How I'd Run the Druidic Language || D&D with Dael Kingsmill

[@patrickthornton840]

"Who knows what the druids are doing?" - a question asked many times by Romans stationed in Britain and Gaul, I imagine.

[@skyepollard5951]

as an english druid. i have no clue what we're doing

[@jacopobertolotti5025]

My best guess is that Romans stationed in Britain and Gaul asked "Why are we conquering this cold and rainy land when we should be conquering Egypt?" ;-)

[@Skiamakhos]

Egypt has its own hazards - my great grandfather was there in WW1, and his regiment lost 800 men in a day due to thirst, pursuing the Ottoman Turks into the desert. He told my gran of how they made it to an oasis marked on the map, and all there was was a drip running down this stone, and the men practically fought each other for a turn getting a drop in their mouths. Give me rainy & foggy over the sun literally killing you any day.

[@zionthedragon8866]

@@skyepollard5951 *neo druid.

[@rationalroundhead6739]

@@jacopobertolotti5025 Hadn’t they already conquered Egypt by the time they were in Britain?

[@OsciideeOTDC]

Druids being able to whistle on the wind means that evil druids can send a message with a storm which is super cool!

[@MonarchsFactory]

OOHHHHHH THAT'S SO NEAT

[@ross8093]

Could also be a call to war. Or a day early battle cry of sorts. Y'know a clan or confederation of clans go to war to defend the land and they send a storm to hang over their enemies. Like a noose waiting to be tightened with lightning and rain ( as the over dramatic bard/druid would say)

[@digitalbrentable]

Or a murder of crows calling a cacophony from beyond the horizon. Or just an unnatural stillness and silence momentarily spreads throughout the wood, with the occasional rattling of twigs. Or the deep, dull, drone of many insects rolls by. All pretty sinister.

[@uncleistvan3501]

Yes, you could tie the intensity (or intent) of the message to the strength of the wind. Have you ever had the wind howling outside and feel a chill go up your neck? An exhausted Druid stumbles into the tavern and collapses while mumbling "... death on the wind."

[@rubyc6317]

That's a nice thought, but it's impossible. Druids always have the alignment of true neutral. If they become evil or good they lose all their powers

[@DabIMON]

The bird calls could work for long-distance communication as well; a druid starts whistling, some birds pick up on their tune, and soon it spreads across the area with a ton of birds repeating a tune which other druids can recognize.

[@TomWDW1]

Having birds transmit messages and "spread the word" would be an awesome ability.

[@caitlinmanning1292]

OMG that squiggle thing! If the druidic could put their hand up to a tree and make them without removing the bark and this left some sort of mark which other druids would see as a sign to pull back the bark to read the signs underneath !!!

[@marctelfer6159]

I don't know if you came across this while reading for this video, but humans in the real world also, in some areas, have "whistled languages", the most well known example being Silbo Gomero, a whistled variant of Spanish used on the Canary Islands. Whistled languages are predominantly used to communicate across long distances, e.g. across valleys, between nearby villages, or in wooded areas, because they carry further than, say, shouting, and stand out more from background noise.

[@Tongyo42]

This is good.

[@3nertia]

There's also a language of communication that uses flowers :D

[@metallsnubben]

I remember this from a swedish quiz show actually haha, was really interesting how it exaggerated pitch difference and emphasis to make up for having essentially no consonants or distinct vowels And yeah, it really was spanish but whistling, like trying to mimic speech with a flute!

[@claire3614]

Eres canario, muyayo? Estás seguro de que eso es un idioma? Porque a eso aquí lo llamamos silvar fuerte.

[@marctelfer6159]

@@claire3614 Forgive my reply in English (I don't think I could even attempt to respond in Spanish) but I think Silbo Gomero (SG) is largely considered to be a "register" of Spanish (or at least the local variant of Spanish), rather than a distinct language, but the method by which it is communicated is fairly unique. In most registers you might expect slight differences in things like phonology, grammar, or vocabulary, but in SG all of that also occurs alongside a shift to whistling. Basically, though, it's a whistled version of the local version of Spanish. However, because of that fact, it's fairly difficult for Spanish speakers to understand. I guess, in that case, it's sort of a "relex"?

[@BigJono21]

Trust Australians to come up with a name like scribblybark; childish sounding yet 100% accurate.

[@stixywixy]

As opposed to Britishisms, which are equally silly but often wildly inaccurate out of understatement, irony, hundred-year-old innuendo rooted in 400-year-old slang, or any of a bewildering variety of more embarrassing reasons better off forgotten.

[@mr.flibble3190]

You see "scribblybark" on trees in North America, too - which makes Daelic Druidic script useful in a whole range of ecologies, as long as you have trees.

[@kylethomas9130]

@@mr.flibble3190 glad I checked the comments, scribbly bark does have a widespread aesthetic.

[@FlyingAxblade_D20]

random inspiration: Druids never use "on the left" "forward" etc. but always use North, South, East, West and the highest reference point for their locale, and druids always seem to be, wait for it, walking or standing in circles, casting their eyes around and oddly nodding often. muttering mmhmm, mhmm, so that others who meet them find them restless and agreeable. =)

[@ghrondindustries5136]

Ogham, the script used by the actual druidic ethnic group in real world history, is perfect for the long-term communication. Every letter consists of 1-5 lines coming off of a central line, like branches off a tree (which also makes it conceivably viable as sign-language). However, each letter is also associated with a specific holy plant. A druid might lay down a bunch of sticks in a pattern, which spells out a clear message to other druids, while appearing completely inconsequential to anyone else.

[@alanschaub147]

Ghrond Industries, I’m really glad someone pointed that out.

[@Madhattersinjeans]

I have heard of soldiers who acting as scouts will use a special twisted leaf and leave it where their comrades would see it as a signal. Twigs/branches would do the same thing, a certain shape would indicate different things. Most people don't take more than a second to look at leaves or twigs but if you know what to look for it's a clear signal for things like "area clear", "area not clear", "I am in danger come help", "ambush nearby". That sort of thing So in DND this could translate as a kind of "natural" language like the hobo markings.

