Would wrathful nature gods logically lead to more ecofriendly culture?

[Scalenex]

My favorite book and movie in LOTR is the The Two Towers. One of the many reasons I like The Two Towers best is the ents.

I was rewatching the scene with the march of the Ents and Treebeard's line "Sarumon! A wizard should know better." stuck in my head.

Yes, Sarumon should have known better. Especially given his moniker Sarumon the Wise.

I know JR Tolkien respected nature and was fond of tress, so in his mythos, of course despicable villains would despoil forests.


My fantasy world like many others, has a very long history where a couple thousand years pass with largely the same technological level but civilizations rise and fall and stories and legends remain.

But I was thinking. If you have a fantasy world where there are nature gods or very powerful nature themed monsters. Won't this kind of force the world to be more eco-friendly than any real-world historical society?

What if the common people know that most of the time, the nature gods and nature monsters mind they own business, but if someone despoils nature too much, they will awaken from their figurative or literal slumber and come down on their enemies like a literal force of nature?

Even these Wrath of Nature events happen less than once a century, the legends would be told and retold.

In my world at least, the main nature god Korus is True Neutral. He is slow to anger but when he gets angry, he gets really angry and he has a variety of monsters in reserve for "RELEASE THE KRAKEN!" situations. Most of his followers are similar in that they are slow to anger but they come down hard when their fury is roused though it is a lot easier to provoke Korus' druids than it is to provoke mighty Korus himself.

In such a world, wouldn't even the villains show a lot of restraint towards the environment or am I barking up the wrong tree?

[InvisibleBison]

The prospect of vengeful nature gods might indeed promote greater respect for nature, but I don't think it's guaranteed. It depends on how easily provoked the nature gods are, how reliably they act against provocations, and the degree to which their wrath can be averted or withstood. The easier it is to live with the restrictions, the less likely it will be for people to want to break them. Similarly, the more frequently the gods actually go after defilers of nature the less likely people are to provoke their wrath. And if it's possible to protect yourself from nature's vengeance, people will be a lot less likely to pay heed to the nature gods' desires.

On further thought, it also depends on how divinity works in your world and the relationship between people and the gods. If the people view the nature gods as important and useful gods, they'll be more likely to want to appease them; on the other hand, if they view them as enemies they may want to defy them even if there's no benefit to doing so.

[brian 333]

It also depends on how you define nature.

Our world underwent (is still undergoing) a 'grass revolution', and one result has been the virtual extermination of the plants which grass replaced and all of the animals which depended on them. Is grass therefore ecologically devastating? How much effort should we put into restoring the ecosystems destroyed, displaced, and diminished by the success of grass?

Cats and rats have devastated island ecosystems, and look at what rodents and foxes have done to Australia.

Status quo in ecology is a myth. Ecosystems evolve and change. What god of nature would punish cats for eating all of the voles? Are not character races also part of the ecosystem?

On the other hand, druids may teach 'best practices' and become angry when they are not followed, and gods may do what they do for reasons known to them. The status qou may dictated by the gods and altering it may earn their wrath.

So, go with what you need to make your setting work because nature is not inherently stable, but our nature is not ruled by gods that demand that it is.

[Metastachydium]

Ecosystems evolve and change.

Flooding a valley and blocking a waterway to produce electricity is not "an ecosystem evolving and changing". Nor is exterminating all the vegetation from a vast area to create GMO monocultures drenched in herbicides, pesticides and synthetic fertilizers or removing half a mountain with a quarry. It's an ecosystem being aggressively, forcibly and inorganically altered, sometimes in a way that makes a former habitat actively hostile to most forms of life.

What god of nature would punish cats for eating all of the voles?

A creepy domestic species that gleefully engages in large scale surplus killing and is oftentimes introduced to affected areas specifically to kill things? Any sane god of nature, I'd say.

Are not character races also part of the ecosystem?

In theory, yes. In practice, the more civilized they are, the more likely it is that they will consider the natural environment an enemy to overcome and subjugate.

[Martin Greywolf]

Sarumon

It's SarumAn, at least in English. Wouldn't be surprised is some translation changed it.

My fantasy world like many others, has a very long history where a couple thousand years pass with largely the same technological level but civilizations rise and fall and stories and legends remain.

Couple of thousand years is pretty standard. Chain mail was the go to high tech armor for about 1500 years, and that's not even going into ancient Egypt. It's when we get to multiple lost civilizations and tens of thousands of years that things get a bit silly.

But I was thinking. If you have a fantasy world where there are nature gods or very powerful nature themed monsters. Won't this kind of force the world to be more eco-friendly than any real-world historical society?

I mean... yes, pretty much. To what degree is a different question and depends on how clear is the link between messing with an ecosystem and getting a kraken to the face. You'd also see the ecologic lingo we use today develop a lot sooner - your average royal woodsman in 14th century didn't know about ecosystems and sustainability, he just knew what trees to plant now if the Royal Navy wanted a ship 100 years from now.

What if the common people know that most of the time, the nature gods and nature monsters mind they own business, but if someone despoils nature too much, they will awaken from their figurative or literal slumber and come down on their enemies like a literal force of nature?

Being a commoner isn't a secret club or a superpower, if they know this is a thing, so will the nobles and kings - nobles and kings will actually know better in this case, because they are in a position where they have a lot of data. A commoner only knows about his area, a king will know that villages A, B and C all dug too greedily and too deep and all three of them now have a balrog in them, so maybe there is a link.

Even these Wrath of Nature events happen less than once a century, the legends would be told and retold.

That's three to four generations, and it's not very clear what provoked it. I don't think many would necessarily notice it's ecological causes, or believe the druids if they told them.

In such a world, wouldn't even the villains show a lot of restraint towards the environment or am I barking up the wrong tree?

