Monetizing Giant-Spider Silk

[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.

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by 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.

Those domestic cultivated spiders need to be fed a regular diet of dungeon delvers.

[Stone Dog]

Farming large predators sounds expensive.