1000 calories a day doing anything other than relaxation is starvation rations. You cannot march, let alone fight on 1k calories. Maintenance for your average person working a desk job is around 2k.
A house rule I’ve implemented in my games is eating more extravagant or well-made meals will not only keep the characters fed, but also give them a handful of temporary hp to represent the nutritional and morale boost of fine dining. My party quickly started looking forward to spending the night at their aristocratic patron’s estate because the exquisite food gave them a nice boost in bonus hp. While this hasn’t come up yet, I would also make spices capable of turning even bland trail rations into a culinary delight, allowing for the temp ho boost as well. Leaving a small bag of exotic spices in a treasure hoard would cause the party to decide if they want to sell the valuable spices or keep a little for themselves.
I genuinely love this. Temp HP for players feels like a good boon, and can literally be a life or death difference in some cases, but the way you made it such a simple fix and it changed the way your players interact. LOVE it.
I like to look to the people in the real world who would have been the equivalent of adventurers - the voyageurs and traders of the American and Canadian north. Their trail rations included pemmican made of dried meat, suet, and berries (very calorie-dense), hardtack, dried split peas, and dried corn, often cooked into a stew called rubaboo. In my world, people regularly dry foodstuffs for shipping, so adventurers often carry a mix of pemmican, dried veggies. The individual parts can be eaten plain or soaked in a little water if there's no time to cook. If they can hunt or forage edibles like fruit or mushrooms, Prestidigitation (the all-around most useful camping spell) can assist in dehydrating them for additions to the rations.
Hey learned something new! That sounds...delicious? LOL. I definitely wonder how the old adventurers survived their trips back in the day. Complete beasts.
I really like that you used footage from Townsends channel, from Food that time Forgot video. Really like your animation, what editor are you using? And also wishing you luck! You will be in a top dnd youtubers one day, I guarantee you that 😊
I'd be interested to see what a fantasy ration pack would look like that would give them that 3000-5000 cal that they need would look like and still be close to the same weight as the dnd item
I have an answer to all the things that are problematic with D&D. I mean may as well ask how the berries from the goodberry spell will fill you up. The answer is magic... :P
nothing would be dense enough fat is the most calorie dense, but that's still not enough to be compacted in 450g, let alone the need for various vitamins, including a lot omre vitamin k than most people need due to all the blood clotting, some way to embue food with vitamin D for underground adventuring without bones going brittle. given the pack costs a few gold each just say it's magic white powder that becomes meals in water, like full on bipity bopity boo magic.
Ive been diving into the concept of fantasy rations for a little over 2 years now. Its something i wanted to offer as a renfair vendor but laws around jerky and cheese are complicated. Fandabi Dozi has a great recipe for a bannock bread thats super calorie dense, Pemmican was a regular ration in the 1800's, in east Asia there were what i think were sesame/date snack balls, and just before this i came across a video on Churchkhela which can keep for up to a year without refrigeration. Some of the fantasy cookbooks have interesting takes on what rations could look like as well from candied bacon to "iron rations" which is basically savory granola. If i had a point, i think it would be to look at cultures far away from one's own and see what rations throughout history were there. Especially since not all shelf stable food is stable in all climates (mostly the midwest humidity ruins everything)
I really like this bit about explaning everyday things like food or sleep. It is often overlook in most stories how Hunger and Tiredness affecting the Character. It is a gold of posibilities where you can create scenario and stakes for the character.
@@TheFantasyForge sometimes in games, realism part kinda makes the game mechanic a bit annoying. But with stories or roleplaying, those realism really shine throughs and provide us with many opportunity for story telling.
1) 2:25 cutest fantasy murder puma 2) I remember playing with someone who complained the rations weren't enough for a meal. My calorie counting-obsessed ass almost screamed "Do you have ANY IDEA how many calories are IN A SINGLEEE ALMOOOOND?"
Own the DnD Cookbook "Heroes Feast" and they give you a recipe for iron rations, which is what you describe subbing the hard tack with crackers, dried fruits with fresh ones and also has hard cheeses in the mix. Clearly it's more made to be palatable than to function as actual rations.
