Guide Food system

[Cascade]

Hello everyone!

This far into the apocalypse, it is more than likely your character has become ruthlessly capable at defending themselves from threats, the living and dead alike. However, there is another threat that poses serious challenges to your survivor. It’s been 12 years since people mass produced canned goods and now the overwhelming majority are either already eaten or have expired. You won’t have much luck scavenging house to house looking for food - and any you manage to come across likely would lead to a night where you’d seriously miss the old world luxury of running water.

Fortunately, many survivors have learned the necessary skills to be self-sufficient! Many of you likely have picked up basic hunting, farming, foraging, and fishing abilities. Some revered among you have learned the trade of agriculture, gingerly caring for crops and livestock. Those who have put their minds elsewhere have hopefully found communities where other people handle these important responsibilities.

As always, PZ mechanics makes it so you don’t have to mechanically eat nearly as often as you would in real life. As always, the admins encourage you to take responsibility to offset this, eating when you’d RPly be hungry and to roleplay the horrible effects of hunger if you’re unable to sufficiently feed yourself. Many of your characters might have faced the horrors of starvation over the past 12 years and might live in fear of their new community similarly devolving into famine.

Unfortunately, PZ and Hydrocraft mechanics make it very difficult to naturally obtain food. Therefore, the admin team will be taking steps to complement existing hydrocraft abilities. For instance, if you want to hunt but don’t have the necessary overly complex knowledge and skill levels in hydrocraft to do so, you can roleplay a hunting trip and potentially get the carcass spawned in for you.

Professions like butchers will be extremely important in order to quarter, prepare, and preserve the meat. Salted and dried meat and fish should be stored to help people get through winter. Excess crops should be preserved, pickled, or turned into jams as much as possible. Hopefully players will make characters with these skills and offer their services to communities, feeding the masses and contributing to the economy we’re attempting to build. If a necessary role is not filled by a player, an admin will attempt to step up as an NPC as much as possible.

But that said, we’d much rather it be done by active, engaged players! If you play a butcher, farmer, fisherman, hunter, leatherworker, or any other role vital to the sustenance of in game communities and the budding economy of the region, admins will actively work with you to provide items and skills that may be more difficult to obtain mechanically than through roleplay. Requests to utilize this feature should be put in through support tickets, either in game if an admin is online or on the forums. Of course, the caveat here is that good, engaging roleplay will be required. We’d encourage you to work with other characters within your profession to establish good business relationships and to promote that aforementioned roleplay.

Of course, mechanical gaming is still strictly forbidden and anybody caught doing so might be subjected to having their items stripped. Our hope is that this offer to work with you as admins helps offset the need for mechanical gaming and sparks roleplay related to the complexities of sustaining a community of survivors.

As a final note, this will not be a write for food kind of system. We want this to complement the in game economy, not overwhelm it. We are instituting this because the usual way players sustain themselves (looting) will be highly inefficient. Therefore, we want to create a new, roleplay based means of acquiring food that works a whole lot better than just mech spamming hydrocraft. To ensure we’re not overwhelming the system and to ensure realism, you will not be successful at every roleplay attempt. Hunting and tracking is difficult and you will find yourself unsuccessful more often than not unless you have extensive experience and use the appropriate equipment. You may even run across dangers or hostile wildlife within the woods. Crops will die or get diseased and you should have at least some OOC knowledge of how to deal with these scenarios should they arise, otherwise you will face IC consequences. Your success or lack thereof will be based on your characters expertise in the field, the roleplay you provide, and a bit of old fashioned luck.

We hope you guys enjoy it and don’t hesitate to respond with questions about what is or is not allowed.

 

[harperers]

We are instituting this because the usual way players sustain themselves (looting) will be highly inefficient.

How so? So far i have seen not a single person starve to death in the history of new dawn and gateway, and that is because even on the lowest loot spawn levels there is enough food to sustain a semi-active playerbase.
Also, are there any restriction on how many things you can be proficient in? Are there going to be any systems put in place to do this outside of support tickets? and i don't quite get what you are going to do be doing, either. Are you going to provide the very hard to get tools and skills for people who want to roleplay that profession in hydrocraft, or are you going to go around the hydrocraft systems to directly give results to the person who did the RP?

 

[Cascade]

As mentioned in the post, it will be highly inefficient because this lore is taking place 12 years into the fall of civilization. Therefore very little loot will be on the map, especially in terms of food. Additionally, any little scraps of food that are left will almost certainly be expired and will make your character ill if you eat them. This is obviously not something we have the resources to enforce and clearly some particular non-perishables last past their sell-by date and may be edible, but if you manage to find any food at all, it'll very likely be RPly spoiled. Due to these two reasons, looting 12 years into the apocalypse would be highly inefficient and living off the land would be much more important.

As for your second question, there is no set limit in how many things your character could theoretically be good in, although we ask you to keep it realistic and grounded within your bio. If you are proficient in too many skills, we may have you dial back the level of proficiency and be a jack-of-all trades, master of none kind of guy. We'd definitely prefer if players kept proficiency in only one or two skills, thus encouraging people to rely on one another for roleplay and help form vibrant communities. Any effort to abuse this system will not be tolerated and may result in the player being excluded from participation in it.

Requests to utilize this system will be done solely through support tickets in order to keep things organized.

This will be used to help people go around the hydrocraft system entirely, allowing people to focus more on roleplay than arduous and often illogical game mechanics that require a lot of grinding. For instance, hunting is a hydrcoraft mechanic that requires skill levels in multiple skill trees, multiple books, and many items. This system would allow somebody with some amount of IC hunting experience and the proper equipment to roleplay a hunting trip (perhaps with friends), writing how they track the animal (perhaps bonding RPly with their fellow hunter all the while) and manage to ultimately take the shot. This would allow a fun roleplay experience in order to receive a food item that would support the IG economy and community as opposed to simply grinding a skill, going out alone, and mechanically attempting to get the animal. We are hopeful that this roleplay experience might make people prouder of their kill, having them proudly bring it to the butcher and perhaps use it to feed the town, again bringing people together for rp through food. That's just one example of how we hope this system could be used to offset mechanical gaming and encourage roleplay.

If you have specific requests for items or skills that'd you'd like your character to start with, that should be mentioned in your app as usual. If you really need an item you are absolutely unable to acquire, you can put in a support ticket and the admins will consider possibly providing that item to a trader or a caravan.

I hope that answers all your questions!