Harvest Megaverse

[Tor]

(thread title is a play on the 'Harvest Moon' game series)

I've been wondering, with most game lines and adventures set around things like adventuring, solving mysteries, engaging in combat, rescuing people, etc...

Does anyone, in whatever setting, focus a game on something a little more placid, like farming? Either growing plants or tending livestock?

I could see this coming up more often in PF or Rifts since in spite of having magic and armies, there isn't the mass-civilized farming like we'd see in HU/Nightbane or the 'our alien organo-tech grows it' shrug-away like Wormwood or Splicers.

It also seems like it would come up in Systems Failure or Dead Reign too.

Farmers and the like seem to get relegated to NPC supportive roles. The people you RP with or save, but rarely do you just hang out on a farm and do farm stuff, right?

If a game did focus on that, it seems like a lot more details and mechanics would need to get fleshed out, but it'd be pretty interesting. This (and other stuff like mining, gathering lumber, etc) is where raw materials come from and a major basis of economy. It's all well and good if you're playing a Merc or a TW/Operator repair-man, but nobody's going to pay these guys stuff if they're not first getting their wealth from more basic means.

Aside from farming, does anyone else have any other ideas for interesting kinds of gameplay or campaigns that rarely come up? Running a hospital also comes to mind (think of all the popular doctor shows, even supernatural ones like Being Human) or running a funeral home (6 feet under) or dealing drugs (breaking bad).

[Wooly]

I think it would be neat to run a game with a Millennium Trees as home base. Lots of work pruning and taking care of a Tree the size of a sky scrapper. MDC leaf poncho ftw!

[Tor]

Pretty sure those things explode and hurt you if you prune it. It self-prunes whenever it wants to give stuff to people.

Might work with the Wisdom Trees that Biomancers have to deal with though. or Nature Spirits from Spirit West.

The Gardener OCC in the Rifter for Splicers could also be dedicated 100% to food.

[The Dark Elf]

(thread title is a play on the 'Harvest Moon' game series)

I've been wondering, with most game lines and adventures set around things like adventuring, solving mysteries, engaging in combat, rescuing people, etc...

Does anyone, in whatever setting, focus a game on something a little more placid, like farming? Either growing plants or tending livestock?

Nope. Sounds very boring.

[CyCo]

Not quite the same, but once, many many moons ago, I ran a D&D Basic campaign one on one, and they ended up shipwrecked on the Isle of Dread. They had lost most of their gear, and were still fairly low level (think maybe 3rd to 5th maybe), so they were very careful about not being seen or attracting attention to much. Despite the bare bone system, I worked out a reasonably neat system for fishing, depending on the level of success, meant how many days worth of food they caught. It worked well enough that for a while, we were both content to simply run the game where he holed up in a cave, made some 'light' furniture, did some fishing and foraged for roots & berries (basically used the same system). I'd occasionally throw some 'baddies' his way to keep things interesting. One day he decided he was over this, and decided to follow up some rumors he'd heard (had him meet up with some furry humanoids in a tree village, but not Ewoks. He'd trade with them for other basics in exchange for fish). So we simply ditched the camp and he went exploring again. But I think that went on for several months of game time, and probably about 6 gaming sessions, before he wanted to explore.

[sHaka]

I think a mundane setting is a great starting point for a campaign, but would be rather dull if it never went anywhere exciting - we want to escape reality for a bit don't we?

e.g.
The party being white collar cube neighbours working for a giant corporation performing monotonous data entry work, notice that other employees that go for their 1-2-1 meetings with their line-manager (who no one has seen, only refered to by name) come back....different... or not at all....

Good way to kick off BTS2 or Nightbane