Nutrition & the Preparation of Food

For those who are interested, I've completed the rewrite of "Nutrition & the Preparation of Food" for the Authentic Wiki, removing it at last from the old wiki.  This makes it the 11th longest page on the wiki.

Food

To make tea, start by purchasing a ceramic pot with a semi-finished interior, then get comfortable with the notion that the interior should never be cleaned with soap or even a rag.  Desirably, the teapot's interior should build up a residue of earlier pots that have been brewed, and these should not be rubbed off or washed away.  At most, rinse the pot out with water.  A professor of mine who would always offer tea to his students, even though sometimes that meant making it, insisting the cups shouldn't be cleaned either; but that's a risk I'm not willing to take, at least not with cups that are shared with other students.  If a cup is to be kept strictly for tea-drinking, then it, too, should have a semi-finished interior.

If there is tea left in the pot before a new pot is brewed, pour it into a cup, put the lid on the pot and pour the old tea slowly over the pot, letting the tea sit on the exterior.  Boil water, and use the water to fill the teapot, leaving it to sit with the lid on.  Then, boil water again, leaving the first boiling to heat the teapot, while causing any tea residue on the outside to stain the pot.  Pour out the old boiled water, add the tea of choice, then consider adding spices such as nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves or licorice, depending on the sort of tea.  Add a thick woven cozy.  The heated pot should brew the tea more intensely, as the pot itself is not stealing heat from the second boiling of water that's been added.

The ritual takes time.  Many do not participate in the ritual because they don't know about it, cannot see why it makes a difference or simply can't be bothered.  It does make a difference.  It's not the only ritual to make tea; I am describing the English tradition, but there are many others.  The Japanese and Chinese are most commonly rendered onto film—I can't say for sure, because how would I know, but I'll bet the movies always get it wrong.

Rituals matter because at some point, someone has learned how to do something better.  Quite often, when we discard a ritual, because it seems troublesome or because it is a cheaper way to make something we're trying to sell, it almost always makes something worse.  We live in an age when almost everything that was once brilliant has been denuded of its brilliance, from the making of beer to clothing.  We don't notice, because we never experienced the thing when it was brilliant.  This is often a problem of very old people, because they have.

However loathsome time travel plots and renderings are, I feel the notion of travelling back in time is an important thought experiment in comprehending history.  Watching a film like 2016's The Founder enables us to see a bit through the eyes of people in another era; the film is about the popularity of destroying the traditions of food for the sake of merchandising ... both in the personality of Ray Kroc who acts the anti-hero in the story, but even in the personae of the two bambi-like innovators who are screwed over by Kroc's manipulations.  Everyone in the film is bent on the destruction of good food—a notion that hardly arises in the viewer's mind because we're far more engaged by the industrialization of food than we are in what it once was.  Some of us are old enough now to remember when the McDonald's french fry tasted better ... but we're dying off and in the end, it doesn't matter.  Other people are inventing new french fry traditions.

All this goes to set up a question that I often see asked:  If I could send you back in time to, say, the year 1513, how would you use your present knowledge of technology to either empower or enrich yourself?  Of course, I've just influenced you to my way of thinking by the paragraphs above the question: though you might have thought "guns" or "medicine" if I'd asked the question at the top of the post, suddenly you're thinking of food ... which probably would never have occurred if I hadn't Heisenberged you.  Nevertheless, think of the things you could invent in food services.

Indulge me first if you could, while I discuss for a moment the common "doctoring" answer to the question.  Yes, you probably do know much more about treatment than anyone from that time-period; you understand diseases, how bones fit in the body, what's really going on with the "humours" and so on.  Unquestionably, you could use your knowledge to improve the lives of a lot of people, by setting bones, practicing CPR, investigating possible drugs and so on.  However, if you got a reputation for healing people, no doubt your fame would grow; and people would start bringing patients in for you to treat.  If that happened, you're sure to find yourself treating some very powerful people, local lords and religious leaders, and later more powerful folks up the chain.  Now, assuming you don't get yourself executed as a heretic, consider for a moment what modern medicine would look like to a total ignorant outsider.  Medicine is a very uncertain practice; even if you ARE a doctor, you're going to have people die on you; and right now, when people die, we're educated enough as people that we understand that you've done all you could and it's not your fault.  But if you start saving some people, and not the important son of a Marquis or a Earl, you will find yourself facing some very unreasonable expectations from someone who will very definitely blame you for your failure.  You don't want that, believe me.

Now, what do we say when someone invents something really terrific?  We say, "That's the best thing since sliced bread."  Guess what they don't have in 1513.  They do have sausages for making hot dogs, and ground beef for making hamburger, and all the ingredients you'll need to make mayonnaise and ketchup.  They have salt and oil and potatoes.  They have fire for getting the oil very, very hot, and all the means you'll need to infuse the potatoes with salt before adding them to the oil.  You'll even be able to explain how to make a fryer basket.

My gawd, dear soul, do you realize how easy it would be to take all that we've learned about mixing salt, oil and sugar together (it'll have to be beet sugar, but still), to make a ritualistic something that will be incredibly addictive ... so addictive that you can be sure that you won't be executed for getting something wrong?  Or blow yourself up trying to make a 16th century rifle?

Sugar is your biggest stumbling block.  The West Indies have been discovered but it's a century or more before cane sugar makes its way to civilisation.  You need beets, and lots of them, and enough understanding of genetics to replant a selective new crop each season.  Until then, you can get along on the sugar you do have and honey as well, while using an oven to invent pizza, something that's been invented but certainly not the way you'll make it.  There persists a rumour among historians that Europeans thought the tomato was poisonous, but quite frankly I've always thought this is bunk.  8,000 years ago the almond absolutely WAS poisonous, but without knowing anything about genetics the locals selected the treenut until it produced almonds that weren't.  I've yet to see any fictional material from any historical period where the character decided to die by tomato.  If audiences thought it true, a writer would have used it as a plot trope.

Anyway, just throwing out a few thoughts, inspired by my making tea so I could work late into the night on rebuilding the textile pricing designs in my pricing table.  I finished foods a few days ago.  As such, these things prey on my mind.  Until next post.

