From Introduction: For all its magic, monsters, and powerful warriors, the world most people still play in is a natural one. The majority of adventure worlds are sparsely populated with wide tracts of land that know little or no civilization. So you would have thought that the classes that best interface with this natural environment would be very popular indeed. Characters for whom waking up is done to bird song, and climate and weather are living beings to be treated with respect. There is nothing more powerful and destructive than nature roused - the tornado, the earthquake, the drought or even a flood, nature is the most powerful force of all. No one can ever be said to have mastered nature, or at least say it and it be true. But there are a number of classes who are closer to nature than others - rangers, druids, and barbarians. Each in their own way is a ‘Master Survivor’ but all share a common understanding: nature is a harsh mistress and it takes a special sort of person to live comfortably with such a mistress. These people are masters of the wild not by bending it to their will but by adapting to it, by living with rather than against nature. Lost in civilization’s cocoon, it is a foolish man who forgets that these wild men are somehow less than they are. Many a cruel warlord has been defeated when they forgot that nature is a terrible enemy. This book examines one of these classes in detail, providing new tools and understanding of how the Ranger interacts with nature and culture.