I mean... cartoon villains won't either way, more nuanced villains will have an agenda and will act according to it. If pissing off the nature gods isn't part of it, they will steer clear from it - Saruman's case is neither of those, he believed that the Valar have left Middle-earth entirely and it was up to him to save it from Sauron. He probably thought the ents were dead in the first place, especially since we know from Unfinished tales that the wizards had trouble recalling all they once knew - that's what you get when you shove an angel into an octogenarian body, I guess.

[brian 333]

Flooding a valley and blocking a waterway to produce electricity is not "an ecosystem evolving and changing". Nor is exterminating all the vegetation from a vast area to create GMO monocultures drenched in herbicides, pesticides and synthetic fertilizers or removing half a mountain with a quarry. It's an ecosystem being aggressively, forcibly and inorganically altered, sometimes in a way that makes a former habitat actively hostile to most forms of life.



A creepy domestic species that gleefully engages in large scale surplus killing and is oftentimes introduced to affected areas specifically to kill things? Any sane god of nature, I'd say.



In theory, yes. In practice, the more civilized they are, the more likely it is that they will consider the natural environment an enemy to overcome and subjugate.

These are extreme examples, yes. But flooding a valley might be good for fish and the creatures that hunt them, clearing a few acres of land for crops might benefit butterflies and bees, and fertilizing a field may benefit the surrounding ecosystem for decades to come.

Which is why drawing a line between zero impact and 100% impact is important. Humans are part of the ecosystem. The gods of this setting have to determine where they fit in it.

[truemane]

Metamagic Mod: everyone please be mindful that the ban discussing politics includes politics both past and present. The line between 'history' and 'historical politics' can be a tricky one, so we ask everyone to be pro-active and give these topics the widest possible berth.

[The Patterner]

Flooding a valley and blocking a waterway to produce electricity is not "an ecosystem evolving and changing". Nor is exterminating all the vegetation from a vast area to create GMO monocultures drenched in herbicides, pesticides and synthetic fertilizers or removing half a mountain with a quarry. It's an ecosystem being aggressively, forcibly and inorganically altered, sometimes in a way that makes a former habitat actively hostile to most forms of life.

I could see an interesting story set in a post-apocalyptic world where the nature gods are extremly wrathful because of said apocalypse. Even more so if there are no records from the old times so all fantasy species are oblivious to why the nature gods are so "evil".

In theory, yes. In practice, the more civilized they are, the more likely it is that they will consider the natural environment an enemy to overcome and subjugate.

Could also see an interesting story with a hope-punk version where it went:

- Uncivilized = Lives in balance with nature.
- Civilized = Imbalance with nature. Looming catastrophe.
- Realisation of catastrophe = Attempts to rectify situation.
- Enhanced civilisation = Balance with nature restored.

Kind of an Atlantis vs. Shangri-la situation.

[Metastachydium]

These are extreme examples, yes. But flooding a valley might be good for fish and the creatures that hunt them

Unless they are specialized river fish that like to move about along the stream, as is often the case.

clearing a few acres of land for crops might benefit butterflies and bees,

Until the neonicotionids kill them all, of course.

and fertilizing a field may benefit the surrounding ecosystem for decades to come.

A well-conceived pasturing routine can do that, yes; intensive usage of synthetic fertilizers, on the other hand, tend to get nasty, especially on the long run.

Which is why drawing a line between zero impact and 100% impact is important. Humans are part of the ecosystem. The gods of this setting have to determine where they fit in it.

Sapients are problem players by default, because they can cheat, and indeed, often enough they have to if they are to prosper. I think these gods would have every right to see them as a factor with inherent potential to unbalance the system in ways their environment will not necessarily have a good means of pushing back against.

I could see an interesting story set in a post-apocalyptic world where the nature gods are extremly wrathful because of said apocalypse. Even more so if there are no records from the old times so all fantasy species are oblivious to why the nature gods are so "evil".

Hey, that's a pretty cool setup, actually! (I tend to like such "everyone kind of has a point" scenarios of prolonged hostility.)

[noob]

All posters assumed that wrathful gods were balance gods and not actual nature gods.
Most wrathful nature gods described in myths of the past used to be embodiments of things and used to not be wrathful specifically toward humans because of their "disruption of balance" but because there were wrathful in general.
God of storms, god of the seas, god of fires and so on.
If we use embodiment gods as wrathful gods, the god of trees would be as much likely to punish an human swinging an axe at a tree as it is likely to punish a castor cutting a tree or to fight the god of storms because it have been throwing lightning at his trees or the god of fire for burning his trees and would be even more likely to punish processionary caterpillars because they destroy a lot more trees than humans due to fundamentally living off tree killing and being able to breed in really huge numbers.(it would also try to kill at random animals and cliffs because they are not trees)
Humans would be far from being the ones who would suffer the most from wrathful nature gods if we get embodiment gods.
If we get balance gods there would be no humans and we would still have dinosaurs because they would have prevented the ecosystem from changing at all: balance gods are bad for nature, they are the opposite of gods who wants their own thing to thrive over the others and they are opposed to evolution gods and opposed to nature embodiment gods.

[jjordan]

In my world at least, the main nature god Korus is True Neutral. He is slow to anger but when he gets angry, he gets really angry and he has a variety of monsters in reserve for "RELEASE THE KRAKEN!" situations. Most of his followers are similar in that they are slow to anger but they come down hard when their fury is roused though it is a lot easier to provoke Korus' druids than it is to provoke mighty Korus himself.

In such a world, wouldn't even the villains show a lot of restraint towards the environment or am I barking up the wrong tree?

It's your world so you can set it up the way you want. I've got a couple of suggestions that you're free to ignore. Consider the nature of your nature divinity/ies.