In Which the Cook Becomes the Most Cherished Party Member

COOKING (sage ability)

The craft of preparing superior food for consumption, with additional skill in making dishes which are more healthy and palatable. This translates to an increase in the taste of fare that is cooked by the character, as described in the nutrition & preparation of food rules.

Determining Taste

The taste of food is described as ten measures: grub, chow, nosh, savoury, tasty, flavourful, delicious, piquant, mouth-watering and ambrosia. Whatever the tools or space available, a character with the cooking ability will be able to improve taste by one measure: grub becomes chow, chow becomes nosh, nosh becomes savoury and so on. This includes a concomitant improvement in the diner’s response to the food as well, producing a better chance of the character finishing the meal sated, happy or elated, with a corresponding unlikelihood of being grumpy, tired, miserable, vomitous or experiencing diarrhea or a gastro-intestinal affliction.

Cooking also provides the character with an ability to distinguish fresh foods from selective, or recognize when food has spoiled and is inadequate for preparation.

CULINARY ART (sage ability)

The expansion of food-making craft to the level of artistic achievement, so that not only is superior food prepared for consumption, the overall experience of the food itself is heightened. This translates to an improvement of one degree of effect that is shown on the nutrition & preparation of food effects table.

The Effects of taste

The food experience is described as ten effects: affliction, diarrhea, vomit, misery, tired, grumpy, no effect, sated, happy and elated. Whatever the rolled result may have been, the culinary artist improves this effect by one degree: affliction becomes diarrhea, diarrhea becomes vomit, vomit becomes misery and so on, up through happy becoming elated. Naturally, this provides a comparative improvement in the diner’s well-being.

Because the skill adds to the previously existing cooking ability, this enables a culinary artist to have a 50% chance of producing elation in the diner, even when the food would have been originally mouth-watering in the hands of an unskilled person.

Note, however, that the effect cannot exceed the best possible result at that level of taste.  The effect of tasty, for example, would not improve to "sated."

At Last, Nutrition Rules

I have Sterling to thank for much of the content below.  He sent me a system in January 2018 that I thought was simple and brilliant.  I have adjusted it, of course.  That is the nature of these things.  But I want to stress that the organization and the ground work is essentially Sterling's and he deserves much applause for it.

I'll be posting this on the wiki in a few days, but in the meantime I'm going to preview it here on the blog.  Poke holes in it if you can (with purpose, please) ~ it will make the wiki post better for it.

NUTRITION

In addition to the amount of food that characters must consume, another consideration is the nutritional value of that food. Characters cannot simply live on bread and water, but should eat the best of possible foods. This isn’t always easy when adventuring, particularly when we consider how this food is to be prepared and cooked.

Each ½-day period follows the meal prior, either the breakfast/early day meal and the evening/late day meal. Bonuses and penalties therefore apply to either the day or the night, following the early or late meals.

Food Quality

Foods are rated in “quality” according to their durability and nature of ingredients. There are five standards of quality: durables, staples, fresh, selective and premium:

Durables include preserved meats such as jerky, dry sausage, salt-pork, sauerkraut and dried fish; potable plant products such as polished rice and dried pulses; and durable forage such as dried mushrooms, grains, wild nuts, seeds and dried fruits. Food that is foraged falls into this category. These are products that have a shelf-life of months, even years.

Staples include foodstuffs such as flour, salt, honey, cheese, butter and biscuits; root vegetables and tubers; and beverages such as beer, mead, wine or distilled drink. The weight of these latter beverages will raise the quality of the meal, but do not count towards the weight of food that must be consumed daily. These are products that typically have a shelf-life of 2-8 months.

Fresh foods include leafy vegetables, fresh fruits, fresh meats, milk and cream ~ products with a shelf-life of 2-12 days. Longer shelf-life products include common herbs such as basil, chamomile, cumin, dill, rosemary, parsley and sage are included, as are dried tea leaves and roasted coffee beans.

Selective foods include fresh foods that have been collected in the last 24 hours, including butchered meats ~ all of which are of the highest standard, lacking bruised fruits, discoloured vegetables or meats that have been improperly butchered. Selective quality reduces to fresh after a day (unless somehow preserved).

Premium foods include items that are of the most distinct imaginable: caviar, foie gras, bird’s nest soup, eels, turtle, cabrito, suckling pig, unusual distilled spirits or wine, kumiss, cicitt and so on. These are of variable shelf life, and are often transported great distance (magically or otherwise).

Preparation

There are six “standards” of preparation, requiring utensils and space that varies from nothing but the cook’s hands to a fully equipped kitchen. How foods are readied, cooked or blended can adjust the experience of eating, which subsequently affects the diners’ health and mood.

Cold camp fare describes eating in the outdoors, effectively cooking in one’s lap. This allows cleaning with water, peeling, the use of a knife or a scraping rock, mashing, pounding and mincing, but the food cannot be safely blanched or boiled, nor can it be browned and sweetened. Durables and staples are designed for cold camp rations. Fresh vegetables, fruits, beverages and spices can be used, but fresh meat would need to be eaten raw. Selective food is slightly better. Most premium foods are somewhat processed and can be eaten in a cold camp (caviar, for example), but without other viands it can be a dreadful waste.

Campfire fare describes the benefits of an open fire, the use of the open flame, boiling water, various means of wrapping foods to be cooked in coals and as much variety as a fire will allow. Most preparation is done on a rock or upon a board on the ground, cleaned with boiled water.

Galley fare describes the food that might be prepared around a rolling cookwagon or vardo, a kitchen or aboard ship. If there is a fire, it is built on a raised, open stone box, with a flue or opening above, or a campfire is employed. Ship’s galleys included a brick cook oven. Fresh and selective foods are rare aboard ship, due to the distance from land; but they were often procured for a few days.

Scullery fare describes food from a typical home kitchen, with small fireplace and chimney, counters, a large washbasin, bins for flour, grains and seeds, bottles, cold storage, a variety of utensils and space for large cooking pots. Typically a cook’s knife and a few cook’s tools would be all that a small house could afford. Many larger mansions include a scullery for secondary work, in addition to a guestkitchen.

