In a world where magic had always existed modern crops would not

nice

Have you tried not playing D&D?

The point that we're both seemingly making here is that they didn't; the crops available in most fantasy settings differ from the rough time periods they correspond to exactly due to the differences in circumstance.

In a setting where ancient wizards/gods create chimeras like owl-bears they would probably also create weird mystical plant hybrids. Trees whose fruit has the consistency and nutritional value of meat. Dire berry bushes which produce gigantic, nutritious, and intensely flavorful berries. Pitcher plants which grow actual pitchers with the natural elemental power to produce large volumes of pure water.

And then there's the fire-breathing dragon vines grown to protect mystical fortresses, whose grapes make the best wine in the world.

I have, I have not found other systems that handle this better.

d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/h/harvest-season

>You cause an explosive burst of growth in a single plant, causing it to grow through a cycle of flower, fruit, or grain production as appropriate. If the plant is not one that normally produces food fit for humanoid consumption, it produces edible flowers under the effect of this spell.

>edible flowers

You are now aware that in d20 settings dogwood blossom salads are a thing.

d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/g/goodberry
d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/witch/hexes---3rd-party-publishers/hexes/major-hexes/hex-major-witchs-bounty-su

> Each transmuted berry provides nourishment as if it were a normal meal for a Medium creature.

You are now aware that in d20 settings druids, shamans, and witches can make multivitamins.

Or they could all look the same cause humans are lazy bastards and they would all use the same spells.

we don't have spells here on earth prime.

They won't all look the same. People will independently figure out different versions of the same spell and then they will never change over to even a strictly better version because their version is a tradition.

Not necessarily. Whoever is intervening in the evolution of the crop would have a particular favorite aspect about it.

They could be growing the plant so that it produces the most fruit, bigger fruit, more resilient fruit, more nutrient dense fruit, more flavorful fruit, etc. Then you could have some tumblr wizard who is only interested in changing the color of the skin of the fruit or some stupid shit that doesn't make it a more efficient harvest but makes his particular brand special.

None of those modifications are better than the other, it depends on the circumstances.

>Dire berries
>Dragon Vine Wine
>>Pitcher-pitching pitcher plants

Totally stealing this.

GURPS has an entire college of magic dedicated to food, another to plants, and another to weather. If you're going to look into GURPS for worldbuilding in a fantasy world, make sure you grab GURPS Fantasy and GURPS Magic. Both pdf's can be found in the GURPS general thread.

>dropping a second level spell on every banana
Fucking expensive, and still not permanent

Disease removal us a good point, but it's availability depends on the setting.

We probably wouldn't have quite the same selection of crops, but they would likely be pretty similar overall since people are still going to try to grow bigger, tastier stuff.

Reminds me of Zork Grand Inquisitor.
If you cast a grow spell on a literally snapping Snap Dragon, it resists the spell and then your guide informs you that it you probably didn't want it to work.

This would imply either:
>Everyone is a mage
>At least half the population are mages
>Mages are ridiculously powerful
Commoner piss poor NPCs need to eat and would develop normally even if there's a couple wacky hobos that can turn peanuts into coconuts.

if you were a mage, priest or god of any reknown, why would you waste time buffing food when you can just hit people with magic directly

There's things like the golden apples in myth, but beyond that it's simply not very interesting to talk about blessed crops.

If you were a god of reknown, why would you care about mortals at all when the universe is your oyster? Because eventually, the mundane becomes interesting when filtered through an unlimited length of time.

When was the magic discovered?

When was it possible to actually utlilize magic to suplement the low capability of pre-domestication crops?

Were the humans given knowledge of magic by Gods, or had to spend time figuring it out themselves?

And if so, what would stop the gods from just putting domesticated crops in their hands?

IIRC crops were domesticated before writing was a thing, or were well in the way. Were cavemen able to use magic to just grow more stuff? did they had a guy they pestered every weet to make food for them? Or was magic so common and developed they could do it themselves?

GURPS: Fantasy has a sizable section on how magic would interact with various parts of societies, including agricultural sectors, because of course it does.

Yeah but GURPS has "sizeable sections" on literally everything.

>dogwood blossom salads
I hope they taste as good as they smell.

In each of those possibilities you will have a different type of crop as an outcome.

Got alchemical botanists in the setting I'm running right now. Totally stealing these ideas.

Elves and Hobbits cultivating stuff.

Now shut up and roll your dice

Can't help you with a system (I don't even think this aspect of the world would mean spells accessible to characters), but perhaps you would prefer to discuss this at alternatehistory.com.

This would count as ASB timelines, but people would still be interested, specially if you're throughout enough about it.

The timelines where people develop agricultural packages for people like inuits are amazing in this regard.

Whoa, wait, Hold the phone!

