Adding Realism to my game- need help with Gathering and Cooking food system

WonkaMania

First Post
EDIT- I've come up with the system I'm going to use, see my post below that explains it if you're interested. Going to leave the first message I had typed up just as a reference for anyone that is/was interested in that.

:)


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Hello everyone!

In my new campaign that I'm starting this Saturday I want to add a bit of realism to the game. I want players to eat food and drink water every day and keep track of this, or they will start to become malnurished and fatigued. I want my players to roleplay deeply as if they where there character, to take their characters and breathe life into them! The game is going to be more based on being an experiment in *acting*! I had presented this to my group as an *idea* that I'd like to run a game like this, and if they'd enjoy it, and there was an overwhelming response of *yes*! :)

A little backstory and where this comes from:
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I've been playing some NeverWinter Nights online persistant world modules, and they use some great rules. In both modules I play in, one's character may NOT rest/sleep without eating food! They accomplish this differently: in one of them, you kill an animal and then use a skinning knife to carve raw meet from it's body. You then use a flask of oil to make a campfire and "cook" that raw meet into edible food! (or you can buy pre-made food rations which are expensive) In the other module, you pick food off of trees and plants, such as pears and grapes and lettuce and then use the cooking skill to make things out of it (such as a salad or apple pie) to eat. Alternatively you can get eggs from chickens, milk from cows.

(I told my players that background types of skills such as cooking and hunting and etc would be used, and that I'd give them 4 extra skill points at first lvl and 1 point per lvl thereafter; all of these bonus skill points only to be spent on either "craft" or "profession" skills)


Problem I'm having implementing something like this:
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OK, so here's the problem I'm having. How to go about implementing some sort of system like this and make it fun, reasonable, not too hard but also not to easy, and without screwing over the "Survival" skill? Under the current "Survival" skill (same as 3.0 "Wilderness Lore" skill) it has for a (I personally think) low DC of 10:

Get along in the wild. Move up to one-half your overland speed while hunting and foraging (no food or water supplies needed). You can provide food and water for one other person for every 2 points by which your check result exceeds 10.

Now, I had envisioned the characters basically using two differnt "skills". One would be either "hunting" or "farming" or "herbalist" used to gather the food. Then, the character (or someone else's character) would make a "cooking" skill check to see if he/she could successfully cook the food.

The Survival skill kind of screws over my plans that I had though.. how do I incorporate my planned system without screwing over the person that purchases ranks in survival? There will be a Barbarian/Ranger in my group. Now, I had thought about using a sliding scale such as the one that Survival uses, say you make the DC and you find enough food for one person. For every 2 points over the DC you find enough food for one other person. So, I could still keep Survival as saying such, BUT, once you find the food, you have to cook it! This would basically group "finding" food into 4 different skill checks: Survival, "hunting", "farming" or "herbalist". A different skill check "cooking" would then have to be made to cook the food!

That could work? Now, what about the low DC of 10? My players will start out at 1st lvl and be 2nd lvl within a few hours of play (just the way I have it set up from background xp rewards and roleplaying rewards/small adventure). So, they could have their skills at 5 ranks. So, to get enough food for themselves, they'd have to roll a 5 on a d20. (and that's not including any ability modifiers). That's.. uhm, not too challenging. Then again, that's assuming that players will max out said skill inlight of others (perhaps they want their character to be able to both find and cook food, or perhaps they went another route with things such as sailing/etc it's up to them, these are "background" skills) So do I raise the DC to take into account those that will "max" out the skill? And if so, to what, 12? 13? 15? I want it to be reasonalbe though.. at second level they are just starting to get good at doing said thing, but it's still perhaps a challenge? And later on in their adventuring careers they've been doing it for so long that it's not even really a challenge to them (which is perfectly fine and understandable and expected)

Cooking- I figured I"d make cooking a static DC. Say for vs. dc 12 or 15 or so you attempt to cook each individual piece of food. Either you cook it and it's edible, or you fail your check and the food is rendered inedible. A stationary object (say a stove) could give a +4 bonus, as could "masterwork cooking tools" give a +2 bonus.