Guestkitchen fare describes food that is cooked in a spacious and clean environment with excellent tools and good ventilation. A guestkitchen is designed to cook multiple meals at once for scores of people at one time. Typically the room has been seasoned by years of operation. A wide assortment of knives and other tools is available. Guestkitchens often have one or more sculleries attached, which may be used for baking or for washing up dishes.

Lord’s kitchen fare describes food that is typically prepared as a feast for hundreds of people at a time, from a massive stone building with a score of preparers working together and giving much attention to specific dishes. The knives are kept sharpened, the plates used for the elite diners are of high quality and even the barracks that are served from the kitchen gain the benefit of food grown on the property and stored in large amounts inside the kitchen. Resources to maintain the kitchen are plentiful. Enormous pots and continuous fires allow for long-term preparation that may stretch out over days.

Taste

Together, the food quality and preparation combine to produce an eating experience, as shown on the table.

In order, grub describes food that is hardly palatable but is choked down because it keeps us alive; chow is hardly better, but the diner can remain indifferent to the taste, enough that eating isn’t a chore; nosh is agreeable, encouraging the diner to scrape the remains from the plate; savory has a sharper taste gives a feeling of being content and wholesomely satisfied; tasty is distinctly pleasurable and almost always calls for seconds; flavorful causes the diner to cease conversation and actively enjoy the taste of the food; delicious calls for the diner to share aloud the eating experience, declaring its noteworthiness; piquant is distinct and memorable, the sort of meal that one would certainly recall weeks later; mouthwatering cries for the food to be gobbled, even protected from others, as the diner cannot get enough; and ambrosia is simply ecstasy, eaten with eyes closed and at one with one’s pleasure.

Effects

Depending on the taste of the food (coupled with its substantive healthiness), the effect upon the diner is organized on the included table below. Each result describes the health (mental and physical) of the character during the ½-day following either the breakfast or the evening meal.

Some of these effects will be severe if the character is already on half-rations or is somehow afflicted. The DM should treat such circumstances as increasing the effects of either half-rations or the disease accordingly.

Affliction: the character acquires an gastro-intestinal affliction, as described under disease.

Diarrhea: late in the ½-day period, the character will be struck with a round of violent bowel movements that will dehydrate the victim and force bed rest. They will receive a -3 penalty to strength and will have no appetite to eat the next meal, so that the penalty will last throughout the next ½-day.

Elated: the character is in such a fine frame of mind that they will display generosity (giving away gold coins to commoners and others, granting freedom to slaves, releasing persons from commitments) and uncommon bravery (a willingness to enter a joust or other combat, perform an act of risk for the pleasure of it). Treat them as if they are a full age younger with regards to their ability stats for the ½-day following the meal.

Grumpy: receive a -1 penalty to charisma and therefore to charisma checks as well. Lower the morale of hirelings when within two hexes of the character.

Happy: the character is in unusually good spirits, gaining a +1 saving throw generally, and a +2 save against charm and other mentally affecting attacks.

Misery: receive a -1 penalty to strength and dexterity, and therefore to checks as well. The character will be bad-tempered and moody; during the day, the character will demand a halt after half-a-day’s travel or labour, sullenly refusing to continue.

Sated: the character will rest especially well at night, gaining +1 hit point in healing without the need of a full day’s rest.

Tired: receive a -1 penalty to both intelligence and wisdom, and therefore to checks as well. The character will complain a great deal and be unable to push themselves to forced movement. Reduce daily movement by 10%.

Vomit: halfway through the ½-day period, the character will throw up a good portion of their dinner. They will receive a -1 penalty to constitution and will have little appetite until the next meal. Treat as being on half-rations (see food) until then.

A Little "Fun"

The above is a screen shot of the water use calculator (available for download) I've written to simplify the dehydration page of my wiki.  It simply shows how much water in fluid ounces, or pints, that a character needs to drink per day, based on their body weight, the ambient temperature and their food intake.  This is a job half done ~ it doesn't take into account what a character would need if they had a disease that caused diarrhea or vomiting, but those things can be calculated on a case by case basis.

The table on the left, labeled in green, is not part of the calculator, but is a simplification chart for quick reference if the DM would rather not use a calculator all the time.  It represents the typical amount of water a character drinks in cups (8 oz. or 237 ml) per half-day, when travelling or performing ordinary labor.  Do note that the food eaten is taken into account, so that 60 lb. creatures can get their water intake, most of the time, from the food they eat.

For ease, halve the amount if the character is resting and double it if they have fought a battle that day.  If the weather is hotter than sweltering, use the calculator.

Starvation & Half-Rations

Recently, the online party in the Juvenis campaign miscalculated the depth of the dungeon they were entering and found themselves unexpectedly short of food ... and to deal with the problem as a DM, I found myself turning to a very old methodology that I'd developed more than two decades ago.  All this time, I had never actually built a set of rules to manage starvation.  As I write this, the trial has passed for the party, but I find myself wanting to settle on a hunger-starvation system nonetheless.

The principle problem is that it can take humans an extremely long time to die by starvation, particularly if they are able to get at least a little food.  For example, 19 men survived a journey of 1,500 miles on an ice floe for six months at the close of the disastrous Polaris expedition, from 1871 to 1873.  These are men who had been on bare rations for a year prior to the loss of their ship Polaris, who survived by straining just enough shrimp from the sea to give them each as little as an ounce a day, supported by the killing of a very rare seal, which might be gotten once in three to four weeks.  And a seal does not go far between 19 men.

Some people do just give out ... but many will survive, though they may not find the energy to act.  The goal, then, is to not to build a system of saving throws, in which the character simply dies, but a slow, grinding means of eventually killing a character off, while giving the potential for that character to survive a long, long time.

My idea is that the character would suffer acutely right at the start.  That going without food initially has a severe effect, dropping the character's ability stats badly on the first day of feeling the pinch, and an equal amount on the second day.  However, while this penalty doesn't go away, the severity of the increase diminishes as time passes.

