For a fan of 13th Age and DCC RPG I’ve been running
a lot of D&D 5E lately. I think that I’m a very weird 5E DM... to start
some of my favorite rules are from the playtest notes (“D&D Next”) and from
the Workshop chapter of the Dungeon Master Guide. However, I got a new and
excellent party and they’re loving 5E, so let's keep 5E (for now).
This post is about languages, more precisely about
Druidic because one of my players built a Wood Elf Druid. We are running a
playtest adventure (which is kind of new for me and doesn’t allow me to “go
crazy” like I usually do… but it’s an excellent change of pace… and the
adventures that we’re playtesting are really great!).
I’m the kind of DM that loves social and cultural
interaction. I like adventures where the party meet weird societies, with
bizarre or different rules of etiquette (Jack Vance and Robert Jordan are some
of my favorite authors precisely because of that). I find this type of “social
exploration” as fun as the traditional “physical exploration”. When I wrote the
races for Chronicles of the 7th Moon (a setting co-wrote some 10 years
ago), I was given the task of giving a new flavor (but no rules’ change) to the
D&D 3.5 Core Races (elf, dwarf, halfling etc.); it was a blast and I had a
very good time precisely because I had to work with society and culture. My
players really enjoyed it too.
So, I like to highlight different cultures. That
means that I love languages! And languages with a twist. Tolkien is just the
beginning, check Warren Ellis’ Ocean, Jack Vance’s Moon Moth or
Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun (particularly the Ascians). By consequence
that means that I usually hate Common as an “universal language”, although of
late I prefer to keep it, because I know that some players just hate to have to
pay attention to different languages (it can get frustrating for some classes,
like Bards).
That leads to other “universal” languages: the
various Alignment Languages (something I always like to address, but not here),
Thieves’ Cant and Druidic.
Thieves’ Cant is easy for me. It’s not a language
but actually a way for members of the criminal underground to get in touch with
each other. In fact, I usually employ Thieves’ Cant as a “free rumor” our “free
contact” character trait - Rogues can use it to find other thieves in taverns
or to know the latest heist in the area. It gives a social touch to the Rogue,
something that I find quite missing in most settings.
Now… to Druidic. Sincerely, I see no point in
keeping Druid in my D&D games. In fact, in my previous groups, I noticed
that official adventures and DM’s Guide encounters used a lot more Sylvan than
Druidic (so much that seriously considered removing it for Sylvan, which has a
lot more use and flavor for Druids in most settings/adventures).
However, something came up recently: I was running
the aforementioned playtest for an awesome adventure where the party travels
through an exotic realm where most of the natives don’t speak Common (which
makes language one of the challenges of the entire thing). At some point I
noticed that the adventure didn’t provide any information on local priests or
healers. Because of the nature of the setting I didn’t think that Clerics or
Paladins fitted the local religion. Thus (and also because D&D 5E still
doesn’t have an official Shaman class) I decided instead to place a NPC Druid…
… and that’s when Druidic made sense for me. It was
actually an accident on my part, when I placed the NPC Druid. I had completely
forgot about the language part. I don’t like to backtrack on my narrative (the
now famous “Yes” rule), so instead of removing the NPC I played along and
allowed the Wood Elf in the party to talk to him, using Druidic. In terms of
flavor, it worked perfectly and enhanced the narrative (and everyone loved the
scene).
Ironically that’s how I see Druidic now: the
only universal and constant language among mortals. Old and almost
sacred. You can be of any place or culture, but Druidic still is the same
thing everywhere in my setting. That means that for many societies Druids are
the only reliable source of information or communication between far or isolated
communities. That also makes Druids a good contact options for Bards (which is
a great homage to the original Bard from AD&D 1st).
It may seem dumb or too obvious, but this small
detail gave lots of ideas about how Druids fit in my home settings. I hope it can help you too.
