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Kol Korran
2011-12-16, 06:17 AM
ok, this may be a bit silly, but it's intended to be serious. (and i may make some ignorant mistakes here, forgive me) in a possible upcoming campaign i may run, i want the region the party starts in to be sort of a western (or more correctlya frontier town... something a bit like Deadwood? :smallconfused:)

now, for certain reason, i don't want the area to be able to support cows, but it should be able go grow mostly... pigs, big ones, some of them more feral (on the boar side). what would make a frontier area viable for pigs but not cows?

as a side note: people may still bring horses to the area though, but their upkeep may be a bit more expensive, but possible (i assume horses and cows subside by similar nutrition?

I'd make a more thorough search of this myself if i:
a) had the time :smallfrown:
b) knew where to start bloody looking :smalleek:

so thanks anyone who might help with this peculiar piece of information. let pigs rule in no-cows-land!

(Search word: kingpig)

Reynard
2011-12-16, 06:25 AM
Pigs can be kept perfectly fine in places like heavy forests, so you don't have to clear vast swathes of trees to provide them with room to live. They don't care much about what they eat, especially the more "boar-like" ones, and all you really need to do is securely fence off a decent section of forest/woods and leave them be.

So if there's any reason why the people living in the town can't/won't clear-cut the forest to make room for their animals and farms (such as an agreement with the Elves), then pigs could be used instead.

Yora
2011-12-16, 06:26 AM
The thing with pigs is, that their metabolism is extremely similar to that of humans. Simmilar body mass, similar sized organs, very similar nutritional needs, and similar digestion. This makes them so valuable for medical research (and why Mythbusters use them to test tissue damage of weapons, explosions, and stuff).
However, this also means that pigs eat people food.

Cattle, sheep, and goats have a completely different system of digestion. They eat grass, which is indigestible for humans and pigs.

So when you are living in large plains that are mostly grass, you want cattle, since all the fruits, berries, and roots you'd want to eat yourself and not feed them to pigs. To feed pigs, you need some surplus of food, usually the stuff that you could eat, but don't want to. The outer leaves of salad, apple cores, the ends of carrots, and stuff that starts to smell funny. Just give it to the pigs.
Another way to feed pigs is to send them out and forrage for their own food like cattle or goats. However, since they can't eat grass, this mostly works in areas with lots of forests. There's a lot of berries and mushrooms that the pigs can feed on, without eating anything you'd want to eat yourself. But make sure they don't get inside your vegetable fields.

kaomera
2011-12-16, 08:56 AM
now, for certain reason, i don't want the area to be able to support cows, but it should be able go grow mostly... pigs, big ones, some of them more feral (on the boar side). what would make a frontier area viable for pigs but not cows?
Maybe the feral pigs are all like: ''We don't much care fer yer kind round here, beefy...''

Nerd-o-rama
2011-12-16, 10:04 AM
Pigs do better in mountains and especially forests - they're relatively small root-eating (or heck, anything-eating) animals. Cows and other large herd animals (and, notably to adventurers, horses) need wide open grasslands to thrive. This is why you most famously find pigs in heavily wooded areas like the rural east US, northern Europe, and Pacific islands, and you most famously find cows on big wide expanses of prairie like Western Europe or the central US. If you get somewhere with enough space, like Texas, you can breed horrifying monster cows (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Longhorn_%28cattle%29), whereas you get giant pigs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warthog) naturally in Sub-Saharan jungles.

tl;dr pigs go in trees, cows go in plains.

askandarion
2011-12-16, 10:31 AM
Aye, forest land, and a lot of it. If they're artificially introduced to an area they aren't a part of, they can cause a lot of damage. You couldn't really have agriculture, since they'd have a tendency to go hog-wild on crops (har har). Well, if you kept them fenced-in in a forest, maybe not, but you'd still have them bust out occasionally. If you did want farmland involved too, then I'd suggest a borderland, where more open ground changes into heavier forest and the people could fence up the forest to keep the pigs penned in and available.

Kol Korran
2011-12-16, 10:55 AM
ok people, time to start planting some trees! (and here i also wanted to savannahs for hyenas and gnolls... i'll have to think) my oh my am i crap at this stuff! :smalltongue:

thanks for the info, here hoping the campaign gets to play! :smallbiggrin:

Nerd-o-rama
2011-12-16, 10:59 AM
ok people, time to start planting some trees! (and here i also wanted to savannahs for hyenas and gnolls... i'll have to think) my oh my am i crap at this stuff! :smalltongue:

thanks for the info, here hoping the campaign gets to play! :smallbiggrin:

Mixed savannahs and wooded areas could work - see Sub-Saharan Africa. If you have hyenas, though, you're probably going to have some kind of grassland-dwelling herd animal for them to eat. They might not be domesticated, but they'll be around (again taking Africa as an example, some relative of the antelope, or something that looks like a relative of the antelope, is probably a good call).

