10-09-2017, 05:20 AM | #1 |
Never Been Pretty
Join Date: Jan 2005
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Monetizing Giant-Spider Silk
Let's say the heroes find a large area filled with spider webs, which I assume is the raw material for Giant-Spider Silk. It's quite sticky, so how can they harvest it? How much would it be worth for someone who can turn it into Giant-Spider Silk, ready to be woven into light cloth armor?
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10-09-2017, 06:04 AM | #2 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Monetizing Giant-Spider Silk
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10-09-2017, 10:16 AM | #3 | |
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
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Re: Monetizing Giant-Spider Silk
The hard way. Either by hand or by spinning it up on a stick or something and then cutting it free into a container.
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Also some of the silk will have decayed, so only a portion of what is collected will be of value, and this will be a cost passed on to the harvestors in the form of a lower price. Honestly (and I'm saying this as one of the saps likely to end up trying to collect this dross) I'd reach for the Scraps rule on pg 15 of DF 2: $1dx100 per half-ton wagonload (even then we'd have to find a buyer). Alternately, the proprietor of the establishment could inquire about it when we come and then upon seeing it call it useless (or if you decide it does have value, she could offer to broker it around, paying us to harvest it). It depends on how much you want to reward the Players ingenuity or just move along to the rest of the adventure. |
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10-09-2017, 10:24 AM | #4 |
Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: Northeast Kansas
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Re: Monetizing Giant-Spider Silk
I'd probably make it a naturalist roll, modified for how clever a harvesting scheme they have. I'd assume the weaving costs are significantly higher than ordinary silk, since the stickiness and tensile strength is considerably greater.
Still, I don't have a problem with it paying out big money, depending on how well they harvest it. I believe in raining down huge sums of money. As a player, I'd be much more inclined to use it to reduce the cost of making a suit of giant spider silk armor. |
10-09-2017, 10:51 AM | #5 | ||
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
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Re: Monetizing Giant-Spider Silk
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* Which means "they boil it and then lie to make it sound mysterious". Their advantage is in being able to communicate with or control the Giant Spiders in the first place making harvesting far, far easier. Quote:
Something that occurred to me only after writing the earlier post is how long does it take to harvest: I'd recommend 30 minutes to harvest a hex, suffering it's 'trap-ness' effects (regardless of whether you're going with 7 feet deep of candy-floss webbing or 1-2 feet deep thick heavy matting, the former we'd spin onto sticks, the latter cut up like sod). Each failure to the 'trap' might reduce the value some or adjust how long it takes to harvest. Just some more thoughts on it. |
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10-09-2017, 12:07 PM | #6 |
President and EIC
Join Date: Jul 2004
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Re: Monetizing Giant-Spider Silk
Would it be a better use of the party's time to just sell the location to a lower-level group of adventurers for a share of the take?
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10-09-2017, 12:38 PM | #7 | |
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
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Re: Monetizing Giant-Spider Silk
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I say 'steal' because we might not get paid to what we are down in the basement doing. We were paid to exterminate giant rats, we're instead being murdered by giant ambush spiders in the tavern basement of doom. ;) |
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10-09-2017, 04:06 PM | #8 |
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Maitland, NSW, Australia
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Re: Monetizing Giant-Spider Silk
Two options:
1) If the spider hasn't freshly spun the silk (e.g. it degrades every minute after being expelled) then it can't be used for weaving into cloth. This makes the value of the raw material very high compared to the final product. 2) Spidersilk requires a special (and expensive) treatment process before it can be woven in to cloth. This makes the resale value of the raw material much lower compared to the final product. If you went with option 1, you'd have PCs trying to capture a live spider to imprison it and harvest its silk, thus flooding the market. Option 2 makes it very hard for the PCs to corrupt the market.
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10-09-2017, 06:36 PM | #9 |
Untagged
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: Monetizing Giant-Spider Silk
Option one also leads to some enterprising individuals hiding and transporting spider egg sacks. How sure are you about the gestation length of wild giant spiders?
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10-09-2017, 07:16 PM | #10 |
President and EIC
Join Date: Jul 2004
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Re: Monetizing Giant-Spider Silk
Maybe cultivated spiders are already a Thing, but just don't yield the same quality silk that wild ones do. No one knows why.
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