FORAGING: Characters travelling in the wilderness may attempt to search or hunt for food, either to extend their normal supplies or prevent starvation. Searching for food may be done while travelling. If 1 is rolled on a d6, the party will have found enough to feed 1-6 men for one day. This food will consist of nuts, berries and possibly small game. To hunt, characters must spend a day without moving. There is a 1 in 6 chance of having an encounter from the Animal Subtable on the Wilderness Wandering Monster Tables. This encounter is in addition to any normal encounter rolls for the day. Days spent resting cannot be used for hunting.
Cook, ed. Dungeons & Dragons Expert Rulebook, 1981, p. X51
I love the simplicity of this mechanic, and in my experience resolving attempts to forage or hunt during play is super quick and non-intrusive. Although the rule as described above allows for an actual encounter when hunting, I usually handle hunting just as abstractly as foraging to keep the game moving. With that said, I would certainly play out a hunting encounter depending on the context and feel of the gaming session. The AD&D Wilderness Survival Guide which came out in 1986 provided four pages on how to handle foraging, hunting, and fishing. Sure, that’s great for times when you need a bit more complexity and detail; however, I’ll take a solid one paragraph mechanic over four pages of unnecessary complexity for my games.
In my current B/X game, I have a player using a homebrew hunter class. For wilderness-related skills, I simply use Cook’s guidelines for foraging and hunting. I find it unnecessary to have a separate list of skills for tracking, setting traps, skinning an animal, and so forth. For me, a mechanic that allows a character to hunt both small game and larger game abstractly assumes that characters can, to some extent, track or set small game traps. One can even expand the conceptual scope of this mechanic to broadly include all actions related to wilderness survival. For a dedicated hunter class, I allow the character to begin with a 2-in-6 chance at foraging/hunting/wilderness survival, and this skill improves by 1 for every three levels of experience. Easy.
| Level | Foraging/Hunting/Wilderness Survival |
|---|---|
| 1-3 | 2-in-6 |
| 4-6 | 3-in-6 |
| 7-9 | 4-in-6 |
| 10-12 | 5-in-6 |
| 13-14 | 6-in-6* |
*As in the d6 system found in Lamentations of the Flame Princess, to maintain a chance to failure when a “6” is rolled, roll again. If a second “6” is rolled, the attempt fails.
Of course, one does not need a dedicated hunter class in order to handle players that just want their characters to have the opportunity to gain more experience and training in foraging, hunting, and other wilderness-related skills. D. H. Boggs over at Hidden in Shadows wrote a recent post about character education that offers one possible, and simple, method to handling something like this.
So here is what I do, and here is what I recommend. For any thing a character wants to learn or any skill they wish to acquire, I assume it will take them a number of months of continuous study to master. The number of months is equal to 20 minus their Intelligence score for any cerebral subject, or minus their Strength score for any purely strength based activity, or minus their Dexterity score for activities requiring a steady hand and a quick eye.
D. H. Boggs, “Education for character variability”
Personally, for something like wilderness survival I would probably just use the wisdom ability score, although one could certainly make arguments for scores like intelligence and dexterity. One could even use the average score of multiple ability scores to determine the number of months; however, I tend to avoid this kind of additional complexity. So, for example, a player running a fighter with a wisdom score 14 would be allowed to improve foraging/hunting to a 2-in-6 chance after six months of experience/training. This could entail six months of time spent surviving in the wilderness, or perhaps six months under the tutelage of someone like a trapper or hunter. Again, nice and easy.
Now, I also allow my players to forage for medicinal plants to make various herbal remedies, and this is related to all that has been discussed above. However, I’ll return to that topic in another post since I am beginning to smell what is sure to be a wonderful breakfast. Saturday family time!
Cool, I now got an idea about how long it’s going to take my wizard to learn Dwarvish now, around 3 months.
I was also wondering how you would handle dehydration or starvation situations? Like the party being lost in a desert, mountains, or at sea where it’s harder to hunt and get water; so, they may go a few days without food and little water. What kind of minuses and damage would you apply?
Hi Chris,
Thanks for the comment and questions! Right now, I am using a modified version of the Rule of Three discussed previously at Delta’s D&D Hotspot blog. I like this method of handling things like starvation and exposure because it’s easy to remember and simple to use. It has the added bonus of being grounded in an actual real-world mnemonic for outdoor survival. Although I have modified how I use it in my games, his post will still give you an idea on how I might handle such situations in play. Perhaps I’ll post a modified version one day?
