The Project Issue #2 and Seed Caches

[ArmySGT.]

800 year old seeds from extinct species of Squash grown in Michigan.

Seeds

[ArmySGT.]

Rereading the cache description provided by mmartin798 I realize that I thought the cache held only 1250 seeds but it actually meant 1250 packets of seeds. Even with that correction I think that those packets will not hold enough seed for a single 100 acre farm for four years let alone four 100 acre farms for four years.
I think it would work better if that allocation of 1250 packets was meant to supply up to 100 acres of crop, but 400 acres and for four years just seems wildly optimistic.

These are or should be all hierloom or non hybrid seeds.

Heirlooms are old varieties that have become uncommon due to mega farms and mono cropping. Saving seed from each harvest will produce true and full varieties of the seed saved. Depending on the fruit or vegetable 10% to 50% would need to be unharvested until fully ripened to produce seed (onions. turnips, corn, etc). Tomatoes, squash, melons, are notorious for their seeds and none would have to be held back or ripened past a point for quality consumption to have enough seed for the nest years harvest.

[.45cultist]

These are or should be all hierloom or non hybrid seeds.

Heirlooms are old varieties that have become uncommon due to mega farms and mono cropping. Saving seed from each harvest will produce true and full varieties of the seed saved. Depending on the fruit or vegetable 10% to 50% would need to be unharvested until fully ripened to produce seed (onions. turnips, corn, etc). Tomatoes, squash, melons, are notorious for their seeds and none would have to be held back or ripened past a point for quality consumption to have enough seed for the nest years harvest.

Friend of mine bought a farm where heirloom watermelons have been grown for 100 years. the watermelons and seeds came with it.

[cosmicfish]

800 year old seeds from extinct species of Squash grown in Michigan.

Seeds

This and other examples miss a few important points:

1) Every species has its own period of viability. Some seeds are viable for centuries, some for decades, some for a few years. 150 years after sealing, most of the varieties will be long past their sell-by date, even if a few are still within range.

2) Not all seeds within a given species expire at the same time. If the mean survival of seed X under conditions Y is 15 years, then a few will likely still be viable at 30 or 50 years, but most will be long dead.

3) A lot of the news stories about ancient seeds being recovered miss that growing them required exceptional techniques and/or a lot of seeds per growing plant. The "Methuselah Tree" that was grown from a 2,000 year old seed was the work of a single dedicated grad student subjecting the seed to a number of techniques and materials that were not part of standard agricultural practice. The squash mentioned above does not indicate how many seeds it took or what the grower did to cultivate them, but I would be willing to bet that it wasn't "plant one seed, water and fertilize, yield one plant".

So my point is that if the viable period of the seeds is 10 years, then 150 years later there may be a small fraction of one or two varietals that will still grow with what the typical Team can do, but if the Project is going to grow from their seeds then they will likely need a better seed vault where the Project uses special techniques and facilities and personnel to preserve a variety of breeds long past their viable dates.

And there is one other point, I guess: Who is going to use this in a game As has been noted by many on here, it is hard to get most players to get past shooting, I can't imagine a situation where an actual group of players is going to turn to an actual GM and ask about seed details so they can start the agricultural development stage of the Project. In every game I've ever played, these seeds are going to see two possibilities: being ignored, or being discarded. I don't see a player group doing any actual agriculture... ever.

[mmartin798]

Your points are valid. Even studies from 1961 showed that most food seeds do die off in large quantities within 70 years, though legumes were shown to be particularly hardy in this regard. This all seems to be a problem with the walls of the seeds being thinner on food crops. Weeds, with their thicker walls, can live several decades without careful storage and still be viable in large quantities.

Food seeds routinely get treated in a number of methods to inhibit molds and other pathogens that hamper seed germination. It is not outside the realm of possibility that, given the prevalence of nanotechnology in the Project, a graphene treatment is used that helps mitigate moisture loss and thereby improving seed viability. While this would not make the seeds immortal, such a treatment could help achieve the 40% viability at 150 years that would make such a cache still useful.

