Alternatives to Farming

[Anthony]

So, I was thinking about the logistics of my monsters (yeah, I know, rarely sensible), and for things like goblins and the like, I don't want them to just eat magic, so they have to have some sort of backing economy that lets them have sufficient numbers to pose a threat to civilization, but I don't want my PCs to find themselves walking through goblin farms that look just like human farms. So, I want an alternative that will look a bit unfamiliar, but is still sufficient. Bonus if it works well in rough terrain.

My first obvious answer is herding -- farmers vs herders is a common enough conflict in the real world, and it's pretty easy to justify races who need more meat in their diets than humans. I'm not sure how population densities differ between nomadic herding, ranching, and farming. Tempted to make the ubiquitous giant rats serve the same role as pigs.

Any other thoughts? I don't mind farms as long as they don't look quite so obviously like farms, if it's reasonable to disallow grain while allowing something like beans or fruit or root vegetables.

[Michele]

Originally Posted by Anthony

So, I was thinking about the logistics of my monsters (yeah, I know, rarely sensible), and for things like goblins and the like, I don't want them to just eat magic, so they have to have some sort of backing economy that lets them have sufficient numbers to pose a threat to civilization, but I don't want my PCs to find themselves walking through goblin farms that look just like human farms. So, I want an alternative that will look a bit unfamiliar, but is still sufficient. Bonus if it works well in rough terrain.

My first obvious answer is herding -- farmers vs herders is a common enough conflict in the real world, and it's pretty easy to justify races who need more meat in their diets than humans. I'm not sure how population densities differ between nomadic herding, ranching, and farming. Tempted to make the ubiquitous giant rats serve the same role as pigs.

Any other thoughts? I don't mind farms as long as they don't look quite so obviously like farms, if it's reasonable to disallow grain while allowing something like beans or fruit or root vegetables.

Hunting and gathering is the obvious alternative. It does offer much thinner sustainable densities, but even so, at times the hunter-gatherers can temporarily join forces, and be a significant threat to the farmers' armed forces, as the 7th Cavalry's example goes to show.

The other historical alternative is to integrate the nomadic herding you proposed above with regular raiding of the farming settlements. That's not even entirely out of fashion, as the Janjaweed demonstrated until recent times. That will really make the goblins feared and hated by the human farmers.

If you want the goblins to be sedentary but not to look too much like farmers or herders, consider pisciculture.

[Daigoro]

They're about orcs not goblins, but these threads should prove edifying:

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread...98#post2327498

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?p=2332284

[khorboth]

Just a few quick thoughts:

Moss. Some varieties grow quite quickly. It's not great food for humans (or most of our livestock) but it grows great in some rough terrain, and won't look like any farm we recognize.

Small livestock animals. Guinea pigs, rabbits, frogs, rats, or even something like a dik-dik would make a plausible meat source. If the pen were made from something other than wood fencing like a magically crated stone pit, it might be fairly invisible.

Insects. There could be a deliberately created insect colony that's regularly harvested and/or some kind of trap for insects.

Rodent traps. Any established settlement will have rodents living on the fringes. If goblins don't mind eating them, have them create live traps. Goblins are frequently depicted as clever trap-makers.

[johndallman]

A plant, probably one that grows tubers, which spreads as a weed, given half a chance. Goblins dig it up and eat it, keeping it under control. Without goblins around, it threatens human farming in the medium term.

[Michele]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

They're about orcs not goblins, but these threads should prove edifying:

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread...98#post2327498

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?p=2332284

Well, nice to see that the first thread suggests pisciculture and aquaculture.

[thrash]

Second the insect suggestion: high density protein, high growth rates, mostly creepy to players (and their characters by extension).

There's a wide gray area between nomadic hunter-gatherer (as we imagine it) and agriculture (as we understand it), where intensively managed gardens look wild but are not. Groves of fruit and nut trees (multiple varieties mixed up together, not in monoculture grid orchards) support vines (grapes, peas, etc.) and provide shade for berry bushes and ground crops. A muddy pond in the center provides a light well for the plants that need it, water-based tubers (like cattail), and fish. Food (and possibly other) waste from the village gets piled in a midden to compost then spread on the ground partially decomposed, given the impression of squalor. Throw in some food insects that live in the leaf mold covering the ground, and you have a near-complete food supply for a village year-round. Extra points for domesticated spiders that manage the insects and reduce competition from birds.

The primary skills here are Gardening and Area Knowledge (for what crops are ready when, and where they are located) rather than Agriculture. There are a couple of traditional peoples in the high Amazon/Andes foothills that still "farm" this way, but it's probably just as easy to research the more extreme sort of "grow all your food in your suburban back yard!" self-sufficiency advice.

The goblins supplement these crops by gathering wild herbs, fruits, and vegetables from the surrounding forest, and by hunting. Once humans move into the area and start clear-cutting animal habitat for fields, the goblins switch to raiding them for produce and domestic animals instead.

[RyanW]

If you're trying to avoid this because "they're just like us, are we the monsters?" you could instead give them a subservient class of another species. Perhaps they have agriculture (or equivalent) tended by enslaved kobolds or some such.

[Donny Brook]

In the right climate areas of skree (on hillsides for example) could be a good place for lichens on the surface or fungus underneath.

[dcarson]

An interesting article on the artifical tree type distribution in the Amazon that can still be seen centuries after European plagues killed off the civilizations that created them. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/...amazon/518439/