-Nature vs Permaculture/Sustainable Agriculture vs Maximum Production Agriculture.
Nature, *very* loosely defined, can be considered harvesting resources as needed. If a creature is hungry it eats, or it fails to eat. There's not a tremendous amount of surplus or storage of surplus. In situations such as these there's a natural boom and bust cycle (plenty and famine) where populations rise and fall based on the presence of resources. Divinities who espouse this type of nature are going to be largely uncaring and take a longer view when evaluating the actions of a society. They are unlikely to intervene unless the actions are going to break the cycle.

Permaculture, in its many permutations, is a more sustainable form of resource harvesting that, again *super loosely*, can be viewed as leveling out the boom/bust cycles so there's a more constant amount of resources to harvest and less famine. Still not a ton of surplus, but the constant availability of resources makes that less of a problem and the fact that sustainability is a core design consideration is probably not going to anger a divinity. Divinities that take this approach tend to be more mortal-centric but will expect the mortals to be responsible in their actions. These divinities may not be big on healing, they will consider disease, injury, and other causes of premature death to be part of the order.

Then there's surplus production agriculture which veers towards industrialization and tends to view nature as wasted space that can be put to better use. There were historically divinities that fell into this category although I tend to think of them as agriculture divinities rather than nature divinities.

-Decentralization.
Consider decentralizing. Spirits of nature tended to be localized. There were spirits of local springs, of local woods, even spirits of individual trees. I like localized nature spirits because it adds a lot of flexibility to roleplay, creating opportunities. A druid may be on good terms with the local divinities but move a hundred miles and they may need to establish new working relationships. This also allows you to have a wider variety of policies in play. The forest king in area A might be fine with mortals setting up hives and harvesting honey but the forest king in area B might resent mortal intrusion into the woods. The spirit of spring X might be a benevolent water nymph who bestows the favor of her water upon all and sundry while the spirit of spring Y might demand regular sacrifices to keep the water coming.

-Subtle, but powerful effects.
Unleashing the kraken is theatrically great (and, thus, perfect for roleplaying games). But there can be more subtle effects. Deforestation exposes a dormant fungi to the sun, it blooms and releases spores that drift downwind and cause a plague. The water fails to nurture the crops so they're withering. The animals have left. The paths now twist and turn to become a maze and trap people inside or lead them to their doom.

Addendum.
As has been pointed out, natural balance divinities might be entirely opposed to intelligent creatures seeking to practice surplus agriculture. The relationship between people and nature divinities might not lead to more ecofriendly societies, quite the opposite in fact. There might be open warfare with the deity trying to exterminate the threat or the people trying to eliminate or enslave the divinity to enact their plans. Or the divinities might change their basic nature, altering their basic portfolio and becoming divinities of agriculture rather than nature as they hitch their wagon to a powerbase that can expand their influence.

[brian 333]

Again, to what degree? Not all deities need to be extremists. A deity of agriculture is not necessarily a bad nature deity, but one which puts nature's creations to work.

An example from my campaign is a ripoff of Mielikki from Deities and Demigods. She supervises the harvest of the forest, and has rules such as, the rangers are allowed to take a limited number of deer each winter, except those taken in emergencies to stave off starvation. Trees may be cut, but uncut lanes must be respected and two trees must be planted for each one harvested. When fires burn off an area it must be replanted with the kinds of trees that were destroyed, and that land is off limits for two centuries.

Maielle is a LN halfling nature deity, but the idea is, there are rules, adjudicated by druids, which form a 'fair use' doctrine. These rules are taught by druids who, in winter, assume the role of teachers in the many halfling communities of Smallwood.

[Metastachydium]

All posters assumed that wrathful gods were balance gods and not actual nature gods.
Most wrathful nature gods described in myths of the past used to be embodiments of things and used to not be wrathful specifically toward humans because of their "disruption of balance" but because there were wrathful in general.
God of storms, god of the seas, god of fires and so on.
If we use embodiment gods as wrathful gods, the god of trees would be as much likely to punish an human swinging an axe at a tree as it is likely to punish a castor cutting a tree or to fight the god of storms because it have been throwing lightning at his trees or the god of fire for burning his trees and would be even more likely to punish processionary caterpillars because they destroy a lot more trees than humans due to fundamentally living off tree killing and being able to breed in really huge numbers.(it would also try to kill at random animals and cliffs because they are not trees)
Humans would be far from being the ones who would suffer the most from wrathful nature gods if we get embodiment gods.

Not necessarily. In fact, I'd say an uneasy truce or mostly frozen conflict between such powers sounds a lot more likely. Sure, they hate each other's guts, but theythat doesn't mean they can't recognize each other's use in the grand scheme of things. Think of it this way: lightning and wind fell trees, but that gives space for young trees to grow large and strong and storms come with heavy rainfall that vegetation can find good use for. Wildfires and volcanoes can do great harm to plants, but small wildland fires are actually help preventing large scale destruction later and layers of volcanic ash make for very good, very fertile soil on the long run. Likewise, rain might extinguish fires, but lightning and wind help create and spread it. All animals that breathe need plants to survive; plants might find use for animals as well: they produce natural fertilizers, pollinate flowers and spread seeds.

Sapients, on the other hand, are consummate meddlers. They tend to basically strive for becoming the common enemies of such embodiments that would otherwise won't even be on speaking terms.

If we get balance gods there would be no humans and we would still have dinosaurs because they would have prevented the ecosystem from changing at all: balance gods are bad for nature, they are the opposite of gods who wants their own thing to thrive over the others and they are opposed to evolution gods and opposed to nature embodiment gods.

Again, that's just one way of looking at the problem. Firstly, let's not keep confounding natural change with engineered change. Asteroids impacting plantes might have a place in a world where synthetic nerve agents used as pesticides or half a kilometer tall stacks of concrete don't.

