Scars of War - Feed Me Seymour

Gareth Fouche has picked up the Eschalon II food/water debate over at the Scars of War blog, with quite a detailed post.  In essence, Gareth argues that food/water can be a worthwhile element if there are choices and decisions to make, beyond just buying a bunch of food:

Coming back to hunger, food supplies serve as a natural “soft barrier” for traveling to hostile or far off locations. Instead of saying “you aren’t high enough level/haven’t uncovered the plot hook required to travel there yet” you simply say “traveling there will require 1 months supply of food and the means of carrying it (mules)". I can think of 4 ways off the top of my head of solving this. You could buy enough supplies to make the trip. You could learn a forage skill/magic spell that lets you circumvent the need to take your own food. You could find maps of the land which show oases along the route, allowing you to restock along the way. These maps could be the reward for solving quests or helping NPCs, alternate forms of reward to simply giving money and items. Or you could hire a guide, someone who knows the way and can find food for you. This guide may be expensive (money being another form of resource management mechanic the player juggles) or hard to locate.