I love daily-life content. And it's useful because you can hook adventure details onto it. Unless you're in a giant city, the kinds of foods available reflect the local economy. Small towns won't have hard tack, they keep grain and grind it as they need it. Maybe you hear a magical critter crunching inside the hard tack bag and it shares a clue when found. (Note: Eating hard tack without softening it was only a last resort.) And dried grains and legumes are a bit heavier but waaayyy more common. So between those and wanting to cook your hard tack and dried meat (cooking it was normal, too) losing the party's cooking pot really changes your quality of life. Finally, other cultures survival foods are fun, too. tsampa from Tibet seems like a great one. Native Americans and early settlers traveled with "parched corn". I've seen pictures of Japanese soldiers with cloth tubes of rice balls over their shoulders. Oh, and hard cheese is another good option that wasn't mentioned. And olive oil can be both food and lamp fuel.
The number for total calories in dnd rations seems low. Considering you have 2 pounds to fill. From my Google searches I found the following numbers Hardtack 87 calories per ounce Jerky 116 calories per ounce Mixed Nuts 172 calories per ounce Dried Fruit 85 calories per ounce (I used Raisins here as it seemed like a good middle ground) If we take the lowest number here, dried fruit at 85 per ounce, multiply it by 32 ounces, 16 ounces per pound, we get: 2,720 calories per ration. If we instead assume an even mix by taking the average calories per ounce of all these options we have an average 115 calories per ounce. Which is, for 2 pounds: 3,680 calories. Unless my numbers are 3x too high I don't see how you can get 1k calories. It is worth noting in 3.5e and pathfinder 1e rations were 1 pound where you could expect just 1840 calories. You'd be able to keep going with that, especially if you had fat to lose (A pound of fat is about 3500 calories). But you supplement your rations with foraging, and you'll do much better. Otherwise over the long term those rations wouldn't likely be enough. So when you get to town a party might be feeling quite hungry. Adventurers who might be going out for extended periods of time may be eating a lot while they are in town. To build back up from their adventure and gains some extra weight before the next one.
There are so many types of food ration, you just have to look into indigenous/nomadic cultures. Native Americans: pemican Europeans: jerky, hardtack, flour, dry soup bases (reduced beefstock), medieval pies (dough was just a vessel), dry jams, lard, tallow, salted butter Mongols: jerky, milk powder Do not forget: most of them still foraged and hunted their food, edible mushrooms, mosses, ferns (fiddleback), greens, tubers, roots, nuts, meat, eggs, honey Most important thing are the pots and pans actually. It allows you to cook food to be more palatable, filling.
Historically, hard tack was most often broken up and even ground into small bits and then added to stews (meaning a hot liquid, and not just room temp water). This was to 'thicken' the soup or stew so that one got all the juices from cooking one's meal. Hard Tack was meant to be kept from the wet for long storage life. It was often packaged in waxed paper, or some other water-resistant covering. Substituting Jerky for Pemmican is dumb. Jerky is just dried meat. Pemmican is made with minced meat and fat, and usually berries of some sort. When made correctly, it resembles a brownie in thickness and shape. Usually about an inch thick and 3x4 inches across. The fat in pemmican is important, since your body needs it, and it is a good source of calories and energy when digested. Pemmican is GREAT for soups and stews, and you add your crushed hard tack to such stews to 'thicken' it to make consumption easier and soak up the 'juices' from cooking the soup or stew. Pemmican is also 'drop dead' easy to make, store, and carry. Another thing I have to argue with you about is that you made NO provision for 'found' items. An experienced adventurer would find berries, nuts, watercress, wild grains, wild tubers, mushrooms, etc while traveling. These would be added to that 'two pounds' of rations per day. Also, finding wild onions, wild potatoes or yams, or other roots, berries, and nuts, would tend to make each meal different from the last one consumed, and add variety as well as extra calories to one's diet. From my own experiences I remember as a youngster, my dad pointing out to my brother and I, which shrooms were edible, what wild tubers were edible, and where to find them, as well as berries and nuts. Edibles out in the wild are varied by where you live and season of year. Like: Deer Hunting Season, where Cat Tails are abundant. Just break off the puffy-looking 'sausages' and take 'em with you. These can be stripped from their stalks easily with a knife and added to a stew and taste a bit like potatoes. They have a high starch content and are 'safe' to eat. However, you do want to get them before they 'puff out' in their seeding stage like dandelions. Speaking