Druids: motivation for adventure

[Zulgyan]

I really like the druid class and spell list, and instead ecological treehuggers as presented in modern D&D, I use them to represent the old, pagan faith of mankind, before the advent of the Church of Law. They are now a marginal cult, though with the opportunity of making a comeback as the Church of Law weakens.

Now, I have a hard time finding the reason why they would join a traditional D&D adventuring company focused on dungeon & wilderness expeditions, for gold and domain building. In more "modern" good vs. evil type of epic campaigns, they are an easier fit as player characters.

How do you handle this in your games?

[thegreyelf]

I've never really had an issue with it, as I leave the impetus for adventuring on the PCs. If someone wants to play a druid, it's on them to figure out why they are adventuring. A motivation to adventure could be as simple as wanderlust or a desire to seek adventure. There's nothing in drudism that specifically discounts that, either, so it's a nice, basic reason to go out and make one's way in the world--to see what's out there.

That being said, your own description provides an intereating rationale: if they see a chance for their cult to make a resurgence, they're venturing forth to spread the word and bring converts back to the Old Faith, just like any cleric would.

[Zulgyan]

Yeah, the thing is that gold hoarding and civilization building looks more like "new gods" (cleric) morals to me, right now. I'm trying to find a way to reinterpret the druid so as to meld better in the traditional D&D adventuring group (an expedition party in search of treasure). Maybe finding a parallel in modern neopagans or new age types.

[talysman]

Aside from adventures specifically designed for druids (I've wrote a couple myself,) there's this: people training to be priests, whether of Law/Chaos or of nature, aren't necessarily priests. They might even be putting off accepting assignment to a community because they have an urge for adventure. This is true of clerics, so why can't it be true for druids as well?

A cleric or druid PC might be:

+ taking a sabbatical while they consider their "major",
+ trying to decide which territory they want to settle down in,
+ having a "crisis of faith"/reconsidering whether they even want to stay in the religious hierarchy,
+ seeing more of the world to further their understanding of nature,
+ taking the risks of adventure to speed up their advancement in the hierarchy,
+ on a long-term mission, self-imposed or ordered by someone higher up,
+ putting off a permanent assignment because they want some fun.

Let the players decide, unless they ask you for ideas.

[hamurai]

The old faith/pagan style is how we mostly play the druids, too.

I often have PC druids be on adventure because they received a vision to find a certain place, a vision that an old god or spirit animal or whatever granted them, vague enough to be interesting and looked for, but also vague enough for me as ref to use just any old place That is, if the player can't think of a good reason. We don't have that many druids as PCs, though.

The druid might feel a certain sensation that they are near the place they are looking for when I choose it's time to follow up on that vision quest. They might receive further visions, either of the place (to gently railroad them there) or an object they might find there and recover for whatever purpose (the will of the gods might seem illogical, but who are the PCs to judge?). It's a nice quest hook you can pretty much use at any time.

We also had a player whose druid was thrown out of his circle because of wrong accusations of murder and theft. He was an outcast, trying to find his place in the world. I had him meet another druid from his circle at some point who presented evidence that the then-new arch druid was involved in it, and the player had a nice story arc to find out more about this and return to his circle to face and defeat the arch druid who wronged him and the entire circle, as it turned out, the arch druid had been corrupted by Chaos and was descending ever deeper into madness and had to be stopped to save the circle.
On name level, we played the showdown so the player could take over the circle. The other players were also involved because the arch druid had forces of Chaos on his side which plagued the surrounding lands.
That worked out really nicely and it was a good point to retire the druid PC to become a major NPC in our campaign.