A Druid-run Logging Village

[Jendekit]

I'm looking for ideas and suggestions on how that would work.

The only things that I currently have is that the village of 76 has 5 druids, of which the archdruid is also the village leader, and that the village is built around a massive fir tree that radiates life-giving energy. The energy radiating from the tree encourages plant growth and improves both general health and longevity.

Can anyone give me ideas on how to make this feel like a place that would work?

[Superstition]

What kind of game is this? What role do you want this village to take in your adventure?

If it's high fantasy, the druids would be like nobles or the lords of the realm, benevolently ruling over their community. They may even live in the tree, having grown houses on its branches.

If you're going for a grittier setting, the arch druid uses this tree to control the people and maintain political power. The druid may even sacrifice people to the tree, in order to maintain its powers.

Otherwise, do you have any thoughts on how the village works? Most logging villages have traditionally been frontier towns. They clear land by chopping trees and selling them, before turning the new land into farmland they can use for a more sustainable life. Unless your surrounding forest has extremely valuable wood (such as old growth spruce and teak that could be used for shipbuilding or something of equal commercial/military value), there is little to no reason to set up a logging village just to sell lumber.

[Mechalich]

Sustainable logging is a thing, and druids can certainly do so intuitively rather than guided by advanced ecological science. With magic to augment plant growth you can actually conduct rather a lot of logging within sustainable limits.

[Blake Hannon]

In a world that has druids, I imagine sustainable logging would be a much more widespread practice. And more efficient.

[Jendekit]

What kind of game is this? What role do you want this village to take in your adventure?

I'm planning on using it as the focus location for an entire campaign centered around the dangers of an unknown, harsh frontier in my Ruins of the Forbidden Elder setting.

I'm considering using this campaign to introduce elements of the setting's equivalent of the Underdark, but it is still in the early planning stages.

If it's high fantasy, the druids would be like nobles or the lords of the realm, benevolently ruling over their community. They may even live in the tree, having grown houses on its branches.

If you're going for a grittier setting, the arch druid uses this tree to control the people and maintain political power. The druid may even sacrifice people to the tree, in order to maintain its powers.

The setting I would describe a Mid-Fantasy with major Renaissance and Pulp influences.

Otherwise, do you have any thoughts on how the village works? Most logging villages have traditionally been frontier towns. They clear land by chopping trees and selling them, before turning the new land into farmland they can use for a more sustainable life. Unless your surrounding forest has extremely valuable wood (such as old growth spruce and teak that could be used for shipbuilding or something of equal commercial/military value), there is little to no reason to set up a logging village just to sell lumber.

This is something that I've been drawing blanks on. I have the demographics figured out, thanks to a slightly modified version of this, as well as a few of the residents (the Archdruid is a dwarf named Edric Wintersbreath, the part-time barkeep is a halfling man named Tolben, and the blacksmith is a female half-orc named Henga) but the history and economy I keep drawing blank.

[Superstition]

Sustainable logging is a thing, and druids can certainly do so intuitively rather than guided by advanced ecological science. With magic to augment plant growth you can actually conduct rather a lot of logging within sustainable limits.

Not so sure if it's intuition so much as magic replacing science and technology (and the knowledge nature that replaces the field of biology/ecology) in this case.

There is a lot of ecological knowledge and conservationist practices you can use to minimize Human impact in the forest and you can use those to tweak and define the minute features of the village, such as how they harvest, and even transport the trees out. I'm assuming teleportation magic is not ubiquitous in your world (although it could perhaps be used to create a fantasy-like Star Trek setting) and your villagers are not just teleporting the wood they sell, or importing the food/materials they need for their village. Feel free to nitpick on how that might work, but I'm focusing more on the overall purpose of the village, how it might be used, and the likely ways it might grow in the future. If this creates conflicts with the druids, that's just more stories and hooks for you and your players to play with.

Anyway, onto developing your village. I'm going to design this based around what you want your players to do rather than what is specifically realistic (since we can mold and add other factors that would let you could then use to explain or logic away). The main concern is on focusing on this as an interactive game for players and making sure they are willing to get involved and want to establish this settlement as a base camp without you explicitly telling them so.

What facilities do your adventurers need? Obviously, a location for healing and resurrection services is needed, and the druids can fulfill this reasonably well (whether or not they need to complete quests or gain favor with the druids before the druids offer their limited spell slots to save the adventurers is a separate issue and can be discussed later). The druids can also offer item identification services perhaps. You mentioned a bar and a blacksmith, both of which make sense for a logging village and can be used by adventurers looking for rest and to repair or procure necessary equipment.

Is there anything else you have noticed your group likes when they choose a place to camp, a village they want to spend time in, or something that motivates them to accept a quest they normally would think is too difficult? If you can't think of anything else, that's fine, but just keep an ear out for what grabs their attention. The point is to identify and solidify the specific features we cannot give up on to engage your players.

For example, if your players have an interest in politics, you would create an economy and history that highlights the conflict between your druids and a fraction of the villagers. Perhaps the druids worship Kyrnash and are pushing for more restrained deforestation or working to improve the agriculture to have less impact, but their agenda is being met with suspicion or hostility by others because it happens to be mixed with their religious dogma.

If your game focuses more on exploration, then few of these matters might interest you except in that the village may have trouble with a group of nearby goblins raiding their trade caravans or the use of a river. Those are excuses for your players to go out and explore, and the rationale just has to explain why the goblins are attacking the trade caravans or poisoning the village's river.

We can throw out some more focused ideas and help you develop it further once you decide how you want to engage and involve your players with this village.

[tantric]

is your setting technologically advanced enough to have sawmills? is it logging for lumber or for paper? in any case, 'Ecotopia Emerging'.

[sktarq]

Okay a few things. If the village is part of a larger kingdom the local tax may well be based on a certain amount of tax paid in high quality lumber. Plus since most fantasy world's operate on a much longer timespan than our own history (look at how many RW nations last 1000 years vs game nations) silvaculture becomes more probable. And silvaculture for both lumber and coppice is exactly what the town would be practicing. Combined with some layered agriculture supplemented by hunting and food imports (with something like breadfruit and shade loving root vegtables as local staples) and you have the basis of a viable village. They may work the wood themselves or send the reeds, trunks, etc to larger towns for working into finished goods.

The druids could also be to large degree the local wise men-those with a connection to wider forest that act as guides the rest. Probably making up the majority of a town council or the like. With a village that small, unless social norms are imported from larger units, the leaders will be rather hard to distinguish from others-social bonds still trump titles.

[Vogie]

If you want to focus on the ecology of the area as a conflict, you could have the logging as a sort of pruning of the environment. This could be a political thing - an archdruid vs a Wildfire druid locked in a winter-summer conflict, for example - or an environmental conflict - the area is a magical powder keg, and the pruning stops the whole area from exploding. Maybe due to leylines, maybe due to something hidden under the earth.

Since you said it's Renaissance-era-esque, the archdruid could be healing the land. The previous feudal controllers of the land taxed it beyond its ability, and it was effectively ruined... then the archdruid has taken over, either through conflict or because the previous owners had moved on, and is using the magic of the trees to repair the land, with a long game in mind.