The Headwater Hills aka All About Famine & Agriculture by John Josten is a role playing game supplement published by Board Enterprises. This is part of the Small Bites series and is the “World Walker” version; the full version, available to Patreons, is a b it less than double the length.
The supplement is available for free from DriveThruRPG as a 30-page PDF. One page is the front cover.
The Introduction explains that food is one of the most important things in life and agriculture is therefore important to a fantasy setting.
Fletnern Wiki has extracts taken from the wiki, all connected to Headwaters and Famine. The entries also link to entries on the wiki and cover many different rivers as well as legends, regions and cities.
The Sounding Board is a collection of blog posts and starts with Baking in a Fantasy Era. It explains how baking was done in medieval times and how most people didn’t own an oven suitable for baking and kitchens on estates, being a fire risk, would be built out the back.
Cuisine is More Important than War goes into how knowing what people eat explains what they grow and therefore what the geography is like. What is imported is also important.
What’s Normal? is on the average person and how, in a typical fantasy setting, the majority of people would be farmers, just as they were in medieval times, and would therefore be above average in strength.
A sidebar, Game Designer’s Notes, mentions Grain Into Gold and the upcoming All About Cuisine edition, as well as what is in this supplement.
Lifestyles of the Magical and Mundane starts with Agriculture and an extensive discussion on ploughing and planting crops, especially in a medieval setting. This is followed by The Headwater Hills Culture, which is on this region, the people and the most common product, cheese. Wet Behind the Ears discusses the sorts of skills a character of rural origin would have.
News of Fletnern starts with the various colonisations of the Headwater Hills. Next, The Rat Holes is a dangerous area thanks to being riddled by the holes of a large prairie dog, with a sidebar on missions and quests related to these. Latvich Parnania is on how the Latvich looked for their own food after conquering the area.
The Good Life starts with Rations and Provisions, which is on the sort of food that is suitable for travellers. Preservation Methods has several ways in which food can be preserved.
Characters with Character gives background on a mercenary warrior, his giantess wife and his half-giant son.
On Magical Matters considers magic when it comes to agriculture. Most mages won’t deign to do labourers’ work, but they can make a big difference through supplying water.
Y? Y? Y! considers natural disasters and how a series was planned to help GM such, except most disasters had a lot of overlap, so the idea was moved to Small Bites.
What’s Missing explains what is in the full version.
Finally, In Conclusion wraps things up and gives a number of links.
The Headwater Hills aka All About Famine & Agriculture in Review
The PDF is decently bookmarked with major and minor sections linked. The Table of Contents is less thorough but is hyperlinked. There are also a lot of external links to the Fletnern Wiki. Navigation is good. The text maintains a two-column format and appeared to be nearly free of error. There are some black and white public illustrations relevant to the text. Presentation is okay.
As is the case with all the other supplements in this series, this is a collection of generally related articles and snippets around a subject, in this case agriculture. As is also quite common in the series, some of these articles go into far more depth than many would consider. This does result in a more logical game world and one that, within its parameters, does actually fit together and work. There are reasons why things happen, and not just because that’s what the GM decided. The Headwater Hills aka All About Famine & Agriculture is an interesting collection of articles and it can be downloaded for free by clicking here.
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