Monetizing Giant-Spider Silk

[Colarmel]

I'd probably make it a naturalist roll, modified for how clever a harvesting scheme they have. I'd assume the weaving costs are significantly higher than ordinary silk, since the stickiness and tensile strength is considerably greater.

Still, I don't have a problem with it paying out big money, depending on how well they harvest it. I believe in raining down huge sums of money. As a player, I'd be much more inclined to use it to reduce the cost of making a suit of giant spider silk armor.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Colarmel

I'd probably make it a naturalist roll, modified for how clever a harvesting scheme they have. I'd assume the weaving costs are significantly higher than ordinary silk, since the stickiness and tensile strength is considerably greater.

It's probably boiled to render it separate and unsticky, just like regular silk. Or maybe the Shadow Elf Weavers have secret forbidden techniques*...

* Which means "they boil it and then lie to make it sound mysterious". Their advantage is in being able to communicate with or control the Giant Spiders in the first place making harvesting far, far easier.

Still, I don't have a problem with it paying out big money, depending on how well they harvest it. I believe in raining down huge sums of money. As a player, I'd be much more inclined to use it to reduce the cost of making a suit of giant spider silk armor.

In this case it's how much time is going to be set aside to monetize this random cash crop versus continuing the adventure.



Something that occurred to me only after writing the earlier post is how long does it take to harvest:

I'd recommend 30 minutes to harvest a hex, suffering it's 'trap-ness' effects (regardless of whether you're going with 7 feet deep of candy-floss webbing or 1-2 feet deep thick heavy matting, the former we'd spin onto sticks, the latter cut up like sod). Each failure to the 'trap' might reduce the value some or adjust how long it takes to harvest.

Just some more thoughts on it.

[Steve Jackson]

Would it be a better use of the party's time to just sell the location to a lower-level group of adventurers for a share of the take?

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

Would it be a better use of the party's time to just sell the location to a lower-level group of adventurers for a share of the take?

The location is owned by an NPC... so far one person in the party has (OOCly) contemplated how to 'steal' all the webbing to sell.



I say 'steal' because we might not get paid to what we are down in the basement doing. We were paid to exterminate giant rats, we're instead being murdered by giant ambush spiders in the tavern basement of doom.

;)

[DanHoward]

Two options:

1) If the spider hasn't freshly spun the silk (e.g. it degrades every minute after being expelled) then it can't be used for weaving into cloth. This makes the value of the raw material very high compared to the final product.

2) Spidersilk requires a special (and expensive) treatment process before it can be woven in to cloth. This makes the resale value of the raw material much lower compared to the final product.

If you went with option 1, you'd have PCs trying to capture a live spider to imprison it and harvest its silk, thus flooding the market. Option 2 makes it very hard for the PCs to corrupt the market.

[Flyndaran]

Option one also leads to some enterprising individuals hiding and transporting spider egg sacks. How sure are you about the gestation length of wild giant spiders?

[Steve Jackson]

Maybe cultivated spiders are already a Thing, but just don't yield the same quality silk that wild ones do. No one knows why.