Have you ever played a campaign where NATURE was the main villain?

Every day of my life.

>Actually, that'd be very easy to make a game from. You would just need to make the player not!gnostic mystics rebelling against physicality in search of a higher truth, or something of the sort.

Wouldn't being gnostics would make players the main villains.

Demiurge did nothing wrong

This. There's an inclination among modern western society that nature=good, without realizing that many of the greatest human triumphs (the invention of vaccines, Norman Borlaug's dwarf wheat, the invention/discovery of domestication and animal husbandry just to name a few) were in direct contradiction of what is natural. Also, pic related, nature is not nice.

Thats because of the romantic movement in literature.

>"From my point of view, the druids are evil!"
>"Than you are lost!"

It's more "Hey guys, we kinda need these things to live, could you please stop shitting all over the planet? No? Ok."

Nature is not "good" or "nice", but unrestrainment "enlightenment" led mostly by greed is gonna finish us off as a race a whole lot faster.

Nature is literally chaotic neutral. It cares not for humans as a species, so why should we be tree huggers? We should manage (not love) nature so long as it serves our needs.

Coming back to OP, yes, Nature is an uncaring villain, who is capricious, callous and ruthless. She despises the Weak, the Helpless and the Sick. She favors those who will do anything to survive. She rewards those who specialize in nature, only to turn her back on them when the seasons change. She's a bitch.

Does it count if the campaing takes place in Australia?

I'm currently putting together a Delta Green campaign where oil is the villain. As in petroleum.

Oil is an inherently terrifying thing, if you think about it from the right angle. It's trillions of organisms, dead and buried and compressed into liquid. It's concentrated death, and it fuels basically everything. You're in contact with billion year old dead animals right now.

The underlying story is basically that oil is a malignant intelligence that's ensnared humanity and instills a subconscious death-drive in all living things. They'll first catch wind at an oil rig where everyone on board suddenly committed suicide with whatever equipment they had on hand, and eventually to a cult in Iran planning to engage the planetary death drive with a false flag nuke and ensuing world war.

I mean, most monsters can either be magical or natural in origin. In settings where they are natural beings, I guess the main villain could be the world itself and its inhuman inhabitants.

youtu.be/VBB8gagV3Xs?t=66

Start at 1:04

Nature is a cunt always trying to keep mankind down.

Only reason we're still alive is by augmenting our capabilities with our inventions.

youtube.com/watch?v=N3472Q6kvg0

The first elf in my homebrew is the BBEGirl.
Elves themselves are monsterous too.

No. Nature can be a threat, of course, but that's not the same as being a villain. Nature doesn't scheme or organize. Anything dangerous related to industrialism, be it extreme polution from a factory, deforestation or stripmining, or paid goons beating up anyone or anything standing in the way of profit/progress, can be tied to one larger villain.

Meanwhile, a pack of wolves is just a pack of wolves doing wolf things. A fun side threat, sure, but not really plot material.

That's kinda how real life goes. Unless you're talking about a shallow definition of "nature" where you're talking about the trees and grass. To me, industrialization is a part of nature.

Fighting against nature is basically what idealism is. If you want to end suffering and imperfection, then nature is your enemy.

Asphodel did nothing wrong

reanimate the civilized races, manikin war now

In fairness, a lot of people on both "sides" conflate "nature" with "the environment", which is how we ended up with a bunch of HFYfags idolizing Captain Planet villains.

That said, defining "nature" as "the state of the world" is so broad that it becomes a bit too abstract for most settings. Unless you're playing in a Fallen London campaign and trying to enact the Liberation of Night, I guess.

But wouldn't it be interesting if nature could plan and scheme. An interconnected sentient forest with the goal of spreading and taking over as much land as possible would be a villain wouldn't it?

>interconnected sentient forest

Eywa please go.

I liked this plot better when it was Blue Gender, a pity the writers sided with the villain

Well, that's not really nature anymore, is it? That's just an invasive species, 'cause it's just as dangerous to other parts of nature as it is to humans.

