TalenLee

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I'm Talen! I make videos and articles and games and graphic designs and guides and messes and encouragement. Chances are you can find anything I do on my blog. I like it when you comment on my things, so please do!


barrowofdirt
@barrowofdirt asked:

When world building, how much do you think about food?

Are there omelets, for example? Because that would imply edible eggs which are probably from animals that can be farmed if chickens don't exist...

Cheeses? How many different kinds and stuff? Are there multiple milk animals? Cows, goats, sheep? Are there any others?

Which grains are the biggest staples in each area? Is it like our world where in Europe it was mostly wheat, barley and stuff, but in Asia a lot of rice? Are there different ones which don't exist here?

I think about food all the time but also I have a huge advantage in that I'm building typically a world that just gets to steal a ton of stuff from our real world and then just add on. Like, I don't have a big bold sweep of 'there's no cows in this world,' even though the cow as it exists in our world is a relatively modern invention, same as like bananas and broccoli.

The main thing I do when thinking about food is consider materiality of culture. So, for example, orcs, because they have high endurance and stamina and a personal space bubble measured in half-kilometers, they tend to have lots of SPACE but not a lot of CULTIVATED LAND. They don't tend to farm crops or bread. They have like, wild rice and potato gardens, but that's on the scale of one person who doesn't mind doing a methodical personal garden. They're more likely to hunt for large scale protein in small groups. When they do get access to grains, it's super common for them to not turn them into bread (why bother) and instead turn them into booze (because that takes longer and can be useful for longer without spoiling).

There's also countries which just have the means to produce a lot and export it. Elven communities use druidic magic to make small areas yield large amounts but also then only really use it within the community; surplus is waste, so they just have a commons maintained by druids but don't gather more than they need because that's time that could be spent fucking around having fun. The idea of full capital with donations and needy, that's more of a different cultural thing.

The other thing is, I have other species in the world. Dinosaurs are running around. CHicken is one thing, bison is another thing, both are edible meats we consume in the real world, now what if they were the same thing mashed together and you needed a hunting party to safely get one?


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