Last week I left off with the tempting notion of talking about resources even more! And boy am I going to deliver this week! Resources are important, and I’ll be damned if I don’t talk just a bit more prose about it.

We determined last week that Munta had 2 tons of easy to access food that we can load up on our ship, and this includes food that you eat and drink. I’m not going to break down food into even more categories and rate islands even more finely… I don’t think that that would be fun for a lot of tables, but if you suspect your table might enjoy that, by all means, go forth and prosper! … but you’ll have to make your own rules.

Though on that note, I’m not even sure the resources I’m working on now will be fun for tables, but maybe one day I’ll get a chance to try it out!

Good, Fresh, Clean, Wholesome, Organic Food

If you remember two weeks ago, we talked about the weight of food and its cost and whatnot. What I didn’t touch on was the type of food a sailor could expect for their diet, they are:

Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays: One and a half pounds of biscuit, one liter of water, one liter of wine, half a peck of a mixture of horse beans and chickpeas for each twelve persons, and one pound of salted fish for each three persons. (A peck is about 8 dry quarts – used for dry goods) Tuesdays: A pound and a half of biscuit, one liter of water, one liter of wine, one pound mixed rice and oil for each ten persons, and half a pound of salted pork. Sundays and Thursdays: A pound and a half of biscuit, one liter of water, one liter of wine, one pound of salted meat, and two ounces of cheese. Each month: One liter of oil and something more than a half a liter of vinegar per person.

This is all taken from the Palm Beach County History Library and its little wonder sailors cussed so much. I’d be swearing like a sailor if I had that much hardtack/biscuit to eat every day… plus, no mention of coffee! How can they expect me to function if I don’t have at least 2 pots of coffee a day? … I swear I don’t have a problem, I just like the taste!

But this has nothing to do with the header of Good, Fresh, Clean, Wholesome, Organic Food unless you think of hard biscuit as wholesome! So where exactly am I going with this? Well, the idea is that ships would often stop over at islands to pick up freshwater and then continue on their merry way, but I don’t see why the crew wouldn’t also spend a bit of time to smell the roses and see about finding some fresh food while on the shore. Maybe some juicy coconuts or throw out lines for some fish, of course, this all takes time and so it would be a trade-off for the crew.

By stopping at islands, you could get fresh food for your crew but you need to spend a bit of time there. Right now, I think that spending a day on the island could get you enough time to load up your food stores with a ton of food, and so that slows down your trip by a day… but you get free ton of food! And that means you get to save 84 gp per week if you don’t have to worry about buying a week of supplies!

Unfortunately, food just doesn’t last unless it is properly stored. If you spend two days to take in all 2 tons of food available on Munta, some of it is just not going to last to that last day. At the end of every day, the cook must make a DC 10 Cook’s Utensils (Wisdom) check to ensure that they can keep their fresh food properly stored. On a fail, the amount of food consumed for that day is doubled as some of the food must be tossed, and if they are on their last day of fresh food and the cook fails the check, all that food has gone bad and instead the crew must eat the normal rations. Furthermore, the Fresh Food will act as ‘temporary hit points’ of a sort where the fresh food is the first to be subjected to vermin, spoilage and being eaten first by the men.

Fresh Food When the ship takes on fresh food, the Cook must tend to it and ensure that it stays fresh long enough until the Cook can work with it. At the end of every day, the Cook must make a DC 10 Cook’s Utensils (Wisdom) check to remove any spoiled food and prevent vermin and rot from infecting the Fresh Food. On a failed check, the Cook is forced to toss a day’s worth of Fresh Food due to spoilage. If this happens on the last day that there is Fresh Food, the crew must eat rations as the Fresh Food is no longer palatable. If the Cook is unable to spend their day cooking and checking on the food stores, it is assumed that the check is automatically failed. While there is Fresh Food on board, and being served to the crew, the morale of the ship is increased. The Cook can turn any Fresh Food into rations so long as there is enough salt onboard, the Cook needs half a ton of Salt per ton of Fresh Food they hope to turn into rations and then must succeed on a DC 10 Cook’s Utensils (Wisdom) check. On a fail, the food becomes spoiled and must be tossed. Each ton of Fresh Food takes a full day to cure. Whenever the food stores are subjected to an effect, like vermin, food theft or spoilage, the Fresh Food is impacted first, followed by any rations if there is no more Fresh Food.

Food Rationing

Another component of Food is that you have to rely on your Navigator when they tell you that land is a week out, but you only have enough food for 4 days. By enforcing a half rations measure on your ship, you can extend your food stores long enough until you get to land. Of course, this has a negative effect on the crew in so much as they start losing morale and everyone on board, who is getting half rations, must start succeeding on exhaustion checks.

Food Rationing When the crew is subject to half rations, the crew must succeed on a DC 5 Constitution saving throw at the end of the day or become exhausted. The DC for this save increases by 1 after every consecutive day that the crew is on half rations. If the crew is suffering from exhaustion and given full rations, at the end of the day they must succeed on a DC 10 Constitution saving throw to overcome their exhaustion. On a fail, they are still exhausted but do not have to save against furthering their exhaustion. While the crew is subjected to half rations the morale on the ship decreases. The morale on the ship can increase only when the crew has full rations for a day, but even then only a little bit of the morale is restored. See the section on Morale for more information.

And I think that this is where I am going to leave off for this week. Next week, I think it is about time I start talking about Morale and how we can take WotC’s morale system and get it working for us. In the meantime…