Fishing

[kato13]

Aren't time zone differences great! You're drinking Bourbon and I've just had breakfast with my daughter! Makes you realise that we really are a global community on here!

The board on which the sun never sets.

[jester]

It is Targ! Truly, I realized that as I was sipping on good Dutch Beer I found at the market and some nice hot French bread with a spinach dip as I posted how great it was on the yahoo forum.


As for the whole cumulative effects of contaminated food. I guess what I was getting at was when a person and his faimily is starving they will ignore long term effects for immeidate satation of hunger. And recently raised as in farmed post war you would only have to deal with lingering contaminants. The plus side, most of the routine contaminants would cease instantly. Which is something we have never seen in history, to have them stop all together.

I do understand about contaminated muscles and such. There are oytsters near my marina where my boat is and where I lived for a time that were as big as a childs head, I sliced the sole of my foot on the lip of one towing my raft along the shore after the engine failed. A huge oyster for sure, but I would not eat that muscle if my life depended on it. At least at present time. If I were on the brink of starvation then I may reconsider. But knowing what is up the river that flows into that little bay, no thank you!

[headquarters]

how many rations / month

I would simplify -and have done in previous sessions -

1. try to deduce number of boats and crew available

2. split into 1 or 2 caregories cean /deep sea and the other coastal

3. set a base value of kg fish that they pull in pr workday and multiply with number of boats

4.roll a dice to determine if its a bad or good month and modify total catch acccordingly

5. roll a dice to gleen the number of people eating bad stuff and getting sick

6.new month /week -repeat
7.obviously fishfarms and shell fish breeding grounds will be another matter ,but for simplicity just follow the above procedure and change names ,places and capacity .

GM tip -be stricter rather than lenient to keep your players from creating a surplus that takes the fear of hunger out of them .

As for other means of feeding people ratfarms,hogfarms,rabbitfarms,mushrooms in the dung cellars,every available pot and bucket filled with soil and potatoted ( stacks of old tires can be used to this end as well )
Insects are very protein rich and I guess cockroaches could be cultivated in a sense .

(yeah..I know..but it is after the nuclear holocaust after all )

look up potato farming -it doesnt require the expertise of most agriculture and it demands little in the way of infrastructure.Good dirt,dung and water will do most of it . Ask Graebearde for number of square feet needed pr person with agricultural program.(Look up the farming thread -his stuff is good ).

give each "farm" or "fishery" a monthly or weekly value and add/subtract after the "RESULT " roll is done .

Lack of fuel or foul weather etc will be bad , but PCs managing to conquer a traincar with fertilizers from marauders will be good etc .

Just suggestions of course .

[kalos72]

Some good discussion here guys. Thanks, giving me lost of ideas.

HQ - I will definitely simplify it for "maintenance" rolls and such. But my problem now is to try and get a realistic number as a baseline for kg caught per person/day.

I was going to go with something like this:

Fishing from a boat on a large body of water will triple my catch.
Base MoS of 5 as an average - will develop a training cadre to increase the fishermens skill levels.
10hr days

Each fishermen will catch on average 150 "meals" or roughly 350kgs of fish.

This is a "compilation" of both v2.2 and 2013 rules and some assumptions for game "playability".

[kalos72]

Anyone have any feedback on those numbers Good Bad

[Legbreaker]

As my previous posts tried to imply, seafood (and other sources) are almost certainly contaminated with something, however, if you're hungry, you'll eat anything.

I've got some numbers at home for food requirements and space necessary to support life in a sealed environment. Not a lot of help with collection, but could be useful working out space necessary for crops, animals, etc.
I'll post the link in about 10-12 hours.

[kalos72]

Thanks Legbreaker, everything might help.

As for contamination, I understand your point. But seeing as most of the commercial style fishing happens in open ocean, I dont see that playing any more of a part then it might now.

A mans gotta eat...

[Legbreaker]

Yes, you've got to eat....
With regard to sailing skills, what's to say all the recreational sailors stayed in New York If they had a boat, I'd imagine they'd have sailed off into the sunset at the first sign of trouble. Those that stayed are likely to have suffered a similar casualty rate as the rest of the populace in the attack and subsequent famines, plagues, riots, etc which would have added to the impulse to get out in any way possible, and a boat ride is a lot better than walking!

Since '97 those few remaining would be exposed to piracy as well as kidnapping, etc (sail for us or else).

[kalos72]

Numbers would be small at first...not everyone can be a commercial fisherman, just watch Deadliest Catch once and you will know.

But as I have said, I would form Training Cadres to ever increase the number of available fishermen/sailors. Of course the same for boats of course. I wont simply be able to field 100 boats with 5000 people as crew to feed millions. :P

But the part I am having problems with is the math. Based on the rules, and game experience, does the math I posted a few posts up work for most people

[kato13]

But the part I am having problems with is the math. Based on the rules, and game experience, does the math I posted a few posts up work for most people

As someone who is a math nut I have a problem blessing numbers without a little more research. That being said nothing leaps out at me as being ridiculous.

