You have 16 Days Until Your Place of Business is Shut Down

> Hm. OK, I think I see how this is going to work. Can't get ingredients without killing monsters, can't kill monsters without ingredients to make stronger weapons... Don't want to put Sarah and Dave into danger when there's no need to.

> Forage for materials, making sure not to attack or aggro any monsters, and survey findings afterwards.

> If we find any ingots - unlikely, but possible - take them to Hagel. If not, can you give us an overview of the various shops and places in town where we might want to visit?

>Seconding the idea of foraging. We need to get materials quickly if we want to make any progress.

(Do we gain levels from fighting monsters or is it just the chance at sweet loot?)
>If you think you can take on a weaker looking monster, go for it! If you don't think you can yet, then run away and stay safe! >.<

>Make sure you buy/gather up some food. Doing all of this on an empty stomach might be a bit of a challenge.

You decide to head out and try to gather some ingredients first. To begin with, you track down Dave and explain the situation. He's actually been out around monsters before, so he seems like a good choice to come along.
"Sure, I'd be happy to help," he says. When you ask him if he wants to be paid for helping you he just shakes his head. "Nah, we're buds."

Making sure to bring a few days' worth of food, you head out together to the Nearby Forest. It is the closest forest to town, fairly low on monsters by Dave's information, and it's likely to have at least some plant-type ingredients. It's about a half a day away, so it's mid-afternoon by the time you get there.

Without any further ado, you look around for something useful. There are some herbs around that strike you as possibly worthwhile, so you kneel over to gather them up in the basket.
Once you've got them all, you stand up. "Phew. Okay, this isn't so bad."
"Hey, look out!"

You are assaulted by a monster!
(Puni x 1)

Battle information:
Battle takes place on a grid as seen above. (The size of the grid may vary.) Most characters can spend each turn on either moving and taking an action (such as attacking, using a skill, or in Sarah's case using an item from the basket), or moving twice as far. Skills and attacks have various ranges, which can include multiple tiles. For now, both Sarah and Dave have melee weapons, which can strike anything in the 8-tile radius surrounding them. Sarah knows a single magical attack which can strike any single tile; Dave knows a throwing attack which can hit a single thing on a straight line from him (orthogonal or diagonal). The character statistics include a list of their available skills from now on, which can be learned by experience in battle or by certain events. For things with limited range and situations where monsters move out of that range, characters are generally not stupid and will not attack nothingness or an ally unless specifically asked to.

>

Date: 1/1
Time: About three quarters

Status & Inventory:

236 Cole

Character Status:

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SpoilerSarah Kennigan: Uninjured, Energetic
Weapon: Basic Staff
Armor: Normal Clothes
Accessory: None
Skills:

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SpoilerEther Light: A self-defense technique from Master. Non-elemental magic attack, any 1 square.

Dave Barrett: Uninjured, Energetic
Weapon: Hatchets
Armor: Normal Clothes
Accessory: None
Skills:

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SpoilerHatchet Throw: Throw a hatchet in any of 8 directions. Does physical damage to whatever it hurts first.

Fee: 0 Cole

Basket (3/60):

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SpoilerMagic Grass x 3

Container:

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SpoilerSpoiled Milk x 1
Tap Water x ∞

Known Recipes:

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SpoilerIngot: 1 Day; [Metal]
Cloth: 1 Day; [String]

Locations:

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SpoilerSyzygy: Home town.
Nearby Forest: Half a day's walk east of Syzygy.

A/N:

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SpoilerI'm having to decide how to handle various game-like abstractions as I go. In many cases I'm trying to go for "qualitative statistics" rather than actual numbers for things like health, experience, etc. for a combination of realism and not having to do as much number crunching on my end. The "fractional time" mechanic is partially so that I can consider some things like normal battles to take up "negligible time". But fundamentally this is meant to run like some sort of RPG, where characters do indeed gain experience from battle.

That being said, I'm just gonna put my foot down and say "let's not really worry about food, just assume everybody gets food but don't ask for the food everybody has as free ingredients or anything like that" because there are already enough things to manage without worrying about that.