Badmike wrote:Druids in all my campaigns are NG or NE...no one, I'm sorry, could ever be TRUE neutral without eventually going bonkers at some point in their lives... Enough! Dimbulb the 1st level druid should never have to wrestle through existential questions of existance that a Tibetian Zen Master could only begin to fathom. Also, true neutral IMO means you can never go adventuring....what party in their right mind harbors a guy who any moment might yell "Run away, grizzly bear, the party wants to take your fur!"

Marlith wrote:My campaign had the Good Druids being the friendly environmental types who wanted to protect the environment but if civilization was really going to suffer they would agree to what was for good of civilization (within reason). The Dark Druids were the radical environmental types. They were anti-civilization and would often go out of their way to disrupt things they saw an encroachment on their "wilds".

Excellent stuff, y'both!

Sad to say never managed to adopt such an interesting take on the class, here: PC druids (such as there were) tended to appear more like refugees from small, besieged Gaulish villages...

I once had a small community druids in my campaign who lived on the edge of a dangerous forest.  The PC's would stop there to spend the night before going in and they would pass back through on their way out.

   The head druid would always make some sort of lofty prediction about their coming adventure, such as:  "One of you shall not return from the forest," or "One of you shall be changed."

   These predictions had an aggravating and ironic way of turning out to be true.

   Finally, one evil player destroyed the druid village by flying over it at night and polymorphing small animals into elephants as they fell onto the huts below...splat!  Very amusing.

   Mostly I do not like druids because the earth-moron game rationale makes for so many dumb and time consuming spells and unbalanced rules such as the ability to stay a bird all day.

Mark

MShipley88 wrote:"Balance" is another fantasy gaming concept that I find amusing.

 I could accept the Balance between Chaos and Law of Michael Moocock's writings. That works.

  But a "Balance" between Good and Evil makes me laugh:

  "I need some evil to balance all the good I have done. What do you suggest?"

  There is too much good? We need some evil?:

"El, you really must try this because it's puerco pibil. It's a slow-roasted pork, nothing fancy. It just happens to be my favorite, and I order it with a tequila and lime in every dive I go to in this country. And honestly, that is the best it's ever been anywhere. In fact, it's too good. It's so good that when I'm finished, I'll pay my check, walk straight into the kitchen and shoot the cook. Because that's what I do. I restore the balance to this country. And that is what I would like from you right now. Help keep the balance by pulling the trigger. "

as i said, i used to just tread neutral characters as simply that. they stayed neutral and just didnt get involved in any struggles involving either of the other factions.

Al

DungeonDelver wrote:"El, you really must try this because it's puerco pibil. It's a slow-roasted pork, nothing fancy. It just happens to be my favorite, and I order it with a tequila and lime in every dive I go to in this country. And honestly, that is the best it's ever been anywhere. In fact, it's too good. It's so good that when I'm finished, I'll pay my check, walk straight into the kitchen and shoot the cook. Because that's what I do. I restore the balance to this country. And that is what I would like from you right now. Help keep the balance by pulling the trigger. "

Johny Depp as Agent Sands  8)

And the muff. Don't forget the muff.

Deadlord36 wrote:And the muff. Don't forget the muff.

lol frank you crack me up you have such a way with words

MShipley88 wrote:The druid as presented is not a medieval point of view. It is much closer to a modern, secular whatever-ism. The game druid does not even match the historical druid. The concept of a defender of nature is entirely modern. Medieval Europeans (the people of 90% of fantasy game worlds) would not have even been able to understand the concept...would have returned only blank and puzzled stares even if you explained it to them.  8O

  The concept of "no moral component" is alien to heroic fantasy role-playing. Good and evil are starkly contrasted. The idea of remaining neutral in such a clash is incomprehensible. Even when the characters and the conflicts take on modern tones (such as the Elric novels), even the evil guys know they are evil.  :evil:

 So, the druids on the sidelines, yawning enormously, are not one of the better components of the game.  :roll:

Mark

Well, Daoism is hardly modern OR secular.  That leads to the question of (1) whether D&D druids are meant to represent Daoist principles and (2) if so, whether they belong in the default D&D milieu any more than monks do (and EGG is on record as saying that the latter really didn't).  As for what historical druids did or what medieval Europeans would have understood, I doubt they would have comprehended killing orcs or finding the Eye of Vecna, either, so that's not really the litmus test.  Obviously the game is not intended to be a realistic historical simulation.

Your strongest point is the one about heroic fantasy.  I admit it's hard to imagine how true neutrality fits in this scheme, though I wonder whether that's more to do with the conceit or our lack of imagination.  I also admit that it's hard to picture a true neutral adventurer, and easier to picture someone more cloistered as a true neutral.  Given that D&D ultimately has allowed druids to be neutral good, neutral evil etc. rather than only TN probably reflects this-- if you're going to go out and affect the world, even just a small corner of it, you're probably going to skew NG or NE.  Even EGG seems to have made this concession (see Curley Greenleaf from the Gord novels.  Definitely NG, at the very least!).  

On the other hand, one might argue that someone out there trying to make sure that neither good nor evil dominates, because the dominance of either leads to disharmony and suffering, could be interpreted as TN.  That can work in the short term in a typical party of PCs (killing orcs to prevent them from overrunning the countryside), but could be difficult long term (because inevitably a TN will have to prevent someone good from overreaching as well).  All this speaks more to the difficulties of TN as a concept than it does the druid as a PC class, though, at least if you concede that druids can be NG/NE.

It's hard.  People struggle with paladins, too, for I think the same reason.  The alignment requirements of these classes require a very fine sense of moral subtleties and if you paint them with too broad a brush, the classes become caricatures at best and unplayable at worst.

Ya know, I never looked at Druids like the way you guys are. Maybe 'bout time I give 'em another look-see. The odd part is that I studied a bit of their culture in school, I just plumb forgot 'bout them. Thanks guys!

As for objectionable art, I still say the cover of AC2 is a bit weird. It reminds me of the Little Mermaid cover. Ya know, hidden in plain site type stuff.

What was the topic?  * Looks up at the title*  Ah, yes.  The TSR artwork that I find most objectionable:

    Just about anything that depicts female drow.  These paintings tend to show what female drow would look like if encountered at the Playboy Mansion...or if the mansion were in Menzobarranzan.  (Erelhei Cinlu?)

    The result is a superhero/dominatrix look that is entirely too lust-filled for a game publication....IMHO.  

Mark