I wish.
youtube.com/watch?v=zCAUpxLfCbo

I had a game once where a minor villain was a druid obsessed with the "cycle of life" to the point of murdering a couple towns with ravenous beasts just because the humans "weren't strong enough to survive"

Somewhat related, all the major oil deposits date to very specific geological periods in Permian and Mesozoic. Specifically, they are connected to periods of major ocean anoxic events, which both kill off most marine animals and provide conditions for organic matter to be preserved. Ocean anoxic events are caused primarily by global warming (warmer water can hold less oxygen). Which ironically means burning fossil fuels facilitates the very conditions oil deposits were formed at.

>implying nature isn't a villain IRL
Nature doesn't have the concept of mercy OR justice, and the "dog-eat-dog" ideology that is encouraged by the nature is literally Max Stirner tier.
Humans are perfectly in their right to subjugate the nature to their whims.
Destroying nature is stupid, but enslaving it? There lies the true wisdom.

The one where OP struggles against his latent homosexuality?

and why should it not be a part of nature?
The balance you see is only a temporary one. Nature is constant conflict for resources, and if one species destroys all the others? that means that it's just better adapted to that environment.

>Wanting to enslave nature
Spooks

Any wilderness survival game or game about surviving natural disasters

>Nature doesn't have the concept of mercy OR justice
Do you?

If one species destroys all others then it has effectively ruined its own environment, most likely ensuring its own imminent doom. The most successful predators have adapted to not consume more resources than their surroundings can sustain.

>The most successful predators have adapted to not consume more resources than their surroundings can sustain.
sure, because all the ones that didn't stop lost their food sources and died out
adapted to environment =/= long term survival, only that their offspring have a larger share of the following gene pool

>adapted to environment =/= long term survival
Fundamentally disagree. It doesn't matter how few predators are out for your kids if you all starve to death.

Under rated comment

>oil as a malignant intelligence.
I´m reminded of the Black oil from X Files which is bassicaly bloood of some alien species which they use a medium for their woen reproduction, smehow. It can infest or posses people who come into contact with it or drink it, so it is a body-horror and infestestation/ inflitration themed threat. A vaccine can be devolped against and some people are genetically immune to it, however.

trips dont lie

You could have Nature be an antagonist, but not really an evil villain.

>Mercy - "one should act unto other kinder than one would act unto himself".
>Justice - "one should receive reward/punishment appropriate to his achievements/misdeeds".
It's not fucking rocket science, you smug bastard.

Maybe it is.

But if Industrialism wins the conflict, we all die.

If Nature wins, we can survive.

Having Nature as the main villain is stupid.

>If Nature wins
we'll also be dead

the only way to survive is to find a middle ground between those, or make ourselves independent of nature

Wait about seventy years, user. You'll be living it.

Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill.

I want to have sex with Nature

Nature and civilization are in a balance. Humans are part of nature so they don't need to be exterminated but if they cause too much damage they need to be trimmed back. Just have a coven of crazy Druids start attacking villages and cities.

Man against nature is one of the four staple conflicts, so I don't see why anyone would ever have a problem with it.

Fuck off back to /k/

Only a weak pussy thinks nature is an antagonist or a protagonist. Nature simply is, and there's no such thing as unnatural. Cutting down a tree is natural. Disemboweling someone for cutting down a tree is natural. Everything is natural.

Nature can't be a villain. An embodiment of nature can, but nature as a whole doesn't have agency.

Well, no. Eldritch horrors are non-natural.

Sorry, I left the name on while I was making fun of the real one, I'm not actually him.

Depends on your definition of "villain"

Depends on your definition of "natural"

Oh. Good. I was about to start screeching autistically.

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No, but I've planned one. To sum it up, bla bla bla fey bargin, bla bla bla royal family, bla bla bla giant tree now threatens all existance, bla bla there is no good end only the encroaching forest. Powder fantasy with a good excuse for strange woodland stuff, and a plague slowly turning people into trees.

I was part of this thread.

suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/46417158/

In my experience, Nature itself is too impersonal to provide a good villain. Players need a face to focus on.

In african folklore, Nature is evil, but more like a place of chaos and lair to anything that isn't human, from scorpions and lions to witches and too many varieties of people-swallowers. Kinda like one doesn't fight Chaos itself in WH40K, no one fights Nature, just its denizens.

nature is always the enemy
it wants you killed to create new life
everywhere
all the time

What about the undead? Are those natural?

AdMech please go.