Suppose the character is reduced to acting on half rations, and we want to know precisely what sort of effect that will have.  I propose the table on the right as an initial proposal ~ there's more to come on the subject, but I want to be sure this part is understood first.

"Half-rations" is defined as an insufficient amount of food, below the amount that is required, but more than half that amount.  If we suppose the character needs 2 kg of food in a given day in order to do heavy work, spread between two or three meals, then half rations would be anywhere between 1 kg and less than 2 kg.  How much less is really up to us; but for game purposes, we don't want to reward the clever player who figures out that we will handwave two grams below the amount needed.  We should then consider the numbers to be absolute.

Still, if we want to quibble, there's room for it on this table.  If a day of half rations lowers your ability stats by 10%, we can argue that 1.9 kg should reduce the stats only 1/10th of 10%, or a mere 1%.  It depends on how fine we want to split that hair.  We can argue that even 1% less than a 17 is 16.83, which we can state is a defacto 16 for game purposes.  That would discourage players from splitting hairs ... but we can go full game, too, and say that any deficiency in the amount of food is enough to cut stats the full 10%.  I personally lean to this approach, as I just don't want to reward cheap players.

Okay, let me explain the table.  As I say, that 1st day hurts, as does the 2nd day.  Both see a severe drop in the character's stats.  But then the idea of living with hunger begins to take hold, so that the 3rd and 4th days cause an additional penalty of only 5% each.  The 5th, 6th and 7th days add a penalty of only 3.3% each.  And finally the 8th through 12th days cause further penalties of only 2% per day.

I am extrapolating this on the Fibonacci series (endlessly useful), so that further 10% segments are successively divided by 8, 13, 21, 34 and 55.  Altogether, that would create a starvation that would kill everyone in 143 days, or just under five months, somewhat crueler than the measure of the Polaris expedition survivors, but in line with other, similar experiences, such as Shackleton's adventure or John Franklin's first expedition ~ the one he wasn't lost in ~ overland through the Northwest Territories.  However, this doesn't take into account the effects of eating less than half rations.  How would that work?

My choice would be to count quarter rations up to half rations as two days of starvation; and then to count one-eighth rations up to a quarter rations as three days.  Anything less than one-eighth would count as four days.  That would bring starvation around a little faster than the Polaris expedition, but then we're not dealing with the healthier 19th century human.  In any case, one could live a long, long time on one-eighth rations.

My food rules say that a sedentary character, one who needs to do little more than rest, make food for themselves and manage the small duties of living in a camp, must eat two pounds of food a day (my 17th century system uses imperial units).  One-eighth of this is a mere 4 oz. per day.  If the character tried to do hard work, that would require twice as much; and if the character were to take a part in battle, three times as much.  But let's say we're sedentary characters, with little food, waiting to be rescued before we all die of starvation.  Or by some other means.

How would this work, exactly.  Well, that's a very long table ... but let's go as far as 33 days.  From day 13 to day 20, the character is losing 1.25% of their stats each day, and from day 21 through day 33, the character is losing only 0.77% of their stats each day:

Here we can see the days of reduction to stats applied to a real character, that of Rob Munro the Scot from my Juvenis campaign, a druid.  The numbers drop precipitously at the start, quickly flattening out at the high scores drop into the sixes and sevens after two weeks.  The reader can see that I've highlighted the ability stats as they drop, in lighter orange for the most part, and under the dexterity at one point, in a darker tone.

The first shading indicates the point at which the druid no longer has the necessary stats to act as a druid.  Being old school regarding D&D stats, the druid needs a 12 wisdom and a 15 charisma; and every other stat has to be 6 or higher, as the old Player's Handbook indicates.  Here, the character's wisdom, dexterity and charisma all fall off the minimum on the third day.  That is sobering.

On the 19th day, the character's dexterity falls below 3, typically viewed as the minimum roll for any character.  I see that as significant, as the point in which the character must make an ability check to perform any dexterous activity, even walking or feeding themselves.  And since that check is going to fail 90% of the time, this particular character is going to suffer very badly from any long-term starvation.  That 7 dexterity is a harsh disability.  Still, there's nothing that says a check to see if the character could walk can't be done as often as necessary, noting the time this would spend as the character eventually got the strength to rise, only to collapse again a few rounds later.

That brings me to the subject of ability checks in general.  When the party was starving in the game of late, I had the active members all make an ability check against a random stat, once per day.  For example, I had the druid here make a check against constitution, which the character succeeded.  On some level, because the characters were following a route through a familiar, cleared dungeon,  I could have asked for more than one check (as it is a dangerous place) ~ but normally, I wouldn't ask for any checks unless the players did something purposefully dangerous.  My logic was that they did not "feel like themselves," and that this justified at least one check.

I think I'd increase the number of checks being made per day over time: perhaps 2 checks per day on the start of the fifth day, then three checks starting on the 9th day, and so on.  After a while, though the characters could manage to stay alive, they'd yet become virtually helpess ... particularly as every stat dropped below a 3.

That 3 could be treated as another threshold, where constitution was concerned.  Breathing is a constitutional action.  Just as the heart beating is a strength issue; or being able to think is an intelligence requirement.  At some point, having to be constantly making a roll for these things ought to end in the body just giving up the ghost.

The question is when, or how.  I haven't quite worked that out yet.  I like this scheme so far ... but it still has holes that I need to fill.

Where You Eat Matters

Five years ago I wrote a post about compelling players to observe some kind of nutrition rules for campaigns.  It was a mental exercise and no more: just an example of the sort of thing that can be reviewed and considered but which is impractical for actual gaming and accounting.

That idea has sat on the shelf since I proposed it.

And now, today, I had an idea.  Have a look at this table, that I've only just designed:

Sorry about the size of the text; I recommend opening it in another window.

Undoubtedly, some are not familiar regarding my very basic rules about the consumption of food.  I am now very seriously considering augmenting those rules by implementing the above table where it comes to where the characters eat and how much effort they make towards that goal.

