Create Food and it's effect on infrastructure

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by Varyon

The rule from Ritual Path Magic is that magically-conjured food needs to last at least 3 days to provide sustenance. That's looking at things a bit more scientifically, however (that's roughly how long something takes to go from snack to stool) - the metaphysics of your setting may well decide once something has been "consumed" (at whatever point of the eating+digestion process you set that - RPM appears to set it at "the waste has left your body") it's now a part of you, and thus no longer under the dominion of the person who conjured it up - which also means their limit is reset, so they can make more.

I'd definitely do it by the latter. Things get incredibly convoluted and just annoying for everyone involved if I do it 'scientifically'. Plus, that would entirely undermine the idea since most people want to eat more than one 'basic' meal every three days. That's neat to know about RPM, though.

[dcarson]

If you are using RPM making 30 pounds of food is only a +1 energy. So create enough for three of you and then let someone else create the next day etc. and back to you on day four.

[DarkPumpkin]

Regarding magic's effect on world development, I look at it this way:
1. The pseudo-medieval (or Bronze Age, etc) is the end result desired for storytelling or atmosphere purposes
2. Magic which would disrupt this if it were common, is therefore not common
100% the story and desired world comes first, not the "rules as physics engine".
Done.

[Michele]

Originally Posted by DarkPumpkin

Regarding magic's effect on world development, I look at it this way:
1. The pseudo-medieval (or Bronze Age, etc) is the end result desired for storytelling or atmosphere purposes
2. Magic which would disrupt this if it were common, is therefore not common
100% the story and desired world comes first, not the "rules as physics engine".
Done.

Right, that's what I'd do. BUt the real problem, I believe, is answering the question:
- Would this kind of magic disrupt the end result I want? Am I sure that there wouldn't be unforeseen applications that bright players would immediately notice, even if as of now they escape me, the designer?

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

I'd definitely do it by the latter. Things get incredibly convoluted and just annoying for everyone involved if I do it 'scientifically'. Plus, that would entirely undermine the idea since most people want to eat more than one 'basic' meal every three days. That's neat to know about RPM, though.

Yeah, just set roughly when in the eating+digesting process the food stops being "magically conjured food" and starts being "part of the consumer." In theory, if you do this early enough, there's the possibility of some culture doing things more bird/wolf-style - gorge on magically conjured food, wait until it passes the threshold, vomit it up, and repeat until you've got enough partially-digested food slurry to feed a lot of people. You then process the slurry into something more palatable and there you go. This is pretty disgusting, but might fit certain narratives. It's roughly comparable to an idea I had a while back, where the setting's equivalent of Create Food simply gave nutritional and caloric value to existing matter and made it edible, but did nothing for the taste and texture. One of the countries was a barren land that had high goldmine productivity (gold being necessary for magic - essentially gold's luster served the role of mana, and casting turned it into a dull gray metal that otherwise had all the physical properties of gold), and it largely fed its people dirt and mud that had been magically enhanced into food (the higher ups imported proper food from elsewhere).

Originally Posted by dcarson

If you are using RPM making 30 pounds of food is only a +1 energy. So create enough for three of you and then let someone else create the next day etc. and back to you on day four.

I mean, if using RPM, there's no limit to how many times you can create food (outside of the time required to gather energy, anyway). It's just that you need to create it with a Duration of 3 days or more. You could easily just do the ritual 3 times a day (for each of breakfast, lunch, and dinner), and so long it had a Duration of 3 days or longer, you'd be fine. Of course, you'd be feeding multiple people with each casting, as IIRC you can create up to 10 pounds without needing to feed any more energy into the ritual.

[jason taylor]

Suppose there are only a few mages or shamans or whatever with this power and they must abide by a series of Gaes-like rules? That could be the setting of a quest to restore the magic.

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Suppose there are only a few mages or shamans or whatever with this power and they must abide by a series of Gaes-like rules? That could be the setting of a quest to restore the magic.

If you want a limiter on it, "Create Food" is often portrayed as Divine "magic" and gods are traditionally resistant to those who appear to be trying to game the system.

Probably the most famous examples in Western culture would be Manna (which rotted if stored overnight except at Shabat or if placed in The Ark) or the miracles where Jesus fed four thousand on one occasion and five thousand at another, by infinitely subdividing existing food (although interestingly both of these latter miracles did generate a significant surplus so perhaps if you get a powerful enough caster...). Maybe the miraculous catches of fish and the turning of water into wine count as well? It does appear that Jesus respected Maslow's hierarchy when it came to dealing with his congregation.
The only other such miracle I can think of from pagan sources would be the goats of Thor, but there may be others. The Sampo produced "meal" but didn't see much action. Was the cornucopia meant to be an actual thing?

[Inky]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornuc...oman_mythology Yup.

[ak_aramis]

Originally Posted by Michele

Well, most of the historical settings over human history featured slavery, and it was a fact of life. Naturally, PCs could be not wealthy enough to own slaves, or non-conformists who don't want to own other humans, or even abolitionists. But to have an entirey society without slavery, at TL3, then probably only having Create Food relatively common isn't enough, for the reasons I mentioned.

You either have to go all-out post-scarcity, for everything and not just food (and even then that might not entirely rule out violence and servitude); or you have to make it so that the result of the resource situation is an essentially classless, not stratified society (think hunter-gatherer bands).

Even some hunter-gatherer societies had slavery, but not technically chattel slavery. A few of the US plains tribes required captives to work, and used coerced marriage to bind captive women to the tribe. Likewise, I've read that certain tribes in Alaska used enslavement for term as a punishment just shy of banishment.

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by DarkPumpkin

Regarding magic's effect on world development, I look at it this way:
1. The pseudo-medieval (or Bronze Age, etc) is the end result desired for storytelling or atmosphere purposes
2. Magic which would disrupt this if it were common, is therefore not common
100% the story and desired world comes first, not the "rules as physics engine".
Done.

When I want to be simpler about things, I definitely do this, but it doesn't work when I do want something to be categorically different without significantly changing the feel of the setting.

Originally Posted by Varyon

Yeah, just set roughly when in the eating+digesting process the food stops being "magically conjured food" and starts being "part of the consumer." In theory, if you do this early enough, there's the possibility of some culture doing things more bird/wolf-style - gorge on magically conjured food, wait until it passes the threshold, vomit it up, and repeat until you've got enough partially-digested food slurry to feed a lot of people.

I'd probably have the magic food become "part of the consumer" more literally for it to make sense at all, which means this kind of thing wouldn't necessarily work.