Village Food Status and Charity (both ways)

[Roheline]

I understand the most recent update adds the option for villagers to refuse excess food goods in trades if their village is well stocked.

This brought me to a new idea that villagers' food stocks could naturally fluctuate and lead to different relationships or even "mini quests" in the process.

If the village has plenty of food and the PC is starving and has a decent relationship with the village, how about some occasional offers of food to the PC when they chat with villagers? Or increased chance of chores quest being offered to give PC trading credit?

On the reverse side, if the village is doing poorly ("bad hunting" or "crops failed this summer") perhaps there could be an opportunity for the PC to earn status/gratitude/friends by gifting some of their food supplies? Some of my long termers have pretty astronomical amounts of food hoarded and it would be nice to have a social purpose for it.

[Ara D.]

I agree. We know that they are charitable to NPCs ie wounded adventures. I think it would be very much in the spirit of the game for them to say I see your starving go collect fire wood and I'll give you supper.

[Sami]

This brought me to a new idea that villagers' food stocks could naturally fluctuate and lead to different relationships or even "mini quests" in the process.

If the village has plenty of food and the PC is starving and has a decent relationship with the village, how about some occasional offers of food to the PC when they chat with villagers? Or increased chance of chores quest being offered to give PC trading credit?

On the reverse side, if the village is doing poorly ("bad hunting" or "crops failed this summer") perhaps there could be an opportunity for the PC to earn status/gratitude/friends by gifting some of their food supplies? Some of my long termers have pretty astronomical amounts of food hoarded and it would be nice to have a social purpose for it.

Yep, this would suit the game nicely. One thing that it requires would be to track and generate village resources in more detail, and that leans heavily towards accomplishing village and society simulation. It’s been discussed before that our time and interest is limited to go into that direction too heavily, but to some extent yes.
Charity, or actually generosity, can be witnessed already to some extent as characters with good reputation may be asked for lower prices. But just asking and offering food could be added – again.
See, we’ve had asking for food in action back in the day. Villagers did decide individually if they would hand out some food. This was often exploited as players could toss away their carried food, starve a little, and then run around villages asking for food. But now if this was linked to reputation it would work in better fashion.