Resources 2 / Campaign Diary: Archipelago Adventures - Pt. 24

Last week we talked resources and how we were going to handle it for this adventure… but let’s talk about foraging for resources on all these islands we are stopping in. Ships in our history would often stop at islands to get fresh water and supplies, so its definitely something we can include in our adventure… though, I think it is going to be taking on the roll of temporary hit points… you’ll see what I mean.

Supply Drops

Way back when, and even now, ships need to carry their own fresh water as the water they swim in… float in? boat in? … swim in has a lot of salt and fish poop in it. If you don’t believe me, go to your nearest large body of ocean water and take a good swig of it. That’s pretty salty, and one should not actually follow my advice as that is a horrible thing to do… Fish poop in that water! And it’ll dehydrate you and eventually kill you if you keep doing that… plus… there’s fish poop in the water… and people like swimming in it!? I don’t understand people who like the ocean… you are swimming in a massive toilet for whales!

But I digress, and I’m barely a hundred words into this post… sigh. Back to the main point of this post. The ocean is big and salty, and sailors need fresh water or they’ll lose a lot of moral and probably lead a mutiny against the captain. So it’s important to keep fresh water on board the ship, but water tanks take up a lot of storage space on a ship especially back during the olden times when it would take literal months to cross across the ocean… so how do you make sure you have enough room for cargo and water? By taking pit stops as predetermined islands and refilling your water tanks… this is also a good time to stock up on fresh fruits, meats and all kinds of things… plus it gives the crew a chance to stretch their legs on some solid ground and improve morale.

So we are going to be including into our island descriptions what resources are available to our table, and what it means to harvest those resources.

Island Information

If you go all the way back to Part 11 where we talked about what information would comprise our island, we listed three qualifiers when it comes to resources:

Barren -> 25%
Fertile -> 50%
Lush -> 25%

Just as a reminder, the percentages define how many of our 100 islands would have that specific qualifier, so 50% of our total islands we want to make will be considered fertile.

I go on in Part 12 to talk more about our islands and even make a joke about monkeys throwing shit at adventurers… unfortunately, Past-Stephen has no respect for Future-Stephen, which is largely why I end up writing these posts at 10pm the night before, and basically just shrugged his shoulders and said, “eh, that’s Future-Stephen’s problem. Fuck him.”

So let’s go ahead and figure out what we mean by our three terms:

Barren -> Very few, if any Resources due to polluted lands or a destroyed ecosystem
Fertile -> Enough Resources to live off of
Lush -> Bursting with Resources and plenty of foodstuffs to support a large population

Now, these are just loose descriptions of what resources are on the islands. We need to dial that in a bit more. Let’s go ahead and grab the three islands we already have made… only 97 more to go… please send help!

Islands

Island #: 59, Munta
Island Size: Small | 9 miles or smaller (on one side)
Population: Moderate | Inhabited, but not over-run
Tier: 1 | Character Levels 1 - 4
Resources: Fertile | Enough resources to live off of

Island #: 9, Kataigída
Island Size: Medium | 10 - 16 miles (on one side)
Population: Sparse | Some inhabitants
Tier: 3 | Character Levels 11 - 15
Resources: Fertile | Enough resources to live off of

Island #: 10, Astéri
Island Size: Small | 9 miles or smaller (on one side)
Population: Sparse | Some inhabitants
Tier: 3 | Character Levels 11 - 15
Resources: Barren | Little-to-no resources

Let’s start off easy, Astéri is Barren. It has a dead, warped and twisted forest home to weird Far Realm creatures. The entire ecosystem is destroyed and there is nothing of value, to the party, to be found on this island. Boom, that island resource is done!

Now Munta and Kataigída are fertile, but one is home to a big forest and a swamp, the other is home to a giant mountain with an outpost on the top. How do they both have fertile resources? And that’s going to be a challenge to begin working on for each island. Each island is going to be different, and that is going to affect how we label our islands. I think… we can assign points to an island to allocate towards it’s resources. Each point would be a representation of its Resources. Let’s go ahead and just assume that a fertile island has 5 points we can spend on an island’s resources. Our resource categories are:

Food -> Important to keep a happy and non-mutinous crew
Trade Goods -> Great for growing your wealth and maybe buying more ships in the future! Includes many subcategories of trading goods.
Treasure -> Who wants to spend all day working hard to be a merchant prince? Its better to just find a huge pot of gold.
Weapons/Equipment -> A catchall for siege equipment and weapons for your crew. This includes passengers and anything that isn’t inherently a Trade Goods even if someone is willing to trade for it.

Now, let’s go ahead and grab Munta, our first, and dare I say, most beautiful island to date… though Astéri has all mine beautiful Star Spawn on it… hmmm…

So Munta is a Fertile island, which means we have 5 points we can spend on its resources. First off, I am going to say that it has no points in Treasure and Weapons/Equipment. Sure, the party could ransack and capture all the Fearie Dragons that call Munta home but… that feels decidedly evil and is not something we are pushing for in this campaign.