After a few trips to South Korea, I was amazed at how productive their small, labor intensive, personal gardens were. The largest percentage of their agricultural production is based on family rice farms of 3 hectares (7.413 acres) or less. The fact that these farms are primarily located in mountainous terrain makes it even more impressive.

Hard work plus a culture of self sufficiency lead to this country, which is the size of Indiana and has a population of 47 million, be able to remain a net food exporter as recently as 2002. (I know this is in monetary value not calories, so processed food and meat exports might skew the results, but it is nonetheless impressive.)

I also at one point in the past determined that in terms of sheer calories from grain production alone, the United States could feed the T2k canon population 2000 calories a day with something like 11% of prewar production. This excluded all meats/fruits/vegetables/nuts and fields which were purposely left to fallow to keep prices artificially high. It also did not include newly gardened areas. (I really wish RPGhost had not purged that post, as it was A LOT of work. Oh well that wont be an issue if I decide to do it again).

All of this information has radically changed my opinions of how many people can be fed from a small area. I know this makes me one of the more optimistic GMs in terms of food production, but I like my numbers .

[Mohoender]

All of this information has radically changed my opinions of how many people can be fed from a small area. I know this makes me one of the more optimistic GMs in terms of food production, but I like my numbers .

I'm as optimistic as you are but that's only because I already witnessed how much food you can get even from a small garden. What you'll lose the most in a T2K setting will be diversity. What can be a real problem, however, is the weather and planting planning.

A good inspiration for that could be "Reign of Fire". I love the dragons but the community is exactly what I would expect a T2K community to be. The military unit is also great using all kind of equipements.

[Legbreaker]

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3g.html

Don't know how much use it'll be, but that site contains just about all you'd even need to know about life support, food and water requirements in a closed environment (ie spaceship or base).
Stumbled across it while researching for my Aliens game.

[kcdusk]

Agreed, i think 100k people would be underfed. A major population area isnt the place to be.

Most people, civilians, wouldnt know or even think some foods could be contaminated.

Soldeirs, scientists and others who knew there was a chance of food contamination would either move on or do what they gotta do ...

The 'strong" would make sure there food was of a higher quality.

If your into fishing, dont forget grenade fishing.

[Jason]

kalos72, do you have 'Armies of the Night' It is very useful to anyone running a campaign in NYC. I know you are mostly looking for info and stats on fishing and food consumtion, but I find no information in the module that indicates fishing provides food for the survivors in Manhattan. Here are a few notes from the module.

Many thousands (tens -of-thousands) of NYC's inhabitants are virtual slaves under the yoke of the Mayor or another gang. These slaves are certainly underfed.

Cockroaches are mentioned; "roaches are an important source of food. As edible as any other arthopod, they are much smaller than lobsters-but far more numerous, and considerably easier to trap."

Pigeons are present in the millions, and use the lower tiers of buildings that had their windows blown out by blast damage or vandals.

Rats are another pest that Manhattan's residents call lunch.

The gang that took over the Seaport Museum uses captured sailing vessels to raid nearby farming communities on the East and Hudson rivers. Food is the primary target of these raids.

Rovers seem very active in searching buildings for lost or forgotten caches of food. During the build-up to the nuclear war many residents stock piled food and water. When the bombs fell on the Thanksgiving holiday, many people were away from the city, and never made it back to thier pre-war stash.

In the street markets of Manhattan T2K a 9mm pistol is worth 35 kg of canned/ domestic food, while an M16 is valued at 120 kg.

Though it is never mentioned, I always imagined that many people fished from shore, bridges, or docks as best as they could manage with improvised poles and throw lines.

I just wanted to give you some of this info. I think it is cool if you want to make fish a major part of the economy in your game. This could lead to all kinds of game hooks like controlling the vibrant fish market(s), communities that specialize in salting/smoking fish for preservation, fishermen who are attacked by pirates etc.

I had a campaign in NYC once years ago where the players tried to set up a supply line to import wheat-flour and bake bread on a large scale. This baked bread would have been distributed among the poor peaceful communities to encourage the locals to support the players. This never really got past the planning stages, although the team did recon several retail and commercial bakeries.

The problem with these types of plans is that NYC is one of the most violent, desperate places on earth, where the strongest gang-members carry multiple firearms and are veterans of the streets. Gun battles among a landscape saturated by hard cover and dangerous terrain is serious business, and my players managed enough bad luck to spend about half the campaign recovering from one serious wound or another. Good times.

[Targan]

In my campaign the PCs caused so much mayhem at the markets they attended in NYC that the frequency of market gatherings sharply decreased and the PC's party were pretty much persona non grata.