[@kennethbrown1919]

Thank you, this and the comment from Marc M are more useful/valuable than the entire video

[@AlexisLaJoie]

@MonarchsFactory the druidic script connection to medicinal plants seems like a great tie in to your medicine and poison guide... Certain plants could have an annotation of the appropriate druidic letter. That would actually be a pretty cool idea for a special botany book that characters could come across in world.... Hmm

[@capser22]

As your friendly neighbourhood ecologist who studies eucalypts and birds (sometimes), I endorse your information as being mostly correct :) From a more scientific standpoint, the idea of bird calls is awesome for communication as some bird calls (e.g. Eastern Whipbird) can actually carry a really long distance (further than a kilometer in the whip birds case) while some contact calls (the more simple chirps and shrills) are extremely short distance. I'm picturing specific druidic tribes having a subset of bird species they use to communicate within tribe and another more generic species group of bird calls for general druidic between tribes. The idea of a druid player sounding like a lyrebird makes me happy. Needlessly complex to include any of that, but it tickles my ecological mindset

[@Inkenote]

capser22 I’m gathering that you imagine the druids tell a bird to spread a message rather than the Druid copying a bird call loud enough to be heard far away. As in, a Druid would copy a bird call to speak to a bird and ask it to send a message to someone several miles away and by virtue of passing the message to other birds of the same race it “sends” the message to the receiving Druid, who will notice the activity of the birds and be able to hear what is being said to them. I’m having ideagasms.

[@capser22]

Haha, yeah having a "snow white" druid is an amazing idea. I was actually thinking more along the lines of the druid themselves creating the bird calls to communicate. But the idea of using birds as a messenger is awesome, sending the message along a chain of birds through a forest is cool for a long-range method. For more short range (say 100-200ft) a bird call could be used for an encoded druidic message. You could use both :)

[@marcm5207]

Depending on the cultural theme of the individual druid these forms of communication could change. Elephants communicate through long distances using infrasonic calls that travel as vibratins in the ground and whales use a somewhat similar system in the water. An "african" or oceanic themed druid could use those signals for long distance communication... The thing is... how would a wood druid community and an oceanic one communicate? Maybe it would be necessary the existence of a coastal druidic community to act as an interface. And I find that very appropriate: it would be as if the druidic communities related to one another as an ecosystem with each individual community being essential to the survival of the whole group...

[@ImaginaryJeremy]

I really like the flavor of the variations here!

[@Spectacular-Spider-Dan]

Now I want a romantic subplot in my game involving druidic bird song dating.

[@ghrondindustries5136]

HA! Perfect.

[@ciarfah]

DM: "As you wander along, your party hears a strange series of chirps and twitters carry through the trees" *Druid character hears this* "Hi sexc ;)" DM: "What do you do?"

[@thomascocks9136]

They met on tweetr

[@StepBackHistory]

I like the idea of the secret messages the Bene Gesserit in Dune could send to each other. Simple messages hidden in plain sight only people who knew where to look could notice.

[@alexanderdobbs2358]

This is seriously so cool. Whistling messages on the wind? Yes please one Shadowfax please thank you

[@uncleistvan3501]

Why not have Druids communicate through nature as any background noise? Birds may be a common form, but some circles may mimic other things. Circle of the Moon Druids may use nocturnal calls primarily.

[@mr.flibble3190]

Wildshaping might also encourage druids to draw on more than just bird communication, as a way to make sure they get some use out of Druidic in a variety of forms.

[@uncleistvan3501]

Yes, you could add even more enhanced communication capabilities for Wildshape Druids. The limits are whatever you can workout with your DM. Some animals might not have much in the way of easily conveyed long distance contact abilities. Always be mindful of where your PCs are, and use a suitable creature if you want things to remain plausible as background noise. Another is issue might arise if the player is not as focused to pick up on their cues as you thought. If you weave the messages into the flavor of the narration instead of the Druid taking a break to talk with nature, it may go right over their head. I can think of 2 Druids in games I play right now: A. Sharp player would pick up on most of them easily if hears them over the party. B. Slightly distracted at times, loves the animals, but maybe would be better as a Rogue. I don't want deter anyone from trying it. I just caution to assess if the extra work would be worth it. You could build an entire system of codes, particularly if those involved are big fans of nature and animals. Have fun!

[@Madhattersinjeans]

I mean if you're tuned into certain kinds of animals like birds and the noises they make you would totally be able to tell if there's a threat nearby or if things are A-okay. It's not something that would require a lot of work unless you really wanted it to be. Recognising bird calls isn't hard provided you have a few around you can work with, or the internet to hear the recordings.

[@Maverickstyg]

I think things like this are perfect opportunities to give credence to passive perception and passive animal handling scores. If certain players want to benefit from the natural proficiencies of playing the druid class, but aren't so forward thinking as to know to provide a cue for the DM, you could give anyone with the passive perception the ability to naturally see the druidic message someone left. Alternatively, to intuitively understand what the birds flight patterns/chirps, or bear's claw marks mean. In addition, you wouldn't be forcing someone to burn an otherwise useful wild shape just to understand or send a simple message(granted, they come back on short rest, but it may still be worth the consideration)

[@cacklebarnacle15]

Those are some cool ideas. I can't wait to play with them. Would druids use those also as the vocal component in spells? I think so. And just imagine, going into the deep woods, and hearing bird calls all over, but never seeing any birds that would make them, until you are confronted by a grove of druids, who would like you to get out of their territory, if you don't mind. Or else... As for a really permanent version, I'd like to think stoneshape could be used to pull in veins of other stone types and create a more angled version of the scribbly bark. Because trees can fall and a drought may erase smaller plant signals, but a big rock will stay no matter what.

[@MonarchsFactory]

Yessssss!! So good!!

[@marcm5207]

In an environment without scribbly bark trees, other kinds of marks could be used. similar to what certain animals use to mark their territory (a bear's clawmarks, specific musks, that kind of thing).

