Hunger Explained

Though we may have a habit of essentially negating it by our habit of declaring a WAAAGH! (Orks, Orks, Orks, Orks!) far too often, the Hunger system remains a major part of your *coded* experience of Chiaroscuro.

However, while everyone has to deal with it, many may not understand quite what it is, or how it all works. This post aims to act as a primer to explain just that!

Everyone has a maximum Hunger level of 1440, which just so happens to be how many minutes there are in twenty-hour hours. Thus, your character harbors a full day's worth of hunger points. Now, these don't reset every night, nor do they vanish within a full day if you're not around to play. Hunger points do, however, tick down when you use an action like +walk and +run, or by 1 every minute that you're In Character.

1440... 1439... 1438... 1437...

...and so on.

When your Hunger level drops below one third, you accrue a -1 Hunger penalty. While you may be aware that this equates to a natural -1 on any +taskroll you might make, some of you might not understand how this actually works, as you never see it.

The misconception is that this -1 *only* applies to roll skills. It doesn't. The -1 applies to EVERY skill on your ENTIRE +SHEET. How it works is that, when you get that -1, it becomes a -1 not to your roll, but to your SKILL LEVEL.

So, any Good skill you have becomes a Fair; any Superb skill you have is actually a Great.

This means that when you roll Good Swordsmanship with a -1 Hunger penalty, you're *actually* rolling Fair Swordsmanship.

However, as stated, it doesn't only apply to +taskrolls. Any system in the game that requires a certain skill level to access or read is also effected by this penalty. For example, if you needed Fair Underworld Connections to read the Underworld Connections BB, and had Fair Underworld Connections by also a -1 Hunger penalty, you wouldn't be able to read it.

Hunger *can* fall below 0, which won't kill you through starvation, but *will* give you a -3 penalty, which equates to each skill level on your +sheet actually being three levels lower than what is actually shown. These penalties also stack with the Encumbrance penalties, so - without some attention - you could actually render your entire +sheet useless.

Hunger can be reclaimed by eating food, being IC during a WAAAGH! or Cheese confetti bonus, and can be stalled by going OOC when you're idle.