If this is a D&D setting or a Pathfinder based Setting I have to stop you. I literally wrote out a report to my GM once. I was tring to amass as much wealth as possible in a game and He allowed me to attain Land, holdings and start a Legit Trade Company. That system within the information given in their official books doesn't work. You literally can't make a realistic functioning Company or for that matter a real functioning economy.

The way these books , D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder, worked the only viable economy even for a nation would be appealing to adventurers due to the terrible lay out and lack of economical oversight. Veeky Forums did at that time actually have several .pdfs where the economy was broken down by a bunch of people. frank was what one of them was called. Sorry I can't remember the other one.

I realize you mean to point out about Crops and Agriculture so I Deleted my post to edit it. It would apply there too however. I village could sell a single magic weapon and feed the village. Taking common sense and food has to come from somewhere and making a deal with wizards/clerics would be trivial. Depending on the System a very simple ritual could make the food of one very small harvest Far larger than even Modern Agriculture could hope to attain in the forseeable future.

You telling me I have to give up corn to get magic?

Can you just take my sanity or something?

Source?

okay, you have a neat little point there - we've certainly had a hand in how massively many plants have changed over the years, and magic would definitely change that.

now go and create at least one 'alternative reality' crop for each and every type of plant we've affected the evolution of throughout our history, and then a few more since naturally we'll have made modern-level foods out of things we wouldn't have without magic.
and then try to figure out how those will be used in cooking
i'll see you in about a year - during that time i'll actually be playing a game instead of spending all of it writing about alternate universe corn.

the thing is that you're fussing over very small details that will very rarely change how the game is actually played - even on a roleplay level. most players really don't give a fuck about this kind of stuff, and most DMs are content to put fucking potatoes in a medieval europe setting - and i don't blame them.

of course, if you manage to actually write some 'realistic' alternate-universe foods that make sense and aren't some retarded 'gasmorpolorp'-tier attempt, then maybe some people will actually use them in their setting? hell, maybe i even would.
.. or not, maybe they'll just stick to corn and potatoes because it won't take a three minutes to explain to the players what those are every time they get mentioned.

>having real world plants in your fantasy setting

Fufufu, I seriously hope you're more creative than that.

Holy fuck the autism. Filling books with arguments about minimal changes to crops! Who cares if the lettuce in your fantasy world is smaller or your bananas more curved and less sweet because you chose a different type to start with? No player I've ever met will argue with you about the price of a crop farmed with magical assistance. If your worldbuilding goes that much onto detail about how every crop is a little bit different and how and when magic is involved in every agricultural process, you're wasting your time with informations of your setting the players will never need nor want.

I guess you have fun with that so I'm not telling you to stop, just realise it's pointless for the fun of your game and doesn't add any real deepness to your setting.
i'm no native english speaker sorry for any BS grammar n stuff

Only things I saw wrong were

>deepness
Should be 'depth'

and
>informations
Should be 'information'

Source: I, your humble servant, am a most loyal subject of Her Royal Britannic Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

OP there is a general that pops up often called Worldbuilder General. They have links to the Information that may interest you and can help with this.

>tfw you never payed your party with 3x the estimated Dungeon loot from the goods list only for them to sigh and give it back bitching about how they did the quest for free.

Joking aside my group and I actually pay attention to this stuff. We've listened to the things the GM said about the setting many a time and capitalized on it alot. Selling rations to hungery and armies, Buying rare goods to sale in other places, Old worthless pottery to scholars, heirlooms, salt, you name it. The most expensive thing they left with once was worth in the books several silver but in fact was worth more than everything else except a single book.

It's the things like that that make a setting feel alive. When you make it through 20 levels of death incarnate to see nothing but a book in a skeleton hand and open see the name of a man who destroyed the world and know it was worth it.

Why would a bunch of poor dirt farming peasants who can't afford one sword in the whole village have the gold to actually fund adventurers? Pay them in Wheat and Ale. let them sale it in the neighboring Towns on their way to find more exciting shit to do. Otherwise it feels more like filling off a check list.

>not using bellgrapes, diceberry, mangolephants, loquat-shoes, pear'o'heels, squalphins, citrisquid, springananas, peach puppies, apricats, applesocks, whalamatos, pineoclocks, fishy fruits, boarmelon, rhinoloupe, orcalplant, garlicrown, honey onions, sweat moais, spiny carrots, conchurnips, cornflowers, cabbadillos, needlettuce, cherry bombs, masked potatos, lilipods, rocket papaya, orangeopuses, bumpkins, heart mints, spade basils, dialurels, gold clovers, mush-in-a-box, and toadstoolsheds instead of regular vegetables and fruits

Nice worldbuilding there, mind if I steal it.

Go nuts, just don't try to copyright it. I might try and incorporate some of it into a video game I working on.

Do your players give a fuck?