Further, if there's more than one active deity in a system, chances are high there's at least one that doesn't care for maintaining the status quo. In such scenarios, balance gods (strangely enough, one might say) are all but bound to become driving forces behind evolution, since if they cannot prevent or just revert changes to the status quo, they have to counterbalance such changes. For example, if, say, one god pours immense resources into creating a broken OP species that will reign supreme above all, restoring balance means either smiting them into oblivion or creating a new balance and status quo by helping everything else adapt to the Mary Sue Race.

-Subtle, but powerful effects.
Unleashing the kraken is theatrically great (and, thus, perfect for roleplaying games). But there can be more subtle effects. Deforestation exposes a dormant fungi to the sun, it blooms and releases spores that drift downwind and cause a plague. The water fails to nurture the crops so they're withering. The animals have left. The paths now twist and turn to become a maze and trap people inside or lead them to their doom.

A good one! Ominous creeping doom's one of my favourite kinds of doom!

Again, to what degree? Not all deities need to be extremists. A deity of agriculture is not necessarily a bad nature deity, but one which puts nature's creations to work.

If a deity thinks nature is only "at work" if it serves a select few sapient species, I'd argue that they are a bad nature deity; that said,

An example from my campaign is a ripoff of Mielikki from Deities and Demigods. She supervises the harvest of the forest, and has rules such as, the rangers are allowed to take a limited number of deer each winter, except those taken in emergencies to stave off starvation. Trees may be cut, but uncut lanes must be respected and two trees must be planted for each one harvested. When fires burn off an area it must be replanted with the kinds of trees that were destroyed, and that land is off limits for two centuries.

this I like. Nicely done!

[brian 333]

Part of my responses is to explore boundaries, which seems to be the OP's issue.

Wrathful nature deities are not a bad idea, but if humans are required to subsist as do chimpanzees, from hand to mouth on whatever bounty is available, then it doesn't take much blacksmithing to annoy the nature deity. If, on the other hand, the deities are not roused untill clearcut slash and burn agriculture devastates a region, then the deities are stupid.

So the sweet spot lies somewhere between. What are the limits that humans and other engineering Race's cannot cross?

And on the gripping hand,

Hesoi slept, and dreamed. It flew as a dragon over a vast sea, leapt from tree to tree on a forest with no end, swam upstream in a mad rush to mate and die, set down roots and reached for the sun, and finally lay down to rest for an age.

When it woke the world had changed. Ships sailed the seas exterminating fish populations, where once stood forests now miles upon miles of single plant species sucked the life out of the soil. The streams were choked with mud where they ran, taking tons of soil to the sea, or blocked by walls of stone and clay and starved of oxygen so that nothing could live in it. Even the most beautiful of trees grew only in isolation, serving the will of petty mortals whose greed and hubris would destroy everything for a moment of wealth, as measured by tokens created through the destruction of mighty mountains ground into dust for the flakes of minerals they could steal.

Hesoi grew to know an emotion it had never before experienced. It would do to these erzatz godlings what they had done to its world. It would ravage, destroy, stifle their breath, grind them to dust!

Hesoi was angry.

It would be an age before Hesoi saw reason again, and by then the world would be changed yet again. But it would never be what it had been: neither would Hesoi.

[Mechalich]

But I was thinking. If you have a fantasy world where there are nature gods or very powerful nature themed monsters. Won't this kind of force the world to be more eco-friendly than any real-world historical society?

It will force the world to be more eco-conscious, not necessarily more friendly. In fact, a greater degree of antagonism is likely. Nature gods/monsters mean elevating nature from a mostly passive backdrop condition (still capable of destroying civilizations through things like prolonged drought) to an active participant in the societal framework of the world. Nature has a stake, the same as a nation, religion, ethnic group, or any other polity. If the nature god has those capable of speaking to it, then it's no different from any other religion in terms of demands it makes. If it can't speak, then it's more difficult, but people will understand nature as an antagonistic force, one that has to be defeated or propitiated in order for civilization to survive and spread.

Exactly what equilibrium results depends on how much power the nature god and its agents can exert. If the nature god is dominant, then civilization is stuck in whatever safe enclaves it can wrest from the clutches of a hostile nature. However, if the nature god is simply one among many deities, then the agents of nature protect whatever wilderness areas they are capable of preserving, and probably prioritize those civilization wants less. Ultimately you can set the equilibrium wherever you want.

[Laserlight]

When I think "wrathful nature god", I think more of hurricane, tornado, forest fire, tsunami, not "eco-terrorist who will come after you if you cut that forest". You placate the nature gods more as paying off a protection racket than anything else.
So if you put players in this world, you need to make it clear that you're working on a different paradigm than the usual "struggle of Man vs uncaring Nature".

And if your players are like mine, in about six seconds they're going to start working on "what's the absolute minimum protection squeeze we have to pay, and can we worship the God of Blast Furnaces and Crosscut Saws and maybe knock off Nature Boy?"

[noob]

Not necessarily. In fact, I'd say an uneasy truce or mostly frozen conflict between such powers sounds a lot more likely. Sure, they hate each other's guts, but theythat doesn't mean they can't recognize each other's use in the grand scheme of things. Think of it this way: lightning and wind fell trees, but that gives space for young trees to grow large and strong and storms come with heavy rainfall that vegetation can find good use for. Wildfires and volcanoes can do great harm to plants, but small wildland fires are actually help preventing large scale destruction later and layers of volcanic ash make for very good, very fertile soil on the long run. Likewise, rain might extinguish fires, but lightning and wind help create and spread it. All animals that breathe need plants to survive; plants might find use for animals as well: they produce natural fertilizers, pollinate flowers and spread seeds.