On Micro-Managing
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I had originally told my players that they would be needing to keep track of encumbrence and arrow use, and that they'd have to hunt for food, cook the food, and drink water everyday. I asked players if they'd enjoy this type of game and got an overwhelming response of *YES*! (we play in another game where it's sort of "anything goes" maunty-haul, so I'm running this to provide a different experience from that game)

So it comes down to, am I wanting too much realism here? Am I biting off more then I could chew? The players said they'd enjoy playing in a game that incorporated this kind of thing, but I'm begging to wonder, from a games-mechanic point of view, should I just scrap the whole food/water idea? Please let me know your thoughts on the subject, and if you've done anything like this before, how it worked out, and/or if you have any suggestions to help make this work! Thanks in advance! :)

P.S.- I'm kind of confused by what is meant by the Survival skill's mention of "one half your overland speed".. does this mean that this speed reduction would not count in combat rounds, correct? Also, it says you make one check every 24 hours, the result of that check applies until the next check is made. So does that mean that they'll be moving at one-half thier overland speed for the 24 hours following said skill check?
 
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Micro-managing things like this and acting are actually counterproductive goals, in my experience. If you're concentrating on your equipment list, you're not getting into your role as your character, you're being distracted by mechanical considerations. I'd rather just go with the Survival skill and have done with it.

So, there's no problem with what you're doing, but I don't think it will give you the same experience you think it will. At least, it wouldn't for me.

Also, I think your Cooking DCs are pretty steep. Only in the sitcoms do people regularly cook food so badly that it's actually inedible. I know from experience -- as a 12 year old boy scout who camped at least once a month for years, I saw some of the worst cooking imaginable.
 

To Boil water should be DC 0
To throw stuff into boiling water and call it soup DC 2

basic 'survival' cooking isn't hard - and often isn't tasty that doen't mean its inedible. The difficult parts are the 'lighting the fire, collecting the food' parts not the cooking

And of course food does not need to be cooked, fresh killed meat can be eaten raw (and still warm) - though its safer to cook of course - and most leafy vegetables and fruits can be eaten raw too. (again the survival check makes sure that you haven't accidently picked the poisonous variety of lettuce)
 

So... aside from eating, drinking, and sleeping, what ELSE is this campaign going to be about. I think that your concern about too much micromanaging ruining the fun is perhaps a valid one. Any time spent rolling dice to see if the characters can feed themselves for one more day is time NOT spent adventuring.

Keeping track of arrows and encumbrance isn't a bad idea. Arrows especially should just naturally be tracked -- I don't think I've played in a game since High School that simply assumed limitless ammunition. The fact is, though, that the survival skill should allow the PCs to do just that -- survive. Keep in mind that, as the rules are written, there's no reason one can't take 10 on this check. That means that a level one ranger with four ranks in survival and a +2 ability score bonus could automatically feed four people. It's not challenging, but it's not supposed to be. The FUN part of the game should be what you do when you get to where you're going, not keeping your belly full until you get there.

What I would do is allow players to purchase dry rations for those times they're in a hurry, perhaps at a slightly increased price. For just wandering through the wilderness, you can handle the whole idea of eating with a line or two of flavor text -- "You scout ahead and find a small stream where you refill your waterskins and catch some fish to filet for dinner along with some wild root vegetables" or "You pause a few times throughout the day to pick handfuls of wild berries. By mid-afternoon you've also killed a brace of rabbits which you skin to make a tasty stew". This gives some flavour without bogging the game down in what will eventually become trivial details.

If the group is in a very harsh environment you might rule that it's simply not possible to find adequate food and characters suffer temporary ability score loss due to vitamin-deficiency diseases. I recall a game I ran in which the players were forced to loot rations from orcish patrols. The orcs had two types of food, one of which was much more appetizing (if I recall correctly, the disgusting one was some kind of fish paste wrapped in dark green grape-leaf like things. The nicer one was some kind of jerky with a hard biscuit). Anyway, eating one and not the other would give them some kind of long term ill-effect due to missing nutrients. Perhaps something like this, used sparingly, can give you some of that survivalist feel to the campaign without bogging it down.
 

The Tome of Sorrows has a system for hunting and fishing as well as info on meat storage and freshness. :)

You can download it for free directly from my sig.
 

The only time I've ever had my players keep tight track of food and water was in a very harsh desert campaign which was set in world that was mostly in stone-age technology, with a few pockets of early bronze age tech
 

Ashrem Bayle said:
The Tome of Sorrows has a system for hunting and fishing as well as info on meat storage and freshness. :)

You can download it for free directly from my sig.

