Max number of days you can provision for?

[Thunderfoot]

Pemmican is NOT salted meat. Not at ALL. People used it for at LEAST a year at a time. Indians and traders. It is today what is called a complete food. I'm afraid you lack useful data on this food. Pemmican - Wikipedia

Thanks. I have always been led to believe that pemmican was just another form of jerky. That being said, the caloric intake would still need to be increased for a combat campaign so your amounts are a little low. Good stuff.

 

[éxypnos]

Thanks. I have always been led to believe that pemmican was just another form of jerky. That being said, the caloric intake would still need to be increased for a combat campaign so your amounts are a little low. Good stuff.

Agreed. 3k calories is just what an average adult male needs. US Army specs minimum 4.2 K calories/day in temperate climate for combat soldiers

 

[Mannahnin]

So, now we go waaaaaay back to AD&D and the supplied areas in most modules to store provisions and then strike out to explore. So a small wagon of food and water stored in a nearby safe area would cover the party if they returned daily or even every other day. The problem is as modern humans we forget that the first military rations were issued by Napoleon thanks to the invention of canning. before that you got provisions - coffee, flour, salt, etc and you were required to forage, hunt, fish or raid or rely on a provisional kitchen (field mess).

To my recollection these canned rations were the origin of the term "iron rations", and so the use of the term in D&D setting with a pre-canning level of technology was a bit of an anachronism, which was explained away as the nearest equivalent without the cans- still salted meat, hardtack, and other non-fresh, slow-spoiling foods.

 

[embee]

To my recollection these canned rations were the origin of the term "iron rations", and so the use of the term in D&D setting with a pre-canning level of technology was a bit of an anachronism, which was explained away as the nearest equivalent without the cans- still salted meat, hardtack, and other non-fresh, slow-spoiling foods.

Eat enough hardtack and you take -1 to your Persuasion and Intimidation checks. It's hard to convince someone to see your way of thinking when you don't have any teeth left.

On the other hand, you can use hardtack as a hammer or as sling ammunition.

 

[Mannahnin]

Eat enough hardtack and you take -1 to your Persuasion and Intimidation checks. It's hard to convince someone to see your way of thinking when you don't have any teeth left.

Well, that's why you soak it in your coffee or stew or just water, if that's all you have.

On the other hand, you can use hardtack as a hammer or as sling ammunition.

• World War II American D Rations were bars of specially formulated chocolate that were effectively just bricks of nutrients. Eating them took a bit of work since biting straight into a bar might just break your teeth. They were so hardy that they could be fired from artillery cannons to soldiers who were trapped behind enemy lines. The military commissioned Hershey to make the bars so unappealing to soldiers that they wouldn't eat them unless they absolutely had to. (The commission literally specified that the bars should taste "slightly better than a boiled potato.")

• Indestructible Edible - TV Tropes

Rock-hard (and indeed contains various rocks such as gravel), never goes stale, and is terribly sustaining. A traveller can go for miles, just knowing there's dwarf bread in their pack. A traveller can think of just about anything to eat rather than dwarf bread including their own foot and even pumpkins (see Witches Abroad).

Various forms of dwarf bread can be used as weapons, e.g. battle muffins and drop scones. Fine specimens of dwarf bread can be found in the Dwarf Bread Museum, Whirligig Alley, Ankh-Morpork, open to the public whenever volunteers have time (Feet of Clay). Dwarfs away from home often miss dwarf bread very much, and complain that mass-produced breads by Mr. Ironcrust hardly meet the standards, but dwarfs are too busy working to go and see the exhibits in the museum, much less to volunteer there.

Proper dwarf bread has to be not just baked, but forged (with gravel, of course) and dropped in rivers and dried out, and sat on and left, and looked at every day and then put away again. For preference, its use as a cat's litter box is also recommended. Dwarfs generally devour it with their eyes, because even dwarfs have trouble with devouring it any other way.

Dwarf Bread - Discworld & Terry Pratchett Wiki

wiki.lspace.org

 

[Jd Smith1]

Eat enough hardtack and you take -1 to your Persuasion and Intimidation checks. It's hard to convince someone to see your way of thinking when you don't have any teeth left.

On the other hand, you can use hardtack as a hammer or as sling ammunition.

The best way to eat hardtack, as period accounts all agree, was to soak it until it became a mush. Union troops in the ACW were known to soak their in their coffee as it came to a boil.

 

[Thunderfoot]

To my recollection these canned rations were the origin of the term "iron rations", and so the use of the term in D&D setting with a pre-canning level of technology was a bit of an anachronism <Snip>

Correct for 200 and you gain control of the board. Again, it shows that a lot of the hobby evolved from wargamers. If it hadn't have been for Arneson's first dungeon it might have forever been a way to level leaders in wargames.

 

[aramis erak]

Someone should do a youtube vlog, go underground with full plate armor, backpack, longbow, two swords, 50' hemp rope, 10' pole, provisions for a week and 10,000 gold pieces.

See Lindsey Beige, on YouTube...

 

[aramis erak]

not sure what a harness is, but full plate cavern crawling, sure I can go with that easily. I'm just putting a limit when its massively bulky or massively heavy, then its pretty hard to make a movie depicting that. I was just saying a vlog showing medieval arms and armor, backpack, provisions would be cool to set a rough ballpark. Probably someone already made one.

Harness can be used multiple ways.
For a soldier, it can be the sets of straps to suspend armor on the body, or the sum of said straps and their affixed armor, or even the sum of worn armor.

For a horse (or other beast) it's the load carrying equipment, especially when that is a connection to a cart or wagon. It can range from straps, through saddlebags, to a howdah.

Full harness usually refers to all one's wargear in most contexts; full kit adds the march and camp gear to the full harness.

 

[Thunderfoot]

Just stopped in to say Shadiveristy on YouTube covered this in a recent (2mo ago) vid. For those unfamiliar with his channel, he's an Aussie gamer geek who worked in construction engineering and is very keen on historical reference in games but also differentiates between history and fantasy. The vid is worth checking out, and if I wasn't on my phone I'd post a link. He brings up a good point about forage and even forage in relation to 'campaign movement' (foraging and hunting applied to movement speed makes the old 1e slow campaign movement more realistic my conclusion not his) in passing.