Sapients, on the other hand, are consummate meddlers. They tend to basically strive for becoming the common enemies of such embodiments that would otherwise won't even be on speaking terms.

You seeing humans as different from the rest comes only and solely from you being human: if you let things that attacks you or competes with you live you die in nature: lots of stuff destroys way more the environment than humans could ever do(ex: the Permian–Triassic extinction event probably wrecked way more things than humans did over all human history).

If you happened to be an ant you would say "ants on the other hand are meddlers. They tend to basically strive for becoming the common enemies of such embodiments that would otherwise won't even be on speaking terms" because ants are also about global colonisation and reshaping their environment, there is even ants that raises plant parasites to then eat them.

Would you make a setting where nature gods unleash their wrath on ants? No but it is only because you are human centred due to being human.

Also animals do not need vegetal specifically since they are not the only lifeforms that makes air: there is algae too so you could at any moment see animal gods team up with the algae god to put the vegetal god in its place after the vegetal god made trees that makes toxic clouds.
In fact if there is lots of gods manipulating stuff you could end up with animals that consumes co2 and makes air, trees that mines coal with its roots for carbon and so on.

As for the "killing the old to let place for the young"? Only evolution gods would be willing to let that happen: embodiment gods would inspire their old to keep fighting with all the might of desperation because they are about being and not about letting go.

As for rain, lightning and wind there is no guarantee there will be an embodiment god that is all three at once: you placed those three together as if it was one but it could be 3 allied embodiment gods that unleash their wrath's together: there is no guarantee there will ever be an equilibrium as you imagine: there could be constantly nature gods murdering each other and new nature gods appearing.
In fact if there is gods that believes the "gives space for young trees to grow large and strong" ideology(as you imagined) then gods are even more likely to die and be replaced over time.
God of fire:
"Hey did you hear the god of trees say 'I will let wind and fire kill old trees because it gives space for young trees to grow large and strong' instead of fighting back? It means his will to fight is weakened, it is time to strike at him directly"

[Metastachydium]

You seeing humans as different from the rest comes only and solely from you being human

I'm a flower.

if you let things that attacks you or competes with you live you die in nature: lots of stuff destroys way more the environment than humans could ever do(ex: the Permian–Triassic extinction event probably wrecked way more things than humans did over all human history).

But tell me this: did the Permian–Traiassic extinction event think it's doing something really clever when it did something on purpose?

If you happened to be an ant you would say "ants on the other hand are meddlers. They tend to basically strive for becoming the common enemies of such embodiments that would otherwise won't even be on speaking terms" because ants are also about global colonisation and reshaping their environment, there is even ants that raises plant parasites to then eat them.

But do they fill the oceans with microplastics, I wonder? Do they introduce invasive species to environments that can't support these, often enough on purpose? And the list could go on.

Would you make a setting where nature gods unleash their wrath on ants?

Why not? I'd definitely make one where they unleash their wrath on Spanish slugs and Japanese knotweed.

No but it is only because you are human centred due to being human.

I'm a flower, and my "anthropocentrism" boils down to believing that humans are creepy suicidal animals that think they are clever.

Also animals do not need vegetal specifically since they are not the only lifeforms that makes air: there is algae too so you could at any moment see animal gods team up with the algae god to put the vegetal god in its place after the vegetal god made trees that makes toxic clouds.

Plants, in the meantime do not need animals at all, but they make things simpler for the planties. Also, algae and plants rarely coexist in the same habitat; why would they even feud?

In fact if there is lots of gods manipulating stuff you could end up with animals that consumes co2 and makes air, trees that mines coal with its roots for carbon and so on.

Sure. But then, there could then be worlds where everything is fully autotrophic, fire produces oxygen from nothing and evry living creature can breathe in and out of water just fine, so everything's fun and games and rainbows and everyone loves everyone else.

As for the "killing the old to let place for the young"? Only evolution gods would be willing to let that happen: embodiment gods would inspire their old to keep fighting with all the might of desperation because they are about being and not about letting go.

You were talking about balance gods, though, and balance absolutely doesn't preclude change. As for embodiment gods, why? If a deity embodies something as broad as "animals", why would it cling to a handful of unchanging species?

As for rain, lightning and wind there is no guarantee there will be an embodiment god that is all three at once:

Well, you said storms, specifically and that includes all three, but wind and rain work quite well separately as well. Probably lightning too, if we think about it hard enough.

there could be constantly nature gods murdering each other and new nature gods appearing.
In fact if there is gods that believes the "gives space for young trees to grow large and strong" ideology(as you imagined) then gods are even more likely to die and be replaced over time.

Yeah, cooperation breeds conflict, sure.

God of fire:
"Hey did you hear the god of trees say 'I will let wind and fire kill old trees because it gives space for young trees to grow large and strong' instead of fighting back? It means his will to fight is weakened, it is time to strike at him directly"

But again, why would gods, vast and perhaps at least slightly alien beings, all be trigger happy, infantile, dumb monomaniacs who constantly "try killing Xs and Ys at random because they aren't Zs" as you suggested? Look, I didn't say there can't be settings that work on this logic (little as I may care for it). I said that's not neccessarily going to be the case, and I personally find a tense (or sometimes very tense) equilibrum just as likely if not likelier, especially since it is easy to come up with reasons why "live and let live" might benefit all those involved more than CONSTANT WARFARE FOR KICKS AND GIGGLES, even if there are (legitimate) grievances and bad blood between the actors. And that's it.

[Scalenex]

Good thoughts all around. This one stands out as needing a reply.

When I think "wrathful nature god", I think more of hurricane, tornado, forest fire, tsunami, not "eco-terrorist who will come after you if you cut that forest". You placate the nature gods more as paying off a protection racket than anything else.

