Hello H&H community!
I noticed that, for a beginner, it can be kind of a chore to acquire bones. Chickens and rabbits seem pretty rare plus rabbits aren't that easy to catch either. So when I came across a skeleton of a dead player character I thought "Finally some bones I can utilize!" but nope. No bones for me. Just a corpse blocking the way. So why not give players bones from human corpses and skeletons? I know the mere concept may sound a bit... vile. But on the other hand: this game is about survival. And I don't assume the players in the game, the charcters, grew up in a society where things like using human bones were a taboo to the people. In fact, they don't know society. This is why I think it would only make sense to be able to use human bones, too.
But there may be some flaws, though. Firstly, human bones are not exactly easy to bring into shape when it comes to tools like the bonesaw. At least not with bare hands. If you do not have at least a stone axe you won't get far (which would be an excellent requirement, wouldn't it? Easy to acquire, too!). Also, if you want to implement the use of human bones you would have to think about implementing human flesh as a food source, too. In my opinion at least. Because: If you can use their bones, why not also eat their flesh? Would only sound logical to me. I don't know if there should be some belief system behind this. For example: You can only utilize human bones and eat human flesh if you have certain values in your beliefs screen, like barbaric and nature and whatnot. But then again, this would kill the idea of human skeletons being a more easy to loot bonesource. Also you could remove the skeletons from, say, your holdup if someone (or one of your former characters) died there instead of it littering the place. And also, you have two excellent uses for the corpses of dead players, too.
Those are my ideas about the usage of human bones and human flesh (but mostly bones as stated in the thread's title). What do you think of it? Is it possible to implement that in the future? Does it make any sense? Have you own ideas which would make this feature better or more balanced? Let me know!