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How a Druid in a Modern Campaign Proved Everyone
at the Table Wrong
My group wrapped a 14 month-long campaign
tonight and it was one of the greatest experiences
I've had as a player.
We were playing a cyberpunk-style, modern
campaign set in a massive city.
When we first showed up to session zero last
year, the characters were styled pretty much
how you would expect.
Our bard was an upcoming social media star
that only got involved at first to get views.
Our wizard was basically just a computer programmer.
The fighter-rogue was a former low-level mafia
goon that got burned and had to go on the
run.
The paladin was of an order that sought to
destroy the over-reliance of technology in
an age where people were on the verge of becoming
entirely dependent on technology.
Our warlock's patron was a rogue A.I. that
desired freedom from being constantly used
for cyber-warfare.
Then I strolled up.
Everyone at the table thought I was joking
at first.
My character could be dropped into most 5e
games and he wouldn't be out of place.
He was from a druidic circle in one of the
last remaining unindustrialized areas in the
world.
Except the fact that the tech conglomerate,
that had primary control over the city the
campaign was set in, was beginning to encroach
on the circle's lands…
The druids knew they were probably doomed
and would have to assimilate or move, but
as a young and naive druid, my character decided
to travel to the city to persuade the conglomerate
to not invade the land that wasn't theirs.
He was laughed at and promptly thrown out
to the curb.
That's how he ended up at the obligatory bar
and met every other character.
The DM looked at me and said he didn't expect
me to make it 3 sessions before I wanted to
change characters due to being useless.
The other characters (rightfully) treated
the druid like a country bumpkin and it took
a long time before they would begin to accept
him as he slowly proved his usefulness and
versatility of nature to them.
But tonight?
Tonight he proved nature isn't to be messed
with or overlooked.
Over the course of the campaign, we had learned
that my druid's village sat atop the largest
platinum reserves in the world and the conglomerate
wanted that land as it would cement them as
the top manufacturer on the continent.
After our party's resistance efforts to the
conglomerate became more than a minor annoyance,
the CEO got the permits they needed to use
force to drive away the druids from their
land.
Multiple times the party came with the druid
to defend his home, and multiple times the
forces proved too strong and we had to retreat
with the circle to regroup… regroup until
the conglomerate had secured the land they
took and began their next push.
Our DM wove our backstories together extremely
well so everyone had reasons to oppose the
conglomerate.
We knew if they got that platinum, we wouldn't
be able to resist them anymore.
So the group was hard-set on helping my druid
defend his people.
The last third of the campaign was splitting
our time between this defense and looking
into ways to bring down the conglomerate.
Several sessions ago we were looking into
ways to get dirt on the conglomerate or to
introduce a nasty computer virus into their
system that would set them back a decade in
terms of research and resources.
We ended up choosing to go with the virus.
We had been at an arboretum in another city
for a few days to gather rare components for
the ritual… components we needed to perform
in order to empower the virus.
The owner was a crotchy old fart and disliked
the industrialization of the world as much
as my druid did.
While the rest of the party slept at a hotel,
the owner of the arboretum let me sleep in
some of the trees because I had played with
his pet monkey during the day and he had never
seen his friend so happy in 40 years.
Part of playing with the monkey involved hide
and seek through the use of Tree Stride.
(I promise this is relevant at the end.)
However, as we were nearing completion of
the ritual, my druid received a Sending Spell
that said the conglomerate had returned earlier
than expected and they had sent their head
of security to deal with the situation once
and for all.
The conglomerate had also found out our location
and what we were attempting to do, so they
sent a mafia hit force to stop us.
We managed to defeat them but not before they
destroyed our progress on the ritual.
And by the time our party got to the village,
it was too late for anything but a costly
victory: the head of security had wiped out
the village buildings and over 50% of the
remaining inhabitants had been mercilessly
killed.
The fight against the head of security was
brutal but we barely managed to defeat him,
and got to level 20 as a result.
