Is it fair to assign low level adventurers to tasks like "collect two large burlap sacks full of crickets"?

Imagine the satisfying crunch when you whomp someone with a giant sack of live crickets. They stare on in eldrich horror as the chirping escalates and you produce a second bag.

What a waste of perfectly good crickets.

>catch two crickets
>put them in a large box with plenty of food
>come back in a few weeks and you've got thousands of them

You could always give intensives for side jobs, not outrightly so, but something like, one of the players helps out a local guard with keeping the peace, and when the player's character returns, he has some weird trinket he found on some drunkard the guards were dealing with (plot hook), or one of your players goes and helps harvest some old farmer's crops after his field hand couldn't make it to work because he broke his leg, and when the character returns a passerby told them a rumor about some bad business going down in a nearby city. Plot hooks or extra rewards, or experiences and such which the players may randomly stumble upon when they take side quests

The true reward to the two bags of crickets quest is information.
Now you know that the town's seamstress put in a large order for crickets.

>pc campaign breaks down into an infinite cricket/bag of holding get rich quick scheme

Crickets do need to breathe, right?

so you stick some moss or some shit in there idk

>seamstress orders large sacks of crickets
>pastor orders a barrel of fresh goat blood
>inn asks for three coffins
>bakery has two millstones
>lumberer is stocking up on spears

What are some other good suspicious things I can throw into what is otherwise a perfectly friendly and kind town?

I'm not sure they do. Or at least not they way we do. I've found them living buried in the dirt, under rocks, etc. Places where there's little access to air.

I would assume that as long as the box wasn't completely sealed, they'd be able to find enough air to satisfy whatever breathing they do.

The extradimensional spaces in bags of holding are completely sealed, though, from what I understand.

>The shipwrights want some sacks of assorted cuts of meats delivered to the baker
>Local carpenter has pieces of lumber in the back of his work shop that are just soaked in blood, seems he's been trying to clean it off
>Local guard captain has been seen at night walking around the outside of the walls with a lantern

it might be fair, but is it fun? and what would keep your players coming back to the table about collecting crickets? Now traveling into a goblin infested lair to collect a rare type of cricket for a witch's brew is more entertaining.

Are they giant crickets?

>The town is out of grain but the baker always has bread
>The blacksmith's forge has been lit day & night, sounds of metal on metal ringing can be heard too
>The kennel master keeps loosing dogs, one at a time almost every month
>The drunkard isn't from around here, but carries a bow, & raves about spiders
>The mayor wears a tin mask in the shape of a god of judgement at all times
>The candlestickmaker is asking anyone if they can sell him chickens, he has collected 20 by now, but no one has seem them in his yard

leave the bag open, it's not science.

Sounds accurate.

The blacksmith one would probably be normal if there's a huge job on.

A blacksmith whose forge can't/won't go out at night might be worth looking into.

>They stare on in eldrich horror
Pardon?

>Is it fair to assign low level adventurers to tasks like "collect two large burlap sacks full of crickets"?

No.
It's demeaning, disrespectful, and a waste of their unique talents. Posting stupid, fake, or meandering tasks on the bounty board is punishable by a fine, time in the stocks, or even a public whipping if it's entitled and stupid enough.

the fine is two boxes of frogs

This seems like exactly the kind of retarded thing a Wizard would ask for so yes, potential hook

Sounds like the most efficient way to acquire two large burlap sacks full of crickets is to devise some sort of large-scale cricket farm.
I mean, it would be a relatively slow way to get crickets, at least at first, but ultimately it's a more realistic goal than just go catching crickets every evening until we don't hear chirping at night.
Also works for snakes, if you were wondering. At least until they stop paying a bounty on them, at which point you may as well just let them go.

This give your players little hooks so they can get interested on time off.
>I want to do menial labour
>You find a chunk of weird metal

>I want to get hammered
>You meet a retired person of interest (mage, swordsman, robin hood style thief, etc.) and have a riveting conversation for a pair of drunks, he might be useful later

>I want to buy six whores
>One of the whores mentions that she is frequently hired by the local count for his personal use

>I want to help the homeless
>While helping the homeless you discover that one of them was a former general of the army, a military genius who was stripped of his lands and titles by the jealous emperor

The outcome could be meaningful (eg. blackmail info, a potential ally, or a material used in making magic/anti-magic weapons) or could simply be some interesting background information on the setting or individual characters (eg. huh the count happens to like whores, the emperor is a paranoid asshole, or this metal is too soft to be used for weapons but heats up quickly when repeatedly bent). Either way it should get your players interested in downtime instead of just saying "fuck it I will just always do what gets me money or just say "I drink" because I don't care."

The barkeep is actually a bear

fa-ir? what is this word, I don't understand.

tasks for players should be fun or engaging in some way, at least thats how i deal with it. if you really want to have them do fetch quests, do shit to them while they are out doing them, getting robbed by idiots who think they are collecting high priced alchemy ingredients or let guards of the local mental sanatorium appear bcs someone ticked them off, thinking your players going mental collecting a shitload of crickets.

well something along those lines anyway, better do it so that noone will believe them in town when they come back.

fair? yes.
Interesting? no.

I am interested in this spooky little village.
Where the seamstress might actually be a secret spider, where the inn is host to undead, where the bakers always have bread even if it's suspicious, and most importantly, where they treat the party members kindly and try to keep all their various spooky secrets on the down low.

Your party of paranoid murderhobos might still itch for an excuse to exterminatus the lot of them, though, if they mistake your spooky flavoring for plot hooks.

technically, it IS a pile of plot hooks, but all of them result in "they're secretly a spider/zombie/werewolf, and also they make really good cobbler".

You know, unless the players are the type to out and out kill a pile of spiders that is offering them some cobbler.