[@lisamoore6335]

Cackle Barnacle There's an ancient form of Celtic writing in Ireland called Ogham. Grooves were scratched into the edge of rocks with the shape and number of grooves symbolising different letters. You can find alphabets really easily online if you want to check it out, might be handy for druids that don't have as many trees in their area

[@Inkenote]

-furiously rewriting next session notes

[@zexionthefirst6767]

So in my game, I have druidic as a language that is predominantly spoken. Our party Druid has only ever seen it written in Elven or common to take very short notes: it's really just using the alphabet of those scripts, and you read them aloud phonetically to kind of figure out what the druidic words would be. The exception is a scroll of reincarnation that he found. That was written using the Sylvan alphabet, and that was very surprising to him. Sylvan being a language that most of the world has forgotten with the collapse of Elven Kingdom over a thousand years ago. Moreover, it seems a few of the actual letters of the Sylvan alphabet have lost use since this scroll had been written, so he didn't know what sound they were supposed to make, and there were a few to rid of words that he didn't know the meaning of. ... just a short little anecdote about how I tried tying druidic into my own game two or three sessions ago (about two months ago, we took a Hiatus from playing every week shortly after that)

[@Skiamakhos]

I like the idea of there being a spoken & written language, perhaps a branch of Elvish that split off from High Elvish way, way back when the Elves were a young race, & this being a language that nature understands - but that would possibly be understood by a number of classes that are closely associated with nature - like, as Dael says of her natural Druidic language, Rangers would get some sense of what's going on, but be unable to create their own messages. Perhaps Clerics who serve the gods & goddesses of nature would be able to study it, and maybe if you're a magic user with a familiar spirit you could get a translation that way - but then there should also be ways of communicating using nature itself that are only ever accessible to Druids, like causing a tree or shrub to grow in a particular way that another Druid would interpret correctly - just throwing some ideas around, anyway :-)

[@Driftingsiax]

Another fun idea is something that elephants do. They can make a sound lower than the minimum human hearing threshold. They use it to communicate over long distance because low sounds carry better. It would be cool to have a message as a sound that you don’t so much hear as feel in the earth.

[@sonjaquan5775]

I just rolled up a Tortle druid last night so this was timely. Since my characterization of them was going to lean heavily into Crush from Finding Nemo (and of course TMNT) who grows and brews their own, ahem, recreational substances, your idea of the language as philosophical got me thinking of a language utilizing statements where much is elided but contains much that is alluded to. "I was walking, and it's like, the universe, my dude." But that got me further thinking that it could instead be a deeply-nested, self-referential memetic language. As anyone with passing familiarity of internet memes knows, as soon as you get two or three meme levels deep the meaning is almost incomprehensible to the layperson, but if you are familiar with the source memes then the meaning is immediately recognizable. Kind of like the Tamarians from TNG. But I also really dig your ideas (especially the scribbly gum!) and will try to incorporate them.

[@ghrondindustries5136]

Consider taking a look at Ogham, too. The script used by the druidic peoples on earth.

[@lolthien]

The scribblybark writing is fucking inspired. Lady, you have a knack for this DM stuff. Well freaking done!

[@eitberko]

I love the whistling idea! It can also tie into human whistling language. In my setting it is a magic language with a set number of speakers. When a druid is ready to retire or die, they pass on the language to their successor, passing on the knowledge of the language through a ritual. The young druid suddenly just knows the language without needing to study it, and the old druid stops knowing it. It is kinda like Vancian magic, a seperate item or entity that lives in your brain but isn't completely a part of you.

[@ashwinnmyburgh9364]

This is hecking awesome. The idea that Druidic is basically this animalistic, natural communication, not a true language and yet capable of relaying information on the environment, dangers within it etc I love it, it really gives druids the vibe I think they should have, and really matches the idea of being one with nature.

[@silbril.stories]

Such a relief to hear dnd voices from not only the Southern Hemisphere, but here in AU. Please never apologise for that!! We all been starved of relevant content for the Southern Hemisphere

[@drmirabilis]

This is so inspirational! I think that another realm of Druidic language that could be unique is FORECASTING. E.g. using Druidic to predict the weather, create a warning system before an earthquake, eclipse or volcanic eruption, etc. this would be especially interesting with her idea of long-term communication. I'm from Hawaii so this is a volcanic example. There is a particular type of tree that is called the Lehua blossom with a unique red flower spray that one myth states "if you pick the flower, it will rain." So a Druid could signal Rainfall/Sadness/Chill/Rot/Dampness by summoning a Lehua blossom and having it falling/on the ground/in a log/etc. the Lehua is also known for being the first blooming plant to occupy the landscape after a volcanic eruption. So a seedling or twig of a red spray of Lehua blossom either could signal rebirth or the coming of lava, depending on the context. It would be especially powerful if a part of the lore of Druidic is that squiggly bark, bird calls, migration patterns, cloud types, etc. are all nature spirits that created the Sylvan or Druidic languages in the first place to communicate with each other and mortal Druids are merely learning to read those natural signs at a deep level. A master Druid could forecast a future event or ask a great natural philosophical question and the answer would only be revealed centuries later when it is relevant. Something like Stonehenge where the alignment of planets and stars matters but only at particular seasons or one specific special night of prophecy. Or a fairy circle of mushrooms blooming out from the rot of a particular magical beast like the sad death of a unicorn that tells the story of its life in a cyclic pattern.

[@chickenelafsworld7105]

I like the idea of druids being so in-tune with nature that they can sense the messages forests send. Like, interpreting what wolf howls and bird calls mean. But even cooler, trees, fungi, etc. communicate over a wide area, with both electric impulses and pheromones(? I don’t remember if that’s the right word for it) in order to warn of danger. For example, a Druid knows some of the navigation of the woods they enter because other druids have lived here, and their communion with nature has gotten so imbedded that the trees remember where they went and why, and anyone can hear if they know how to listen like a Druid does.

