Fishing (technology)

The activity of trying to catch fish. Fish are normally caught in the wild, through “capture.” Wild fishing, as it is called, exists in the oceans; in game terms, any hex with a coastal village will produce at least enough fish to support the village. Large stocks of fish occur at places upon continental shelves, accessed by large boats that may travel ocean-wide distances to reach such places. In the time of the world, no over-fishing has occurred.

Fish stocks are affected by water temperature, ocean currents, river estuaries, distance from the coast, presence of coral reefs, ocean rises and seamounts. Oceanic gyres, or upwellings, can transport nutrients to the surface so that rich feeding grounds are created. Most small-boat fishing occurs along rivers and near estuaries, lagoons, intertidal zones on the ocean coast and littoral zones on lakes. Except in hunting whales, most remaining parts of the ocean (the open sea) are impractical to fishing cultures.

Techniques include hand gathering, spearing, netting, angling and trapping. There is an intricate link between various fishing techniques and knowledge about fish. Fishing folklore has produced a great many theories about how fishing is accomplished and stories of what has happened to fishing folk.

Characters with a fishing background should possess the following bonus skills: fishing sage ability; +1 with spear to hit; use of net as a bonus weapon proficiency. Fishing enables the capture of saltwater and freshwater fish, shellfish, fish fins, seaweed and sponges. These are products themselves and are related to a wide number of byproducts and services.

Examples include basket-making for fish traps, spinning and knitting to produce nets, making of hooks and other tools, and finally boatbuilding. Much fish that’s caught is never marketed and is therefore not a part of the economy; it is fish caught solely to maintain the livelihood of the fishing home or village.

The most successful fishing boat known to date is the dogger, a two-masted ketch gaff-rigged on the main-mast, carrying a lug sail on the mizzen, with two jibs on a long bowsprit. Early forms of the boat have only one mast. They typically displaced 13 tons, carried a ton of bait, three tons of salt, half a ton of food and firewood for the crew. Around six tons of fish could be carried besides this. The dogger was about 50 feet long and had a beam of 14 feet, with a draught of five feet. The dogger also carried a small open oat to maintain the lines and row ashore. Doggers were slow and sturdy.

Less advanced fishing is practiced in undecked fishing boats that are paddled or driven by sails that can be operated by a single person. Most boats like this are suitable only for use near and in sight of the shoreline. Sails are animal skins or woven fabrics; the mast is little more than a pole set upright in the boat. Shapes and styles differ by cultures and environment, including canoes, dugout canoes, rafts, reed boats, coracles, kayaks, catamarans and vakas.

Commercial fishermen usually trade through a fishmonger, who buys fish cheap and then sells or transports it to markets. Fishmongers possess a monopoly on this trade, as a guild, in most parts of the world.

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Travel & Movement

As characters move from place to place, they will travel by various means and through a wide variety of environments.  Conditions affecting travel are many, as are the forms of travel.  On foot is most common.  The use of animals can speed movement where roads are available, and hamper movement in areas of dense wilderness.  Boats and ships can make use of oceans, seas, lakes and navigable rivers, but come with their own problems, such as currents and storms.  These things affect flight, as well ~ though this last is the most effective means of covering large distances in the shortest time.

Obstacles

Land travel is most efficient where roads are available.  Paved roads with a hard surface of stone or cement, featuring drainage and a smooth, firm purchase, provide the best ease of movement.  Dirt roads made of loose materials are even and almost as convenient, but they can be muddy and uneven, or worn away to a layer of roots, or ingrown with plants, or suffused with loose stones.  Cart tracks are little more than two ruts, often with a center mound, and often overgrown if the surrounding wilderness is not cut back.  Finally, paths, or trails, wind and follow the landscape, with the worst elements of routes already named.  Even so, all of these are better than pure wilderness.

"Wilderness" is divided into four levels of vegetation.  Steppe, including hard surface deserts lacking in stone, offers little effort to cross, as the ground is firm and dry ~ either because the short vegetation will drain or soak up rainfall, or because rainfall is absent or too scant to affect the surface.

Path & Woodland describes a variety of conditions, where some obstacles challenge movement (stony deserts and tundra, subterranean passages, soft-ground surfaces), or possessing of vegetation that is marked by trees and deep grass, yet with pathways, trails and grassy areas that enable characters to bypass dense areas.  This sort of vegetation includes savannas, veldts, wooded steppelands and open forests, as well as places where creatures have thinned out woodlands by logging.

Closed woodlands lack paths or trails, being strewn with deadfall, underbrush, briars and deep grass.  These dense forests are hard to pass through, particularly with animals, as climbing is necessary to pass though without having to physically cut trails.

Finally, jungles are rainforests so dense with undergrowth that virtually all travel can be thwarted.

Lastly, terrain can be further blocked by landforms, which are described as hills, scattered peaks and dense peaks.  Hills describe all slopes with firm purchase that can be climbed without use of hands, or circumvented if necessary.  Scattered peaks are loose mountainous areas featuring areas of gravel, scree or low ridges, which can be crossed only by scrambling (using hands) or through easy gaps that can nevertheless take hours off a day's journey to locate and pass through.  Dense peaks describe mountain ranges that must be physically climbed ~ which usually includes passes that, although lower in altitude, are little better regarding access.  Dense peaks often feature areas of permanent snow.

Walking

The table below gives the total number of hours that may be travelled in a 10-hour period (a typical day's effort).  To use the table, the characters should calculate their normal movement rate according to encumbrance.  This gives the number of action points (AP) that can be applied to movement.  This then gives the base distance travelled, as shown:

The base distance is then adjusted according to the columns under "fewer miles travelled each day due to conditions."  If a paved or dirt road, or cart track, is followed, then the columns under vegetation should be ignored.  If no road exists, then use the vegetation columns.  Elevation change for hills, scattered peaks or dense peaks is then used in conjunction with other penalties.

For example, Party A, walking with 4 action points and a base distance per day of 25 miles, loses 3 of those miles if they are walking on a dirt road, and 4 more miles if moving through a hilly area.  They would not lose any distance if the road passed through a forest.  Party A would travel 17 miles per day.

Party B, however, walking with the same action points and moving through a closed woodland, would minus 14 miles from their progress.  If they, too, were moving through a hilly area, they would also minus another 4 miles from that progress.  Party B would travel 7 miles per day.

It can be seen that there are several possibilities on the table that would produce a negative result.  For example, Party C is walking with 2 action points through a jungle, which removes 13 miles from their base 14-mile progress per day.  If Party C is also moving through hills, the table indicates that they lose another 4 from that number, resulting in a movement of -3 overall.  How is this possible?

Negative results should be viewed as fractions of a mile, indicating that the terrain is so onerous that it must be physically cut through with machetes and loads dragged over and through endless obstacles.  The minus number should be treated as a fraction's denominator, with a "1" as the numerator.  Thus, a movement of -3 is treated as one third of a mile per day.  For an historical example, I suggest this video.

This is a placeholder for further content regarding animals, water craft, movement under water and flight.

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