[DF] Turning bodies to loot

[A Ladder]

Originally Posted by Anders

Have you looked at DF8: Treasure Tables? Common furs are worth $200 per 75 lbs., while exotic furs are worth $500, 75 lbs., etc. (p. 12). The fur of a bear weighs 50 lbs. It has DR 2, which would probably be relevant for the weight - say that the fur weighs 1/5 to 1/20 of body weight (this is off the top of my head, I have no experience with hunting). I couldn't find any information on horns and antlers, etc. though. They can be used as decoration, I suppose. Still, DF8 would be where I would look.

If there is no listed weight I would say... 1dx$100? Lots of cutting damage would reduce that, obviously but that might be going into too much detail for a DF game. It depends on how much loot you want them to get.

Going off of this you could say monster pelts are worth (1d-1)x$1 per pound of fur for regular monsters, going up to 2dx$1 per pound of fur for exotic creatures.
Going off of what (E) said this is 10% - 20% weight (which can be eyeballed using wikipedia or their Build weight (p. B18).
For food I would do 1/10th of fur value (so (1d-1)x$1 per 10 ten pounds to 2dx$1 per 10 pounds of meat) and use 50% of their weight.

[chandley]

Originally Posted by Rasputin

No, this does not. It gives rules for removing said bits and for the character to assess how much they would be worth, but does not say how much they are worth.

The value of a particular monster is left to the GM. Just as the number of coins in a monsters purse is left to the GM. I'm not sure why you think anyone here would be able to give a useful suggestion to your campaign, but perhaps you can look at the material costs for potions as a guide.

Interesting, though that isn't practical for DF monsters, as few of them have listed weights. (Oddly, the bestiary format for SJGames does have a spot for the weight, but almost no products use that spot.) It also seems high. For example, if my family were to kill me (about 150 lbs., let's say 152), half of me (76 lbs.) is edible. Since a meal's rations is 2 lbs., that means I'm worth 38 meals. Somehow, I think that's high, especially seeing as how I'm delicious. The few times my players have done this, I've used the monster's ST score to read meals, but I kept thinking it was high.

Sure it is, GURPS has several guidelines for weight, depending on the kind of math you want to do. The weight of creature is (HP/2)^3 in pounds, then adjust for build, where natural. Alternately, SM+0 ranges around 150 lbs. Adjust for variant SMs as the cube of the height difference (1/2 height is 1/8 weight, 2x height is 8x weight, etc). And yes, a single 150 lb dear does in fact give about 75lbs worth of meat and edible organs. For short term meals (where complete nutrition isn't a concern) that really is 37 or so meals worth of meat. Growing up, two decent sized deer was venison for the year (seeing as we didnt eat exclusively 2lbs of meat every meal).

The would-be monster eaters will have more trouble _preserving_ all that meat, and carrying it. GURPS After The End 2, p.30 and 31 gives somewhat more detailed rules on hunting (it repeats the 50% weight estimate), cooking, and/or curing meat vs DF 2 or DF 16's roll and shout method.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by chandley

The would-be monster eaters will have more trouble _preserving_ all that meat, and carrying it. GURPS After The End 2, p.30 and 31 gives somewhat more detailed rules on hunting (it repeats the 50% weight estimate), cooking, and/or curing meat vs DF 2 or DF 16's roll and shout method.

LTC3 also has detailed rules this.

Edit: corrected typo mentioned by chandler

[chandley]

As a follow up, DF 16, p.44 has "Naturally Occurring Loot" that does in fact give a $ value, though it is really meant for trapping natural animals in the wilderness, not skinning slorns or rust monsters. In any event, perhaps you can use it to spur your imagination on this.

[chandley]

Originally Posted by Anders

LTC2 also has detailed rules this.

You are right, I forgot about LTC3 (not 2). The rules start on p.4 and go into significant detail. So you have roll and shout (DF 2 or DF 16), mildly streamlined (After the End 2), and detailed (LTC3).

[Anders]

This might make a good Pyramid article.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by chandley

The would-be monster eaters will have more trouble _preserving_ all that meat...

There is a spell for that. Coincidentally* it's in the Food college...


* Totally not a coincidence. ;)

...and carrying it.

There is also a spell for that!


My Troll Wizard/Druid in a DF game took the Food spells specifically so she could eat what we kill*. She does not have Lighten Burden. :(

* Also because the spells Prepare Game and Preserve Food make looting those valuable organs easy and safe and keeps them fresh for sale.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Rasputin

Interesting, though that isn't practical for DF monsters, as few of them have listed weights.