[@animistchannel2983]

Great ideas. Something I'd put out for consideration are real-world shaman techniques like yoik or various kinds of song-chants used in the northern & arctic world. It's often improvisational singing or chanting used to call information from the environment, navigate, or find opportunities or friends or food etc. Basically, the practitioner uses variations on their personal repertoire to project their mind/spirit into the environment, and the environment gives back clues or draws their attention to certain options or signs. Some yoik or throat-chant or bone-chant may have a calming or mesmerizing effect on various animals, allowing stealthy passage or hunting through the ecosystem. Other variations may call to the spirit worlds, and entities or fairy-type nature spirits or even deceased human inhabitants may choose to come listen and interact or share information. It isn't a direct summoning, more like ringing a "hello bell" to see who is already around. In these cases, it may be a way of combining Druidic with other spells as an RP mechanism, but it could also be used to send messages. By "singing your way" into the web of life, other practitioners of similar arts may then hear or get intuitions of it from the voice of Nature that they are listening to or communing with, and they may be inclined to check out or pay attention to the new player in the field around them. Maybe someone's familiar would interpret some of the message and lead their friend to respond accordingly. Some of these arts are manipulative and should probably be classed as spell components in RPG's. Others are just general information-sharing with the wild, and the wild and other practitioners will respond however they feel like. It sort of turns a forest into The Forest, a living environment and open chat-line for any attuned or communing lives that can access it. It could manifest in insect or bird sounds, animal behaviors like greeting and leading, changes or swirls in wind or water flows, even minor weather changes. If there are fae contacts involved, they may just communicate in straightforward language. The trick is for the practitioner to be aware and sensitive to the subtle combinations, which may be a little different every time or in each area. It counts as commune-ication, of turning your "self" into a component of what is already flowing through the mind of the specific part of Nature that you wish to interact with for a given purpose. It's also a way to just absorb into the greater mind to better understand your place and the general possibilities of it across time and the worlds of thought and spirit and communion. Another way to apply a "language" or art like this is to communicate with various other non-humanoid inhabitants, to hear in their own thoughts and languages as if they were people you were meeting in a pub or a walk down the street of a town. In that sense, the Forest is like a city unto itself, with its own ways and politics and language and commerce. Sometimes, it's all out there to just join in, and sometimes it takes some diplomacy to deal with. Many practitioners have a sort of "personal tune" or chant that basically identifies and joins them to the web of life in general, with other songs and variations that have specific applied purposes. In D&D it may be like a druid-bard hybrid art, or like ritual spellcasting over extended periods of time as the practitioner is sort of "tuned into the network" as they travel or camp, looking for whatever messages and clues are out there. For one view of a theatrical but genuine version of this idea that includes song, chant, dance, postures, instrument, even a sense of raw animal voice; check out: "Mari Boine - Goaskinviellja / Eagle Brother (Oslo Opera House, 2009)"

[@Yous0147]

I really like your imaginative ideas. The whistling long distance communication is nothing less than genius and so appropriate for druids

[@ArrogantDan]

Thought: Druidic is a means of communication such that a message can be understood in any wildshape

[@extrams0]

I never thought of druidic being a spoken language - more of a set of signs that druids use to communicate information about locations. indeed using those markings on trees seems like an awesome idea for that. I was using circles of 5 flowers - with 1 indicating the direction & type. example: a cricle of a red flowered thistle on the north side + 4 dandelions = "something very dangerous on the north side" + "lion" = "warning, north of here starts lion hunting ground."

[@ghilliefinn]

LOVE your idea of using druid craft to pass on ideas by blooming types of plants eg those plants that signify storm if left on the outskirts of a town could signify that it is 'unstable' or undergoing change; flowers that signify the start of spring would denote a prosperous area etc! Awesome!

[@SpyridonTheWonderWkr]

Thank you for putting in some thoughtful and well thoughtout ideas for Druid. I will certainly make them available in my campaigns! Slight side note, my favorite part of this video was your kind remarks about the children on bikes.

[@devinlykins1741]

I love the ideas you mentioned hear. In one game I play a druid and my GM had no idea how to incorporate druidic other than just another language. At which point we had to discuss the difference between sylvan and druidic... Also I'm running a game in which my party is about to meet a grove of druids and my ranger is arakocra. This will give me some really cool hints before I actually introduce them.

[@jeffrycochran_mp3a425]

I like the idea with the rangers picking up on some of the Druidic signals. The rallying signal sounds real good for eliminating a predator (i.e. an entity threating the harmony of the forest).

[@DisasterAuntie]

Every year or so, I come back here and rewatch this, and I find something new to talk about. Sorry I keep showing up and spouting stuff. ;) You talk (around 6:00 to 7:00) about using the Druidcraft cantrip to cause a plant to grow out of season to send a message, mentioning specifically that a person might Druidcraft some dry desert grasses in a patch to indicate "Maybe lighting fires here would be a bad idea," and I loved that. It made me also think of the (Victorian English) language of flowers. You can literally cause a flower with a specific concept attached to it. In Victorian England, a person with a Druidcraft cantrip might have used it to indicate romantic interest, hatred, friendship, or whatever. In Exandria, Faerûn, or some other fantasy setting, flowers might hold these meanings obviously. But they also might hold associations with schools of arcane magic, domains of divine magics, political or economic principles, even historical events. I LOVE EXAMPLES. Example #1, the DM says: You got a 15 on Nature, so you know this patch of grass doesn't fit in with the others around here. It's like, a coastal grass. Maybe somewhere on the Menagerie Coast? And the pattern, you're not familiar, but it looks intentional. The druid NPC comes to look at it, and they tell you, "Yeah, that pattern associates the grass's origin with danger. We're nowhere near the coast, so this means that this river is prone to flooding whenever there's a lot of rain in those mountains, and we should camp further away just in case." Example #2, the Player says: I want to plant the garden in such a way as to conceal the buried hiding spot of this dangerous thing, and also so that no one who understands the druidic language will ever want to dig it up. Make it a clear warning, but only to those who live in harmony with nature. The other player, the druid, pushes up their sleeves excitedly. "I'm on the job." A non-flower example: Bees travel for MILES in search of flowers to pollinate, and they dance to communicate with other bees. The word "bee" in Hebrew is the same for the word "word," which was a weird sentence to type, but there's a solid reason that "the buzz" is syononymous with news or gossip. Whisper a message to a bee. They'll carry that message home to the rest of the hive, spread it around the hive, who will then spread it to any bees from other colonies, and eventually word gets where it needs to go. It's not time-sensitive, but it does work, as long as there's a semi-contiguous (patches only separated by a mile or less) network of flowering plants between here and there.

[@digitalbrentable]

You can expand the applicability of druidic by making it that fey and animals also understand it. So if you're writing messages in flowers to warn of an imminent bushfire, the local wildlife and fey get this message *and take it seriously* (because they know a druid wrote it, and druids don't mess around).