>implying he has any players
>implying this autist has ever played a game

Not every setting is dnd

>If you haven't noticed, in most settings, magic fails to filter down to the ranks of commoners
I'd wish there were more settings where magic is readily available to even the lowliest peasant, to do most of the things we do for science, such that the entire civilization is magically dependant.

Harry Potter comes to mind, are there any other settings like that?

Fair enough.

Harry Potter is a good example of wizards telling the masses to go fuck themselves, even when said muggles devise an alternative which eventually threatens global annihilation on the process.

Uh that would seriously depend on what magic is like, what exactly it is capable of and how easy to use. DnD settings would definitely have modern crops because before those developed people wouldn't have the free time to spend learning to use magic with out starving.

Glorantha, man.

It's like high-magic sword and sorcery in a bronze age setting.

People use folk-magic and rituals for basically everything from improving harvest yields to detecting trespassers and guiding their arrows into the hearts of their hated enemies.

There are more powerful kinds of magic too, but most everybody has a little.

Speaking of Harry Potter, anyone remember that one background character who was stirring his drink without a wand while reading something by Carl Sagan?

You mean the best wizard in the whole damn movie series, the Science Wizard?

That's the one.

Agriculture thread?

Stephen Hawking, but I'm being pedantic

I haven't read any further into the thread, but I'm really happy that this conversation now exists. Thank you.

Go watch Kurosawa boi

I once started a game with a kingdom of plenty having it's agricultural artifact being stolen. Didn't really focus on it too much, didn't go into any other detail, definitely didn't have any greater setting implications.

But you can work with things like that. Until the players decide the teleporting thief was way cooler than the prince, fuck princes get money.

On the other hand, if gods exist and they created the world them it's very likely that those plants that had to be engineered by humans were created by some god in that exact form.
As you look on myths there's usually some golden era in which everything was better, including corn and bananas. Since it ended it's all going downhill and now people are weak and pathetic compared to the heroes of the old - and even wheat doesn't give as good crops.

Even ultra-high magic settings like Forgotten Realms and Golarion tend to not have that level of magic involved in everyday life of normal people.

>people can use magic to kill each other
>this is uncommon
>people no longer eat corn as a result of this
What?

A plant whose fruit/veggie/whatever piece that gets picked from the stalk is protein and carb rich super food...though in the tenth year of harvests after its first planted releases sentient anthrax spores that drive population centers inland.

>This thread is for anything agricultural that you've dealt with that's Veeky Forums related
suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/16802724/

>Trees whose fruit has the consistency and nutritional value of meat.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetable_Lamb_of_Tartary

>Conjure food is a spell
>Cornucopia's exist
>Priests are able to purify food

>"This in no way has any ramifications on hunter gatherer cultures"

Surely you must be joking sir.

Why not? That just seems like the writers are getting lay - because frankly with that much magic is there - honestly, a good reason why it wouldn't be filtering down to the common folk? Priests and clerics are supposed to be acting on behalf of their gods, who typically are fueled by more worshippers.

It's easier to keep your existing flock alive (barring war) than it is to seek MORE worshippers.

How early in - say greyhawk's prehistoric record do you think magic would have arisen?

Actually have a six player game with apparently a much more robust world than most of you.

I am not surprised when I see complaints on here about the difficulties of running a sandbox game, the creativity to do it simply isn't deep enough in this lot.

I didn't think autism levels like this were possible. You've clearly put a lot of thought into the socio-economic development of societies that make use of inexplicable magical powers that follow rules and are distributed in a manner that only makes "sense" in your head alone.

I would suggest you take a step back and realize that even in whatever setting you are imagining none of this actually matters because the setting is an excuse plot for super powered individuals to gallivant around the world fighting monsters.

I want to run a simulated society with as much ability to give the players sound storytelling as possible.

Part of why good writing is good is that the situations can truly happen, the mechanisms of the social interaction are genuine - even if the action is driven by supernatural means (frankenstein for example) the story speaks to deeper understanding of human nature, and the experience of the participants in the story.

I want to give my players the best story possible, and beyond writing good events, and story arcs - I want to be able to provide them an opportunity to explore their perspective on reality.

"Why is this the way it is" The day to day wonderment about how and why things are the way they are that people so frequently lose is an important piece of curiosity. We take things at face value so quickly and so readily - and to take a game, or setting that these players are going to dump years of their life, even if it's just a few hours a week into - and just do some light weight DM prep is not respectful to them.

In the last game I came into as a player, one of the other players hit our first time scan with an incredibly elaborate plan for a crime syndicate - if players can show up with that a GM should be able to create an open and clear world wherein their characters can function, and make it easy enough for them to look at the guts of it that they can take advantage of opportunities in that world in the most creative ways possible.

I want players to do cool shit, and the more detailed a world I can give them, the more elaborate, and the cooler that shit can be.