The whole seed issue does need to be addressed in some manner, as they are present in so much of game canon. Third edition has agricultural teams and seeds explicitly listed in Delta Base. Fourth edition also has agricultural teams and says they have seed stores and frozen livestock as well. So all these agricultural teams are either just some additional farmers with a supply of fertilizer trying to improve on some wild plants they find or they have the ability to quickly start up some new farms with their supply of seeds and start churning out lots of food and surplus seeds within three years. Either way could be a scenario for your game.

As to who would use the seeds in game, back in 1981 my group used them to help a community that had recently be attacked by raiders that burned their fields. So play group vary too.

[.45cultist]

This and other examples miss a few important points:

1) Every species has its own period of viability. Some seeds are viable for centuries, some for decades, some for a few years. 150 years after sealing, most of the varieties will be long past their sell-by date, even if a few are still within range.

2) Not all seeds within a given species expire at the same time. If the mean survival of seed X under conditions Y is 15 years, then a few will likely still be viable at 30 or 50 years, but most will be long dead.

3) A lot of the news stories about ancient seeds being recovered miss that growing them required exceptional techniques and/or a lot of seeds per growing plant. The "Methuselah Tree" that was grown from a 2,000 year old seed was the work of a single dedicated grad student subjecting the seed to a number of techniques and materials that were not part of standard agricultural practice. The squash mentioned above does not indicate how many seeds it took or what the grower did to cultivate them, but I would be willing to bet that it wasn't "plant one seed, water and fertilize, yield one plant".

So my point is that if the viable period of the seeds is 10 years, then 150 years later there may be a small fraction of one or two varietals that will still grow with what the typical Team can do, but if the Project is going to grow from their seeds then they will likely need a better seed vault where the Project uses special techniques and facilities and personnel to preserve a variety of breeds long past their viable dates.

And there is one other point, I guess: Who is going to use this in a game As has been noted by many on here, it is hard to get most players to get past shooting, I can't imagine a situation where an actual group of players is going to turn to an actual GM and ask about seed details so they can start the agricultural development stage of the Project. In every game I've ever played, these seeds are going to see two possibilities: being ignored, or being discarded. I don't see a player group doing any actual agriculture... ever.

AG-1 A central seed vault, farm animal freeze tubes.

[gamerguy]

This and other examples miss a few important points:

And there is one other point, I guess: Who is going to use this in a game As has been noted by many on here, it is hard to get most players to get past shooting, I can't imagine a situation where an actual group of players is going to turn to an actual GM and ask about seed details so they can start the agricultural development stage of the Project. In every game I've ever played, these seeds are going to see two possibilities: being ignored, or being discarded. I don't see a player group doing any actual agriculture... ever.

I think there is a lot of variation in game groups out there. The one I was involved in was heavily into rebuilding civilization. Of course it took killing off some of the more trigger happy characters, not the players they realized the PDs stance quick after the first couple Ye Haw! adventures.

[cosmicfish]

Food seeds routinely get treated in a number of methods to inhibit molds and other pathogens that hamper seed germination. It is not outside the realm of possibility that, given the prevalence of nanotechnology in the Project, a graphene treatment is used that helps mitigate moisture loss and thereby improving seed viability. While this would not make the seeds immortal, such a treatment could help achieve the 40% viability at 150 years that would make such a cache still useful.

But why would the Project work on this They were expecting to activate well within the reasonable lifespan of the seeds with even modest preservation, and they have the ability to do deeper cryogenic storage for a smaller quantity of seeds at select sites. This effort certainly makes sense if the Project predicts failure, but I don't see why they would otherwise spend limited research resources on such a topic.

And without that strangely prescient and expensive focus on preserving seed stock for 30x longer than it was expected to be needed, the stored seeds are almost entirely dead, with only a small percentage of a few varieties still viable. So why worry about the SWAP constraints of dead seeds

The whole seed issue does need to be addressed in some manner, as they are present in so much of game canon. Third edition has agricultural teams and seeds explicitly listed in Delta Base. Fourth edition also has agricultural teams and says they have seed stores and frozen livestock as well. So all these agricultural teams are either just some additional farmers with a supply of fertilizer trying to improve on some wild plants they find or they have the ability to quickly start up some new farms with their supply of seeds and start churning out lots of food and surplus seeds within three years. Either way could be a scenario for your game.