[@andrewsharp4950]

I love these ideas. I almost exclusively DM, but often include Druid-like characters in my Homebrew game as NPCs, and enjoy adding them to the party. This gives a lot more utility to them. Thank you!

[@ed-chivers]

Hi Dael - I'm running a D&D game in the Eberron setting, our party are currently in a part of the world that has a lot of druids. One of the things I came up with for our game was that druids could communicate using trees - a druid would lay a hand on a tree, whisper to it and then the message would be carried all through the forest on the sound of the leaves whispering in the wind. It's more of a broadcast than a point-to-point message but the idea was that druids could send messages to each other throughout the whole forest. My party thought it was cool :)

[@kaladongstormguy]

In my setting, there's a written language for Druidic, but it's seldom used in general and never used for recording things like history, records, or stories. The written language uses logograms (like Chinese), but it's actually most similar to Hobo Code. This is to reflect that historical druids were literate but didn't write any records and the fact that I think hobo code is interesting and used exclusively to communicate simple ideas (like "it's safe to sleep here" or "violent/dishonest people"). As such, oral tradition is extremely important. Which is part of why the language is kept so secret. Most tribes even forbid translating their legends and stories into other tongues. Druidic itself is the language of nature. The Druids listen to nature's call and can speak in Druidic to compel it to their will. The incanting of spells is the Druids essentially asking a favor of Nature. Rangers learn to listen and speak to nature, but never well enough to communicate effectively with Druids (unless they join a tribe and are taught). Finally the language itself would be pretty useless in any urban context. It doesn't have words for things like "King" or "general store" since they don't exist in nature. It has words for "Alpha" and "bountiful food" but that's as close as you're gonna get.

[@CreamyPesto505]

The whistle into the wind reminds me of the Two Towers movie how Gandalf calls Shadowfax when they step out of fangorn.

[@Odalkor]

Something i really like about your channel is to see how much you're passionate about these subject. It's definitively contagious xD. I really like your idea about druidic language, but something that always stuck in my mind was that druid may take ANY form, and depending on their LvL, they may even be immortal, so this druidic language can be a pretty nice way to recognize one another through the world.

[@Mythman1995]

These are really interesting ideas, I've run it before where Druidic is loosely based on victorian flower language, but it might also be interesting for druidic to use Druidcraft to do a similar thing through weather phenomina - mini-lightning for danger, the smell of rain for abundance, sunshine for happiness, or snow for death.

[@Thekushkraken]

I firmly believe the thumbnail image encouraged my brain to misread "Run" as "Ruin"

[@nctinman8775]

Wizards of the Coast needs to hire Dael as a Creative Consultant / Content Developer. You viewpoint on game-play is fantastic.

[@Stormandfire]

Ogham is an old runic alphabet that can look like random scratches on rocks. And I like the idea of combining that with the tree bark. A flower/plant language could also work for long term, but changeable, communication. Plants in certain locations like mile markers or crossroads could indicate sweet waters or rough terrain. It would also allow nature itself to impart messages, if the language is more practical, like gorse springing up indicates an oncoming period of hardship.

[@spicklesandwich]

This is exactly what I was looking for. A bit of astrologist 'reading the tea leaves' in the nature around them, and a bit of an animal making signs and calls to its flock. And it belies the culture behind it - how they use it, and what for, what they value, etc. Commune with nature becomes much, much cooler.

[@flibbernodgets7018]

3:21 I love hearing about stuff like this. I'm running a campaign set in Australia and while it's fun to put in drop bears and bunyips little details like this really capture my imagination.

[@halabackatchya]

I always love playing around with language as an important feature in games. I think it would be very interesting to have a storyline where thieves cant and druidic become critical to the storyline and to the plot that the PCs have to face.

[@JeffersonMills]

Excellent thoughts. I will use them when playing my druid/magic user. Also, in answer to your question, “who knows what the druids are doing?“ the answer is: “No one knows who they were ... or what they were doing,” according to the song “Stonehenge” by Spinal Tap. So there you have it.

[@greatestdegamick2077]

On the island of La Gomera, one of the Canary Islands, the language of Silbo is still occasionally spoken. It is made of whistles that mimic the sounds of Spanish. Speakers can communicate over rather long distances with it.

[@evandill]

One subtle thing I like the idea of is in a forest tended to by one; or multiple druids, the branches of trees have some significance. Like the shortest branch is always leading towards the way out, the longest being the easiest way to find where they may be, or point towards some important location. In somewhere with a malign druid or something corrupting nature these signs may be reversed, where the longest one is trying to lead you out where the shortest branch is pointed towards the stationary source. These could of course change over long periods of time so maybe they used to point to some settlement but that settlement long moved for one reason or another. I really also like this in like dense forest where it's not easy to tell, but druids can hold a tree for a bit to know where the longest branch is, so you'd have druids running through running their hands along each tree to get a sense of where to go to leave or druids calmly walking though trying to find where and what these branches lead to. of course the branches don't form a straight line, but a rough path. Could do the same with roots too.

[@marctelfer6159]

Oh, I don't know how I forgot to mention this alongside Silbo Gomero (I think I wrote my first comment on my way to work), buuuut... "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra". Druids, as sort of "priests" would be "keepers of the stories" in a sense, so they could make references to people/deities/figures at places to refer to events or feelings in a broad sense. To take a Norse example, "Odin at the windy tree" might relate broadly to learning and more specifically to the learning of magic/writing, so by extension "a windy tree" might mean "school" (so sort of cant-esque). Similarly, "Njörðr and Skaði after winter" may refer to the end of a relationship, either of a friendship or of a marriage, and further "Njörðr in the mountains" and "Skaði at the sea" might refer to when just one side of the relationship is unhappy. I suspect that, to a point, generally speaking, anyone familiar with the folklore will be able to grasp at least some of this meaning, but you could layer that into the whistled language as well, and there's always kennings to mess around with, derived from poetic language, that could conceal any meanings they might want to hide, e.g. "seed of the plains of Fýri" means "gold", so your druids might shorten this down to "seeds", and likewise, ""flesh of the mother of the enemy of the giantess" means, surprisingly simply "earth", so they might shorten that down to "flesh of the mother". If a druid might want to refer to buried gold, he might speak of "seeds scattered in the flesh of the mother" instead. So sort of cant-like, but tied heavily in with the mythology that the druids would be especially familiar with. (If you wanted to go full-on immersion into it, kennings and this sort of metaphor could be used by druids who might be in a tight spot, but still want to appear as calm, collected, helpful little prisoners. Tell the captors a story, all the while secretly communicating with other druids a possible plan)

[@simcptmike]

Holy fuck you have some cool ideas! I love the whistle on the wind idea and the tree writing, wow!