And maybe they can learn enough to bring some of those planning skills into the real world and get good jobs so we can retire to play D&D in our 40's because fuck it, that's the dream right? Nice carribean island playing D&D 4 hours a day before you go home to your hot wife, bang her then read and play vidya until you pass out from all the nice rum drinks?

No, no, you're making a classic mistake here.

You see, if you put any thought into your setting at all then you're an autist neckbeard who needs to get a life.

If you don't put effort in and just handwave everything then you're a stupid chad dudebro who are jerks that the ladies always go for instead of me.

The only correct action is to never make a setting at all.

Depends on the prevalence of magic and at what point in human history you think druids would be replaced by clerics as the religious gobetweens, and when certain spells are developed.

I mean, you're right, the impacts would likely be pretty massive, but their exact extent is entirely dependent on the setting.

>I have not seen a system that integrates these lower level more mundane magics.
>If someone would like to point me to such a system I would be appreciative
Ryuutama, bro.

I actually don't remember if it has these specific spells, but you'll probably like it a lot anyway.

Who says wizards aren't interested in breeding exciting, tasty new crops?

What's the point of having magic if you can't use it for life's simple pleasures?

How long have you been running games? I could go into a long winded explanation of why your fantasy about medieval corn is stupid but it wouldn't do anything to convince you and I remain confident that what is really going to change your tune is when not one single person in your game even notices the varieties of shrimpy looking corn on sale in your markets.

You want to add flavor to your game that probably won't but just might add a bit of flavor to your world? Fill it with an interesting and vibrant history of believable and compelling peoples doing things that make sense. Again, odds are that the political infighting of a foreign dynasty will affect your game are basically zilch, but it's more relevant than fucking corn.

You are not an autist because you have attention to detail. You're an autist because you lavish attention on things that don't matter and are almost certainly neglecting the details that do matter because of it.

Wizard crops would be more in the owlbear mode. Weird hybrid Things That Should Not Be.

...so like most modern cultivars then.

No, I'm quite certain you're wrong - there are quite a few political factions functioning, several parallel adventuring parties of assorted alignments and ages, many characters of various motivations all interacting above and beyond their direct horizon.

"corn" (Which would only exist in places with north american base cultivars anyway) matters because it impacts the kinds of liquor available, it it a higher water crop than, wheat for example, it is less drought resistant than many other crops and so if the weather cycle in region x is impacted by large scale castings by a BBEG then these villages are going to be forced to change crops, or are going to have to deal with famine, which will lead to questing in said region.

Just because you can't keep a complex simulation going doesn't mean I can't.

There is court intrigue, there are NPC's with grudges, interpersonal relationships, and hidden motivations, spies, and wars.

These things matter because by having the information available to your players you allow them to play a game with more options. If someone wants to adventure - absolutely they can do that. If they want to take over an agricultural corporate empire to fund other adventurers why shouldn't they be able to do that?

OD&D was born from a large scale war simulator which worked okay for large battles but was abysmal for logistics involved in larger wars, in mid level campaigns in which I've participated large combat operations are frequently glossed over simply because the information doesn't exist, and so handwavium comes into play.

I don't want to be that DM.

I do recognize perfect simulation is not possible, and that some handwaving is necessary, but if I can achieve a more complete simulation by considering individual variables, building house rules and accessory spells out of systems that are better prepared for these aspects of the game, maybe I can build a game for my players where they can legitimately do whatever they want.

Why would you settle for flavorless tomatoes, corn with a cob, or dwarf wheat?

>dwarf wheat

Sturdy, bearded and somehow able to survive without sunlight. The backbone of the underdark brewing industry.

Try Norman Borlaug.

Have you tried anything that isn't DnD?

What would you suggest in particular?

What kind of "magical" sources are we talking about? And why can't enchanted items include mundane items for the peasantry?

Like, you don't have to have a dragon or an auroch outside to plow your field, but why not an enchanted plow? Why do wizards always enchant swords?

Speaking of - why do wizards enchant swords at all? Enchanted swords do much more wizard killing than wizard protecting.

To arm your witless pawns against your rival wizards. Why does this even need explaining?

Because wizards have high INT scores, and typically decent WIS scores - they should see the writing on the wall, and know that magical daggers in the hands of an assassin would be far more efficient than a magical sword in the hands of some mercenary.

plus many systems include a cost (Typically a high one) with enchanting items.

Nah bruh. No one wants your combo thesaurus/atlas/codex of a sandbox, when it's as wide as an ocean and as deep as a puddle.

>Obviously some gods are going to be poking at this shit
If you're talking about DnD, Pathfinder, Exalted, and magic that originates from THOSE stuff - the gods you speak of are literally going to be the Illuminati who managed to jew their way into writing all the rules and regulations for everyone else to follow in