The presence of the seeds and the teams and the facilities makes absolute sense - that they would be present is not an issue for me. But just because those resources were laid down doesn't mean that they will be able to do their jobs 145 years after they were expected to operate.

As to who would use the seeds in game, back in 1981 my group used them to help a community that had recently be attacked by raiders that burned their fields. So play group vary too.

And did the variety or mass or volume of those seeds factor in any significant way to game play How about the percentage of viable seeds I've had teams that distributed seeds to communities as well (mostly at Starnaman) but never in circumstances where the details would be anything but a way to unnecessarily complicate part of the game that no one cared about.

[cosmicfish]

AG-1 A central seed vault, farm animal freeze tubes.

It makes a lot of sense for me for there to be a few locations using more advanced preservation techniques on a relatively small quantity of seeds and animals - they can be used as emergency stocks, as biological experimental and reference samples, and as a hedge in case something goes wrong with the less-protected seed stocks issued to field teams. But that doesn't do anything to make the tubs/sacks/whatevers of seeds in the boltholes anything but mostly dead.

[cosmicfish]

I think there is a lot of variation in game groups out there. The one I was involved in was heavily into rebuilding civilization. Of course it took killing off some of the more trigger happy characters, not the players they realized the PDs stance quick after the first couple Ye Haw! adventures.

That's great! And if that was the focus of the game did anyone consider that the vast majority of their seed stock would not survive 150 years In such a case, I would hope the PD would look a little more into the challenges of actual rebuilding and realize that the stored seeds would be mostly dead and that existing civilizations would already have developed their own agriculture and accumulated their own seed stocks. Teams in such a campaign are not trying to reintroduce agriculture (the purpose of the seed stocks) but rather to improve necessarily existing agriculture.

Put another way, a Team focused on regional security faces very different challenges and will need very different tools depending on whether they are dealing with a war+5 population or a war+150 population. If the Team in question had, for some reason, one or more systems that depended on gasoline, they would in the latter case need to deal with the fact that their gasoline stores are no longer viable and that using those systems would require looking outside Morrow stocks. This is one of the reasons I am against jet aircraft in Project inventories and why I think the seed stocks (although both more durable and necessary) represent a resource that the Teams will need to replace.

[timgray]

Thanks for the input!

We are looking for writers for the magazine. Right now it's a one man show doing all the work. Additional help would be absolutely wonderful and possibly if we get enough help the Project could end up a quarterly release.

[ArmySGT.]

We are looking for writers for the magazine. Right now it's a one man show doing all the work. Additional help would be absolutely wonderful and possibly if we get enough help the Project could end up a quarterly release.

Ok.

Writers guide Submission guide

Some starting point please!

[mcruff]

kinda off topic

where can I find the Project Issue magazine

[mmartin798]

Here are links to both issues of The Project

The Project
Issue #1

http://tomorrowsend.rpgstuff.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/The-Project-Magazine-Issue-1.pdf

Thr Project
Issue #2

http://tomorrowsend.rpgstuff.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/The-Project-Issue-2.pdf

[timgray]

Ok.

Writers guide Submission guide

Some starting point please!

The Project Magazine
Submission Guidelines
The Project is dedicated to expanding and supporting the work of professional and aspiring writers with a straightforward presentation of The Morrow Project RPG game information, gaming instruction and fiction and adventure modules or even settings. Our editor is interested in articles on all gaming topics written by emerging and experienced writers in all genres. We are looking for clear takeaway for our readers: What can they learn to improve their gaming or running a game What how-to tips and strategies will accomplish this Also Game Fiction as well as even simple things like a fully flushed out NPC.
Queries should briefly describe your background and provide details for your story idea. We are interested in how-to stories, how to pieces, narrative stories, playable small mini adventures, settings, towns, equipment, etc. We are not interested in pieces that have been previously published online or in print. We do accept queries that include finished pieces for consideration. We do not accept material that has been previously published in any form in print or online.
Queries should be sent by e-mail to timgray1@gmail.com. Please include your name, and a short bio on your Morrow Project gaming experience.

Article lengths vary widely from 300 to 3,000 words. On occasion, longer articles and excerpts also appear in the magazine.