D&D General Need wheat. Too dangerous. (worldbuilding)

[Ancalagon]

Another partial answer is the spell "plant growth", which is available to druids and nature clerics, which would double food yield.

 

[AtomicPope]

I always felt that Gygax and company resolved this in Greyhawk rather nicely, and many classic modules sprang from these conflicts. Urbanite vs Ruralite: in Greyhawk this was often a religious conflict between Cleric (urbanite) vs Druid (ruralite). Two particular modules immediately come to mind: Steading of the Hill Giant Chief and The Liberation of Geoff. These two modules, and in particular the latter, express the rural life of free folk who are farmers in a fantasy realm. Giants regularly raiding their villages for food is a common occurrence. The anti-Giant Ranger of early D&D is at home here. Nature magic is a central part of life; and while everyone is not an ordained Druid, nor are they a theocracy, they all respect the Old Ways and live by them.

I loved these themes and held onto them when crafting stories and world building. These free folk hold onto their traditions and resist outsiders as a means of survival and prosperity. For a desert people create food and water would be a miracle spell. For farmers in temperate lands it's a waste of time. Plant growth and purify water are both more beneficial as a field of wheat feeds more people than a cleric spell. Spells like spike growth are better at deterring Giants and monstrous beasts than scorching ray, the latter revealing your position.

Growing up with Greyhawk I'm glad I got to experience these themes early on, combining mechanics and fluff to mold a cohesive fantasy society. It's refreshing to get away from the tired old narratives that are pushed in the real world and ignore them completely.

 

[MarkB]

Real-world farmers historically used scarecrows and other defences to ward off pests, so you just need some equivalent method that will ward off low-level wandering monsters. Maybe animated scarecrows (straw golems), along with nasty traps and other measures on the outermost borders of the fields.

 

[aco175]

The large cities have smaller towns a day's ride from them and those towns have smaller villages another day or two out from them. The towns and villages grow the food and animals needed by the city. The city offers protection and sends soldiers and adventurers out to protect things. If a village finds a goblin den within 10 miles of its border, the villagers will want something done. Traditionally, monsters would have been pushed further and further out from these civilized places but D&D also needs them to be close enough to have resupply options.

Grain and flour can be stored and saved for some time if protected from giant rats in the basement and such. Good governments are supposed to save some in good years to ride out bad years, which includes monster attacks. This is why a good siege burns all the fields as they pass through.

 

[Umbran]

Little known fact: most monsters have gluten intolerance.

Your fields are safe.

Your farmers, however...

Therefore farmers need to be made of animated bread!

I am glib, but there is a point here - who has wild, rampaging... herbivores? Your wheat fields are safe from the monsters, because everything that rampages is looking for flesh, not semolina. Even the orcs and hobgoblins that are traditional humanoid raiders are going to wait until that grain is harvested. The townsfolk and food storage are what you need to worry about.

Enter - the farmforged. Not meat. Monsters leave them alone.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

The wheat isn't for making bread. It's for luring in monsters, who are then killed, and bread is made from their ground bones.

Hey, it makes about as much sense as anything else in D&D.

 

[Bedrockgames]

So, you are talking about wheat, but really, what you are concerned about is agriculture. It doesn't matter if you are growing wheat, rice, barley, turnips, or you have sheep grazing, agriculture need lots of land.

Agriculture cannot co-exists with large quantities of rampaging monsters. You are completely right about this. This means that there has to be "civilized" areas where agriculture is possible. Areas with lots of monsters simply don't have a lot of humans living there. It's "the wilderness".

The best solution is to have "wild" areas and "agricultural" areas. I will note that there is a LOT of bad world design out there.

i don’t know. This depends on on how much monsters actually approach settlements and destroy fields or attack people. I mean we live in a word with crocodiles, bears, tigers, venomous snakes and insects that pose risks to agriculture. We have large animals capable of disrupting agriculture (elephants have been known to rampage). Obviously if every month your fiends are destroyed by a tarasque then that is going to put a cap on agriculture. But if such types of attacks are rare or more in the rhythm of big natural disasters, agriculture could be possible on a large scale. And if it is a regular threat to agriculture, you could world build around that with a variety of agricultural defenses.

 

[MGibster]

I don't know if many D&D settings really make a solid attempt to explain where all the food comes from and I don't know if most players really care. We're playing a fantasy adventure game not Sim Farm with the downloadable fantasy expansion. I also don't take things like random encounter tables as the norm for everyone in the setting. If farmer Brown wants to go visit his brother Eustace in the next village, nobody's going to bother rolling on some table to see if he runs into an owlbear or a traveling minstrel. The game is designed for high fantasy adventuring not simulating a realistic economy.

 

[TwoSix]

I think the frequency of item 3 is the real sticking point. If the city in question has enough raiding or monster attack events to make yearly agriculture not feasible, then the city is either currently sinking into famine, or has another source of food.

Since massive famine and starvation aren't the baseline for most settings, I think we have to assume that monster attacks and raiding on farms are a relatively infrequent occurrence. The whole reason an adventurer might get called into looking into those events is because they've become disruptive enough to threaten livelihoods.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

We're playing a fantasy adventure game not Sim Farm with the downloadable fantasy expansion.

I now want that game.