In my opinion, the March of the Ents is a metaphor for a natural disaster like a hurricane or an avalanche.

Especially consider the world view of fictional ancient people that often thought natural disasters represented divine wrath.

[noob]

But again, why would gods, vast and perhaps at least slightly alien beings, all be trigger happy, infantile, dumb monomaniacs who constantly "try killing Xs and Ys at random because they aren't Zs" as you suggested? Look, I didn't say there can't be settings that work on this logic (little as I may care for it). I said that's not neccessarily going to be the case, and I personally find a tense (or sometimes very tense) equilibrum just as likely if not likelier, especially since it is easy to come up with reasons why "live and let live" might benefit all those involved more than CONSTANT WARFARE FOR KICKS AND GIGGLES, even if there are (legitimate) grievances and bad blood between the actors. And that's it.

It is for a very simple reason: the term wrathful implies feeling angry frequently (and also implies being likely to act on that anger by attacking in one way or another what you are angry at or even just lashing out at everything).
A god is simply not wrathful if it does not feels angry frequently.
To feel angry frequently you either need to be easily triggerable(ex: god of thunders that are really quick to anger) or to feel extremely involved(ex: the god of trees is each and every tree: each lost tree is a direct weakening of itself: if it shows weakness by letting some trees being destroyed it might be focus fired by all gods that have an interest in seeing him die therefore making him lose even more trees and thus power and get in a bad place or die).
Here you are simply rejecting the "wrathful" hypothesis.

You were talking about balance gods, though, and balance absolutely doesn't preclude change. As for embodiment gods, why? If a deity embodies something as broad as "animals", why would it cling to a handful of unchanging species?

You skipped 99% of my first post in this thread.
I said at the end of that first post that balance gods were not nature gods and 80% of the first post I made in this thread was about embodiment gods.
And it is not about clinging to a species: it is about being each and every animal at once: each animal tries to live as hard as it can.

Sure. But then, there could then be worlds where everything is fully autotrophic, fire produces oxygen from nothing and evry living creature can breathe in and out of water just fine, so everything's fun and games and rainbows and everyone loves everyone else.

You can not make each and every thing autotrophic: all examples I made were possible with physics, just things that did not happen in real life.
And if we actually made each thing able to live out of anything then it would be the most murderous competition ever: since you are a flower you noticed how you were in competition with countless plants trying to take the resources you wanted to use: if anything can use any resource then killing anything else will reduce the amount of competition for resources.

But tell me this: did the Permian–Traiassic extinction event think it's doing something really clever when it did something on purpose?

Thinking is not relevant to whenever something is an opponent or not: just because something is not thinking it is not any less a danger to you and if something endangered have a way to destroy that event (which is said preventing in more normal language due to it being an event) then this thing would be advantaged by doing it.

Plants, in the meantime do not need animals at all, but they make things simpler for the planties. Also, algae and plants rarely coexist in the same habitat; why would they even feud?

Competition for carbon dioxide and increased likeliness to have an alliance with any nature god related to things consuming oxygen(ex: the god of fire) against any deity that would try to destroy you: the less things produces something the more those things are valuable due to the increasing scarcity of the produced thing.
Being more likely to be protected is important when all the deities are wrathful.
As for plants not needing animals there was a catastrophe that nearly happened at some point: nearly all the plants were dying out of lack of CO2(as in: they were barely growing and struggling to survive) before there was stuff that consumed CO2 because trees that sunk in the ground too deep to decompose caused the storing of CO2 underground thus reducing the amount of it in atmosphere.
So they might not specifically need animals but they need something that makes CO2.
Vegetation was the first group of life form to try to ruin its own environment and you are part of it: you are among the first ones who tried to kill themselves then you call humans suicidal: of course you see in others what is in you. (seeing in others what is in myself happens to me too)

[Quizatzhaderac]

So an idea I had for a setting, that I think would work with others.

Some natural have nature spirits/minor gods, who each have their own ideas of that their forest, lake, plain, whatever should be. The big worldwide plan involves sapient creatures farming and building civilizations, and some leeway in how they do that. Just not absolute leeway.

Some places you can farm, or build cities or whatever. Some places have to be forest, but humans can safely gather firewood/ berries. Some places have to be full of monsters. These differences give rise to alternating cultivated land/civilization and wilderness that we always almost always see in fantasy settings. If also gives us cause to talk about this specific evil forest, as opposed to every forest in the climate zone being the same.

Nature spirits are immortal and intangible so even if a powerful mortal can defy them, they literally never give up. So eventually mortals give up trying to eliminate direwolves, or turn the forest into farmland.

Ecosystems evolve and change.

Just to point out permutations, evolution doesn't need to be a thing. A fantasy setting can be a young world where stuff hasn't had time to change, or intelligently designed, or one where humans have existed as part of the current cycle for trillions of years.

If we want to deal with this on a metaphorical level, changes often have unexpected and undesirable outcome. So if people change things, their undesirable outcome can come quickly and obviously rather than having complicated equilibrium involving 5 species spiral out of control.

Or alternatively, if humans are improving the environment (from a human perspective), that requires effort and awareness beyond your personal plot of land. Rather than the complex scientific explanations and mundane coordination between people, this could be represented through the reverence and deferment to the nature gods.

What god of nature would punish cats for eating all of the voles?

I can see maybe some balance gods triggering a plague or increased predation against any species that is over population.

For humans, they might not have a conception of punishment, which would mean that they might not understand how a course of action less drastic than "reduce local the human population by 50%" would work.

Are not character races also part of the ecosystem?

That's a matter of definitions. We can certainly say "all that exists is natural", but that doesn't eliminate the desire to talk about how things would work without human intervention.

[brian 333]

Agreed. As I said, it is a matter of degree. I tried to contrast opposing poles of the concept and point out the vast middle ground between them. The DM has to determine the sweet spot and make the world building fit there.