Basically, the characters make up their mind what sort of food they want to eat and how they wish to prepare it.  The next day, after they've slept, they make a saving throw on the top third of the table; for the most part, the saving throw is going to have no effect on most of the characters.  If it does have an effect, it is likely to be on less than 1/3rd of the party, even if the sorest rations are consumed without any cooking.  However, it makes a significant difference if the party wants to take the time to get themselves a proper wagon, or eat from a kitchen in a house they build, or eat at the local tavern when they get the chance.  The above could seriously punish characters who insist on eating food out of their pockets rather than spend a little for the boar at the local tavern.

Note that the actual food eaten does have some influence.  If the characters do not buy leafy vegetables for their campfire or chuckwagon, they don't get the chuckwagon's effect, no matter how nice the cooking is.  The same is true if the characters insist on drinking beer and not wine or coffee - at least, with regards to amateurs.  I see I will have to make a note that the kitchen has to obey the rule of food choices, but the tavern and up the scale from there does not - because with vegetable stock, cooking with wine and so on, the fortified benefit is cooked right into the meal.

The chance of disease eating field rations is 1 in 20; but I see that the chance is only 1 in 400 with campfire food and 1 in 8000 with wagon food.  I think that's fair.  Characters need to know what they're doing in making their food choices.

Incidentally, the cellar food option comes from a game, Patrician III:

This is the sort of meal that the players can only get if they know people (or they've joined a guild or some such in a given area).  The lord's kitchen, obviously, requires knowing someone in nobility or royalty circles.

There is an ultimate solution for the proposed rule: Heroes' Feast.  A cleric can obtain the spell at 11th level.

Features & Food, Part III: Animals, Dungeons & More

The trouble with this post, and the reason why it has gone up in three parts, is because of the niggling little details that have to be just so.  It worries me a bit, as hex type VIII is the simplest of them - and I had planned on talking about them all.

Anyway, the water section was the largest, finished yesterday.  I feel confident I can finish today.

Animal Sources

These three are a question of degree, with a game trail producing the least food, a choke point producing somewhat better and game country the richest.

The game trail is a fixed route, generally a series of braided routes a few hundred yards wide, by which meat-yielding animals travel.  A competent hunter would be able to read the trail, knowing at what point along the route and what time of day would be best to conceal his or her self.  

The choke point is a special form of game trail, where the topography forces animals to move through a pass, over a ford, along a particular ridge and the like.  Thus the choke point compresses a wider set of trails into a confining band.  At certain times of the year, animals may be found moving continuously through such an area - so many in fact that local hunters and carnivores will get their fill and ignore the great availability of meat.

Game country is a natural bowl or plateau where ground water is so plentiful that the trees, shrubs or grass grow thick as a carpet.  This indicates that a rich area of vegetation may exist even in a desert. Hunters may roam freely through such areas without the need to conceal themselves in a blind, as game congregates throughout the feature.  Game country tends to exist only in type VIII hexes (100% wilderness).

The chance for game country is 3 in 3d4, modified as follows: +3 if a lake is present; +2 if there is a river; +2 if there is a fishing pond; +1 if there is a dried pond; and +1 if there is an oasis.  Game trails occur in any hex that is adjacent to a game country hex, as they lead from the outside in.

The chance for a choke point is 2 in 2d4 if hills are present and 3 in 2d4 if mountains.  They do not occur elsewhere.

Dungeons

I considered for a long time how common dungeons should be.  I didn't want the standard D&D sort of dungeon to occur every six miles, but at the same time I did not want players having to walk halfway across my world in order to find one.  The solution was to reconsider what defined a dungeon - not necessarily for adventuring purposes, but as a feature that exists in a fantasy world.

I define a dungeon as follows:  there exists more than one habitat.  A single lair, even as large as several hundred humanoids, is a lair and not a dungeon.  For it to be a dungeon, there must be a second lair, at least, either linked with or hidden from the first.  This typically means a series of tunnels or connected natural chambers to be explored.  As well, there must be some natural food supply that exists underground, which the inhabitants consume.

Towards that end I have been working on a series of vegetation types that conceivably do not need sunlight to live.  I do not speak of molds.  If this is a fantasy world, we may conceive of molds that grow like fibrous carpets that can supply food for diminutive herd animals; plants that cling to ceilings and grow downwards, with a consistency like cornsilk, which can be chopped and boiled to make soup or woven to make rope; hard, woody plants that grown in hexagonal patterns in large chambers, that give forth gray flowers that ultimately yield fruit; and seaweed-like fronds ('pond-weed') that grows in cold water.  One might even imagine a plant that, if it receives a blast of light once per month, it stores the photons and thus thrives.  All that would be needed was a first level light spell.  Combined together with fish and animals raised to live on such provender, a 'dungeon' can be seen as a rich food supply, like an underground hydroponics lab without requiring continuous light. 

The chance for such a dungeon is 3 in 3d6, modified as follows: +1 for hills, +2 for mountains and +1 for subtropical dry climates.  This latter argues that dry, warm climates produce a warmer underground environment, suggesting that such places would be more likely to be adapted to the food supplies described.  While considering that 1 in 216 seems a low number, I would point out that this would mean a single 6 mile hex with seven lesser hexes would have a 7 in 216 chance and that one of my 20-mile hexes would have a 49 in 216 chance.  A country the size of Belgium would have an average of 8 such dungeons.  Moreover, dungeons need not only occur in wilderness areas - where Belgium would be concerned, such dungeons would merely be deeper and more likely associated with large cities and ancient churches or tombs rather than large caverns.

The dungeon type indicated is really more of a place-holder at present.  A % die gives the following: 01 ruined town; 02-11 ruined hamlet; 12-13 curiousity; 15-44 dungeon; 45-92 hollow; 93-00 religious ruin.

Ruined towns or hamlets are deserted places where much of the dungeon may be on the surface, with towns having expected underground places for adventuring and exploration - abandoned sewers or basements.  Curiosities are man-made wonders, such as singular constructions like pyramids, elaborate gardens or castles; natural wonders such as geological vents, strange islands, stone forests; technological strangenesses such as a buried spaceship that the party might discover; anything, really, that is separated by its unique circumstance.  Dungeons are the traditional form.  Hollows are collections of natural caverns with little man-made design.  Religious ruins imply undead or other evil creatures living in fabricated tunnels more than a thousand years old.

