for me. He has a vested interest in making sure you don't steal from that land.

Perhaps the person who wrote "Seeing Like a State" should have actually tried looking at the matter from the point of view of a state, instead of from the point of view of a modern bureaucrat that needs things coded into standardized fields for their databases.

It's fun coming up with counter-intuitive theories. It gets you published, press, and grants, but not necessarily the truth.

hymer
2013-04-19, 02:42 PM
All a farm produces is food. That's actually hard to sell when you're in a farm community. The only decent wealth creation is happening in mines and the like. There's a reason why you talk about "Dirt farmers" - they're poor.

It's a simplification, but okay.
What's perhaps more important is that for trade to really mean something, you have to have population centres. And to have towns, you must have agriculture (you may get along with fishing to some degree).
You don't need two cities to have trade, but you do need the one, where the merchant is based, and where he (or the hunter himself) can go to sell the rare furs, stout timber, and what else the forest has available to sell.
If everybody lives as hunter-gatherers, there is not much point in buying and selling anything. Getting around is difficult, finding people is harder, and when you get there it turns out these guys want to buy and sell the same sorts of things you and your tribe produces.
Of course there are small amount of trading or gift exchanges going on before cities. But trade on a scale where it really matters is a city thing.
And once the development has gotten to where there is a big trading hub, people go to live there. And these people need food, and they can't make it themselves. So the price of produce goes up. And by now, the owner of the nearby farmland is getting rich.


Which is why cossacks in the 1900's living in forests in the Urals never faced starvation when their modest gardens of rye fell prey to frost.

Oh wait, they did.

Because the population density had grown beyond what the forest could support, and the skills for surviving off the forest were lost.
JusticeZero is talking about something closer to 2000 BC than 2000 AD.

Edit: Actually, he's not, on closer thought. But 20th century is not what we're discussing here. Not even close.


Yup. All trade is local.

Until you get cities it is, yes.


No. This plot of forest is land I'm giving you. Oh, you aren't making it productive? You're off, and I'm giving it to someone else. If he finds you trespassing, he kills you. End of story.

Oh, but the story doesn't end there. Again, you're assuming fairly modern standards.
The guys already living in the forest would be prone to winning against the guys you send in. They know the terrain, they're skilled hunters, probably a whole tribe of them.
And if you do this sort of thing enough, you find yourself surrounded by rebels and outlaws, and your lands produce nothing for you at all.
To own the land, you have to take possession of it first - that generally means driving the people who live there away, or having them submit to your authority.
What's to keep the second wave you send in (if they're succesful) from taking the land for themselves? If you couldn't take it, why shouldn't they defy you once they did?

Phelix-Mu
2013-04-19, 03:01 PM
It's kind of strange to suggest that forests are more productive than farms. They may be healthier to eat from, but they pretty much don't produce enough to provide food for entire cities. Most farming that goes on in the game is nothing like "early agriculture," and the setting pretty much establishes that farms are productive enough to feed cities (so the tech/magic involved in farming must support a standard of reliable surpluses to support trade).

Anyway, the point is moot. Humans in large towns and cities routinely take forests and turn them into firewood, and much of this happens without regard to reforesting. While access to magic may marginally reduce the usefulness of firewood, it pretty demonstrably does not reduce large-scale stupidity on the part of societies or cultures (just like technology doesn't actually make people less stupid, either).

The problems that druids run into when it comes to civilization is that sentient humanoids are easily tempted by wealth, power, and the quick and convenient solution. Why would I ration firewood and spend time and effort reforesting when I can just make a business out of traveling further away to cut down yonder forest and come back here and sell it to the dumb schmucks that already cut down all the trees in walking distance? Just because it's more productive or whatever to search the woods for food (though the whole city can't go searching), the specialization allowed by all but the most primitive of farming tech is plain, old fashioned more convenient. Why am I spending all my time looking for food when I can just buy it from Jim the Farmer, and then I can get on with my alchemy (where my real talent and joy lies)?

As I already stated, in D&D, searching for food in the woods is often a matter of mortal peril, and in any case, many forested lands are already claimed by other races (elves, mainly), and many of them view humans and their firewood needs rather dimly.

Aquatosic
2013-04-19, 03:10 PM
Turns out I was wrong on the spiders' placement- there's a huge thicket maze between the orcs and elves which local druids protect. The spiders are off in a corner on the continent where they slaughter anyone that enters, but druids love to sneak in because "oh so pretty."

See, these spiders aren't native to those woods. They invaded it and covered it in so much webbing that all sunlight is blocked.
If they've destroyed so much there, where else will they go? Giant spiders are known for their cruelty, so much so that not even the druid hippies can reason with them!
They're going to kill us all unless we contact the local (and maybe not so local) wizards guilds and unleash great balls of fire upon them.
Oh, did I mention that the spider matriarchs are 15' in length?

Show me the quote that says the giant spiders are evil and sentient in this setting and I'll believe you. Taking down an entire forest is never a good idea

hymer
2013-04-19, 03:10 PM
@ Phelix-Mu:
Within a fantasy roleplay context, this sounds about right, but not for everyone. Elves in particular seem able to have large communities in deep forests.
It seems to me that JusticeZero is talking about how the change from hunter-gatherer to peasant came about. And he's right that it didn't come about because life as the earliest peasant is better than that of a hunter-gatherer around the same time. It wasn't. In a fantasy context it may or may not be.

Aquatosic
2013-04-19, 03:21 PM
This thing I wrote earlier is relevant, so I'll crosspost it here for PEACH:

This actually solves my confusion about evil druids. You seem to be saying that they gain strength from their mission, whatever it should be. Leeky Windstaff wants to destroy humanity/elfkind/gnomery/dwarfenkind/half-elfkind because he believes they are a threat to nature and nature should stand alone. They cannot fall because they serve the embodiment of their conception of the natural world. There is no one single anthropomorphic "Mother Earth" figure that they all kow-tow to

Frozen_Feet
2013-04-19, 03:31 PM
On farming vs. hunting-gathering: It might be farming eventually won not because it was more efficient from the start (it wasn't), but because farming necessitates infrastructure.