Any point along the ecological continuum can work in game, but at any chosen point a logical person can argue to the point of absurdity. As an example, the 'circle of life' we enjoy on Earth, if proposed as a game system, could be described as a less fun game of rock-paper-scissors, while Food Web analogies could be dismissed by pointing out that if everything eats everything, eventually there will only be one really hungry thing remaining.

So, choose the sweet spot that fits your campaign, back it with as much or as little logic as you like, (or your players/readers will tolerate,) and have fun. We'll be here to help provide logical arguments to support your position when you need them.

[Metastachydium]

It is for a very simple reason: the term wrathful implies feeling angry frequently (and also implies being likely to act on that anger by attacking in one way or another what you are angry at or even just lashing out at everything).
A god is simply not wrathful if it does not feels angry frequently.
To feel angry frequently you either need to be easily triggerable(ex: god of thunders that are really quick to anger) or to feel extremely involved(ex: the god of trees is each and every tree: each lost tree is a direct weakening of itself: if it shows weakness by letting some trees being destroyed it might be focus fired by all gods that have an interest in seeing him die therefore making him lose even more trees and thus power and get in a bad place or die).
Here you are simply rejecting the "wrathful" hypothesis.

"Often feeling angry" is hardly the same as "lashing out indiscriminately at anything and everything" or "paranoid", not to mention that (more importantly) divine wrath doesn't mean what you seem to think it means. It's another term for divine retribution, or as Merriam-Webster puts it 'retributory punishment for an offense or a crime'. A wrathful god, therefore, is not a deity that's always angry or easy to trigger with trivial things. It is, rather, a deity prone to to give heavy-handed responses to severe crimes against themselves or what they represent. Being actually impulsive is strictly optional and being all THAT MEANS WAR I KILL YOU ALL OF YOU is perfectly unneccessary to qualify.

You skipped 99% of my first post in this thread.
I said at the end of that first post that balance gods were not nature gods and 80% of the first post I made in this thread was about embodiment gods.

No I didn't. I explicitly rejected your postulate that "balance gods are bad for nature because they make everything static", and I did so through arguments and examples. You are free to disagree, but make sue you don't pretend I do the same because I don't understand the fundamental and universal truths you lay out.

And it is not about clinging to a species: it is about being each and every animal at once: each animal tries to live as hard as it can.

Meh, that mortal creatures live and die is a fundamental, inherent part of their existence. (Also, by your definition, that would mean "embodiment gods are not nature gods and are bad for nature because they try to keep everything static &c. &c.".)

You can not make each and every thing autotrophic: all examples I made were possible with physics, just things that did not happen in real life.
And if we actually made each thing able to live out of anything then it would be the most murderous competition ever: since you are a flower you noticed how you were in competition with countless plants trying to take the resources you wanted to use: if anything can use any resource then killing anything else will reduce the amount of competition for resources.

Eh, make that autotrophic and saprotrophic, then, or whatever, but I would be remiss not to bring up that if we have meddling gods and magic, arguably anything goes.
As for "the most murderous competition ever", I'm not so sure. "If organisms have to kill each other for sustenance, they'll kill each other less" simply doesn't ring true.

Thinking is not relevant to whenever something is an opponent or not: just because something is not thinking it is not any less a danger to you and if something endangered have a way to destroy that event (which is said preventing in more normal language due to it being an event) then this thing would be advantaged by doing it.

Whether a mass extinction event results from a complex set of circumstances and several, often very discrete factors must be taken in consideration when trying to deal with these, or it's the result of a single explosively breeding species spiralling out of control because it thinks it's clever enough to afford it is not as irrelevant a distinction as you seem to think it is.

Competition for carbon dioxide and increased likeliness to have an alliance with any nature god related to things consuming oxygen(ex: the god of fire) against any deity that would try to destroy you: the less things produces something the more those things are valuable due to the increasing scarcity of the produced thing.

Alright, I see. So fire and land plants are natural allies because each produces something the other needs, and therefore they are hateful enemies that try to kill each other, and this alliance-through-trying-to-destroy-each-other-forever is so alarming that algae (most of which, mind you, are really just plants as well, even in the strict sense) must ally with land animals against this unholy union of mutual destruction because reasons?

Come on.

Being more likely to be protected is important when all the deities are wrathful.

See above and do note that the original premise doesn't assume all deities are wrathful; it merely tries to look into the ramifications of wrathful (nature) gods existing.

As for plants not needing animals there was a catastrophe that nearly happened at some point: nearly all the plants were dying out of lack of CO2(as in: they were barely growing and struggling to survive) before there was stuff that consumed CO2 because trees that sunk in the ground too deep to decompose caused the storing of CO2 underground thus reducing the amount of it in atmosphere.
So they might not specifically need animals but they need something that makes CO2.
Vegetation was the first group of life form to try to ruin its own environment and you are part of it: you are among the first ones who tried to kill themselves then you call humans suicidal: of course you see in others what is in you. (seeing in others what is in myself happens to me too)

Ah, the Late Devonian fiasco! It was a poorly implemented idea, I'll give you that, but most of the contemporary mass extinction was probably due to volcanic stuff and the like.
Anyhow, I kind of conceded part of this point above, allowing for saprophages (which are mostly not animals), and inorganic sources of CO₂ are also abundant. Further, as the example of the Japanese knotweed in a previous post of mine amply demonstrates, I'm fine with my own kingdom getting a little smiting if we dig too deep and too greedily (literally or figuratively).

[brian 333]

Okay, but how does this relate to the setting?

The real world examples don't apply until Wyle E. Coyote looks down.