Totals

I'm sorry to say that the various examples of the tables above do not relate to one another.  I was hoping for that, but spreading this out over five days has meant the various tables have become muddled.  Therefore, do not worry about how the below relates to the examples given.  I shall sort that out at the end of this post.  For now, try to see the below table for its general 'look.'

For the moment, let's just treat these as abstract numbers.  Bush tucker includes berries, nuts, honey and the various provender to be found from oases.  Berries produce 1 food, nuts 1-2, honey 1-3 and an oasis 2-6+1 (2d3+1).

Fish includes values for coast, lake, river, river mouth, swamp, bank, fish pond and pingo pools. Most water produces at least a little food.  Coast produces 0-1 food, lake 0-2, river 0-1, river mouth 0-2, swamp 0-1, bank 1-4, fish pond 1-3 and pingo pools 0-1.  For reference, 'zero-to-one' is a d2-1, while 'zero-to-two' is a d3-1.  Even with the chance of a set part of water producing no food at all, fish tends to be a major source if there is water available.

Forage includes meadowlands, dried ponds and dungeons.  Meadowlands produce 1-3, dried ponds 0-1 and dungeons produce 2-8.

Game meat includes game country, game trails and choke points.  Game country produces 2-5 food, game trails produce 1 and choke points produce 1-3.

Before going on, lets look at a complete result for the whole hex, generated as one image:

I rolled for this until I got a dungeon result.  Incidentally, I've attached a working copy of the generator to the Wiki, which you can play with.  I'm afraid that most of it is junk at the moment, as the generator is in a state of flux, but you might enjoy looking at what I've done with Type VII and Type VI hexes in the meantime.

What is '1' food?  In the interest of verisimilitude, we had best go back to this post.  There I suggest that '1 food' is equivalent to 100 million calories, which I then suppose would be enough to feed 167 people (remembering that we're including children in our number).  We can argue here than one human weighs, on average, 137 lbs.  This would mean that 1 food on the above list was enough to feed 22,879 lbs. of flesh.

If we assume that the ordinary animals are accounted for in the existing biome, we can presume that this fed flesh refers to monsters only.  That rids us of the need to consider how many deer, rabbits, frogs, lizards, birds and whatever also exist.  We only need worry about creatures as they occur in the monster lists - humans included, as bandits, brigands and so on.

Thus, the dungeon indicated with its five food would feed 2,287.9 goblins, assuming their average weight at 50 lbs. each.  More than enough.  Of course, the critical principle here is diversify!  Don't just pick one type of monster to feed on one given source of food.

Some quibbler is bound to mention that since I rolled the dungeon as a religious ruin, and since I said already that such places would be occupied by undead - and that the undead do not eat - that the whole system makes no sense.  I'm sure, however, that we can use our brains and adjust for such illogical circumstances.

Okay, I'm tired now.  This has been a lot of work.  Different subject tomorrow.

Features & Food, Part II: Water

I'm beginning to feel like this is the post that will never end.  Here is part 2:

Moving onto water-based food supplies:

Each of these tables are deliberately simple for the present - they can be expanded for later ideas having to do with potential food supplies.  I'm just tossing out what occurs to me - and at the same time, adding features that may have nothing to do with food, such as the 'dead pond.'  A dead pond is a place where salt or other minerals have rendered the water undrinkable.  That will probably become a stub at some point in the future that designates a certain creature that might dwell there or be associated with it.

Banks are related to salt water.  They may also be called shoals, places where fish congregate due to food supply.  Cool or cold sea water is created by currents, inspiring bacteria growth that in turn encourages spawning and schooling among larger fish.  Not every sea hex is a bank; the local fishermen come to know where to fish, so that there might be adventurous fishing folk temporarily in a hex that is considered 'wilderness.'

Dried ponds have little or no standing water are still fed by groundwater, so that they feature green grasses, rabbits, grouse and other small game, as well as hay for animals.  Seasonally they will form sloughs, standing water that is anywhere from an inch to a foot deep - these will evaporate slowly, as groundwater is usually just below the surface.

Fishing ponds are fed by brooks or creeks, or may be formed by groundwater springs (not to be confused with aquifers, a rare form of geological groundwater formation).  These may be naturally possessed of fish or they may have been stocked by locals.  Water tends to be from 3 to 10 feet deep (or more, depending upon the topography).  I have written some rules about fishing on the wiki.

Hot springs occur in mountain areas (and rarely elsewhere).  Oases form in deserts - and are really only special because they're springs that occur where there's no water.  However, they do tend to be intensely employed for that reason, so that a single oasis would likely produce more food than a dozen springs in a temperate clime (where they would be ignored).

Pingo pools and hills are fascinating.  I was surprised to find that the pools sometimes contain fish; this is due to periods of flooding, so that fish are left behind after the nearby river recedes.

The base chance for a bank is 2 on 3d4, modified as follows: +2 for coast, +3 for a river mouth, +1 for open sea. This means that the chance indicated will be impossible unless the sea touches upon the hex - which is fine, since in those cases a 'bank' cannot occur in a mainland hex.

The base chance for a dead pond is 2 in 2d4 in subtropical dry climates and 4 in 2d4 in temperate dry climates.  Dead ponds do not occur in other climates.

The chance for a fishing pond is 2 in 2d4, modified as follows: -1 in mountains, +2 if a river, +3 if a river mouth, +4 if a swamp, +3 in tropical wet climates, -1 in subtropical dry climates, +1 in temperate wet climates.  Dried ponds occur if the chance for a fishing pond is missed by 1.  Thus, if the chance of a fish pond is 2 and a 3 is rolled (as is the case with Hex C above) then a dried pond exists.

Hot springs have a 1 in 100 chance of occurring in mountains.  (Non-random hotsprings occur in my world where designated by wikipedia - benefits of running the real world).

Oases occur on a 3 or 4 rolled on 3d6 in desert hexes.