of which, Collard Greens are just the leaves of a plant resembling dandelions. Dandelion leaves can be gathered, crushed in a mortar with a pestle, and used to cover wounds before bandaging. This works. I have the scar on my right kneecap to prove it. So, in conclusion, your depiction of what 2 lbs of food would do for an adventurer or commoner, isn't exactly right. They WOULD add to such fare with whatever they could glean as they traveled, adding calories and flavors to their meals, as well as medicinal properties, like the natural immunity boosting of things like onions and garlic. This is why when I adventure in D&D games, I always have my character buy dried onions, dried garlic, and keep a close watch out for edible plants and animals en route. The bunny over there that I just shot with my bow and arrow, will make a great addition to the pot tonight, and if I have a sealable jar, some of the offal (guts) will make great fishing bait! I have driven some DMs to drink by doing this. But, my characters always have good food to eat, and are NOT limited to just the dried 'iron rations', even though the iron rations are the base of any soup or stew I end up preparing at day's end. There is a good reason for the 'Survival' skill in D&D. USE IT!
The way I have handled it is that they consume the ration and the party survival rolls supplement with fresh game, berries, fruit, roots, etc... And you would be talking in the 5-7+k calories for your melee types and 4-5k for your casters complaining how heavy their spell book is while walking all day.
You can also tell your fellow players a lot about your character by describing what they add to their rations and/or how they eat them that stands out. As two simple examples, I've had two characters that really focused on this part of RP. One was so tortuously practical about saving money for his needs that he'd take the absolute cheapest stuff he could find, usually via scavenged trash in the city market, and force it down before curing himself of the sickness he just caused himself. Another character, a plasmoid science experiment, is a glutton, plain and simple. If there's a chance to gather rations, he does so and eats some while he gathers. When he sees someone feeling down, his intinct is to offer them food because he's so delighted by it he can't imagine being upset on a full stomach. In both cases, I quickly cemented some my characters in the minds of everyone else at the table.
You might also factor in size and build and that oh-so-mysterious metabolism variable. For example, I'm 5'7" and I weigh around 120, as I have all my adult life, no matter what I eat or how much. I don't exercise, but I'm still active and energetic, and in general I maintain a low-calorie diet, mostly high protein stuff plus fiber, like eggs, peanut butter, cereal, bread, dairy, and a bit of other stuff here and there. I doubt I hit that 2000 mark very often, and even tho I'm not exactly fit, I am relatively healthy. But even so, if I were a traveling adventurer, I know I would be eating more, just not a lot more. Also, we have caffeine and sugar. You could throw some of that in those rations. They do in the military.
Thank god for this video. Made a barbarian whos rage is built on food because each use burns calories. Going to be fun when its revealed he needs the equivalent of 3 rations for 1 day
The US military designed MREs to be eaten at a rate of three per day (total of roughly 3600 calories) and this is expected to sustain a servicemember in active operations doing military things all day. This is a result of over a century of research into military nutrition, so it's probably a good baseline, keeping in mind that today's American soldiers are a lot beefier (so have a higher BMR) that knights of old. The Romans had daily rations of white flour (approx. 3500 calories/kg) and olive oil (approx. 8400 calories/kg), so if you're targeting 2lbs you can use some proportion of these as your main calorie source (IIRC the Legionaires were supposed to cook it themselves, mostly as flatbread or some kind of porridge) maybe in the form of bread, and fill the rest with protein and sugar. A 1kg loaf of bread does sound about right in terms of raw energy, but unless it's fresh that's gonna be a chore to eat if you have literally nothing to go with it. That cooking bit bears mentioning, because unless you're force marching literally all day, it's much easier and a lot more pleasant to cook something. I have a k. und k. regulation military cookbook on my shelf and the mainstays it relies on include a lot of things like soups and stews cooked in a cauldron, which makes meat (even dried meat) go a lot further and adds some flavour, and makes even normally inedible things edible. If you don't want to literally just eat trail mix, your rations could include dried vegetables, legumes and such that you can make into a soup, and perhaps thicken it with flour or hardtack or make dumplings. Also when foraging it's a lot easier to find things that can be thrown in a soup and eaten than things that are immediately edible (e.g. mushrooms).