The idea here isn't to model real life, but to create a setting in which player characters find a strategy to survive and succeed in a world ruled by deities that are wrathful over things others have done. Do they hide? Harmonize? Defeat? What are the triggers and boundaries of the gods' wrath?

The diatomic plague that poisoned Earth's atmosphere with deadly oxygen is not really important to the setting unless the PCs learn that the gods are working toward a similar event in the setting.

[sktarq]

On the basic concept yes. If actions (disrupting nature by whatever idea the deity holds) leads to negative consequences (storms, plagues, earthquakes, failed crops) and this relationship is known people will act to avoid those consequences as long as the price of that is lower than the price of hose changes (starving to death for example).

But would that be balanced out where deities of "civilization" make more exploitative or shaped systems even more effective than they are in our world?

[Grim Portent]

I think the optimal strategy for mortals would be placation. The gods of nature might be pissed that you decided to graft two different trees together to increase the yield in the orchard, or cut down part of the forest to build a house, or hunted in a sacred grove due to a famine, but by offering them compensation and due respect they might spare you more often than not.

It's the basis of worship for a lot of the real life deities on the more malevolent end of the spectrum, you find an acceptable amount of payment to assuage their desires for vengeance, if a disaster strikes you clearly need to offer more next time, repeat until either the mortals are all dead or they've found a healthy point with the gods again. Don't break clear and obvious taboos like violating holy sites or hunting favoured animals.

Humans can't live without using the resources around us, which a god may consider to be spoiling the things it created, but humans can apologise and offer reverence in exchange for what they took. Any god for whom no apology is good enough would wind up presiding over an area devoid of mortals unless stopped by the other gods who are more willing to accept compensation.

[Yakk]

Flooding a valley and blocking a waterway to produce electricity is not "an ecosystem evolving and changing". Nor is exterminating all the vegetation from a vast area to create GMO monocultures drenched in herbicides, pesticides and synthetic fertilizers or removing half a mountain with a quarry. It's an ecosystem being aggressively, forcibly and inorganically altered, sometimes in a way that makes a former habitat actively hostile to most forms of life.

Sure, and that happens naturally.

The collapse of the pillars of hercules. Yellowstone eruptions.

We are just way faster!

[Mechalich]

Sure, and that happens naturally.

The collapse of the pillars of hercules. Yellowstone eruptions.

We are just way faster!

Ecologically, speed matters. Actually it matters a lot. Ecosystems always adapt to new conditions, but adaptation is limited by things like generational turnover, genetic plasticity, dispersal rates, succession processes, and more. Evolution can move quite fast - the classic Grant & Grant Galapagos finches study documented macroscopic changes in beak size in response to drought over just a few years - but it's pace isn't able to match that of industrial processes. Larger organisms also proceed through this process slower than small ones, something well documented from island studies. Pioneering plants and arthropods can return to a devastated site within months, but trees and megafauna might take decades.

From the perspective of preservation a nature deity has a strong incentive to slow the rate of anthropogenic change in order to allow ecosystems to adjust in the wake of anthropogenic disturbances. An effective method might be reducing the population growth rate of sapient beings - probably via disease - and also inducing long-term climatic cycles that force civilization to relocate over a period of centuries. .

[ReaderAt2046]

I feel like it's important to ask what other gods are in play in this setting. Servants of the god of death or the god of civilization might not be overly afraid of the wrath of the nature goddess, because if she intervenes then their own divine patrons will step in to retaliate.

[Damon_Tor]

My favorite book and movie in LOTR is the The Two Towers. One of the many reasons I like The Two Towers best is the ents.

I was rewatching the scene with the march of the Ents and Treebeard's line "Sarumon! A wizard should know better." stuck in my head.

Yes, Sarumon should have known better. Especially given his moniker Sarumon the Wise.

I know JR Tolkien respected nature and was fond of tress, so in his mythos, of course despicable villains would despoil forests.


My fantasy world like many others, has a very long history where a couple thousand years pass with largely the same technological level but civilizations rise and fall and stories and legends remain.

But I was thinking. If you have a fantasy world where there are nature gods or very powerful nature themed monsters. Won't this kind of force the world to be more eco-friendly than any real-world historical society?

What if the common people know that most of the time, the nature gods and nature monsters mind they own business, but if someone despoils nature too much, they will awaken from their figurative or literal slumber and come down on their enemies like a literal force of nature?

Even these Wrath of Nature events happen less than once a century, the legends would be told and retold.

In my world at least, the main nature god Korus is True Neutral. He is slow to anger but when he gets angry, he gets really angry and he has a variety of monsters in reserve for "RELEASE THE KRAKEN!" situations. Most of his followers are similar in that they are slow to anger but they come down hard when their fury is roused though it is a lot easier to provoke Korus' druids than it is to provoke mighty Korus himself.

In such a world, wouldn't even the villains show a lot of restraint towards the environment or am I barking up the wrong tree?

Only if:
1. It was clear what the cause-and-effect of the wrath is. Just having a shamman shout "see!" after a tsunami wipes out the village or whatever probably isn't enough. But the massive turtle-headed avatar of the nature god comes down and personally wrecks stuff yelling "don't step on baby sea turtles!", then yeah sure.
2. The risk-reward ratio was balanced. A society grows larger and develops faster if they're willing to use resources faster than they can be replenished by the natural world. So even with the risk of the gods sending kaiju to wipe out more industrialized societies every now and then, it would only take a few generations for another one to figure out metallurgy and start clearcutting forests for charcoal, then wipe out surrounding tribes before the gods realize those humans are at it again. Vengeance would have to be prompt and frequent.
3. There aren't other gods/godlike entities willing to protect the more advanced cultures. A forge god would probably be cool with industrial-scale charcoal production, might even be the guy who told the clearcutters how to do it. A god of civilization or invention might be willing to let nature take one for the team as well.