Stranger Than Fiction: Water, Water, Everywhere

This post is part of a series: Stranger Than Fiction

In the second area of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, the city of Kutna Hora has a fountain in it that most first-time visitors will see going in. The main character, Henry, will never fail to exclaim how strange this fountain is, to the point that it's become a meme even Henry's voice actor has acknowledged. It's funny, but it's also a bit of a culture shock-if you're reading this blog, you likely have access to an unlimited (until the bill comes in) source of water. But, obviously, that wasn't always the case; someone had to go and get the fucking stuff and bring it back to where people could use it. That goes not just for drinking, but for washing, cleaning stuff, food if you're making a stew or soup, putting out fires, and so on and so forth. Historically (and even today) this task has disproportionately fallen on women, and if a common experience for half the population isn't a good reason to make some gameable content, then I don't know what is!

Water is also interesting as one of those resources that is theoretically free if you put in the effort to get it, so the entrepreneurial among us have to put a twist on things to stay competitive.

Spells With Interesting Implications: Create Water and Prestidigitation

I'm bundling these two together because they both face the same concept of "Spell that drastically effects working life if you think about it for a few seconds." I'm gonna be pulling from a few different systems in part because what "Create Water" does is different depending on what game you're playing. 

• Prestidigitation is a cantrip that, among its many effects, can clean an object no large than one cubic foot. Given that clothes are capable of folding, this means that any enterprising Wizard or whatever functionally never has to worry about getting water for laundry again. This might also end up being a source of resentment for the communally-minded villagers, if, say, said Wizard refuses to use his Magical Laundry Powers to help them out.  
• Create Water (5E) is a 1st-level Cleric/Druid spell capable of generating ten gallons per level of the spell. Now, I wasn't able to find any sort of statistics on how much water the average person went through before the modern day, but it definitely isn't nothing. One can imagine that the village priest partly sustains himself off of this, while in large monasteries and temples the initiates are partly responsible for "Water-making duty."
• Create Water (2E) is a 1st-level Priest Spell that creates four gallons of water per level of the caster. This is less water overall than 5th Edition or OSE, the ones I'm comparing this to, but it is notable because it becomes incredibly more powerful for a lesser cost, so high-level clerics can actually sling around a LOT more water.
• Create Water (OSE) is a 4th-level cleric spell that provides 50 gallons of water-sustaining twelve humans and their mounts for a day. This is very clearly intended for high-level play by OSE standards-your Cleric is 2/3 of the way to being able to settle down and find a temple, so the spell is very much for creating the water supply of a Whole Bunch Of Guys and exploring into more hostile environments. 

It's also worth considering what kind of water it is. Not necessarily in terms of being potable, but just how pleasant to drink it is-mayhaps water created by a cleric of the God of Cooking tastes better than a cleric of the Lady of Spider's summoned beverage. 

Dowsing

Dowsing is one of those old pseudoscientific mystical practices (like mesmerism) that I just adore. You use a twig or two rods or whatever to try and Find Something Important. This can be precious metals or dead bodies, but in the Americas it's mostly associated with water, and could be a valuable tool for someone either lost in the wilderness or looking to found their own settlement away from the power structures commanding most waterways. Now it is true that it's pseudoscience, but so is phrenology, and yet Half-Orcs in 5.0 still had an automatic racial ability to be good at scaring people.

Imagine you're doing this and then 1d6 goblins attack you.

Quest Hooks

So with all of that out of the way, here's a few interesting ways to use people's need for water in your elfgame!

• The Decanter of Endless Water, in all of its incarnations, is one of those magic items that is incredibly powerful in the survival-focused earlier editions of the game, until it gradually become a novelty as Dungeons and Dragons became the fantasy superhero RPG. 
• The implications of a portable source of potable water are, of course, earth-shattering from a municipal perspective. Getting your mitts on one of these could enable great aqueducts to arise from nothing, or in a more Mad-Maxian way, to become a water baron, and who doesn't want to be Fantasy Immortan Joe (Immorctan Joe?)
• More interestingly however, is the idea mentioned in 2nd Edition that the Plane of Water wants to take these Decanters back, so they can be destroyed. This can result in existential stakes for an adventure, where a city (possibly the player's home) could be faced with a rapidly ticking clock with dire but not world-ending stakes (so that a possibility for failure can be acknowledged in a way that ending the world can't).
• As mentioned above, fetching water was (and is) a long time-and-labor-intensive task that about half the population did/does pretty much every day. Rather than having your gnolls or kobols or whatever harassing trade routes, what if a monster is on the way to the river? Or even in the river? Or even the river itself? That again can add some personal stakes-it's not just the well-to-do of a merchant, but whether or not Tiny Tim will be able to have water tomorrow. 
• As mentioned above from the Immortant Joe example, water can be a powerful resource to have control of, but not always for direct drinking purposes. For instance, in Mali until the 60s, certain families had a monopoly on wells, and used the water therein to trade for manure with nomads. Control of water (both for extraction and transport) is a powerful tool, and access to it could help shake up a pointcrawl. 
• Ancient mythologies are full of water spirits, from the Lady of the Lake to Naiads, but you hardly ever see them in Dungeons and Dragons. Dryads get stat blocks all the time, but not their water-dwelling cousins. Adding one in as a party patron both makes things feel a little fresher while also giving them a wider purview-rivers and lakes can famously be bigger than forests.

Babushka would kill those kobolds, but arthritis makes NPCs of us all.

One of the parts of naturalistic fantasy Elfgame Design is always asking "What do they eat?" or "Where do they go to the bathroom?" "What do they drink?" is an important part of that, because answering questions about a group's basic needs can help them feel richer and more "Real" when the players encounter them. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go have a glass of water.