Alternatives to Farming

[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.
• Elves: elves practice managed forestry, including semi-domesticated deer.
• Halflings: comfortable with human style farming, but have a high metabolic rate, requiring a lot of meals per day, heavy on fast to digest simple carbohydrates.
• Goblins: plains goblins are mostly herders (and use 'wolves' to aid with herding), though often with gardens, including extensive use of nightsoil. Forest goblins are similar to elves though less careful. Both types are highly prone to raiding human farms, breaking down fences to let their rothe graze, etc.
• Kobolds: kobolds are ectotherms developed from ambush predators; their very low resting metabolic rate contributes to a reputation for laziness, though unlike natural ectotherms, they have learned to manage their temperature through external tools such as fire and decomposing organic matter; kobolds who need to alert will have a heat source. They are primary meat eaters, and favor animals that are managed but not actively herded. In addition to larger animals, they consume a variety of insects and grubs (to kobolds, weevils greatly improve the edibility of grain. This does not enamor them to farmers).
• Lizardfolk: like kobolds, they are ectotherms, but being swamp dwellers, do not make a lot of use of fire. They make fairly extensive use of aquaculture, including (rather to the annoyance of humans) the larval stage of stirges (there isn't much in canon about stirge lifecycle, but given that they're super-mosquitos it makes sense for them to have a larval stage which can probably be mistaken for leeches).
• Orcs: orcs are generally nomadic plains herders; they are capable of surviving on a human diet but generally want a bit more meat in their diet.

[(E)]

Looking at the biological systems involved is a good first step.
These in almost all cases start with Sunlight then plants.

Now to take that in an unusual direction.
(Say two farm systems to cover a couple of aspects of the diet(ignoring all the non-food parts of farming for now))

System 1
Protien and vitamins
A domesticated tree fungus is introduced into individual trees, this produces a fruiting body on the outside of the tree and converts the cellulose in the wood into an edible form.
- villages use a forestry rotation to supply themselves or maybe the agriculture method pushes the race towards a spread or perish as they move to gain access to fresh forests.

System 2
Calories
There is a creature whose name escapes me at the moment who sheds its skin to feed its young (a type of snake or lizard?). If a fantastic version of this creature existed it could be used in a similar manner to dairy cows. But in this case would be kept in slimy pits/piles of plant material.

[Donny Brook]

Amphibians will eat their own shed skin, and caecillians in particular are known to allow their young to eat it as it sheds.

[Pursuivant]

For subterranean species, low tech or magical versions of hydroponics or aquaponics, especially if you go for vertical farming, might be just different enough from conventional farming to give a sense of alienness.

Herding using wolves makes a lot of sense for goblins. Even better, make them like 18th/early 19th century Plains Indians in that they're nomadic, follow herds of meat animals, and manage a seemingly natural ecosystem for food, fiber, and meat. That fits nicely into the trope of Goblins as barbarians who trash civilization for no good reason. Like the Mongols, they have little use for cities and extensive modification of the land for agriculture messes with the Goblins' attempts to manage it for pastoralist hunting and herding.

Not exactly "farming" but another way to make the species different is to make Goblins and their kin into omnivorous scavengers with a preference for carrion. That plays into the the dirty, smelly, monster trope.

If they can eat exactly the same diet as their wolf companions, and have a strong preference for meat that's had a few days to "ripen" and condiments like fish sauce (but made from godknowswhat mixture of carrion, fungus, stinky herbs, and unspeakable things that came from inside an animal), it might hit the players on a visceral level.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by (E)

Protien and vitamins
A domesticated tree fungus is introduced into individual trees, this produces a fruiting body on the outside of the tree and converts the cellulose in the wood into an edible form.

The idea of using wood, etc. as feedstock for edible fungus is another halfway plausible way of creating subterranean agriculture, as well as another way of explaining the Orc/Goblin reputation for destructiveness. Things like art don't have much value underground, but if you smash it up a wooden sculpture makes good feedstock for fungus.

The whole fungus vs. wood conflict could also explain the stereotypical enmity between Elves and Orcs (ignoring the whole Tolkien Silmarillion thing). Elves operate like Eastern Woodland Indians - managing mature and second growth forests as "food forests" and game parks. Orcs are fungus farmers; they need all the dead wood they can get for their underground farms and regularly invade Elven forests to get it.

[(E)]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

Amphibians will eat their own shed skin, and caecillians in particular are known to allow their young to eat it as it sheds.

Yes, thank you, it was caecilians I was thinking about.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Anthony

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

Given their subterranean habitat and penchant for gadgets, they might also prefer hydroponics, aeroponics, or fancy irrigation systems. Given their reputation as miners and engineers, and their mountainous homeland, they will also prefer terraced hillside agriculture, like that practiced by the Balinese or Inca.

Originally Posted by Anthony

[*]Elves: elves practice managed forestry, including semi-domesticated deer.

This has real-world analogues in Pre-Columbian South American forest farming and the forest management practices of the various Eastern Woodland Indians tribes. Realistically, this sort of semi-nomadic agriculture, with managed forests and slash-and-burn agriculture results in endemic inter-tribal violence. This is a good excuse for having badass, not-so-nice Elves who treat their captives like the 18th century Hurons or Iroquois Confederation tribes did.

Originally Posted by Anthony

[*]Halflings: comfortable with human style farming, but have a high metabolic rate, requiring a lot of meals per day, heavy on fast to digest simple carbohydrates.

Also, smaller fields which can be reasonably maintained by people with a lower ST scores. That suggests 17th or 18th c. style Irish agriculture with lots of small plots growing potatoes, or else traditional Chinese agriculture with lots of small fields growing rice.

For the more carnivorous species like Goblins, Kobolds, Lizardmen, and Orcs, agriculture is going to be focused on "growing food for food." Not just managing grazing lands, but also growing fodder crops. Insectivores will raise plants for bugs to live on, perhaps like sericulture or ants tending aphids. They might even raise African style termites, tending the mounds like humans tend beehives.

For extra creepy, consider species which herds or raises arachnids or annelids instead of animals or insects. Kobolds might consider scorpion soup to be a delicacy.

Finally, consider that, historically, humans have made choices as to which crops to domesticate, often considering edible but undomesticated plants to be "weeds." Different species might have different staple grain and vegetable protein crops. For example, Orcs might have domesticated crabgrass and thistles as grain crops, whereas human and Halfling farmers consider them to be noxious weeds.

[Michele]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Things like art don't have much value underground

You iconoclast!
http://http://www.visual-arts-cork.c...-paintings.htm

Jokes aside, yes, Dwarves and Orcs who live underground with little natural light should definitely resort to mushroom farming one way or another.

[Luke Bunyip]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Given their subterranean habitat and penchant for gadgets, they might also prefer hydroponics, aeroponics, or fancy irrigation systems.

Efficient mountainside storm water harvesting, with a developed network of cistens and pumps (for example, ram pumps) to enable year long irrigation in drier climes. Qanats could also be a possibility.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

This has real-world analogues in Pre-Columbian South American forest farming and the forest management practices of the various Eastern Woodland Indians tribes. Realistically, this sort of semi-nomadic agriculture, with managed forests and slash-and-burn agriculture results in endemic inter-tribal violence.

Elves living in drier woodland or forests could possibly do something similar to the fire stick farming technique used by some Australian Aborigines.

Originally Posted by Anthony

• Lizardfolk ... <snip> ... the larval stage of stirges (there isn't much in canon about stirge lifecycle, but given that they're super-mosquitos it makes sense for them to have a larval stage which can probably be mistaken for leeches).

Love it.

[benz72]

Now I want to see a Dungeon Ecology supplement.