The Chicken Market

Are you interested in chickens? Are your players interested in chickens? If not, this post holds nothing for you. If, like me, you have players that inexplicably gravitate towards farming in your sandbox games, you may find this post useful. Last session the party began setting up a rooftop chicken coop as part of their gang territory, to turn a profit and keep the gang fed. They plan on periodically expanding the flock, so I threw together some breeds to make the buying more interesting. Except I went overboard on this minor aspect of the game, as usual. :P

I used half index cards and sketched the 20 breeds for reasons.

Chickens have two stats, LAYING and MEAT. LAYING indicates how many copper a day you earn off their eggs. MEAT indicates how many silver a week they make (cash in on Sundays). It's all a bit abstracted in an odd way, but since sessions average 1-2 in-game days, I had to step up the timeline to make it worth it. I'm only making two breeds available for purchase each market day, including at least one cheaper breed (color bands are a quick price indicator for when I'm drawing from the pile).

Roll one or more d20s to generate a chicken breed. Left column is the LAYING / MEAT stats. Names are unlikely to be appropriate for what you rolled, and are intended as examples (or pick an appropriate one).



d20 L/M (price) Quirk Coloring Name
1 1/2 (2s) Longcrower Gold laced Sheffield Singer
2 2/1 (2s) Laughing crow Double laced gold Kahara Buttonbird
3 2/2 (3s) Long feathers White w/ black head Arashti Longneck
4 2/2 (3s) Tall upright tail Reddish brown, black tail Showy Helgiviker
5 1/3 (4s) Gamecock White w/ brown speckles Eirenholm Frostfoot
6 1/3 (4s) Naked neck Brown w/ white speckles Gilded Marshhold
7 1/3 (4s) Huge comb Pure black Eigenwald King
8 3/2 (6s) Big white earlobes Pure white Bantam Kranovan
9 3/2 (6s) Feathered feet Green black Silver Prince
10 4/1 (8s) Long beards Double laced silver Zvoske Snowcap
11 1/4 (8s) Hardy Barred white & black Arbury Gold
12 2/3 (6s) Good flier Barred white & brown Piestova Potbird
13 2/3 (6s) Prodigious Tail Buff Heneruck Bandit
14 3/1 (4s) Ear tufts Dark red Geneheimer
15 3/1 (4s) Dumpy (creeper) Silver laced Laughing Marsh Hen
16 3/1 (4s) Olive eggs Mahoghany Blackwood Dwarf
17 2/2 (3s) Daft Mahoghany w/ black head & tail Brasterberg Brown
18 2/2 (3s) Extra tasty Gold w/ black tail Strigastadt Attic Hen
19 2/1 (2s) White comb Black w/ white speckles Heybury Red
20 1/2 (2s) Gentle Black w/ gold tips Konebruck Creeper

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