[@aaronhollatz3319]

Reminds me of the flower petal message in the hollywood Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe film

[@quincinnamon7686]

I've been wanting to make a Snugglepot and Cuddlepie campaign for a while (I'm Australian, and a birder too!), and this is quite inspiring! Thank you! I'm a DM, but druids are my absolute favourite. In my games, I've included druidic as little symbols scribbled on acorns. I also like the idea that the different form of druidic have different times associated with them, including delays. E.g. ripples past down a stream, or luminescent fungi, or strong smells.

[@TomWDW1]

A Druid being able to do a "Wind Whistle" spell, I imagine, would work like a Cleric's "Sending" spell - though it would only work if the message was going to another Druid. That would be so cool.

[@cristoferpicado4059]

I loved your Thieve's Cant video and showed it to my players. This one is great too and I think we are going to take your idea under advisement to flesh out Druidic in out campaign setting.

[@littledeadsami]

Hehe Snugglypot. That's better than Snugglepot. Also, I am so bad at hearing accents that it didn't even click that you were Aussie. Nice to see a fellow Aussie DM making awesome content on the KZbin's. ❤

[@seanboyd2898]

This is also useful for keeping in mind for Speak with Plants & Animal spells.

[@unkn0wnidi0t]

Even though whistling messages to the wind is a really cool concept, I want to issue a warning to DMs implementing it. You essentially are letting druids cast a restricted version of the 3rd level spell sending since level one and at will, even though it isn't even a druid spell. That may become a problem. For example in my current main campaign I'm playing a cleric and fast and secure long distance communication is one of his main niches in our party. This would be greatly infringed if a druid could do the same without sacrificing a 3+ spell slot every 25 words. So consider the role this form of communication will play in your campaign and if the druid player may be stepping on some other players toes before houseruling this.

[@robinstory8554]

That's a good point BUT this is one of those crisis/opportunity things. 1) Only Druids (and maybe fey creatures?) can hear the message on the wind, so it's not "any creature" like Sending 2) Is there anything less "tamable" than the wind? Just because you whistle the message into the wind doesn't mean that it will reach its destination, or get to where it needs to go in a timely manner. 3) Points 1 + 2 = that message might be intercepted by an unfriendly druid, or even malign fairies like the unseelie court. If the message is anything more important than "don't light a fire right now the forest is too dry" it should be treated more like a postcard that can be read by anyone along the way rather than a sealed letter for its intended recipient only.

[@Sabotender]

I like your interpretation :) While I know that the book says that "you can speak druidic", and that thieves cant' says that you also understand signs, as a DM I have always ran that Thieves Cant' is just spoken, masking your true intentions through "slang", and that Druidic is only symbols and signs, hidden messages left on trees and in bushes and stuff. I do like how you envision it, but for me i always wanted to make each of them a little more special by having one spoken and the other written :)

[@tobiasaberg8659]

I think one of the more useful skill for a druid would be fungus-talking. Some fungus can spread their mycelium for several miles, so if you could have a fungus pass a message you could talk to someone anywhere in the forest.

[@michael-we-are-legion-brown]

Thanks for this video! I agree that druidic would be used to communicate information about the natural world or record esoteric druid secrets. There should be a common body of glyphs that all druids understand or can easily deduce and then regional dialects/mysteries that are specific to a circle or biome. Individual circles have lore specialties: Dreams bestow vision quests or can help decipher visions, Spores/Swamp have Oracle Bones, Moon druids use animal calls to communicate while shapeshifted

[@lyrix9753]

I struggle in finding unique ways of playing the druid it feels too hard to play anything besides the nature hippie/guardian of nature, i think its maybe because of the wild shape ability that is so prominent in your class, its noy like the cleric where your subclass changes a lot of what you can do. With the druid the subclasses are basically druids who can turn into more dangerous animals, druids with more spells (otherwise known as rhe nature wizard), the druid who has more nature buddies and the druid who wanted to actually be a nature cleric

[@cvastley6341]

One idea that I haven't yet run but find pretty amusing is that some secret guild of florists could communicate through flower bouquets. The arrangement and selection of flowers within the bouquet could hold meaning, similarly to how theaves cant can be communicated through playing cards. Just an idea for any florist campaigns you may be running.

[@MagusAgrippa8]

I've got a Druid in my Strahd group and Druids have also been a common enemy, to the point that my players were even able to tame a pair of Twig Blights that they took from a pair of evil gnomes. Since I picture the Twig Blights to be basically Baby Groots, I've been running Druidic basically like that. A language composed of very few words. More or less just 'I am Groot' over and over. Jokes aside, I personally see Druidic as the language of nature, so I'd make it essentially be a language composed of those natural sounds. Snapping twigs, whispering winds, scratching on bark- sounds like that.

[@DanJMW]

In my game, druidic consists of two druids standing completely still and staring at each other. To onlookers it appears that they are not communicating at all, but in fact they are sharing vast amounts of information. This is not telepathy, but rather each is reading the other's eyes and micro-expressions, listening to their breathing and other tiny imperceptible signals. It's almost like two trees communicating. It is a communing of souls. The idea here is that druids are mainly solitary and do not meet often. When they do it is worth stopping and taking time to share, before then going on their separate ways. Yes there are drawbacks to this, like making communication difficult in a larger group of druids, but such councils are exceedingly rare. For this idea I have drawn upon the poetry of W B Yeats, historical accounts of real druids, Celtic folkore, neopagan druidism, the Earthsea series by Ursula Le Guin, and of course from Tolkien's Ents.