If all else fails, just go by SM - 150 lb or so for SM +0, +3 SSR (x3, x10; x1/3, x1/10, etc) per +1 to SM. That works for living things made of flesh, or ooze or similar (basically, things around the density of water). For foes made of stone, treat them as though they were 1 SM larger; for those made of metal, 2 SM's (the latter overstates things, of course). Granted, when harvesting foodstuffs, you only need to worry about this for living things anyway - but if the heroes want to haul that iron golem back in town and sell it for scrap, knowing its weight might be useful.

Originally Posted by Rasputin

For example, if my family were to kill me (about 150 lbs., let's say 152), half of me (76 lbs.) is edible. Since a meal's rations is 2 lbs., that means I'm worth 38 meals.

LTC3 has 1 lb of meat per meal, and also up to 70% (depending on how well the butcher rolls) of an animal's weight being harvestable as food. So, in your case, you're worth around 105 meals, or enough to feed someone for a month. Which is apparently the rule of thumb anyway.

Yes, if the characters harvest meat from all the monsters they kill, rations are likely to be a non-issue. Note they'll need a skilled chef to insure they don't get sick (and will also have to prepare the foodstuffs for transport, as otherwise the meat will spoil quickly), and also that eating sentient foes could have serious negative consequences (Social Stigma if it gets out, possibly metaphysical consequences if Good vs Evil are things in your setting, and of course prion infection* is a possibility as well).

*Ever hear of Mad Cow Disease? That's what prion infection looks like.

Originally Posted by chandley

As a follow up, DF 16, p.44 has "Naturally Occurring Loot" that does in fact give a $ value, though it is really meant for trapping natural animals in the wilderness, not skinning slorns or rust monsters. In any event, perhaps you can use it to spur your imagination on this.

DF8, p 13, has the rules for determining how much delvers get and how much it's worth when harvesting bits from slorns and rust monsters. That bases things off the dice of damage the creature's most powerful attack does, but for creatures without a particularly high-damage attack - like a rust monster - you might have to estimate. Basing things off of Combat Effectiveness Rating (It's a Threat!, Pyramid #3/77) may actually be more appropriate, as a foe with good defense may be just as valuable as one with good offense (and one with both may be more valuable). I seem to recall there being some CER-to-loot conversion ratios, but I can't find them with a quick search.

[sir_pudding]

Several monsters list (in the Notes section) specific values for salvaged parts. The way I do it (or did it when I was running DF and likely to do again) would be to use those values for those specific parts and use the values in DF8 for non-specified furs, teeth, horns, ect.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Rasputin

It also seems high. For example, if my family were to kill me (about 150 lbs., let's say 152), half of me (76 lbs.) is edible. Since a meal's rations is 2 lbs., that means I'm worth 38 meals.

A meal's rations are not "%100 MEAT". A meal's rations are omnivore food. 4-8 oz of meat and the rest being bread is a not exceptional ratio.

But then, the edible bits of you aren't 100% skeletal muscle either.
Your fat, brains, eyes, marrow, lungs, heart, liver, kidneys, blood, various glands including reproductive ones, and much of your digestive tract have definite food value. The digestive tract can be eaten just for its own value (chitlin's and tripe) but they're often used as an edible cooking vessel (sausage, haggis). These are also the bits eaten by most cultures from farm animals and from prey animals; generally a given animal has a customary subset of the organs, and from culture to culture individual organs become taboo (e.g. the reproductive tract tends to go off menu for North Americans, but goes to the top of the list in others).

Don't forget that your head and neck also have a good amount of fat and muscle on them - but there's much more on non-human animals. Animal heads are eaten in most cultures, if only put in a pot to make broth. Your tongue is a good size, and very high quality meat; the tongue of a long-headed herbivore is even better.

Then you get down to other parts of the body that are less "food"-y but involved in cooking nonetheless:
Bones (1/3 body by weight, usually), tendons, skin, cartilage (including ears and noses), hooves, and the penis aren't the best food sources... But they're still food.
You can boil bones to reclaim some of the organic material out of them as soup broth, while skin gets left on many animals to be eaten or gets fried to be eaten separately (with or without a little meat or fat attached). It's a cliche that in desparation people eat their boots but it's not insane. Tendons, cartilage, and the penis can be eaten if you cook them until they render down to sticky generic protein or if you don't mind very chewy food. Hooves don't have a lot of food value, but if you can boil them to make animal glue, you can just eat the animal glue - it's just protein, nothing fancy. I suggest making soup out of it though.

A very hungry and determined group with either no food taboos or just fueled by desperation can strip a carcass down to barely more than boiled and shattered bones, boiled hooves leftovers, teeth, horns, nails, and hair. That's going to be less than half the carcass as leftovers - but the eaters had to put a lot of work into cooking it until it was edible, and probably will have to put a lot of work into digesting it.

EDIT: And then a hyena will come along and eat all the bits you left, because it's perfectly capable of digesting them.