Roads, permanent buildings, mining, cities - these are all things of an agricultural society. When people become unwilling to move to get their supplies, supplies need to get moved to them, requiring a complex network of logistics. This creates a huge pressure for innovation.

Meanwhile, hunter-gatherers don't need, and can't, build such lasting infrastructure - not in a form familiar to us, anyway. I once fashioned a nomadic society that utilized established migration routes, silviculture and seasonal mining - and I've never really heard of something similar exisitng in real history.

However, while hunter-gatherers might not keep up in technology, in philosophy they sure can. There were native american tribes in North America that lived almost solely by hunting - and they advanced mathematics, calendars, starmaps etc.

hymer
2013-04-19, 03:44 PM
@ Frozen_Feet: Exactly right. The higher the population in a trade entity, the higher the possible level of specialization.

Phelix-Mu
2013-04-19, 03:58 PM
On farming vs. hunting-gathering: It might be farming eventually won not because it was more efficient from the start (it wasn't), but because farming necessitates infrastructure.

Roads, permanent buildings, mining, cities - these are all things of an agricultural society. When people become unwilling to move to get their supplies, supplies need to get moved to them, requiring a complex network of logistics. This creates a huge pressure for innovation.

Meanwhile, hunter-gatherers don't need, and can't, build such lasting infrastructure - not in a form familiar to us, anyway. I once fashioned a nomadic society that utilized established migration routes, silviculture and seasonal mining - and I've never really heard of something similar exisitng in real history.

However, while hunter-gatherers might not keep up in technology, in philosophy they sure can. There were native american tribes in North America that lived almost solely by hunting - and they advanced mathematics, calendars, starmaps etc.

Agreed, and this is a well-said bit about why druids have a problem with the "civilization" that is normally associated with agrarian societies. Specialization creates psychological space between the average citizen of the city and their food supply, the welfare of the land, and the balance of their lifestyle.

If civilization tends to promote an information-based/highly specialized society, then a "primitive" lifestyle of nomadic/semi-nomadic society promotes "wisdom," a sense of organic rhythm and perspective that engenders thoughtful reflection, awareness of the connection between actions and consequences, and knowledge of the space about them.

So, the druids don't really conflict with all peoples equally, but with the kind of city-building, expansionist, resource-intensive societies that exist in the game world. Low impact groups like plains barbarians are probably low on the druid's list of priorities.

EDIT:

Turns out I was wrong on the spiders' placement- there's a huge thicket maze between the orcs and elves which local druids protect. The spiders are off in a corner on the continent where they slaughter anyone that enters, but druids love to sneak in because "oh so pretty."

See, these spiders aren't native to those woods. They invaded it and covered it in so much webbing that all sunlight is blocked.
If they've destroyed so much there, where else will they go? Giant spiders are known for their cruelty, so much so that not even the druid hippies can reason with them!
They're going to kill us all unless we contact the local (and maybe not so local) wizards guilds and unleash great balls of fire upon them.
Oh, did I mention that the spider matriarchs are 15' in length?

Well, this does sound interesting, but what it REALLY sounds like is some kind of way too obvious Tolkien reference. I don't mind Tolkien influence, generally speaking (which is good, since it's everywhere in the genre), but this seems pretty much just like Mirkwood. I guess, technically, the elves lived within Mirkwood, but, eh, still seems heavy-handed.

Kalirren
2013-04-19, 04:26 PM
Historically, settled people, and settled agriculture, won out because settled people could typically achieve higher population density, and were thus able to defend their territory against nomadic people.

There were, of course, exceptions to this pattern. Nomadic cultures were sometimes able to invade and occupy settled peoples because of the military advantage associated with greater access to horses. As one might expect, these exceptions to the norm were highly unusual, and spectacular when they did occur.

The advent of mechanized transportation in the form of railroads and automobiles put a definitive end to this dynamic, and relegates nomadic agriculture permanently to the periphery of the world economic system in the modern day.


You seem to be saying that they gain strength from their mission, whatever it should be. [...]

Evil druids are a difficult type of character to construct, just because the more you understand about natural systems, the easier it is to see how to couple civilized and natural systems in a constructive manner. Nature is powerful, and it is easier to work with it than against it. So I do get the feeling that it's difficult for druids to become more evil over time.

Evil rangers are easier to think of than evil druids. "Buffalo" Bill Cody is a great example. He kills the buffalo for profit, and the motivations for that profit are rooted in the conflict of interest between White society and Plains Indian society. I suppose you could make a evil druid character in the opposite vein - a Plains Indian medicine man, who calls the Thunderbird to bring the season's hail late, and ruin the settlers' wheat. But this is more of a druid that also happens to be evil...

To get really a good example of an evil druid in the pure sense, and not one that is evil and also a druid, I think we'd have to go farther back in history. The Egyptian god Set is the God of the Red (wild) land, of foreigners, and of the Nile's flood before it became associated with Isis's menstruation. Priests of Set would predominantly be evil druids. This would be a group that grew powerful and expanded the influence of their god by holding the Inundation hostage year after year, asserting the power of nature over civilization.

Phelix-Mu
2013-04-19, 04:41 PM
Evil druids are a difficult type of character to construct, just because the more you understand about natural systems, the easier it is to see how to couple civilized and natural systems in a constructive manner. Nature is powerful, and it is easier to work with it than against it. So I do get the feeling that it's difficult for druids to become more evil over time.

