The Foraging Die
Hey Mom, what's for dinner?
Apparently, I can’t stop playing with overloaded die mechanics. Last week, I made a discovery die for exploring hexes. I’m trying to improve the table experience of wilderness exploration and just setting up a table of possible discoveries made me more confident that I could present a more interesting wilderness to my players and give them reasons to investigate it. But what else can we do with wilderness exploration?
The Knave rules say that a watch may be spent foraging for provision. A successful WIS check provides d6 rations (p. 8). This is important because the Hazard die includes a Depletion result, which may result in ruined or spoiled rations. This depletion mechanic works for overland exploration in the same way that torches burning out works for the underworld: it forces tactical decisions based on limited resources. In play, I like to think of this depletion as not just spoilage but accident, like that scene early in The Hobbit where the dwarves’ pony carrying all the foodstuffs rushes into a river and all the provisions are carried away in the water. Going into the wild is dangerous business.
So there’s a reason to spend a watch looking for more food, but what kind of food do you find? Here’s where the foraging die comes in. I will use a d4 (the Platonic solid of Fire) for this table, and since we’re all dice goblins to one degree or another, maybe you can use a red or orange d4 for this roll to remind everyone what the campfire’s going to be cooking tonight.
Foraging Die Results
Greens: Herbs, fungus, or wild grains.
Fruits: Berries, tubers, or tree fruits.
Bugs: Wild honey, mealworms, or other edible insects
Game: Fish, wildfowl, or herbivores
The results should be modified by the environment, climate, and season. The rules suggest modifying the target number based on these factors, as well. Wilderness exploration certainly rewards high-Wisdom characters, but players should be encouraged to apply their professions for additional bonuses to the roll. A character looking for a particular kind of provision (‘I’m going hunting.’) may forego the foraging die. Use common sense.
The Value of Flavor
Does it matter what the results of successful foraging are? Perhaps no more than a bit of added detail. It’s flavor text, you might say. Fair enough. But I’ve been thinking about description differently since I started running adventure games and I think it’s like the difference between a map and a battle map. Let me see if I can make the distinction clear.
If you go looking for battle maps online you’ll find hundreds of them. They are often drawn by incredible artists and these days, you can even find some that have cool animation effects. For traditional RPGs that feature lots of combat, these things are great. You can use them to impose constraints and provide combat options, making your fights more interesting. Adventure games, however, aren’t that interested in combat, but that’s not to say they’re uninterested in tactics. A good map in an adventure game provides opportunities for ambush, avoidance, and leading enemies into traps. Everything on an adventure game map is a potentially useful feature: ‘Hey guys, I’ll bet if we get those ogres to chase us down here, we can lead them right into this room with the manticore. While they’re fighting each other, we can sneak into that door we saw before we ran away last time.’
Description, or ‘flavor text’ in an adventure games works like a map does: they’re possibilities for acting on the world. So, while it’s maybe just a bit of satisfying detail that your group found a bunch of edible mushrooms growing under a log in the forest for dinner, it’s also an opportunity for a player who’s paying attention: ‘Hey, didn’t we see those gnomes gathering mushrooms in that village one hex over? Maybe they’d be willing to trade with us if we brought them a gift of fresh mushrooms.’ In an adventure game, everything is an opportunity.
Of course, you know those gnomes really just like mushrooms as a side to their preferred main course of roasted adventurer.
Ah, ‘flavor’ text.
I’m tempted to even take this one step further and connect foraging target numbers with the type of foraging they’re doing in the terrain. Essentially, always asking my players what kind of foraging they’re doing.
The main way to make that choice meaningful I think (ie. “I’m going hunting for game” vs “I’m going to get some berries) would be to give bonuses for equipment or backgrounds. You could also map it to different skills depending on the foraging, but that seems too complicated.
Upon closer examination those gnomes turned out to be goblins wearing pointy red-hats.
The reaction roll surprised no one when we were “invited” to dinner.