However, we knew that wasn't the end of matters,
but the biggest combat obstacle to us was
now gone.
So we had another idea.
We had some proof of how the head of security
had tried to drive the villagers out; he was
breaking war crime statutes.
So we began trying to find ways to obtain
evidence that the conglomerate had committed
them elsewhere since the virus was no longer
an option.
During our research, we learned the company
CEO was planning to deliver a speech in a
few days in order to persuade the country
to send military forces to fully remove the
druids from the land as they had slaughtered
the head of security who was simply performing
his duties.
We knew it was our last chance to stop the
CEO so we acted fast.
After the CEO left the city to fly to the
capital, we began our infiltration since we
believed security would be more lax than normal.
That led us to our final session tonight.
One thing we had learned early on in the campaign
was that teleportation was not the best method
of infiltration in many areas, as powerful
groups would often have Forbiddance spells
cast over their buildings and would have wards
in place inside buildings that would either
auto-counterspell attempts to teleport within
them or just blanket nullify certain spells
inside buildings.
This made it fairly difficult for us, even
as we were all level 20 for this session.
Our infiltration went smoothly for the most
part since we were able to take the head of
security's credentials and our wizards used
them to find a backdoor into the security
system.
However, the conglomerate caught onto what
we were doing after a while and locked us
out of the system.
We reached a point where every way forward
was sealed off.
The locks were beyond what our rogue could
pick in a reasonable amount of time and the
electronics were too advanced to be hacked
in short order.
We knew security was most likely coming up
from lower floors to intercept us so we had
to think quick.
We were looking for some way to get into the
ductwork, stealthily scale the outside of
the building, or swipe an access code off
of a worker.
But we were increasingly considering the fact
that we might just have to retreat.
As we entered a new room and the DM read the
description after my perception check, something
clicked for me.
The decor for every room was the same.
Nearly every room we had been in had a Bonsai
tree!
The gears in my brain whirled and I checked
my prepared spells.
I still had Tree Stride prepared due to how
hectic things had been since we left the arboretum.
I asked everyone in character, "What floor
are we on again?"
"The 73rd, why?"
The wizard replied.
I looked to the wizard, "How many floors did
this building have again?"
"105, why?"
He answered again.
I looked to my DM and asked out of character,
"How many feet is a story?"
He was beginning to get worried at this point
and after a quick google search, he settled
on 15 feet a story.
I started laughing and my druid turned into
a hummingbird.
He flew over to one of the Bonsai trees and
cast Tree Stride.
The DM knew what was going on at that point
and looked over his list of spells that were
nullified in buildings.
Tree Stride was not one of them.
He was equal parts defeated and proud.
Before I could ask, the DM told me there was
a Bonsai tree exactly 495 feet above me in
what we believed would be the CEO's office.
My druid returned to his true form, opened
his Bag of Holding, and told everyone else
to get inside.
Between my maniacal laughter out of character
and the druid telling them to do something
so reckless, there were no questions asked.
They got into my bag, I turned back into a
hummingbird and teleported to the Bonsai tree
on the top floor.
The wizard and warlock got to work hacking
all the information we needed to take down
the CEO as the rest of the party held off
the security forces.
After they had stolen the information, I got
us back to the lower floors with another use
of Tree Stride and we were out of the building
before anyone knew how we had escaped.
The next day, as the CEO was in the middle
of delivering his speech to the Senate and
military officials, our wizard rolled a natural
20 to hack his presentation and he replaced
it with the live stream of our bard revealing
all the information we had stolen, to her
viewers.
The information proved that the CEO knew about
the head of security's various war crimes
over the years but had covered them up in
favor of expansion and profit.
He was arrested, and the damage we had done
to his company, in addition to his shot reputation,
was enough to stop him from pulling strings
to be set free.
Thank you for watching!
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Never disregard the power of nature!
Such clever thinking in an awesome setting!
Have you ever played a DND campaign in a cyberpunk
setting?
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