Read Uprooted. A dryad is a major player.

No but If I would I'll set it in old timey Japan, give the humans somewhat good fire arms and explosives, make sure that the players understand that there will be no winners in this war if they take a side

I thought about making a campaign based around an Earth Mother and her Three Daughters which are objectively evil.

They personify Fire, Ice and Nature.

Basically just ripping off TW3.

>Did you even watch that movie? Old and venerable godly nature is being destroyed by humans, corrupted into demons by humans, ravaged by humans.
>It fights back and loses.
>Somehow the villain.

Hell
>Miazaki film
>Nature bad
Pick one

I always thought of a setting about Vietnam era marines fighting elf led amazons in an earth taken over by jungle.

The soldiers used a sort of super agent orange and instead of giving them cancer it turn them into mutants. Shit like beastmen,insectmen,orcs(thick skin and they lose some of their intelligence.

but thats kinda it

You gonna expand on this shit?

Why did you include elves and orc though? Seems like a good setting without them

Just Human Nature...

That's literally the central conflict though. Nature is shown as uncaring for the weak's struggle. Enslaving nature was shown to be necessary for the weak and dispossesed to have a chance in life

cWoD W:TA, Black Spiral Dancers.

Ah yes, nature the uncaring thing that just exists vs the good guys whose ammunition corrupts and curses the things it impacts into monstrous engines of death set on the destruction of everything nearby.

No, but I attempted to draft one up during my earlier days of playing DnD. It never got finished, and it's cringeworthy shit now, but it actually was going to be some high-level stuff that ends in someone waking up the Tarrasque in order to wipe out all of civilization in some massive area.

>implying the weak and dispossessed should have a chance at life

What? In a world with gods of nature of various kinda, they could just be very wrathful.

"Ok, humans have killed too many wolves. They're now going to be born with thicker skins, bigger fangs and be 40 feet tall! Muahahah!"

-Happy Nature Goddess

Ayoooo hold up

Is there a Fallen London publication? I only know of the browser game and Sunless Sea.

Like this?
viruscomix.com/page564.html

Or this?
youtube.com/watch?v=ACHVwA1D8fE

Wait, sorry.
I meant this:
viruscomix.com/page505.html

Officially? No, although people keep telling Failbetter that they want one.

There is, however, a fan-made adaptation using FATE. I'm not familiar with the system, though, so I couldn't tell you how good it is.

...

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We might as well not talk about anything at all if we're basing it on personal definitions. How about we agree to base our discussion on an idea of nature" that appeals to the majority?

>Industrialism wins the conflict, we all die
No, we enter a post scarcity "Star Trek" economy.
>If Nature wins
We are just another set of fossils that animal intelligences occasionally trip over when hillsides erode.

Winston is such a whiny cunt now

This could go one of two ways.

>Game where you fight the ebil colonialists as the noble savages with nature powers

OR

>Game where you fight savages empowered by vile pagan nature gods who are sabotaging human progress

It'll almost definitely be the first, but the second would be SO refreshing. Of course, these days, pagans, nature, and savages can never be villainous or even neutral, they're always the good guys.

I'm developing a setting right now where one of the central conflicts is civilization versus savagery. It's not a 1:1 to what you're suggesting, as "nature" is pretty neutral, but there are die-hard pagans led by druids who are in a permanent state of on-and-off warfare with the civilized kingdoms and republics. The pagans think civilization is an offense to the gods, and both the mainline monotheistic church and the not!Gnostic heretic kingdoms believe firmly in the dominion of people over nature. They don't hate nature per se, but they do support taming it and bending it to mankind's will.

Yeah. They were trying to make their way to civilization through a new land, far north with winter cold on their heels. They were battling the elements, starvation, infection and on one or two occasions wildlife. Didn't run long, only a few sessions in total but it was fun. The thing about nature is that it is the enemy. It absolutely is your enemy.

>be a living thing
>be your own enemy

"What is Autoimmunity?" for 1500, Alex

I just wanna have a reason for having elf amazons

If someone is weakened by no fault of their own, do they not deserve a second chance?

How would you fight it? Pollute a lot? Build suburbs that are impossible to cross without a car?

>'Nam marines vs. amazon elves

nice

Sounds pretty interesting.