Alternatives to Farming

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by benz72

Now I want to see a Dungeon Ecology supplement.

A lot of us have asked for that sort of thing, for years, now.

Moreover, (E) is willing and has got the skills.

However, there's only so much money, and both Kromm and Evil Stevie are pretty sure that would.have a seriously limited audience. :)

[khorboth]

For your halflings, I would recommend 3 additions. Domesticated large-breed dogs for draft animals. Bernese mountain dogs do this in real life, I see no reason why others could not. Also bees. For fast, dense energy nothing beats honey. Which brings us to the final item; sugar crops. Both sugar cane and sugar beets are extremely calorie dense and grow in very different climates.

[khorboth]

For more sedentary goblins, consider fungus and vermiculture.

A felled tree could provide a family weeks of food as it rots. Mushrooms, insects, larva, scavengers, etc.

Growing worms in a sustainable way is pretty easy. Goblins with raised beds of worm farm would be easy & effective.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by benz72

Now I want to see a Dungeon Ecology supplement.

Seconded.

I've always loved adventures and campaigns which treat the underground environment as a living ecosystem and at least paid lip service to biological plausibility.

[(E)]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Seconded.

I've always loved adventures and campaigns which treat the underground environment as a living ecosystem and at least paid lip service to biological plausibility.

A couple of the vaguely plausible ideas I've had on the topic are based around outside sources of food, one being a fungal/insect based system that relies on a river periodically depositing organic material and the other being a cave system that connects with an ocean.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by khorboth

For your halflings, I would recommend 3 additions. Domesticated large-breed dogs for draft animals. Bernese mountain dogs do this in real life, I see no reason why others could not.

Also useful as herding animals. Halflings might use dogs in the same way that goblins use wolves.

Originally Posted by khorboth

Also bees. For fast, dense energy nothing beats honey.

Great idea. It also fits the idea of relatively small fields and intensive agriculture. Fruit and nut trees, berry bushes (e.g., hawthorn), and similar plants might serve as hedges between fields and gardens, with bees serving as pollinators.

Originally Posted by khorboth

Which brings us to the final item; sugar crops. Both sugar cane and sugar beets are extremely calorie dense and grow in very different climates.

Another good idea.

Sugar cane is labor and fertilizer intensive to grow and requires lots of water. Sugar beets are easier to cultivate and tolerate a greater range of growing conditions.

Also consider other natural sources of sugar, such as maple, birch, or palm sugar, which is harvested by tapping the trees.

Halflings might also intensively cultivate crops and animals which produce fats and oils, corn, colza/canola/rapeseed, and sunflower, in temperate climates, olive, safflower, and sesame in sub-tropical, and coconut and palm oil in the tropics. Preferred animals would be small-breed pigs bred for lard rather than meat, fat-rich waterfowl like ducks and geese, and smaller breeds of dairy cattle bred for milk with high butterfat content.

Finally, Halflings are likely to heavily modify and process their foods in order to further boost calorie content, e.g., turning raw milk into butter and hard cheese or malting barley for beer and malt syrup or sugar. That also gives Halflings their reputation for culinary skill.

Realistically, their high caloric needs also mean that Halflings would thrive on what we humans would consider to be "junk food," possibly giving the species a reputation for Gluttony, at least by human standards.

[Celjabba]

For a monster alternative, you could also look at Starcraft Creep, or something like that : something (slime, fungus, insects, ...) spreading over the land, devouring existing ecology and providing nutrients to the monster (or not monster, just opportunistic) race.

For an interesting twist, have the creep actually improve the land by leaving an much enriched soil layer behind after it dies/move forward ...

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Anthony

I'm actually mucking around with a D&D setting, so there's multiple nonhuman races kicking around. After discussion, some early thoughts:

• Dwarves and Gnomes: able to handle human foods but are prone to agoraphobia, so they tend towards taller plants, walled enclosures, or trade.

By "agoraphobia" I assume you mean the incorrect "open spaces" meaning. It's actually more complex than that as it is actually where one "perceives their environment to be unsafe with no easy way to escape" and also includes crowds (social anxiety), or traveling (even within a litter or other small transport).

Kender: kleptomania (would they even have a roll to resist?)

[thrash]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

However, there's only so much money, and both Kromm and Evil Stevie are pretty sure that would.have a seriously limited audience. :)

A somewhat broader concept is "sustainable" dungeon design, in the sense of reducing dependency on magic to keep things going. (After all, there are doubtless better uses for the mana.) I was thinking of couching it in terms of recommendations for Leadership in Efficient Dungeon Design (LEDD) from the Gnomic Underground Sustainable Building Committee (GUSBC)... an obscure parody, to be sure.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by benz72

Now I want to see a Dungeon Ecology supplement.

Dungeons have the fundamental problems of being small (generally more like urban population density than farmland population density) and underground (so no sunlight); it's unlikely you can come up with a plausible dungeon ecology that doesn't involve importing food or lots of magic.

Maybe Dungeon Plants -- some sort of tree that lives on the surface but produces underground edible bits on its roots -- though that doesn't solve the population density issue.