Evil rangers are easier to think of than evil druids. "Buffalo" Bill Cody is a great example. He kills the buffalo for profit, and the motivations for that profit are rooted in the conflict of interest between White society and Plains Indian society. I suppose you could make a evil druid character in the opposite vein - a Plains Indian medicine man, who calls the Thunderbird to bring the season's hail late, and ruin the settlers' wheat. But this is more of a druid that also happens to be evil...

To get really a good example of an evil druid in the pure sense, and not one that is evil and also a druid, I think we'd have to go farther back in history. The Egyptian god Set is the God of the Red (wild) land, of foreigners, and of the Nile's flood before it became associated with Isis's menstruation. Priests of Set would predominantly be evil druids. This would be a group that grew powerful and expanded the influence of their god by holding the Inundation hostage year after year, asserting the power of nature over civilization.

Hmm, I'm a little unclear on your distinction. Evil people are distinguished by evil deeds. I don't see the distinction between the medicine man and the priests of Set. They both set the power of nature above the rights of sentient beings, and purposefully inflict suffering to assert this hierarchy.

Maybe you can elaborate.

Frozen_Feet
2013-04-19, 04:51 PM
Also, regarding productivity of forests: there are forests, and then there are forests. If you live near the equator (where humans supposedly originated), the temperature stays relatively comfortable throughout the year and forests are plentiful with wildlife and edible plants. On the flipside, there are more parasites and bacteria, so population is checked by those.

When you start moving north (or south, but south does not have as much land mass), the weather gets colder and forests carry less immediately edible things, but on the other hand, there are less diseases and parasites. So if one can overcome the "less food" problem, population can grow higher than before - this might be the incentive that lead to development of agriculture.

And then you get here and other assorted cold places, where winter is likely to kill your naked monkey butt regardless of how hard you work. Better practice your archery skills, because beyond animals, when it gets cold outside your only other option for food is tree bark and pinecones. Oh yeah, the cold. Didn't have to worry about two feet of snow and negative Celsius degrees back in Africa...

Really makes me question why the hell my ancestors ever bothered to come here. They must've mistaken North for South at some point. And the folks that live even further north, like the Inuits, must just be plain crazy. :smalltongue:

Alejandro
2013-04-19, 04:59 PM
Compare this to hunting and gathering. You make a bow and shoot the first suitable thing in sight. If you're lucky, that single day of work will feed you and your extended family for weeks to come.

Well, sort of. You also have to preserve the meat, or it just rots. Lots of work and fuel is involved in doing that, and it's much harder to do if you are constantly roaming.

Kalirren
2013-04-19, 05:01 PM
Hmm, I'm a little unclear on your distinction. Evil people are distinguished by evil deeds. I don't see the distinction between the medicine man and the priests of Set. They both set the power of nature above the rights of sentient beings, and purposefully inflict suffering to assert this hierarchy.

Maybe you can elaborate.

They're both evil. The question is whether or not being evil is part of being a druid or not. For the medicine man, probably not. I could see good and neutral druids deciding to do what the medicine man did as a matter of waging war against a civilization that seeks your genocide. It's something for which they would suffer alignment shift, because it's evil, but it's not part and parcel of their druidism.

On the other hand, the priests of Set claim to personify the will of nature, of a fury manifestation of nature. The evil comes with the druidism in their case.

Is this distinction meaningful to you? It's the distinction between an evil druid and an evil ideology of druidism.

Phelix-Mu
2013-04-19, 05:13 PM
Is this distinction meaningful to you? It's the distinction between an evil druid and an evil ideology of druidism.

Hmm. Yeah, good explanation. I guess they both end up being evil, but one is ideologically evil, while the other is circumstantially evil.

I typically play NG or TN druids. TN is my favorite, because being at the crux of all the alignment conflicts is a fascinating place to be, and because it can allow me to play a nice balance-worshiper, one of my favorite archetypes. Also, you get a nice toolset.

Mystral
2013-04-19, 06:06 PM
An evil warlord, greatly outmatching you and outnumbering you with his horde, is offering you a proposition most foul.

"Strap on this banded mail, or my horde burns down your forest!"

What's a druid to do?

JusticeZero
2013-04-19, 06:30 PM
Population density is interesting too. Which of these patches of countryside is more populated and dense?

2, 2, 2, 2, 19, 2, 2, 2, 2

4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 4, 4, 4, 4

The first one has a big city in it, so obviously it is more dense, right? Alas, we are looking at the whole district. The one with the city actually has a lower density in that regard, because its population is lower. The second one describes the forest types better.

Also, 'forests produce a lot' is completely compatible with 'city people go to the woods and starve' for the same reason that one would expect computer programmers tossed onto a weed covered field to starve. Not only do teey not know how to farm, but the land is not prepared. Gatherer cultures domesticate the heck out of their forests. The end product is a beautiful forest that is very easy to subsist in.

They don't do roads and infrastructure well though. I've never argued teat. It's only the fallacy that agriculture is better at food production that irks me.

JusticeZero
2013-04-19, 06:55 PM
'Banded or I torch' is how we destroy the wilderness cultures TODAY. Either 'You can't live in the forest you've been tending, it's too pretty' or 'We found coal and bought your land, we're bulldozing, you are tresspassing'.

Phelix-Mu
2013-04-19, 07:56 PM
An evil warlord, greatly outmatching you and outnumbering you with his horde, is offering you a proposition most foul.

"Strap on this banded mail, or my horde burns down your forest!"

What's a druid to do?

Actually, either works.

Wear the armour. Live to fight another day. The druid doesn't have to win the battle, just the war. Mind you, the animal companion isn't affected at all by the armour, so the druid is hardly as crippled as, say, a cleric that has moved to an alignment not recognized by his or her god.

Or...