[@Pandaemoni]

In my games the Druidic language is more of an ability than just a "language proficiency." Druids can use it to speak to one another without non-druids understanding it, but they can also speak directly to the natural world and request favors like "please carry this message on the wind" or asking a now raging river to spare the community that tried to divert its course. My world is also populated with animating "nature spirits" akin to elementals (or sometimes fey) but slightly different. For example, much like the Greeks once believed, every river and stream has a "spirit" that guides and moves it, every breeze or wind has a wind spirit that animates it, every mountain exists because there is a "spirit of the mountain" that exists and maintains it, etc. Even trees have their own individual spirits, which is where the connection begins to bleed over into the fey. Druids have the ability to communicate with these spirits, and hence all of nature around them through the druidic language. Nature doesn't generally do what you ask it to (and druids have to be careful to respect the fact that nature just wants to keep on doing its own thing and is not beholden to what the druid would rather it do), but a good persuasion check can sometimes get the the forces of nature to help you out, perhaps lowering the level of a stream so the party can cross it more easily or carrying a message in a bottle to a particular port faster than it otherwise might. With an appropriate check, combined with spending a spell slot, I also allow the ability more of a boost. Like I once let a PC spend a 6th level spell slot and make a Charisma (Persuasion) check on a mountain's spirit when she wanted to collapse a sizable cave complex that ran through and under it. The DC on the check was "very hard" (25) because the mountain had been living with these caves for a very long time, and it wouldn't have liked such big changes all of the sudden. She made the check (with bardic inspiration and Guidance, but still...) and that effectively defeated a series of encounters I had coming from those caves, so good for her. (She might have just as easily - or more easily - asked the mountain to guide her to something in those caves or to create new caves that allowed the party to more easily pass to the other side of it, without climbing up and over it). This use of spirits and the druidic language also lets me differentiate druids, who commune with these spirits and nature directly, and clerics of nature gods, who are communing with a more personal and intelligible conscious being (who likely had a hand in creating some or all of these animating spirits that sustain nature). The spirits of the natural world, in contrast, never really have "desires" and what motivates them is rarely fully comprehensible to sentient beings other than the gods.

[@dlarso11]

The reverse speaking that John Rhys-Davies used when speaking as Treebeard in Lord of the Rings seems appropriate way to speak it. Also works for demon speak as well

[@dlarso11]

Emphasis on the breath, tree sounds.

[@snyparaustralis540]

Yes! Was waiting for the cooo-EE!

[@DragonsFlame3476]

I just found you today, and I’ve been watching the videos while I work. I love the way you form words (you don’t sound like you are droning on ) and the editing is spot on. It constantly feels entertaining and the videos get my DM brain swirling. Also I’m a fan of the outtakes in the videos 😀 Basically I really dig the format and the way you present the topics and I’m probably gonna steal a few things from them.

[@BlackFireLily714]

I really like the use of plants and animal calls to communicate ideas. I never thought of it that way. I may take that the next time I play a druid

[@julierose689]

Great idea about using bird calls to communicate. My current druid character has been separated from her tribe and I've been wracking my brains about how she would try to contact them or other tribes.

[@flibbernodgets7018]

Always thought of druids as lone hermits. This really shook that up for the better.

[@havcola6983]

Yeah, I was hooked at 'Scribblygum'. That's a wonderful little piece of world lore I'd never come across before. The application of it was neat too. Reminded me of a thing i heard about the crusades: While the western crusaders held muslim holy places they would often claim, cover or deface obvious symbols of worship, but the stylized emblazoned writing on walls was often left alone since it to European eyes just looked like ornamental filigree.

[@natureclaws5189]

What if they used the flashing of Fireflies similar to Morse Code or use a swarm of them to send a 'written message' because they're in a situation that doesn't allow them to make a sound or they'll get caught? When the fireflies get there they land and crawl into formation on a flat space or fly in formation to make the symbols for 'Danger!' Or 'Help!' or something like that.

[@ghrondindustries5136]

Clever use of the Animal Messenger spell.

[@GazpachoTabletop]

That scribbly bark sounds really cool. You can actually read tree rings - you can see if there was a fire or if the tree was growing next to another tree and it was really cramped on one side because the tree's rings are squashed together. But cutting down a tree is really invasive and I doubt that druids would do that. Also you're souper imaginative

[@aodhfyn2429]

The idea of a bunch of druids gathering together to annihilate enemies of nature is really cool.

[@justmutantjed]

When you started talking about whistling on the wind, and about birdcalls, I couldn't help but think about when I was lectured for whistling while in stage crew in high school. Apparently it calls back to when whistle signals were used to indicate particular sets should be raised or lowered, so if you whistled the right (or maybe wrong) cadence or melody, you'd be likely to be under a rapidly-descending backdrop or scrim.

[@MonarchsFactory]

Oh weird! I've never heard that stage superstition/tradition before, love hearing new ones!

[@Kennitto]

Late but the idea of birds migrating earlier or later than a druid would know they would, or flowers blooming early, could have a metaphorical message to other druids. "A storm is coming, be safe" or "dont bring attention to yourself in this area"

[@ReustersPlace]

You, my dear, have a beautiful mind. Never change how you see the world around you nor the ones you create.

[@Tanglangfa]

That was fascinating! I love these ideas! Also, scribblybark is a very Aussie sounding word. 🤣. Cheers from Texas!

[@Tysto]

I’ve been trying find a use for druidic language, & this helps. I think I’ll say that not only can it send messages to other druids on the wind but to anyone, because the sounds of nature are universal. The message can’t be complicated & often feels as tho it came from within or that “a little bird told me”.

[@alexczar1456]

Very nice video, I like that you're thinking about what would be specifically druidic about their language. I have a suggestion. Look up Penan tribes' jungle communication system. It's fantastic and IMO would suit druids beautifully. To an ignorant observer it looks like an abstract jungle trash "sculpture". But in fact carries information rich in details and layers to someone who understand it. There are some videos on KZbin about it. The Penan is a very interesting hunter-gatherer culture living in Sarawak and Brunei

[@colourbloo]

I usually treat druidic as "unusual signs left in nature" like for example a bird's nest lying on the ground or snake hisses that sound out of key, a bird flock that sings like a choir, druidcrafted flowers that are out of place. dealing with rare languages is very fun.