Players DO NOT TRACK RATIONS!, I say as long as they have rations (5Gold) then they're good forever, I assume they're hunting/fishing, or foraging/scavenging and unless they're stuck inside a cave tunnel some how then I might have them roll to see how many days of food/water they got until death.
I know lots of games that track stuff like ammunition and rations. It just depends how deep into the "survival" your players want to go. I would LOVE this if I was a player, I love the gritty realism. Otherwise what's the point of the survival skills...
1000 calories a day doing anything other than relaxation is starvation rations. You cannot march, let alone fight on 1k calories. Maintenance for your average person working a desk job is around 2k.
A house rule I’ve implemented in my games is eating more extravagant or well-made meals will not only keep the characters fed, but also give them a handful of temporary hp to represent the nutritional and morale boost of fine dining. My party quickly started looking forward to spending the night at their aristocratic patron’s estate because the exquisite food gave them a nice boost in bonus hp.
While this hasn’t come up yet, I would also make spices capable of turning even bland trail rations into a culinary delight, allowing for the temp ho boost as well. Leaving a small bag of exotic spices in a treasure hoard would cause the party to decide if they want to sell the valuable spices or keep a little for themselves.
I genuinely love this. Temp HP for players feels like a good boon, and can literally be a life or death difference in some cases, but the way you made it such a simple fix and it changed the way your players interact. LOVE it.
I like to look to the people in the real world who would have been the equivalent of adventurers - the voyageurs and traders of the American and Canadian north. Their trail rations included pemmican made of dried meat, suet, and berries (very calorie-dense), hardtack, dried split peas, and dried corn, often cooked into a stew called rubaboo. In my world, people regularly dry foodstuffs for shipping, so adventurers often carry a mix of pemmican, dried veggies. The individual parts can be eaten plain or soaked in a little water if there's no time to cook. If they can hunt or forage edibles like fruit or mushrooms, Prestidigitation (the all-around most useful camping spell) can assist in dehydrating them for additions to the rations.
Hey learned something new! That sounds...delicious? LOL. I definitely wonder how the old adventurers survived their trips back in the day. Complete beasts.
@@TheFantasyForge Had a big long comment about pemmican, but for some reason it didn't post. Long story short, what the poster above said...
@@anonymouse2675 Oh no! The worst lol. I appreciate the comment anyways haha
This sounds like a great use for Prestidigitation!
@@phoenix.recovery the real reason magic exists
I really like that you used footage from Townsends channel, from Food that time Forgot video. Really like your animation, what editor are you using? And also wishing you luck! You will be in a top dnd youtubers one day, I guarantee you that 😊
Adobe premiere, and wow what an eye! Haha. Thank you for the love, that made my night.
I'd be interested to see what a fantasy ration pack would look like that would give them that 3000-5000 cal that they need would look like and still be close to the same weight as the dnd item
It's just steaks and workout shakes. And intermittent fasting
I have an answer to all the things that are problematic with D&D. I mean may as well ask how the berries from the goodberry spell will fill you up. The answer is magic... :P
@@AngelusNielson LOL fair point!
The real world version was pemmican. 1 pound is right around 4,000 calories. Many Native American tribes lived off it for months at a time...
nothing would be dense enough fat is the most calorie dense, but that's still not enough to be compacted in 450g, let alone the need for various vitamins, including a lot omre vitamin k than most people need due to all the blood clotting, some way to embue food with vitamin D for underground adventuring without bones going brittle.
given the pack costs a few gold each just say it's magic white powder that becomes meals in water, like full on bipity bopity boo magic.
Ive been diving into the concept of fantasy rations for a little over 2 years now. Its something i wanted to offer as a renfair vendor but laws around jerky and cheese are complicated.