Pingo pools occur on a 2 to 4 on 2d4 in subarctic conditions (north of the tree-line).  Pingo hills occur if the chance for a pool is missed by 1 (like dried ponds).

Features & Food, Part I

Here and there, I have been working on my 'hex generator 2.0' - which will probably be a relief to some of you who are tired already of me writing about what role-playing is.  For today, then, let's dig a bit into something more substantial.

If the gentle reader is not familiar with my hex generator, you're going to want to start on this post about Groups.

This post will be dealing with 'Group VIII,' where all sub-hexes are wilderness, and specifically the food that can be found within that wilderness.  As ever, I am working on the premise that before we can determine what randomly exists in a hex, we have to start with whatever sustains those creatures.  More than that, natural food helps establish for the players a logical framework for the wilderness that's a bit deeper than, "this hex is full of trees."  Or rocks, sand, water, what have you.

For that, we have to establish what the hex fundamentally is - in terms of topography, hydrography and climate.  We start with Table I:

TABLE I

For the most part, this is a straightforward indication of whether or not a hex contains a certain feature or not.  'Mainland' would be a non-coastal hex.  Hills differ from mountains in terms of their elevation, but more importantly in terms of the amount of free rock; a 'hill' may be counted as something where the top of the feature could be considered arable; a 'mountain' would have large areas that are distinctly not arable.

Terms like 'tropical wet' vs. 'sub-tropical dry' have specific meanings that have specific definitions. For the present, I'm lumping together tropical dry in with subtropical dry, but later I may separate the two.  The reader should understand that the amount of water is much more important than the temperature of a region where it comes to both food production and animal (monster) population.

I suggest familiarizing yourself with the Köppen climate classification, to get a feel for climates that occur in given parts of the world:

Good.   Let's compare Table I above with a part of the world itself.  If we start from this map,

which is in turn a break-down of the 6-mile per hex map on this post - an expansion from the map here - we can enlarge a section to get this:

The larger hexes are each 6 miles across (a bit more, but let's not quibble), while the smaller hexes within are 2 miles across.  Table I at the top of the post corresponds to the 7 letters within the chosen wilderness hex.

According to Koppen, the whole area is temperate dry.  A stream flows through hexes A, E, & F.  C & D are coastal hexes; the others are not.

From here, we proceed to food sources, broken down by type.  We can start with plant life:

Why 'bush tucker'?  My original generator had listed this as 'berries,' but in fact there are a great many more possibilities than that - naturally growing nuts, insect mounds, honey, tubers & roots, bulbs and so on that can all service as food sources.  It can be seen that I am specifying what the bush tucker is.  Meadowlands, in turn, provide natural grasses that will feed domestic horses, donkeys or mules, but not provide sustenance to creatures that cannot eat woody materials.  Admittedly, I haven't included a section for providing food for a wider range of herbivores - I hadn't actually considered specifying that until just now.  I should probably give a flat amount of plant sustenance depending upon the climate.  I was concentrating primarily upon things that would matter to the party.

The base chance for bush tucker is 2 in 2d4, or one chance in 16.  This is modified as follows: +3 for a lake (minimum a mile across), +2 for a river, +3 for a river mouth, +4 if the climate is tropical wet, -1 if sub-tropical dry and +1 if temperate wet.  These adjustments are tests for the present - based more upon a general feel than upon any kind of data.  If someone wants to provide me with hard data as to the amount of bush tucker to be found, broken down by topography and climate, I'd love it.  In the meantime, I'm shooting in the dark.

The base chance for a meadow is the same, 2 in 2d4.  This is modified as follows:  +2 for hills, +1 for mountains, -1 for subtropical dry, +2 for temperate wet, +1 for temperate dry.  I'm not sure I have a good argument for why hills have the best chance for a meadow.  I confess to not fully understanding meadow-development as a science.  It just feels 'right.'  If anyone wants to pitch an argument, I'll certainly listen.

Annoyingly, I'm being interrupted just now.  I'll have to make this a Part I post, and pick this up later if I can.

Two Girls

There's a little Japanese-Korean place just a few blocks from home. Every time I order from there, two young Korean girls in their late teens break into my place, subdue me and keep me pinned until I eat everything.

But the kimche is amazing.

Favorite Food

Hearkening back to this post, and this post as well, my equipment list has a great many things on it that are not, shall we say, 'useful' - like roast rabbit, brandy wine, shark fin soup, dried prunes, licorice root, dried coconut, etc.  The sort of thing one might like to find by the ton for treasure, but not really something the players are motivated to buy.  Although, for those heavy into the role-play thing, they will order a turtle soup or buy melons instead of oranges at the town market (not shown in links).

But I had a little idea tonight that I thought I'd bounce around ... if only so I don't talk about my book again.

The character background generator could be put to good use here.

Suppose we had it generate some 'favorite foods' for new characters, in addition to 'hated foods' ... the sort of things the characters would really hate to eat.  Is this the sort of thing that one is allowed to pregenerate?  Is it not, after all, sort of beyond our control why we like or dislike a particular thing?  Isn't that physical ... and on the level of no one really knows why?  I think it very well could be.

There could be three levels of food generation - rare things really liked, common things really liked, general things really hated.  Then, if the player eats that rare thing (and the key is, in my world, can the character FIND it?) the character gains, say, a hit point for that day.  If the character eats common, liked food, the character gets a +1 constitution check.  If the character eats really hated food (presumably because they have to, there's no other food or they do not wish to be rude), the character is potentially unwell (-1 strength, -2 constitution) for 8 to 16 hours?

Well, some combination of minor benefits and penalties.  There's room to play around with it, try different things, see if it motivates people to get interested if there's almonds or pistachios or opium for sale in this particular town.  Causing them to grumble if its been a long, long time since they could find that one thing they really, really like.

I think it could produce some interesting emotional game play.  Ideas?

Nutritional Nightmares

Given the number of followers with food blogs, I’ve been thinking I need to build up a post for their benefit. For the gentle readers who don’t know, before I found income as a writer, I worked as a chef for 12 years. Food is in my blood. Literally.

