Is it really not easy being green? - Herbalism Minisystem for RPG Blog Carnival
I always wanted to make minisystem for herbalism for my games but it was never fun to play. I generally started from the procedure but it is not the most exciting element of being plant nerd. This time I thought of the finish - products - first. These are the examples of the things you can do with this herbalism mechanic.
Pipe Smoking Herbs - Blue Green Pink Teal - thick herbal paste, can be smoked in a pipe to give pleasant feeling and mild stimulation. When thrown into campfire it repels most bugs.
Smoking Ball - Brown Teal Teal - fist-sized ball of tied herbs, it produces a lot of smoke when burned. Repels all bugs.
Healing Incense - Red Teal Yellow - weirdly smelling incense, it eases pain and generally helps with recovery.
Aromatic Incense - Blue Teal Yellow - nicely smelling incense, usually it calms and brings better mood.
Perfume Oil - Blue Blue Violet - nicely smelling oil, a few drops is enough for a few hours.
Itchy Oil - Brown Violet White - reddish oil, used on someone's skin, eyes or clothes it causes itching, rash and irritation. Prolonged exposure can cause wounds, and in case of eyes even blindness.
Medicinal Oil - Orange Pink Red Violet - oil with dark particles, helps with general sickness symptoms - nausea, fever and pain. It doesn't heal specific illnesses unfortunately.
Firey Paste - Brown Green Teal Violet - thick brown paste, when exposed to fire or big heat it burns for long time.
Nutritional Paste - Green Violet Violet - thick green paste, it makes food more nutritious. Can be eaten as is, can be boiled in water to make soup or thick gruel. Tastes badly.
Soothing Cream - Green Red Yellow - yellowish soft paste, it helps with skin issues like acne, rash, itching and speeds up regeneration of shallow wounds.
Enhancing Drug - Pink White Yellow - greenish powder, it stimulates body to be faster and stronger, and mind to be quicker and sharper. After an hour the effect wanes and person becomes very tired and sleepy. Overuse leads to addiction, deteriorating health and cardiovascular issues.
Calming Powder - Blue Yellow - greyish powder, it calms the body and mind, makes it easier to sleep and relax, effect starts half hour to an hour after ingestion and lasts for up to four hours.
Spice Mix - Blue Blue White - yellow-to-red-to-brown powder with strong spicy smell. It makes dishes and beverages spicy and salty, enhances some tastes and supresses others. Can be used instead of salt. Creates warm feeling, helps dealing with cold.
Poisoning Powder - Brown Orange - greyish or greenish powder, have very mild bitter smell and taste, one dose makes person slightly sick as if with regular infection, multiple doses worsen person's state up until death. Leaves blue marks on a body of strongly poisoned/dead person.
And when you know what your character can achieve and you're hooked then we can decide on playing the gathering game. Each product has some colours mentioned - though I think I'd change the names to gems or something else. At the moment I am set on regular deck of cards, each colour meaning another type of biome. In the end I think I'd go with Tarot deck and make Major Arcana into special herbs - some maybe magical to use in alchemy, others to create significant poisons, specific medicines, special uses or whatever else. Here is the ready part, the ingredients of valleys and meadows.
Hearts - meadows, valleys, in between crop fields - mostly tall grasses, flowers and weeds
2 Bitter Glum - Teal Violet Red - Reddish flower with round petals and leaves. It is said to be bitter and is treated like weed.
3 Nutroot - Teal Green Pink - Small brown plant with large brown root. Treated as food for hermits and during famines.
4 Red Sonchus - Teal Teal Blue - Red flower that grows white fluff after pollination. Well known weed.
5 Wild Borsh - Teal White White - Tall green plant with long leaves. Dangerous weed, said to be burning the skin in the summer.
6 Salpine - Violet White Blue - Yellow parasitic outgrowth on tall grasses. Considered toxic and bad luck, sometimes spreads to cereal plants.
7 Spidevold - Violet White Blue - Short wide grass, blossoms with sticky white webs under leaves. Smells bad and is said to spawn spiders.
8 Soappon - Violet Yellow Red - Long weed with huge, heavy yellow flowers. Sometimes used as poor people soap.
9 White Roak - Violet Orange Blue - Tall grass with leaves white on the inside. Pretty but considered useless.
10 Pendolum - Green Pink Red - Pink flower that sways a lot in the wind. It's called "fools flower" and "jester's plant".
J Alpeir - Green Brown Yellow - Short woody stick that breaks when stepped on. Children sometimes cover scratches with white sap.
Q Block Weed - Green Pink Blue - Regular grass that tends to produce think blocky roots. Farmers tend to add it to compost.
K Ashbloom - Blue Orange Yellow - Tall blue flower that gets white and grey after pollination. Used as a measurement of seasons.
A Sweethorn - Pink Blue Yellow - Thin tall plant that blossoms with horn-shaped flower. Sometimes seen as indicator of fertile soil.
Diamonds are for mountains, barrens and rocky places, clubs for forests and other dense and dark growth and spears for wetlands, swamps and lakesides.
Each herb has it's own Essences, by mixing proper ones - if you have the recipe - you create a dose of given product. After making the other Essences are lost. As for the procedure for gathering I think it is dependent on the system and the power of products. If effects are strong then gathering should be slow but if this system is to be used to give more cosmetic rewards I think gathering should be rather quick and plentiful. I cannot force one way of doing it but I imagined this - spending one hour on herb gathering gives you a die roll. Let's say d6 - on a 1 you fail and no herbs found are actually usable, 2-5 give you one type and 6 gives you two - then pick a card for each herb found and note what it is. I think one could have herb-cards ready as a handout so the player has their ingredients in physical form.
This will be my contribution for this month's RPG Blog Carnival hosted on https://rpgwandering.wordpress.com/2024/05/01/rpg-carnival-for-may-its-not-easy-being-green/