GURPS Magic: Create Food

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

So looks and has the mouth-feel of chocolate pudding? .

If your feces actually look like chocolate pudding you really should have a doctor look at that. It's not normal.

I can't imagine even highly metaphor ruled symbolic magical settings consider feces less like food than literal rocks.

Nor can I. But that doesn't mean much unless rocks can be turned by the spell into tolerable food. And I don't think it will be.

[Bruno]

Create Food can make even literal rocks into food, but it won't change their flavor much. But rocks really don't taste that bad - "mineral-y", obviously, but if you ever stuck pretty rocks in your mouth for safe keeping as a kid, you know there's not a lot of that taste.

More of the flavor might be freed up once you can actually eat them, but I've drank some incredibly hard water with loads of minerals dissolved in it (including spectacular amounts of sulphur compounds), and I imagine chewable rocks must taste a lot like that. It's really not offensive.

Chalk is an actual chewable rock, but natural chalk doesn't have a significant flavor - it's more of a texture, which is best described as "chalky". Now, yellow school chalk? Ugh. The yellow dye is gross.

I know this as I had pika as a kid, and ate all kinds of school supplies and random garden plants until they put me on iron supplements. :P I can also tell you what being poisoned by decorative tropical house plants is like (hint: not fun).

[PK]

Originally Posted by MIB.6361

To clarify, per the description, the spell does two things.
1: It makes something into "food" which I take to mean "edible and nutritious per the casters dietary needs."
2: It makes that same something taste "better" depending on how close that something already is to food.

So even excrement would be transformed into nutritional food.
However, it would still look and feel like poop and probably taste somewhere between "tastes like nothing" and "tasted like poop."

Right, that's what I said. Excrement is (IMO) about as far from food as you can get in terms of symbolism. Because of that, while it would be 100% nutritious, it would taste and look only slightly less disgusting than poo.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Create Food can make even literal rocks into food, but it won't change their flavor much. But rocks really don't taste that bad - "mineral-y", obviously, but if you ever stuck pretty rocks in your mouth for safe keeping as a kid, you know there's not a lot of that taste.
...
Chalk is an actual chewable rock, but natural chalk doesn't have a significant flavor - it's more of a texture, which is best described as "chalky". Now, yellow school chalk? Ugh. The yellow dye is gross.

I know this as I had pika as a kid, and ate all kinds of school supplies and random garden plants until they put me on iron supplements. :P I can also tell you what being poisoned by decorative tropical house plants is like (hint: not fun).

Whoa there. Where does it say that it doesn't change the flavor? If it didn't, then I don't see how spell casters and certainly subjects would believe the magic did anything. It's not like most would understand improved vitamin or caloric content. Same look, feel, taste etc., but according to the magic man it's really food sounds dangerously close to Catholic transubstantiation. No offense intended, but it's not convincing to non-believers, if you get my drift.

Be careful when you say, "chalk". Many will assume the inedible calcium sulphate of classroom chalk rather than the calcium carbonate of limestone antacid chalk.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by PK

Right, that's what I said. Excrement is (IMO) about as far from food as you can get in terms of symbolism. Because of that, while it would be 100% nutritious, it would taste and look only slightly less disgusting than poo.

I still don't understand why. It's organic, still holding lots of nutrition just of the kind to include plenty of waste products and pathogens inimical to human health.
You assume your particular symbolism is universal to all magical settings. Rocks are of the earth, while feces is of the body.

[Flyndaran]

If the spell can't make it taste like something other than feces, then damn few people could physically eat it without vomiting making the entire effort useless.
If that's what you guys want, then just say it fails automatically on things you consider too disgusting of spell subjects. Who cares if this magic would add vitamins to ipecac, if it still induces vomiting?
(Coprophiles not included.)

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

If your feces actually look like chocolate pudding you really should have a doctor look at that. It's not normal.
...

It's a cliched joke, but healthy humans can have quite varied fecal forms. Honestly, I only know what dog feces feels like due to picking up after ours, and of course that's only through plastic bags. I suppose usually it's more mousse like than pudding, but I think we've all had bouts of pudding. Even our Foxy has had days I call pudding-grabs.

[Flyndaran]

I think our main disagreement really hinges on the word food, of all things. I don't consider something food is most humans would vomit if trying to consume it. But it seems like most here disagree and include it to cover everything technically nutritious regardless of literally any other factor.
Bad tasting, to me, means my mom's cooking (don't tell her I said that), or that horrific zero carb bread I once ate when hyperthyroidic. I ate it but cried while doing so from being so insanely hungry. Awful but recognizeable as technically food.

[PK]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

You assume your particular symbolism is universal to all magical settings.

No I don't assume that. You seem to have missed my post (#6) where I explicitly stated that I was speaking as a GM (i.e., how I would rule in my personal fantasy game), not as an editor.

[simply Nathan]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Be careful when you say, "chalk". Many will assume the inedible calcium sulphate of classroom chalk rather than the calcium carbonate of limestone antacid chalk.

I used to eat classroom chalk all the time to no ill effect. I also loved eating graphite from pencils, but the graphite solution with Kool Aid flavor they gave me in the hospital was the worst tasting thing I've ever put in my body intentionally. Even worse than olives, that.