Although it is convenient and saves much hassle in the game, I have never been a fan of ‘rations.’ The Player’s Handbook does not specify what is in these rations, but I suppose it’s what was once called the “ploughman’s lunch.” To paraphrase the link, a thick piece of cheese, a pickle, bread and fruit; from other sources I have heard that it would also include a substantial piece of dried meat, beer, turnips and so on. A wider diet for farmers developed in the 18th century with improvements in agriculture (the link only gives the origin of the name, not the combination of foods). Rations would probably be in a larger quantity than would be carried by a farmer going no further than several rods from his home.

In considering the consumption of food by adventurers, there’s no better example than the voyageurs of Canada ... since we have good records for how much they ate, and what sorts of foods.  Again, taking this from the sources, daily food consumption was ten pounds of salmon, or fifteen pounds of whitefish, or three pounds of pemmican ... dried meat pounded together with fat and berries.  Total intake could be higher than the 7,200 calories suggested by the post.  A meal at a fort - where beef or pork was available - could easily measure as much as 6-8 pounds.  The loads the men carried and the difficulty of the terrain they crossed compares nicely with what one imagines for a fully outfitted party climbing into the mountains with packs, weapons, tools  ... and treasure on the return trip.

If you choose to play your campaign as a DM without the use of rations, you will quickly run into a particular problem, that being one of nutrition.  By the height of the voyageurs operations into the interior of Canada and the United States there had been evidence to show that certain kinds of foods were necessary to the survival of expeditions - and companies forced their employees to consume set amounts of citric acid or vegetables to reduce the onset of scurvy and other diseases.

Obviously, you can demand your players eat a certain amount of everything (you can research those amounts) if they want to stay healthy, but this quickly degrades back into a rations format ... with the players allotting 'days' of food available on their character sheets even if you don't care to do so as a DM.  They will do this because it is the easiest method to get the food issue out of the way and get back to adventuring.  Players have no more desire to muck about with nutrition than they have to measure their encumberance rate.

But if you have an interest in driving yourself nuts, I have a suggestion for you.  After much thought about food and D&D, I made the connection last night, inspiring this post.  As such, none of it is written in stone ... I'm just spitballing here, looking perhaps to build some kind of working system over the next few months if I get time.

To begin with, create separate categories for consumables.  To keep it fairly simple, let's make six categories: meats, cereals, milk products, fruits/vegetables, salt and indulgences.  This last category would include confectionary, tobacco, spirits, and so on - tasty things.  More categories could be made, and the ones mentioned broken up into smaller bits, but let's just use these six for the sake of construction.

Now, let's say that the player has to eat a certain amount in each category to stay healthy.  And let's say that unhealthiness in each category produces a different disease.  Still without getting into specifics, let's call the diseases A, B, C, D, E and F.  Therefore, if you don't eat enough meat, you may come down with a nasty case of 'A.'

And just to give the player a chance to get enough of each category of food, let's measure it not by the day, but by the week or the month.  In my opinion, by the month is best ... it allows for greater flexibility.  If the player gets into a place where fruit isn't available for a couple of weeks, they can try to catch up.

Now, here's the rub:  you don't tell the player how much of each type they have to eat.

You do set a certain amount of food that must be consumed in a day.  You can measure it by calories, or by weight.  You can say to the player that when they are resting in a town, they must eat at least 3,000 calories/day, and when adventuring, 6,000 calories/day.  Or alternatively, 20 oz. of food and 40 oz. of food.  You provide them a wide selection of foods from the market, and let them buy whatever they want.  Without hints!

It is, after all, a medieval world.  Offer them six types of each thing, or ten types of each thing, whatever you like.

Then, every few days, when its convenient, tell them to scratch off the amount of food they've eaten, and mark down on your chart how much of each category they've consumed.  Assign a percentage chance based on how much they've fallen short of a particular category, roll, and if the dice so indicate, tell the player that they've caught the category-appropriate disease.  If you want, obviously, you can just let them know the symptoms.

You could, if you wanted to micromanage it further, assign an increasing likelihood of the appropriate disease if the player fails to change their diet ... even saying that they will catch the disease not based on the die roll, but when the amount they've eaten falls such-and-such short of what they actually require.

Oh, I should point out that the disease "F" resulting from too few "indulgences" could be a psychological malady, like depression or paranoia, as the result of the player not knowing how to have a good time in the interest of saving their money.

Of course, over indulgence in indulgences could result in subtractions to the other categories.  You could also include a limit to how much of a particular food could be processed by the body in a certain time period - if I was low on fruits and vegetables, and tried to eat my quota - to 'catch up' - much of that would be simply expended and prove to be of no value.  Overeating a particular kind of food other than indulgences, in a short period such as the fruit example, or over a long period, could also have repercussions.

Hopefully, one member of the party would consistently eat well and remain disease free, pulling the other party members onto the right track ... but then this could be goofed with by the system also.

Not everyone eats the same food with the same effects.  You could make rolls that indicated for some people, lemons did not sit well with them ... forcing them to give away the three pounds of lemons they bought before their journey.  Or play it so that for whatever reason, they learn that anything they eat that produces a 'disconcerting' result on the other end produces only half the desired result.  Thus, they find that their characters have to test various foods before finding exactly the diet that fits right for them.  Jarod might learn that he has to have pomegranates to get the best results, where as Tothlane has a bad night whenever he eats pomegranates.  And if pomegranates are for whatever reason not available, Jarod must eat Tothlane's nectarines ... to get some benefit, even though nectarines hate Jarod.  Certain races, naturally, could have certain preferences.

It is really a question of how much notetaking you want to do as DM.  Given that I have a trade system that indicates the availability of a wide variety of foods, the availability/non-availability of items works particularly well for me.  And I think that much of the measurement for eaten food vs. unhealthiness could be handled by an excel spreadsheet rather easily.

Such a system could really generate some interest at the market, and in the food that was discovered among whatever humanoids were slaughtered just lately.  I can hear groaning from players who learn that the seventeen crates contain dried apricots ... while one druid goes, "YES!"  And I can also hear the conversations of players micromanaging their diets as best they can, never being absolutely certain they've eaten enough of everything ...