[@MissFotini]

OMG, Dael! Plants are certainly not a limited language hahaha! There's literally a whole Victorian-era flower language that whole books have been written about. I encourage you to look up "Floriography". The whole thing developed in order to convey secret messages!

[@aliceconnors5842]

I never knew scribblybark had a name, I thought gum trees just DID that

[@ReiBarker]

This is rly sick idea, and props for telling 1st nation's stories

[@Enigmatic_Lurker]

I would love to play a campaign like this. RP is severely lacking in the groups I play with sometimes, and it would be nice to be able to actually explore the realm more than just; "You go to the tavern, you talk to some people, you learn some stuff, you go to the encounter place, you kill a thing, everyone gets xp and gp."

[@impishDullahan]

My friend's running a Viking period campaign so we're treating Druidic like the runes used in Galdr. It's pretty much Old Irish written in Ogham with the sole purpose for use in ritual magic.

[@javiernoguera4141]

This reminded me a lot of Crocodile Dundee, in a movie I saw he used some sort of communication similar to the ones you mentioned.

[@3nertia]

HOW HAVE I NOT HEARD OF THIS CHANNEL BEFORE!? Your videos are amazing, your knowledge is quite in depth and you give me fantastic ideas and inspiration; SUBBED!

[@thundasc]

In Exalted there is a language used by the Lunars (shapeshifters) called Clawspeak which is intended to be a way of writing a message no matter what form the writer is in that only other Lunars can understand. It looks about like the squiggle bark, lots of flowing squiggles that are easily traced out with any sort of appendage. This is what I use as Druidic in my game, no spoken version. I do really like your thoughts on what a spoken version would sound like though. I'll have to keep that in my back pocket for the next time I have a Druid player.

[@Marcusjnmc]

well, ty for making me smile, & for sharing nice ideas

[@phane5694]

Woooooooee , I asked and i recieved. Thank you Dael please keep up the videos

[@gauchplant]

I don't think you went here, but I like the idea of the verbal components of a druid's spell mimicking nature. Instead of words, incantations involve animal sounds that, because the natural magic a druid possesses, actually are the sounds of those animals.

[@blondgalahad]

I love seeing another Aussie DM who talks from an australian perspective

[@inevitablepuma5919]

Very interesting video. I have a real live linguist playing so I try to consider language as much as I can. I personally run druidic with a few facets. The spoken language is the oldest language in the world. The written system is a mix of symbols from just about everything. There's some whistling, singing and horn blowing as well, but never thought about the plant thing. Definitely going to steal that! Great video! Earned you a sub!

[@ross8093]

Those are pretty cool ideas and they give me some ideas on how to use other stuff to like leave a message. Maybe something like a fairie ring but of specific kinds of fungus and mushrooms that in a way signify a druid version of hallowed ground like a grave yard or something and depending on the type you can take a guess at why or who someone is buried there. Kinda like "hey, better show some respect. You better not mess with this patch of land." Or with certain kind of mushrooms and depending on how expansive this loose circle of fungus is you could maybe be able to tell of it was just a single druid. A random stranger found dead. Or some battleground long forgotten.

[@MonarchsFactory]

Nice! I can imagine a circle of druids taking out a terrible necromancer and burying him with specific marking to let others know never to dig them up. Also I like that little "burying a stranger" bit, very grateful dead

[@marcm5207]

In an area where the druidic faith was very present but, for whatever reason, has faded that kind of things would probably be the foundation for a lot of superstitions ("we never take a horse to the daisy field, everyone knows that, son").

[@mr.flibble3190]

Or they could cremate him as thoroughly as they can. I'd bet a summoned fire elemental could render him down to a fine powder...and then bring in an air elemental to finish the job.

[@marcm5207]

Erik Filean That would be thorough and efficient but I'd rather have them do their stuff in a way it can be used as the foundation for an interesting game. If the necromacer was definitively defeated 50 years ago, I am not going to be able to defeat him with my friends.

[@mr.flibble3190]

Two words: "noncorporeal undead." When you're the DM, it's not over until YOU say it's over!

[@mr.flibble3190]

I like it. One side effect of basing Druidic on bird communications is that it might become at least partly usable while shapechanged - maybe more so if other animal calls are included in the sound system. Druidic needs to be much more generative than any animal communication system to work as a philosophical language, but I think the idea here is just to base the sound of it on birds, right? This got me thinking about how Alexander of Miletus described Gaulish druids as "barbarian philosophers" and compared them to Greek Pythagoreans. In the game, it might be cool to play with this and present druidic lore as a body of knowledge and precedent based on repeated observation of nature - not quite scientific method, but something that has its own forms of theory, hypothesis, testing, and peer review instead of being strictly intuitive. (My habit is to think of D&D druids as some kind of shaman, but that's really not what I see in the scraps of evidence we have for historical druids.)

[@jaredanderson9613]

Ugghhhhhh this is so perfect! I'm 100% using this next session!

[@rothiirluciusmagus3851]

I built a Druid and I use Druidic for my Spell Casting. I describe it as being a sort of singing which generates my magic. So if I were to do a fire spell then I would sing to the sun in Druidic and the sun sings back and in our harmony we make magic. So people watching me use this language would see my mouth moving as though I am saying words but the sounds they hear are the noises of nature, otherwise people could just copy what I say which defeats the idea that it is a language that ONLY a Druid could speak and understand. My first time using my magic in the game was when we were passing through a dark cursed forest and we needed light but no one knew the light cantrip or pact torches because we all had darkvision but the curse was affecting our darkvision, so I cast Produce Flame and held it in my hand. I described it as taking a deep break and remembering the warmth of the sun on my skin and singing a song, my melody being the voice of many candles singing in choir and when I opened my hand, a flame erupted to light our way. I was Circle of Spores so later on in the game, we needed help so I went to a fallen enemy and described how I placed my hands on his chest and sung the song of the earth with a deep and melancholy pulsing of soil and fungus which the dirt and the grass echoed back as vines and roots dug into the body and raised it as a zombie to fight for us, which was me casting Animate Dead.