That leaves us with two Resource Categories to throw our points into: Food and Trade Goods.

Food 2 Points
Trade Goods 3 Points
Treasure None
Weapons/Equipment None

Now, what does that mean for our party? How can we make this something for our party interact with? Let’s start with Food.

Cookies!

So, we have two points in Food. I think the easiest thing we can translate this to is to say that for each point in Food it equates to 1 ton of food that can easily be harvested from the island… after that, they aren’t going to find enough food in the day to offset the amount of food they have to feed their crew, but 2 tons of food will easily stock their boat for 2 weeks for their warship. So that’ll be fine!

And now we come to Trade Goods… See, there is going to be a bit of a problem for Trade Goods. We can’t easily say that there are only 3 tons of wood on this island. There is a huge forest and wood is notorious for weighing quite a bit of weight… at least, that’s what I told my wife when she wanted me to move our kitchen table up a flight of stairs to our apartment… we got movers and I can confirm that the kitchen table is extremely heavy according to them.

So, how can we feasibly work with the idea that we are using an abstract system of points and our island is home to a ton (maybe even more!) of wood? I think our best option is to multiply the size of the island by the number of points for its Trade Goods. Munta is small, so let’s say that the multiplier is 10. That means there is 30 tons of wood available. Now, that seems extremely small but let me remind the reader we aren’t playing a wood harvesting game. We are working on assumptions that we are commanding a ship with a crew of sailors. The 30 tons of wood signifies the easiest wood we can load up on the ship without heavy equipment… and even then we are going to need equipment for harvesting them as shooting arrows at the trees, while extremely funny, won’t do much to fell the timber. But equipment for Trade Goods is a future subject.

So Munta’s resources will look like:

Food 2 Tons
Trade Goods 30 Tons [Wood]
Treasure None
Weapons/Equipment None

Which is pretty good for a small island.

Now let’s quickly talk about Kataigída, its a medium sized island which means it’ll have more resources than Munta, a smaller island. Let’s keep the number of points each island gets and adjust their modifiers as appropriate. If this comes up with horrible results, we can always change things down the road!… down the ocean?

Food 1 Point
Trade Goods 3 Points
Treasure 1 Point
Weapons/Equipment None

Because we are working with a medium sized island, lets double the amount of food per points. So it will 2 tons of food every point. And then, for Trade Goods I am going to assume that this island has a good supply of some wood (even if it isn’t pictured), ore and maybe some fancy stone! Each point will be times 20, as this is a larger island, which brings us to 60 tons of easy-ish to access Trade Goods that we can harvest if we have the equipment and time for it.

And finally, we have 1 point of treasure. What on earth could this weird island have that has treasure for us!? Behir eggs. In the information provided to the GM, the Behir currently have a clutch of Behir eggs that if the party is nice enough… might be able to get a behir of their own! Or find someone interesting in buying one! Of course… they should pry get permission before they try to take one… else the Behirs may eat them.

Food 2 Tons
Trade Goods 10 Tons [Wood], 10 Tons [Ore], 10 Tons [Granite]
Treasure Behir Eggs [half ton per]
Weapons/Equipment None

Let’s go ahead and close off here. I am going to take the week to stew over some of the decisions made in this post and maybe next week I’ll have changes… if not, we are going to continue with our resources and maybe this time… we can talk about the expiration of resources.

Tritons

You hear an unfamiliar voice calling out for attention, quickly running over to the side of the boat in case someone is overboard you see a figure down in the waters with green hair and blue skin waving up at you with a webbed hand. He appears to be wearing some sort of armor and grasps a spear with three points in one hand.

1. The triton is currently hunting for a small sahuagin raiding party that has been seen in these parts. The triton, Corus, wastes no time on pleasantries and simply asks if they have seen any groups of sharks or sahuagin in the area. If Corus is attacked, he has the stats of a Gladiator (Monster Manual) with the normal stats of a Triton.
2. The triton waves energetically up at you, informing you that you are about to sail over a portal to Plane of Water and if you aren’t careful your ship might never sail the Material World again. There is a whirlpool that the party will sail across in 1d6 hours, see the Whirlpool encounters for more information.
3. A badly wounded triton is calling out for help. If the party assists him, he, Nalos, will thank them for their assistance and ask if he can rest on their ship for a day. He was out patrolling with a unit of Tritons when they were suddenly attacked by Sahuagin. If the party asks him to leave, he will do so without a fight. He will depart with a warning that Sahuagin are growing a stronger presence in this area and to be careful. That night, the ship is attacked by Sahuagin, see the Sahuagin encounters for more information.
4. A triton riding a giant seahorse waves up at them and introduces herself as Feloren. She is currently riding around the territory of her people and thought to introduce herself to the sailors. She is extremely interested in any news of the mainland as she finds those stories to be incredibly fascinating. If pressed, she will describe her ancient city that lives beneath the waves and urge them to visit if they are ever able to. The name of her city is Vuuvaxa, the City of Coral.