Don't wear the armour. The forest burns. Kill everyone, maybe not now...but they have to sleep, right? The forest will grow back some day, and you can help it. Right after you're done roasting each of these despoilers in their armour. Druids are remarkably good at taking on superior numbers of mooks, and don't have to worry about things like notoriety or being hunted down.

*eagle launches spells from way, way off*

"Where's all this death coming from?"

*eagle laughing*

Druids play a long game, and it's things like the karmic cycle and such are close to their philosophy. The warlord is going to get it in the end. Don't worry about it.

Janus
2013-04-19, 08:12 PM
Show me the quote that says the giant spiders are evil and sentient in this setting and I'll believe you. Taking down an entire forest is never a good idea
Oh come on, of course it never says that! The writers are smart enough to know the giant spiders will come and kill them if they so much as suggest such a thing.
You have to read between the lines.


Well, this does sound interesting, but what it REALLY sounds like is some kind of way too obvious Tolkien reference. I don't mind Tolkien influence, generally speaking (which is good, since it's everywhere in the genre), but this seems pretty much just like Mirkwood. I guess, technically, the elves lived within Mirkwood, but, eh, still seems heavy-handed.
Don't remember Mirkwood being pretty much nothing but webs (then again, I haven't read that book in about ten years now), but it wouldn't surprise me if that was an influence.

Frozen_Feet
2013-04-19, 09:01 PM
An evil warlord, greatly outmatching you and outnumbering you with his horde, is offering you a proposition most foul.

"Strap on this banded mail, or my horde burns down your forest!"

What's a druid to do?

How powerful is the warlord? Is turning into a bear and eating him a viable option? :smalltongue:

On another note, if those are the options, the druid can quite comfortably wear the banded mail. It only loses him spellcasting for a day. If the warlord actually sticks to his promise, the Druid has lost nothing.

Of course, the more likely option is that the warlord is trying to fool the druid, in which case I refer to option C) turn into bear and eat him.

Water_Bear
2013-04-19, 09:30 PM
This thread is reminding me why I don't like Druids so much; illogical rules and hierarchies, (literal) nature worship, and the kind of smugness which can only come from believing yourself more natural and balanced than everyone else.

Just burn those woods down and be done with it I say. :smallamused:

Agriculture Tangent
The problem with foraging for food, especially if that's your main food source, is that for the most part the organisms which produce that food have evolved to stop you from eating them. Game needs to be hunted, grains flower and disperse their seeds at random points in the growing season, nutshells make getting the small amount of food out of them a pain, fungi are often toxic. The exception to this is fruit, which is difficult to store long-term and requires you to compete against every other animal species to harvest it.

An agricultural setup is entirely the opposite; domesticated animal and plant species rely on being attractive for human consumption to survive. Wheat (and other grains) have definite harvests where all of the plants bloom at once. Sheep (and other farm mammals) are relatively easily managed, and chickens can be slaughtered next to their young without even causing a stir. That's not to say farming isn't difficult, but your labor is resulting in a larger amount of food which keeps longer and is (generally) more reliable.

Nutritionally, agricultural societies have tended to be worse off because they eat a lot of the same things. But they have also produced higher populations, because they eat a lot of the same things.

And even if most of your population is working on the farm, they're still only working to get food during the planting growing and harvesting seasons. The medieval peasant had somewhere on the order of several months a year when they couldn't work the fields even if they wanted to, and rarely worked more than eight hours a day even during the rest of the year. Even ignoring cities and the specialization of labor coming from there, a farmer has a lot more time to sit and think about their life than a hunter-gatherer who's hitting the woods every single day to try and get enough to eat.

Aquatosic
2013-04-20, 08:09 AM
This thread is reminding me why I don't like Druids so much; illogical rules and hierarchies, (literal) nature worship, and the kind of smugness which can only come from believing yourself more natural and balanced than everyone else.

Just burn those woods down and be done with it I say. :smallamused:

Agriculture Tangent
The problem with foraging for food, especially if that's your main food source, is that for the most part the organisms which produce that food have evolved to stop you from eating them. Game needs to be hunted, grains flower and disperse their seeds at random points in the growing season, nutshells make getting the small amount of food out of them a pain, fungi are often toxic. The exception to this is fruit, which is difficult to store long-term and requires you to compete against every other animal species to harvest it.

An agricultural setup is entirely the opposite; domesticated animal and plant species rely on being attractive for human consumption to survive. Wheat (and other grains) have definite harvests where all of the plants bloom at once. Sheep (and other farm mammals) are relatively easily managed, and chickens can be slaughtered next to their young without even causing a stir. That's not to say farming isn't difficult, but your labor is resulting in a larger amount of food which keeps longer and is (generally) more reliable.

Nutritionally, agricultural societies have tended to be worse off because they eat a lot of the same things. But they have also produced higher populations, because they eat a lot of the same things.

And even if most of your population is working on the farm, they're still only working to get food during the planting growing and harvesting seasons. The medieval peasant had somewhere on the order of several months a year when they couldn't work the fields even if they wanted to, and rarely worked more than eight hours a day even during the rest of the year. Even ignoring cities and the specialization of labor coming from there, a farmer has a lot more time to sit and think about their life than a hunter-gatherer who's hitting the woods every single day to try and get enough to eat.

smugness huh :smallamused:. My, my! Is the tea pot calling the kettle black or what?:smallamused:. They also spent those months off freezing to death and doing work to make sure their leige lord was comfortable

hymer
2013-04-20, 08:49 AM
@ n00bboy2013: I do believe Water_Bear was making a funny based on that very theme. :smallsmile:

Water_Bear
2013-04-20, 11:21 AM
They also spent those months off freezing to death and doing work to make sure their leige lord was comfortable

Is it better to freeze indoors with a fire and a cellar full of food and drink, or to do it while you're still hunting and gathering out in the snow every day? Or even to forgo toiling out in the fields entirely, and just focus on managing the needs of a Lord and their castle year round?