Fandabi Dozi has a great recipe for a bannock bread thats super calorie dense, Pemmican was a regular ration in the 1800's, in east Asia there were what i think were sesame/date snack balls, and just before this i came across a video on Churchkhela which can keep for up to a year without refrigeration.
Some of the fantasy cookbooks have interesting takes on what rations could look like as well from candied bacon to "iron rations" which is basically savory granola.
If i had a point, i think it would be to look at cultures far away from one's own and see what rations throughout history were there. Especially since not all shelf stable food is stable in all climates (mostly the midwest humidity ruins everything)
Someone else brought up Pemmican and that's the first time I heard of it. You're right, it definitely pays to look at other cultures, thanks for that!
I really like this bit about explaning everyday things like food or sleep.
It is often overlook in most stories how Hunger and Tiredness affecting the Character.
It is a gold of posibilities where you can create scenario and stakes for the character.
I love the gritty realism in games haha. I've never played one of my own games like this, but I'd love that sort of attention to detail
@@TheFantasyForge sometimes in games, realism part kinda makes the game mechanic a bit annoying.
But with stories or roleplaying, those realism really shine throughs and provide us with many opportunity for story telling.
@@RickyFSeiei definitely, storytelling first! Wouldn't want that just to add it haha. I just love the idea of roleplaying the starving and exhaustion
1) 2:25 cutest fantasy murder puma
2) I remember playing with someone who complained the rations weren't enough for a meal. My calorie counting-obsessed ass almost screamed "Do you have ANY IDEA how many calories are IN A SINGLEEE ALMOOOOND?"
LMAO I loved this comment. Thanks for the love. I used to eat so many almonds until I realized how many calories nuts have. Cashews betrayed me.
Own the DnD Cookbook "Heroes Feast" and they give you a recipe for iron rations, which is what you describe subbing the hard tack with crackers, dried fruits with fresh ones and also has hard cheeses in the mix. Clearly it's more made to be palatable than to function as actual rations.
LOL yeah probably more like a charcuterie
Hard tack was often used to thicken a soup as well.
I had no idea! That sounds...filling? 😅🤣
I love daily-life content. And it's useful because you can hook adventure details onto it. Unless you're in a giant city, the kinds of foods available reflect the local economy. Small towns won't have hard tack, they keep grain and grind it as they need it. Maybe you hear a magical critter crunching inside the hard tack bag and it shares a clue when found. (Note: Eating hard tack without softening it was only a last resort.) And dried grains and legumes are a bit heavier but waaayyy more common. So between those and wanting to cook your hard tack and dried meat (cooking it was normal, too) losing the party's cooking pot really changes your quality of life. Finally, other cultures survival foods are fun, too. tsampa from Tibet seems like a great one. Native Americans and early settlers traveled with "parched corn". I've seen pictures of Japanese soldiers with cloth tubes of rice balls over their shoulders. Oh, and hard cheese is another good option that wasn't mentioned. And olive oil can be both food and lamp fuel.
Love this! Super informative, I'll have to make a part 2 haha.
Glad you enjoy the content! Always love doing the random deep dives
The number for total calories in dnd rations seems low. Considering you have 2 pounds to fill.
From my Google searches I found the following numbers
Hardtack 87 calories per ounce
Jerky 116 calories per ounce
Mixed Nuts 172 calories per ounce
Dried Fruit 85 calories per ounce (I used Raisins here as it seemed like a good middle ground)
If we take the lowest number here, dried fruit at 85 per ounce, multiply it by 32 ounces, 16 ounces per pound, we get: 2,720 calories per ration.
If we instead assume an even mix by taking the average calories per ounce of all these options we have an average 115 calories per ounce. Which is, for 2 pounds: 3,680 calories.
Unless my numbers are 3x too high I don't see how you can get 1k calories.
It is worth noting in 3.5e and pathfinder 1e rations were 1 pound where you could expect just 1840 calories. You'd be able to keep going with that, especially if you had fat to lose (A pound of fat is about 3500 calories). But you supplement your rations with foraging, and you'll do much better. Otherwise over the long term those rations wouldn't likely be enough. So when you get to town a party might be feeling quite hungry. Adventurers who might be going out for extended periods of time may be eating a lot while they are in town. To build back up from their adventure and gains some extra weight before the next one.