Ashrem,

AWESOME info man! Thank you *very* much! I've read it over and am working on a way to possibly adapt it into fitting into my campaign! Thank you!

~Wonka
 

WonkaMania said:
OK, so here's the problem I'm having. How to go about implementing some sort of system like this and make it fun, reasonable, not too hard but also not to easy, and without screwing over the "Survival" skill? Under the current "Survival" skill (same as 3.0 "Wilderness Lore" skill) it has for a (I personally think) low DC of 10:

...

Cooking- I figured I"d make cooking a static DC. Say for vs. dc 12 or 15 or so you attempt to cook each individual piece of food. Either you cook it and it's edible, or you fail your check and the food is rendered inedible. A stationary object (say a stove) could give a +4 bonus, as could "masterwork cooking tools" give a +2 bonus.

On Micro-Managing
------------------------
I had originally told my players that they would be needing to keep track of encumbrence and arrow use, and that they'd have to hunt for food, cook the food, and drink water everyday. I asked players if they'd enjoy this type of game and got an overwhelming response of *YES*! (we play in another game where it's sort of "anything goes" maunty-haul, so I'm running this to provide a different experience from that game)

So it comes down to, am I wanting too much realism here? Am I biting off more then I could chew? The players said they'd enjoy playing in a game that incorporated this kind of thing, but I'm begging to wonder, from a games-mechanic point of view, should I just scrap the whole food/water idea? Please let me know your thoughts on the subject, and if you've done anything like this before, how it worked out, and/or if you have any suggestions to help make this work! Thanks in advance! :)

P.S.- I'm kind of confused by what is meant by the Survival skill's mention of "one half your overland speed".. does this mean that this speed reduction would not count in combat rounds, correct? Also, it says you make one check every 24 hours, the result of that check applies until the next check is made. So does that mean that they'll be moving at one-half thier overland speed for the 24 hours following said skill check?

Most foods found in the wild can be eaten with no cooking. As someone else pointed out (above), making food inedible is pretty rare... Cooking DC:2, you fail only on a roll of 1; a Fumble. Making wild game palatable is Cooking DC:10, and making an apple pie someone would pay normal price for is DC:15.

Survival is not a problem for you, as (IIRC) only Rangers and Barbarians get it as a class skill. For everyone else, it will be cheaper (skill points wise) and easier to increase hunting and/or gathering, instead. I'd keep the DC:10 task the same, for them all.

Thus, food will be easy to find, IF they put points into a food-finding skill. If not, they can still survive by halving movement speed and taking 10, except in food-shy regions with a -2 Circumstance Modifier...

The thing to play up, here, is the DC:10 Cooking skill check - and only use it appropriately. Pears and plumbs, for instance, don't need to be "cooked" to be edible, nor even palatable. Raw meat, on the other hand, can be eaten, but is rarely considered palatable. So tell the PCs eating it how awful it is...

"Overland movement" is your travelling speed... No, it is not reduced during combat. Someone who could go 60 miles/day on a horse will only cover 30, if they are hunting (or stopping to rummage through the ditches and hedgerows for roots and tubers).

The 24 hours means that if you spend half a day looking for food, you travel for half a day, and make half time (see above). During that time, you search along the area you passed through, finding X-many "man-days" worth of food. You cannot make another check in the same 24 hour period to try to find more food, if, for example, there were 10 people in your party, and you only found enough food for six! One search/day is all you get (maybe two, if you're hunting all day and not travelling).

Obviously, from the numbers, finding enough food to live isn't supposed to be much of a problem for "Heroes". The DC:10 check basically makes it easy to "take 10" and succeed. The down side is that it cuts travelling speed in half, and often produces roots and tubers that only a wild animal could love... But, again, the PCs could take 10, and be done with the task, assuming Cooking is a Craft. If it's a Profession, then they'd need to buy at least one Rank in it...

This might be fun, at low levels, but as characters advance, it will become less and less important, generally. As it should. If you stress it too much, eventually, someone will get a Decanter of Endless Water and Murlynd's Spoon, and have done with you! :p
 


Wow.

I don't think I've ever... well, I'm not going to say what I was going to say. I just can't think of a way to say it that doesn't come off really bad.

My question is, what does it bring to your game to be rolling dice every day for something as trivial as gathering and cooking food?

I mean, anyone with a wisdom of 10 or higher can find enough food to feed himself in a wilderness setting (take 10 on a DC 10 skill check) and that's on purpose.
 

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