Just because someone else is living better than you doesn't mean you can't live a good life; the peasant in their hovel still benefited from civilization whether that meant technologies which saved them time and labor, a reliable food supply which includes luxury goods like alcohol, even just the ability to run to the nearest town if they are interested in advancing their social position ("Town Air Breathes Free" after all). Having a Lord in-and-of-itself doesn't make your life worse; a tribal chieftain can be just as much of a bully as any knight, and you don't even have anything to show for it.

Frozen_Feet
2013-04-20, 12:14 PM
Good king Alcohol. Never underestimate it. I've heard it proposed as a serious theory that humans picked up farming just so they could get wasted more often.

Aquatosic
2013-04-20, 01:51 PM
Is it better to freeze indoors with a fire and a cellar full of food and drink, or to do it while you're still hunting and gathering out in the snow every day? Or even to forgo toiling out in the fields entirely, and just focus on managing the needs of a Lord and their castle year round?

Just because someone else is living better than you doesn't mean you can't live a good life; the peasant in their hovel still benefited from civilization whether that meant technologies which saved them time and labor, a reliable food supply which includes luxury goods like alcohol, even just the ability to run to the nearest town if they are interested in advancing their social position ("Town Air Breathes Free" after all). Having a Lord in-and-of-itself doesn't make your life worse; a tribal chieftain can be just as much of a bully as any knight, and you don't even have anything to show for it.

Only the lord would have the cellar. Also, it was illegal for serfs to move out of their villages, they were tied to the land.

JusticeZero
2013-04-20, 02:54 PM
indeed, at some times it was illegal for them to leave their farms at all.

Cerlis
2013-04-21, 08:40 AM
I never really got why druids can't wear metal armor. Metal is in nature, even alloys are essentially as "natural" as leather is, and they can wear armor made of wood, so it's not like they object to damaging the environment to get it. What's the deal?

I think it has more to do with physically encasing yourself in metal.

Metal is, by the way, dead earth. That is why steal burns fey and magically natural creatures.

DnD uses Cold Iron just because it would suck if you could do what Harry Dresden did to a particular fey, to any fey.

and that involves murdering them with 1 inch safety knives.

----

I also approve of chewing the warlord.

Note i say chewing, cus he is probably high in fat and probably filled with more dark magic that can be good for you.

Since the last thread was about proposing moral dilemmas

What about sensible differing viewpoints on cannibalism. Not only do you have No Cannibalism/ Cannibalism is evil/cannibalism when necessary/and Meet your Meat...but you also have the notion of the amount of action you take.

For instance a Druid who was morally opposed to cannibalism might simply "pass" at dinner at a gnoll camp. He might try to convince them of hunting other meat and helping them do so. He might set the food free and find food to replace.

All of these without negatively judging or directly opposing the cannibals

Water_Bear
2013-04-21, 10:43 AM
Since the last thread was about proposing moral dilemmas

What about sensible differing viewpoints on cannibalism. Not only do you have No Cannibalism/ Cannibalism is evil/cannibalism when necessary/and Meet your Meat...but you also have the notion of the amount of action you take.

For instance a Druid who was morally opposed to cannibalism might simply "pass" at dinner at a gnoll camp. He might try to convince them of hunting other meat and helping them do so. He might set the food free and find food to replace.

All of these without negatively judging or directly opposing the cannibals

Are we talking cannibalism as in "Grandpa died, let's eat him so his soul can find rest in the afterlife," like the actual cannibal societies in polynesia? The sort of "this guy was a huge badass, let's eat his heart now that we killed him" sort of cannibalism which may or may not have existed in various societies throughout time? The "let's draw straws" sort of desperation-cannibalism? Or the sort of "Ooga-Booga, put the heroes in the cooking pot" hollywood type of cannibalism?

I could see Good and Neutral Druids being okay with the first three, because you're not really hurting anyone and cannibalism is "natural" as far as that term actually means anything when sapient creatures come into it. Four is more the territory of Evil Druids, because leaving someone to be killed for their meat is not a Neutral but an absolutely Evil act.

SimonMoon6
2013-04-21, 04:54 PM
An evil warlord, greatly outmatching you and outnumbering you with his horde, is offering you a proposition most foul.

"Strap on this banded mail, or my horde burns down your forest!"

What's a druid to do?

He says, "I'm simply not able to put on metal armor!" The druid demonstrates by trying to put on the banded mail, only to have it fly right off his body.

Salbazier
2013-04-21, 07:40 PM
Only the lord would have the cellar. Also, it was illegal for serfs to move out of their villages, they were tied to the land.

So they run to towns. AFAIK, some towns have charter that makes a person who live and work there a year free from serf, which was the reason for 'town air breathes free'.

Scow2
2013-04-21, 08:23 PM
Are we talking cannibalism as in "Grandpa died, let's eat him so his soul can find rest in the afterlife," like the actual cannibal societies in polynesia? The sort of "this guy was a huge badass, let's eat his heart now that we killed him" sort of cannibalism which may or may not have existed in various societies throughout time? The "let's draw straws" sort of desperation-cannibalism? Or the sort of "Ooga-Booga, put the heroes in the cooking pot" hollywood type of cannibalism?

I could see Good and Neutral Druids being okay with the first three, because you're not really hurting anyone and cannibalism is "natural" as far as that term actually means anything when sapient creatures come into it. Four is more the territory of Evil Druids, because leaving someone to be killed for their meat is not a Neutral but an absolutely Evil act.

Druids might have an exception to cannibalism because of the diseases it can spread that eating outside one's species don't cause. However, I doubt even non-demonic Gnolls see a problem with Type 4 cannibalism - to them, meat is meat, and everyone's just a type of animal, and there's no difference between hunting a human or elf for food than a deer or rabbit.