Oooo the 2 pounds isn't something I considered! Failed again! Haha. This belongs on r/theydidthemath
There are so many types of food ration, you just have to look into indigenous/nomadic cultures.
Native Americans: pemican
Europeans: jerky, hardtack, flour, dry soup bases (reduced beefstock), medieval pies (dough was just a
vessel), dry jams, lard, tallow, salted butter
Mongols: jerky, milk powder
Do not forget: most of them still foraged and hunted their food, edible mushrooms, mosses, ferns (fiddleback),
greens, tubers, roots, nuts, meat, eggs, honey
Most important thing are the pots and pans actually. It allows you to cook food to be more palatable, filling.
Hello FF.
Historically, hard tack was most often broken up and even ground into small bits and then added to stews (meaning a hot liquid, and not just room temp water). This was to 'thicken' the soup or stew so that one got all the juices from cooking one's meal.
Hard Tack was meant to be kept from the wet for long storage life. It was often packaged in waxed paper, or some other water-resistant covering.
Substituting Jerky for Pemmican is dumb. Jerky is just dried meat. Pemmican is made with minced meat and fat, and usually berries of some sort. When made correctly, it resembles a brownie in thickness and shape. Usually about an inch thick and 3x4 inches across.
The fat in pemmican is important, since your body needs it, and it is a good source of calories and energy when digested.
Pemmican is GREAT for soups and stews, and you add your crushed hard tack to such stews to 'thicken' it to make consumption easier and soak up the 'juices' from cooking the soup or stew. Pemmican is also 'drop dead' easy to make, store, and carry.
Another thing I have to argue with you about is that you made NO provision for 'found' items.
An experienced adventurer would find berries, nuts, watercress, wild grains, wild tubers, mushrooms, etc while traveling. These would be added to that 'two pounds' of rations per day. Also, finding wild onions, wild potatoes or yams, or other roots, berries, and nuts, would tend to make each meal different from the last one consumed, and add variety as well as extra calories to one's diet.
From my own experiences I remember as a youngster, my dad pointing out to my brother and I, which shrooms were edible, what wild tubers were edible, and where to find them, as well as berries and nuts. Edibles out in the wild are varied by where you live and season of year. Like: Deer Hunting Season, where Cat Tails are abundant. Just break off the puffy-looking 'sausages' and take 'em with you. These can be stripped from their stalks easily with a knife and added to a stew and taste a bit like potatoes. They have a high starch content and are 'safe' to eat. However, you do want to get them before they 'puff out' in their seeding stage like dandelions.
Speaking of which, Collard Greens are just the leaves of a plant resembling dandelions. Dandelion leaves can be gathered, crushed in a mortar with a pestle, and used to cover wounds before bandaging. This works. I have the scar on my right kneecap to prove it.
So, in conclusion, your depiction of what 2 lbs of food would do for an adventurer or commoner, isn't exactly right. They WOULD add to such fare with whatever they could glean as they traveled, adding calories and flavors to their meals, as well as medicinal properties, like the natural immunity boosting of things like onions and garlic.
This is why when I adventure in D&D games, I always have my character buy dried onions, dried garlic, and keep a close watch out for edible plants and animals en route. The bunny over there that I just shot with my bow and arrow, will make a great addition to the pot tonight, and if I have a sealable jar, some of the offal (guts) will make great fishing bait!
I have driven some DMs to drink by doing this. But, my characters always have good food to eat, and are NOT limited to just the dried 'iron rations', even though the iron rations are the base of any soup or stew I end up preparing at day's end.
There is a good reason for the 'Survival' skill in D&D. USE IT!
Hey Dude great videos, wanted to know if you needed a video editor/thumbnail designer for the channel?
You could also have portable soup in your rations, Jamestownin made a video on portable soup.
