Gone Fishing part 2

 

Let's take another look at the difficulty number on fishing holes. 

As was pointed out by Kyrinn S. Eis there needs to be some sort of meaning between the different ranges of difficulty. Otherwise who wouldn't just spend all their time at a level 5 hole and never bother with any of the tougher ones. 

Area and opportunity. Some places just may not have a good place to fish. Going across a wretched land may provide very few spots and they may be hard to get anything out of. So all you may come across is level 20 holes that produces very little. Also when going on an adventure you may not get a choice of where to fish along the way. That great place where they are jumping the kobolds may be camped out around.

Another factor to show the difference may be in the quality of fish. That hole with a difficulty of 5 may produce nothing but Perch and Bluegill all day long, maybe a rare bass from time to time. While that hole up around the bend may be hard to fish out of but produces some of the biggest Catfish anybody has ever seen. You could also put some high end fish in the harder places as well or even some that are spell components or magical in nature. 

Finally one more reason to make the difficulty of a fishing hole important is to increase your skill. You can only increase your skill at a hole that has a difficulty than your skill level. So if you get to level 5 in your fishing skill you will have to leave that easy fishing hole and go someplace tougher to get better. This could also lead to some adventuring just to get some time at those hard to fish from holes that may be rare. 

Next installment I'll try to get a few sample Fishing Holes written up. 

You can find the first part of Gone Fishing RIGHT HERE, or you could click on the 'fishing' label attached to this post to find it.

So if you liked this and want to see it expanded upon with more details please share it around and let me know (like in the comments section). If you really liked it you can always buy me a Ko-Fi over on the right side of this blog or look at other options in the 'Support this Blog' tab at the top. 

Fishing minigame

 

One thing we see in so many video games out there is a fishing minigame dropped into a regular (usually fantasy) game. Even if what the game is about has nothing to do with fishing there are so many that offer up a chance to toss a line into the water to catch something. So why not do that with tabletop roleplaying games for something a little different. 

So I present to you the very rough, very unplaytested, Truly Rural Publishing Fishing Minigame Rules. These may change, they get all sorts of changed, none of the fish charts are all encompassing. Hell I may never work on it again, who knows?

The fishing rules revolve around a single D20 roll. You add your fishing skill + any bonuses + die roll and beat the target number of the fishing hole. The amount over the target number you roll determines what kind of fish you catch from the chart for the fishing hole.

A characters fishing skill starts off at level 0 and can go all the way up to 20. To raise your skill level you must spend a total number of days fishing equal to the next skill level. So to go from level 0 to 1 you must spend 24 hours of time fishing while going from level 1 to 2 will take 2 days or 48 hours. Keep track of your fishing time. The fishing hole determines how much time it takes to catch a fish.

Bonuses are from gear or magical items. Common gear bonuses are +1 for decent fishing gear, +2 for top of the line gear. Magical Items and specialized gear will be listed in the next (hopefully) instalment of these rules.

The Fishing Hole stats. A fishing hole has a target number that must be beat. As a rule the less likely one is to catch a fish from a fishing hole the higher it's target number. So a hole with a target number of 5 is easy to catch fish out of. The number then goes up by fives (5, 10, 15, 20) as the more difficult it is to catch a fish. The amount of hours needed to catch a fish is determined by dividing the difficulty by 5. So a difficulty 15 fishing hole may take up to 3 hours to catch a fish. There just aren't many there. Specialized gear (again forthcoming) can reduce that time.

Finally I have up one chart for freshwater fish that can be caught. This is a very basic list and each fishing hole could have their own custom tailored list with as many or as few types of fish in that location. I'll be doing more details on to this in the future.... if people are interested. Here is the basic list, the number on the left is how much you beat the target number by and the fish you caught is on the right. 

1-2      Crappie

2-4      Bluegill

5-6      Perch

7-8      Large Mouth Bass

9-10    Rainbow Trout

11-12  Striped Bass

13-14  Catfish

15-16  Flathead Catfish

17-18  Walleye 

19-20  Salmon 

So if you liked this and want to see it expanded upon with more details please share it around and let me know (like in the comments section). If you really liked it you can always buy me a Ko-Fi over on the right side of this blog or look at other options in the 'Support this Blog' tab at the top. 

Part Two can be found RIGHT HERE. Or you can look at the labels on this post and click on 'fishing' to find it and future installments. 

Happy Fishing.