Cerlis
2013-04-22, 12:35 AM
Are we talking cannibalism as in "Grandpa died, let's eat him so his soul can find rest in the afterlife," like the actual cannibal societies in polynesia? The sort of "this guy was a huge badass, let's eat his heart now that we killed him" sort of cannibalism which may or may not have existed in various societies throughout time? The "let's draw straws" sort of desperation-cannibalism? Or the sort of "Ooga-Booga, put the heroes in the cooking pot" hollywood type of cannibalism?

I could see Good and Neutral Druids being okay with the first three, because you're not really hurting anyone and cannibalism is "natural" as far as that term actually means anything when sapient creatures come into it. Four is more the territory of Evil Druids, because leaving someone to be killed for their meat is not a Neutral but an absolutely Evil act.

well i was thinking it would be interesting if we could find a legitimate reason for a druid of each alignment to a reason for each or at least most cannibalism.

For instance i could see a very Lion King philosophy NG or LN druid (i was going to say LG, but then remembered that you cant do that, though it would be interesting to think about) being ok with the first thing you mentioned. It would probably stop at "eating your enemies to forever bind their soul to you and horrify your enemies"ism.

but i bet with the right philosophy behind it most combinations are possible

Cerlis
2013-04-22, 06:20 AM
This reminds me back when I played World of Warcraft. I tried a Night Elf Hunter despite my intense hatred for Night Elves, and when I got the main NE city, I started looking around for someone to start teaching me the professions so I could make myself guns (I wasn't a very nice Hunter). I then found out that Blacksmiths and I think some other Profession didn't exist in Night Elf Land because Night Elves didn't use evil metal weapons.

This conversation happened while standing next to two Night Elf guards in chainmail bikinis carrying giant, 3-bladed glaives. Apparently they just have really sharp trees there.

i think its because darnassus is on a giant tree....which has no ore or rock to speak of . Everything you see is dirt covered roots at best. (mining is horrible to take there, because you dont find ore till you get to the level 11 area)

Komatik
2013-04-22, 08:16 AM
Wall of agriculture-related text:
Agriculture does produce more people - it's primary function is turning ecosystems into desert and hungry people. Which then begets expansion.

Also, states back in the past were nothing like the modern things we imagine - transporting produce via carts ceases to be profitable surprisingly quickly, and that is if you're transporting grain (where the maximum distance is 300-500km or so, as far as I know). If it's low-value stuff like tubers or easily spoiling things like fruit, it becomes much harder. Thus, old cities were city-states due to logistics. Beyond the taxable space was wild land - lower population densities, more diverse ecosystems and more diverse diets. Less work, less disease, freedom. Many population centers existed only due to slavery - people literally died and fled faster than they were born.

When times were bad, folks very literally went to the hills - the lord's power was in concentrated manpower, easy to wield over the open plain, much less so in the deep woods, rugged hills or the swamps. There's a reason old Chinese manuals of statecraft recommend forbidding shifting cultivation.

How the are you going to rule over a people who you can't tax because their crops spoil or are of low value, if you can even see the tubers in the ground? When the people themselves just scatter to the winds, perhaps adopting new (cultural) identities entirely? You don't.
In contrast, you can very easily apply that manpower on the plain taxable granaries to provide easily-stored food for the troops, the terrain is easier and you can build roads. Conflict is open, where equipment and concentrated manpower are supreme.

Apart from that, make no mistake as to the role of psychology. Civilization is mental programming as much as it is a way of life. They tell stories of how they became more than mere hunter-gatherers, how the civilized way of life is the only proper way to live (thus, even if it seems stupid, it is continued anyway: No other way is acceptable). The systems of agriculture and now later industry breed dependency - as you are, the civilization literally sustains you, even if your position is not enviable at all.

More than that, consider what a hunter would consider scary. Not much. They live in the woods, know the animals and plants, have fire and spears and bows to defend themselves with. They are the apex predators.

In contrast, the farmer fears the woods. It contains all manner of critters that want to eat his produce. It's a place he doesn't understand - doesn't control. The deer and the rabbit and so on become actual threats to your already poor sustenance instead of omnom steak. I mean, you hear about these barbarians and their brutish and short lives - and to live in those woods among the beasts without your sky-god's protection? Scary stuff.


Really makes me question why the hell my ancestors ever bothered to come here. They must've mistaken North for South at some point. And the folks that live even further north, like the Inuits, must just be plain crazy. :smalltongue:

Perhaps they thought that a country where the Sun never sets would be a warm place? And then were so disappointed they felt compelled to drink themselves to a drunken stupor? Would explain our behavior somewhat : /

Water_Bear
2013-04-22, 08:33 AM
<Wall-o-Text>

Seriously, can you get a new topic? This thread is about Druid morality restrictions, not complaining that you have to live in a house. Your tangents are off topic and verging on Real-World Politics, which are both verboten in these parts.

Komatik
2013-04-22, 09:51 AM
Understanding civilization and how "wild" people lived clearly has nothing to do with the moral codes of people who revere the natural world. Of course. Half the thread ponders things from that kind of angle, too, and is richer for it IMHO. Understanding the nuances of what used to be (and, in a small way, still is) can help us make richer tapestry for our settings, too. The wall of text is also answering multiple points from a bit earlier on in the thread.

wrt cannibalism, one angle to look at it might be the Golgari guild on MTG's world of Ravnica. They basically compost the dead to farm fungi and plants that they then feed to the poor to keep them from starving. The druidsy folk would probably object to zombie labour though :P


Note i say chewing, cus he is probably high in fat and probably filled with more dark magic that can be good for you.

Fat is good for bears though : /
I agree on not gulping down the dark magic, seems nasty.

