Does Shaman = Druid?

If not, where do they differ...or where should they differ?

Quote from: Spinachcat;784353Does Shaman = Druid?

If not, where do they differ...or where should they differ?

In a game? Depends on the game.

In the real world, druids were priests -- full-time religious specialists, in anthropology terms -- and shamans are part-time, plus shamans are a mix of religious specialist and magicical specialist. Test question: do druids seem more like Catholic priests, or more like Voudoun priests? The latter are shamanic.

Quote from: talysman;784355In a game? Depends on the game.

In the real world, druids were priests -- full-time religious specialists, in anthropology terms -- and shamans are part-time, plus shamans are a mix of religious specialist and magicical specialist. Test question: do druids seem more like Catholic priests, or more like Voudoun priests? The latter are shamanic.

In shamanic belief systems the Shaman is a mediator between people and the Spirit World.  All things have spirits that represent them, animals, physical environments, plants etc.  These spirits can be benevolent or malevolent and the Shaman is the one who interacts with them, to gain their aid, or placate or drive off the unfriendly spirits.

Due to this, to answer a question in another thread, there can be urban shamans, as there can be spirits of animals, plants and environments in urbann settings.  Foxes and Rats spring to mind straight away.

Depends on which version of Shaman and Druid you are refferencing.

In AD&D a Druid was a nature priest as it were and a Shaman was a wilderness cleric I believe. Dont have the book handy.

Druid = Nature Speaker
Shaman = Spirit Speaker. (kinda)

In other games and settings its all over the place. A Druid might be all about blood magic. A Shaman might be all about animalistic totems. A Druid might be focused only on plants, or only on animals, or only on elements, same for the Shaman.

Same goes for Witch. Could be a hedge wizard, a diabolist, a nature mage, an alchemist, etc.

I always picture shamans coming from a more primitive culture, and having  a  bit more emphasis on elemental and metaphysical magics.

Many editions of D&D have a Druid class, but not a Shaman class.

I've always used the Druid class as shorthand for shamans and other tribal holy men existing outside civilization and/or organized religion, in these versions.

In another instance of "Alex Macris has a backdoor to my brain", ACKS has a Shaman class that's pretty much the good ol' D&D druid, genericized, with "druid" given as one possible character template.

Outside D&D, judging from the recent Mythic Britain preview, this Runequest 6e supplement will handle druidic magic as Spirit Magic right out of the box. I don't really know enough about anicent Celtic religion and magic to say whether druids were animistic practitioners in the same sense as Siberian shamans, Lakota medicine men, Inuit angakkuq or Zulu sangoma, but there you go.

In Mystara, the D&D setting, there's a clear distinction.

Shamans communicate with (and get their power from) Spirits. These are immaterial creatures from another plane - the Spirit Plane - that can cross over to the material plane and tend to inhabit objects and geographical features while there. However, they are not part of "nature". They are specifically alien outer planar creatures.

Druids on the other hand communicate with (and get their power from) Urt. Urt is the name of the planet itself - which is a megalith, a type of immense Earth Elemental. The planet is alive, and encourages the growth of animal and plant life on its surface. Having said that, most druids don't even know that Urt exists. They think that they are communing with a personification of nature, rather than a living and magically telepathic planet. Then again, what's the difference between the two?

Druids are militant devotees of elemental forces and primal Gods.

Shaman are tribal leaders, holders of the oral tradition and followers of the animist doctrine that says that every thing on earth has a spirit associated with it.

Quote from: WikiA druid was a member of the educated, professional class among the Celtic peoples of Gaul, Britain, Galicia, Ireland, and possibly elsewhere during the Iron Age. While the best known among the druids were the religious leaders, the druid class also included law-speakers, poets and doctors, among other learned professions. Very little is known about the ancient druids. They left no written accounts of themselves, and the only evidence is a few descriptions left by Greek, Roman, and various scattered authors and artists, as well as stories created by later medieval Irish writers.[2] While archaeological evidence has been uncovered pertaining to the religious practices of the Iron Age people, "not one single artefact or image has been unearthed that can undoubtedly be connected with the ancient Druids."[3] Various recurring themes emerge in a number of the Greco-Roman accounts of the druids, including that they performed animal and even human sacrifice, believed in a form of reincarnation, and held a high position in Gaulish society. Next to nothing is known for certain about their cultic practice, except for the ritual of oak and mistletoe as described by Pliny the Elder.

So in almost every important respect D&D druids bear as much resemblance to historic druids as barbarians do. (And I find it amusing that people who get bent out of shape about barbarians don't do so with druids)

Shamans, on the other hand, are a term for a particular kind of role in many animist traditions. They are intercessors between human and spirit worlds, with all that implies (and with local variation).

Reasonably speaking, D&D druids = shamans, and 'druids' would be any class EXCEPT shaman.

D&D isn't based on history, but mythology and fiction derived from mythology.

Druids were magic-using priests (or at least wisemen/women) in Celtic mythology.

Just like Clerics were originally vaguely Christian (but bear no actual relation to real life Christian clerics), Druids were vaguely pagan.  

Where do Shaman fit in? They really don't, since they mostly exist in cultures not covered by D&D. Sort of the same reason we have Paladins and not Bogatyr

What's really interesting is that, if anything, Druids were 'Lawful' by D&D standards.

The Goblin Punch blog has a nifty post today about Druids: 7 Mythos Everyone Believes About Druids
Not the same old new age guy with sticks in his beard. Kinda has me wanting to have a go at playing one...

For me at least druids = what Victorians imagined Celtic religion to be. Shamans = Korean shamanism, which I know a few things about as opposed to African shamanism which I know nothing of so I can't make up details well, it's veeeeeery broadly similar to Siberian and other circumpolar forms of Shamanism so I can use it for stuff like Sami sorcery without players knowing the difference.

We don't know what Celtic druids were, but they probably were not animists in the Siberian/Asian/Mongol sense, probably more like pagan priests, so in D&D they could be clerics.

But D&D created a special class for them as nature dudes, and so they're nature dudes.

In RuneQuest shamans are quite distinctly animists who negotiate with, or domnate spirits. A lot of stuff in RuneQuest is based on spirits, so a nature based religion is likely to be animists in that setting, so it's quite normal for a nature cult to have shaman-priests.

But YMMV.

I find it odd nobody brings up tribes in the Americas wrt animism?