As a character adventures eating rations for a week they want real food at the inn
The way I have handled it is that they consume the ration and the party survival rolls supplement with fresh game, berries, fruit, roots, etc... And you would be talking in the 5-7+k calories for your melee types and 4-5k for your casters complaining how heavy their spell book is while walking all day.
Lol "complaining how heavy their spell book is"🤣
You can also tell your fellow players a lot about your character by describing what they add to their rations and/or how they eat them that stands out. As two simple examples, I've had two characters that really focused on this part of RP. One was so tortuously practical about saving money for his needs that he'd take the absolute cheapest stuff he could find, usually via scavenged trash in the city market, and force it down before curing himself of the sickness he just caused himself. Another character, a plasmoid science experiment, is a glutton, plain and simple. If there's a chance to gather rations, he does so and eats some while he gathers. When he sees someone feeling down, his intinct is to offer them food because he's so delighted by it he can't imagine being upset on a full stomach. In both cases, I quickly cemented some my characters in the minds of everyone else at the table.
Love the idea of using food as a character choice haha. Great tip!
You might also factor in size and build and that oh-so-mysterious metabolism variable. For example, I'm 5'7" and I weigh around 120, as I have all my adult life, no matter what I eat or how much. I don't exercise, but I'm still active and energetic, and in general I maintain a low-calorie diet, mostly high protein stuff plus fiber, like eggs, peanut butter, cereal, bread, dairy, and a bit of other stuff here and there. I doubt I hit that 2000 mark very often, and even tho I'm not exactly fit, I am relatively healthy. But even so, if I were a traveling adventurer, I know I would be eating more, just not a lot more. Also, we have caffeine and sugar. You could throw some of that in those rations. They do in the military.
Oh you're right! I have once again shown why I should never be allowed to be a scientist 😅
Thank god for this video. Made a barbarian whos rage is built on food because each use burns calories. Going to be fun when its revealed he needs the equivalent of 3 rations for 1 day
LOL orrrrr....we don't tell anyone 🌚
@@TheFantasyForge im not telling why. They just know that i need equivalent of 3 rations a day at least xD
The US military designed MREs to be eaten at a rate of three per day (total of roughly 3600 calories) and this is expected to sustain a servicemember in active operations doing military things all day. This is a result of over a century of research into military nutrition, so it's probably a good baseline, keeping in mind that today's American soldiers are a lot beefier (so have a higher BMR) that knights of old.
The Romans had daily rations of white flour (approx. 3500 calories/kg) and olive oil (approx. 8400 calories/kg), so if you're targeting 2lbs you can use some proportion of these as your main calorie source (IIRC the Legionaires were supposed to cook it themselves, mostly as flatbread or some kind of porridge) maybe in the form of bread, and fill the rest with protein and sugar. A 1kg loaf of bread does sound about right in terms of raw energy, but unless it's fresh that's gonna be a chore to eat if you have literally nothing to go with it.
That cooking bit bears mentioning, because unless you're force marching literally all day, it's much easier and a lot more pleasant to cook something. I have a k. und k. regulation military cookbook on my shelf and the mainstays it relies on include a lot of things like soups and stews cooked in a cauldron, which makes meat (even dried meat) go a lot further and adds some flavour, and makes even normally inedible things edible. If you don't want to literally just eat trail mix, your rations could include dried vegetables, legumes and such that you can make into a soup, and perhaps thicken it with flour or hardtack or make dumplings.
Also when foraging it's a lot easier to find things that can be thrown in a soup and eaten than things that are immediately edible (e.g. mushrooms).
great info! The more you know haha
Players DO NOT TRACK RATIONS!, I say as long as they have rations (5Gold) then they're good forever, I assume they're hunting/fishing, or foraging/scavenging and unless they're stuck inside a cave tunnel some how then I might have them roll to see how many days of food/water they got until death.
I know lots of games that track stuff like ammunition and rations. It just depends how deep into the "survival" your players want to go. I would LOVE this if I was a player, I love the gritty realism. Otherwise what's the point of the survival skills...
@@TheFantasyForge The Alchemy Jug makes 2 gallons of mayo a day, or 48,320 calories a day. So grab your spoons!
@@anonymouse2675 I love that mayonnaise is even an option lol.