Peace,
RC
P.S. I edited your original comment for clarity since there were some typos that may have made your questions hard to understand by others.
Hek yeah rule of 3’s
As you know, I’m running a B/X game (using Old School Essentials, with modifications from LotFP and a few other OSR games/supplements, along with a few 5E modifications such as Advantage/Disadvantage, etc.). I do really like the simplicity of the LotFP D6 skill system, as well as the simplicity of all of the dungeon & wilderness exploration rules in B/X. I was just talking to a friend about this earlier this past week. So, I’m a fan of how you’re handling hunting in your game.
Also, your “Saturday family time” bit, after you smelled breakfast, really spoke to me. My wife and I both enjoy cooking and take turns, but this morning she woke up early and headed over to our local weekly Farmer’s Market and picked up a bunch of fresh berries along with some lovely ahi tuna steaks and some super fresh scallops. The tuna & scallops were for dinners, but the berries became part of “berry waffle Saturday” brunch while we all watched a couple episodes of “The Legend of Korra” on Netflix.
Cheers! (This is Martin from Daddy Rolled a 1, by the way).
Hi Martin!
Thanks for the comment. It’s good to hear from you. Yea, it seems we’re on the same page. I, too, like LotFP’s d6 skill system; although, I’m not currently using it for thieves in my current B/X game. Sometimes I regret not doing this; however, the reasons behind that decision would result in a post-length comment.
I really miss having a Farmer’s Market! We don’t have one close by in the area I’m now living. It sounds like you and your family had a fantastic Saturday. Those ingredients sound wonderful and delicious. I’ll probably be thinking about scallops the rest of the day. My wife and I also enjoy cooking together, and the kitchen area is definitely part of our self-care and family time. My wife read your comment, and now she wants some berry waffles. Thanks…I might have to make a run to the grocery store. We sometimes make lemon-flavored pancakes served with berries and Greek yogurt.
Peace,
RC
Oh, and by the way, my players are loving your recent posts and have been talking about several of the weird quirks for their players. I’ll probably let them incorporate a trait in time for our next session. I’ll let you know how that goes.
It’s funny – I also am not using the D6 skill system in my current B/X game, despite liking the simplicity and elegance of it, but I did adopt it for another game/setting I’m working on, so we’ll see how it works there.
We are very lucky that our local Farmer’s Market is in the parking lot of the local High School every Saturday, and never shut down during the pandemic (since it’s providing food/groceries, I guess) so we have availed ourselves of going there to help out the small mom-and-pop farmers and food people who are there. So, yes, we had a lovely (and slightly decadent) weekend of dinners, with ahi tuna steaks on Saturday with some rice, sugar snap peas, and broccoli, and scallops basted with butter and bacon fat on Sunday with a veggie quinoa side dish. We won’t be doing that again for quite a while!
I’m so glad to hear that you and your players are enjoying my posts on the “weird traits.” I’m working on the next one as we speak – I have all the ideas, and now just need to write them into a post and put the tables together.
Cheers!
That does, indeed, sound like a wonderfully decadent meal! Looking forward to that post.
“The AD&D Wilderness Survival Guide which….. how to handle foraging, hunting, and FISHING” aww man, I didnt know I could be fishing! If you hadn’t made it like all natural resources were corrupted and fouled I would definitely just be sitting out my sessions just having a fishing day. I’ll just roll random d6’s while the crew battles some skeletons below.
Also, I completely forgot about the mechanic for [ 20-ability score= new skill acquisition ]. I am definitely thinking of clever ways to use Strength in resourceful ways. Can you believe in 5e the only Str skill is Athletics? Animal Handling is Wisdom, but what if I want to wrastle like the Crocodile Hunter? Surely that’s also strength?
I’m surprised that with all the random dice tables and charts out there that I couldn’t find one for hunting or fishing.
Hi there and thanks for the comment! Well, the AD&D Wilderness Survival Guide (which I am not currently using) does have some generic random tables for both hunting and fishing (as briefly mentioned in the post). One of the hunting tables takes into account the season and general type of region where the player is hunting. The other table generates a random wild game encounter that includes the possibly of encountering small game, medium game, or large game, and it also determines how far away the game is when first encountered. However, the table does not provide a specific table of actual game creatures, merely the categories small, medium, and large. The DM is expected to fill in the details on what constitutes “small” game in the campaign. This makes sense to me since the creatures are surely campaign/setting dependent. Still, I could see developing a basic game table with specific animals for different regions in a pseudo-European medieval setting since that might have broad applicability. That might be a helpful gaming tool.
Peace,
RC