Water_Bear
2013-04-22, 10:26 AM
Understanding civilization and how "wild" people lived clearly has nothing to do with the moral codes of people who revere the natural world. Of course. Half the thread ponders things from that kind of angle, too, and is richer for it IMHO. Understanding the nuances of what used to be (and, in a small way, still is) can help us make richer tapestry for our settings, too. The wall of text is also answering multiple points from a bit earlier on in the thread.

Except your ideas on how settled societies and nomadic ones interact are completely ahistorical. Since the neolithic, most nomads are at least pastoralists if not just nomadic farmers and their agricultural methods were just as "ecocidal" as those of any settled people.

Forest peoples such as the Celts (who had the actual Druids) and north-eastern Native American tribes (who tend to get touted as being nature worshippers) were farmers first-and-foremost. They would go into a wooded area, burn out a patch of farmland, and then farm it until the soil was depleted and they had to pick up the village and leave. They hunted and used crop rotation because forest soil is awful for farming, but they still relied on it because hunting and gathering alone simply couldn't support them.

Plains and steppe nomads from the Hittites and Aryans at the dawn of civilization to the Manchu and Sioux just a century ago relied on herd animals (domestication is a form of agriculture) in addition to hunting and sometimes planted and raised crops. Their societies proved just as prone to tyranny and violence against outsiders as their settled neighbors, arguably moreso. Heck, it's argued that rampant herding by early proto-Bantu nomads is the reason the Sahara Desert is as big as it is, so they don't even get credit for being "in tune with nature."

So who is really living "in harmony" with nature, taking their sustenance purely from hunting and gathering? People in very specific locations such as Polynesia or other places where tropical climates mean that plants produce food year-round, there is a distinct lack of easily domesticated plants and animals, and the soil is too poor even for slash and burn to be a viable solution. And looking at the statistics of stranger violence observed in these societies, they aren't rocking any more enlightened morals than the rest of us either.

The big bad civilized people didn't sweep in and enslave the pure eco-friendly nomads and force them into inefficient means of production; societies picked up whatever agricultural techniques best served their situation or they were wiped out by ones which did. And unsurprisingly, people are asses to one another however they get their food. [/Rant]

JusticeZero
2013-04-22, 12:26 PM
So who is really living "in harmony" with nature, taking their sustenance purely from hunting and gathering?
..And looking at the statistics of stranger violence observed in these societies, they aren't rocking any more enlightened morals than the rest of us either.
How about the people who used to live in the Yellowstone? That and a lot of South American groups were using the method i'm talking about - modifying the forest to be more productive while still leaving it fundamentally as a forest. When the forests are made into parks and the residents driven out, the forest rapidly changes, often losing the pastoral qualities that impressed people about the forest so much, as the anthropocentric maintenance lapses.

I'm not sure where your rant about evilness of tribal groups is coming in. Did someone argue that living "close to nature" made one a better person and I missed it? Living in the woods makes it hard to apply authoritarian powers, it doesn't make you all happy and disneyfied. A forest culture can still be rotten snots who make everybody else miserable, they just have to do it a bit more democratically because people can sneak away if they try to be too evil to their own people. Switching up to farming lowers the productivity from that, but it's popular because it gives the totalitarian tyrant the power to micromanage everyone under them under pain of death.

Water_Bear
2013-04-22, 02:20 PM
I'm not sure where your rant about evilness of tribal groups is coming in.

That's because that's not what it is.

My argument was that a) the vast majority of nomadic tribal groups throughout history used agriculture of one kind or another, b) that they were just as capable of causing ecological damage with their agricultural activities of as pre-industrial settled peoples, c) that they were no less prone to violence (societal or individual) than settled peoples, and d) an implicit refutation of the idea that agriculture is "less efficient" than hunting and gathering.

-Edit-

Also, if you look at the sentance you edited out of your quote, you'll see why groups like that used the "efficient" forest management form of hunting and gathering; they had little other choice. Pre-Columbian North America had very few domesticable animals and only a handful of plants which can be cultivated, and as far as I know none of them like the high altitudes and cold of the Yellowstone. On top of that, the sources I've found indicate the land is not arable, despite the volcanic activity, because it is rocky and has poor natural irrigation. The Yellowstone Natives chose the best path available to them in their circumstances, just as most people who could chose more efficient forms of agriculture.

It also seems like, based on what I've found about them, many of the tribes which lived in and around Yellowstone because herders quickly after the introduction of horses. So yeah...

JusticeZero
2013-04-22, 02:31 PM
My argument was that a) the vast majority of nomadic tribal groups throughout history used agriculture of one kind or another, b) that they were just as capable of causing ecological damage with their agricultural activities of as pre-industrial settled peoples, c) that they were no less prone to violence (societal or individual) than settled peoples, and d) an implicit refutation of the idea that agriculture is "less efficient" than hunting and gathering.
The only point i'm disputing is D, and not by a vast extent. It's mostly because i've been trying to refute the fallacy that forest dwellers are worse off and in desperate need for farms. They've already GOT farms. It's called a forest. :p Managed well, it's very productive. Managed stupidly, it's a disaster. Just about anything mismanaged is a disaster, including farms.
And i'm still a bit confused at where point C was ever made for you to refute.

Water_Bear
2013-04-22, 02:40 PM
And i'm still a bit confused at where point C was ever made for you to refute.

It's implicit in the whole idea of "Agriculture = Tyranny" which people keep throwing around, and mistaken belief that nomads were more environmentally sound and thus less "wasteful" and "greedy" than those dirty farmers.

I'm sick of people holding up the myth of the Noble Savage as if it were a historical fact, and doubly sick of the white guilt attitude behind it where anything smacking of western civilization is automatically worse than the alternative.

JusticeZero
2013-04-22, 03:11 PM
It's implicit in the whole idea of "Agriculture = Tyranny" which people keep throwing around,No, it's not. Agriculture IS an important tool to be wielded by a tyrant. But people didn't invent war with the invention of the sword, either; the tool just refines the ability to commit the deed.