Yora
2011-12-16, 11:07 AM
There have been wild boars in Galilee for a very long time, which were also domesticated to some degree. Even though the area is pretty much surrounded by desert.

stack
2011-12-16, 11:21 AM
Fencing in large wooded areas presents its own challenges. Pigs can be quite destructive to fences and enclosures. Be hard to contain them in a large area, unless you don't mind them getting out or have the cash for some kind of magic containment.

Cirrylius
2011-12-16, 12:50 PM
Fencing in large wooded areas presents its own challenges. Pigs can be quite destructive to fences and enclosures. Be hard to contain them in a large area, unless you don't mind them getting out or have the cash for some kind of magic containment.

Maybe some kind of campaign-specific semi-domesticated Fainting Pigs or something. Maybe they're bred with especially sensitive snouts, so you can rub poison ivy or peppers or something on the fences periodically to keep them away.

Yora
2011-12-16, 01:04 PM
Or just send some pigherds with them. Though dealing with a stubborn boar might become a lot more complicated than a ram with a bad mood.

Beleriphon
2011-12-16, 05:12 PM
Hogs can be large, and very dangerous. This isn't even taking into account warthogs, which aren't actually that big compared to some of the larger northern European types. Wild boar can weigh upwards of several hundred pounds, have nasty tusks and dismember a human. In some places, Australia for example, they are an apex predator hunting deer and other small game.

Piglets can eat solid food within two weeks of birth, and they especially like grubs and worms. Boar are the best examples of an omniverous specious other than humans. Incidentally, pigs can and will eat grass, but they can't subsist on it entirely the way cows or goats can.

As an aside, domestic swine now can actually get much larger than wild hogs can. They're bred for huge sizes, and they can be upwards of 800 pounds.

Dr.Epic
2011-12-16, 05:49 PM
Enlarge Creature, giant pigs, permanency, and home brewed their giant size is now genetic

Kol Korran
2011-12-17, 02:59 AM
There have been wild boars in Galilee for a very long time, which were also domesticated to some degree. Even though the area is pretty much surrounded by desert.

alas, the boars in the Galilee are nearly extinct. to the norht they have Lebanon which is one of the most fertile and heavily wooded regions in the area (the very little of it i have seen). i was considering a smaller area, but i think i see what you mean.


Fencing in large wooded areas presents its own challenges. Pigs can be quite destructive to fences and enclosures. Be hard to contain them in a large area, unless you don't mind them getting out or have the cash for some kind of magic containment.

I think a mundane irritating or unpleasent substance, or even some minor magic (on the level of cantrip) might be used. good point.


Or just send some pigherds with them. Though dealing with a stubborn boar might become a lot more complicated than a ram with a bad mood.

now this i LIKE! pig herders who have to be a bit tougher than the regular herders. fits VERY well with the campaign i have in mind. (and might entail the PCs becoming part time pig herders themselves... :smallwink:)


Hogs can be large, and very dangerous. This isn't even taking into account warthogs, which aren't actually that big compared to some of the larger northern European types. Wild boar can weigh upwards of several hundred pounds, have nasty tusks and dismember a human. In some places, Australia for example, they are an apex predator hunting deer and other small game.

Piglets can eat solid food within two weeks of birth, and they especially like grubs and worms. Boar are the best examples of an omniverous specious other than humans. Incidentally, pigs can and will eat grass, but they can't subsist on it entirely the way cows or goats can.

As an aside, domestic swine now can actually get much larger than wild hogs can. They're bred for huge sizes, and they can be upwards of 800 pounds.
now that's a lesson! i guess i'm talking about hogs mostly, with some tendencies towards wild boars. BIG animals, that might be a bit rough and tough to handle.


Enlarge Creature, giant pigs, permanency, and home brewed their giant size is now genetic

House Vadalis (Eberron) might be in on this as well, in it's own way, and will try to magically enhance some pigs. not exactly the influence i view on genetics however, but perhaps though experimenting... i'd like magical genetic modification to be a bit tougher, more like in the real world. magic=science in this way alone...

jackattack
2011-12-17, 12:37 PM
Pigs are also famous for eating roots and fungi, so if your fantasy landscape favors those instead of grasses then pigs will be right at home. A place where potatoes and radishes and truffles abound would be great for raising pigs, whether you make it a forest or a plain or hills and valleys.

Yora
2011-12-17, 01:12 PM
House Vadalis (Eberron) might be in on this as well, in it's own way, and will try to magically enhance some pigs. not exactly the influence i view on genetics however, but perhaps though experimenting... i'd like magical genetic modification to be a bit tougher, more like in the real world. magic=science in this way alone...

We can't stop here! This is pig country...

http://www.demotivationalposters.org/image/demotivational-poster/small/1001/genetic-tampering-family-guy-pigs-genetic-demotivational-poster-1264111831.png