..and mistaken belief that nomads were more environmentally sound and thus less "wasteful" and "greedy" than those dirty farmers.
I'm sick of people holding up the myth of the Noble Savage as if it were a historical fact, and doubly sick of the white guilt attitude behind it where anything smacking of western civilization is automatically worse than the alternative.
I'm not completely sure where THAT'S coming from either. I'm not saying that people in hunter-gatherer societies are nice people, wise people, or smart people. I'm just saying that they aren't as hungry as people like to claim they are. Throw them out of the woods and onto a farm and they generally end up doing worse than they were. Also, the woods isn't as pretty - because the darned thing that just got turned into a park or a coal mine or whatever was itself a form of farm.

EDIT: I do, in review, see that Komatic has been smoking the stuff they tell the rich tourists. I haven't seen much "reverence" so much as "home turf advantage", myself. There's nothing more transcendental about a patch of woods than there is about any other patch of dirt. It's sustenance and economics we're concerned with here.

Scow2
2013-04-22, 03:20 PM
And yet, a large number of northern Native American tribes were agricultural, especially the East Coast.

Agriculture developed because it provided consistent results, and was theoretically the 'lazy' way to get food (Why go hunting when you can just keep all the animals in the same place and kill them as needed? Why go foraging for food when all the fruits, vegetables, and grains you need are growing all in one spot in orderly lines? To which you can then make a tool to harvest them relatively effortlessly?). Turning it into a weapon of tyranny came much later.

TheStranger
2013-04-22, 03:39 PM
I suppose I'll weigh in with a few thoughts:

1) "Noble savages" are not a thing. Nor are "ignorant savages." Or at least, not very much of one. People are people, and have been for a very long time in all parts of the world. That is to say, people, on both a societal and individual level, can be wise, foolish, noble, selfish, clever, shortsighted, and a great many other adjectives. It's very, very hard to suggest that one society has one of these traits in abundance without oversimplifying things.

2) Agriculture and hunting/gathering are two ends of a spectrum, not independent options. Virtually every "hunter-gatherer" society has practiced some form of agriculture, and virtually every "agricultural" society has practiced some form of hunting and gathering. Where I live, venison (and other game) is a staple in a lot of freezers, and there is a thriving (if seasonal) market for a number of food plants harvested in the wild. And commercial fishing is still a thing.

3) Very rarely in human history has a society been so far from starvation that they got to pick their location on the above spectrum rather than adopting whatever strategy is going to work best for their time and place.

4) You can cherry-pick examples of any number of historical societies that have succeeded and failed with a variety of approaches. There are risks and rewards associated with all of them. However, you can't deny that we're currently enjoying a pretty good run with an agriculture-heavy approach to feeding ourselves. On the other hand, it's certainly not our only source of food, and there's no guarantee that it will work forever; only time will tell in that regard.

5) On the broader original topic: D&D seems to adhere to a very traditional Western school of thought; you have nature, and you have civilization, and they are distinct and possibly opposed. There are other ways of viewing the world; for instance, you can see human(oid)s as simply one of many species that are a part of nature. Our cities are no different from termite mounds; our earthworks akin to beaver dams; our highways nothing more than very large game trails. It's all a matter of scale, and at then end of the day we're just another animal surviving as best it can. Sometimes we alter our environment, sometimes we adapt to it. Sometimes it's at the expense of other animals, sometimes we can coexist; no different than any two species competing for the same resources. I'm not saying that's the right way to look at nature, or even that it's what I believe, but it's a way of viewing the relationship between people and nature. So, imagine a druid that does not believe that humanoids are distinct from nature, but rather sees civilization as merely another aspect of nature. What does that druid see as his purpose? Does he preach his outlook to the masses? Does he hold cities up as exemplars of nature? Does he encourage people to welcome the wilderness into cities because they are the same thing in the end? Or does he just live a quiet life somewhere with his pet bear, comfortable in the knowledge that whatever happens, it's all part of the great cycle of nature?

Scow2
2013-04-22, 04:25 PM
5) On the broader original topic: D&D seems to adhere to a very traditional Western school of thought; you have nature, and you have civilization, and they are distinct and possibly opposed. There are other ways of viewing the world; for instance, you can see human(oid)s as simply one of many species that are a part of nature. Our cities are no different from termite mounds; our earthworks akin to beaver dams; our highways nothing more than very large game trails. It's all a matter of scale, and at then end of the day we're just another animal surviving as best it can. Sometimes we alter our environment, sometimes we adapt to it. Sometimes it's at the expense of other animals, sometimes we can coexist; no different than any two species competing for the same resources. I'm not saying that's the right way to look at nature, or even that it's what I believe, but it's a way of viewing the relationship between people and nature. So, imagine a druid that does not believe that humanoids are distinct from nature, but rather sees civilization as merely another aspect of nature. What does that druid see as his purpose? Does he preach his outlook to the masses? Does he hold cities up as exemplars of nature? Does he encourage people to welcome the wilderness into cities because they are the same thing in the end? Or does he just live a quiet life somewhere with his pet bear, comfortable in the knowledge that whatever happens, it's all part of the great cycle of nature?
This is a big reason for why druids strive for balance - They aren't "Sit back and let nature run its course". Instead, they are the caretakers of the world, and while they aren't "Status Quo is everything" either, they try to preserve things and nudge from the sidelines.

Good druids help with the spread and growth of good civilizations, while also keeping them mindful of the natural world they rely on. Even if "The Wilderness" is doomed by expansionism of civilization, the Lawful or Good druid would ensure that the diverse species do not go extinct, and remain relevant to the world.

If the world's going in a direction they approve of, they try to act in ways that allow it to smoothly progress, instead of allowing it to boom then bust.