Good Enough to Eat

Food is an integral part of culture and our lives, but it’s oft something overlooked in a roleplaying game. Eating is important to all cultures and dishes reflect those cultures and values. How do you add this excellent bit of flavor (if you’ll excuse the pun) to your games? We’d suggest try coming up with a couple of menu items for the city or country your players are in. It’ll deepen the cultural background and flesh out the place they are in.

So how do you get started?

Consider the setting. Obviously if playing in a medieval fantasy game having a local Chinese takeout around the corner doesn’t make much sense. Consider the following questions when coming up with your menu. What kind of place is this? Cheap? High class? Local dive bar? Is the focus more on the food or the drink?

Chose a couple of “prize dishes.” These dishes should be unique to the location, there should be around three of them with quick one or two lines sentences about them that can be read to the players. Try to include some local flavor to them. If red dragon happens to be in abundance the local inn keep may have a special. If the city happens to have a large Japanese population and is a port town some sushi may be in order. Playing far into the future? Consider some Pan dishes, such as a teriyaki burrito (japan-mex anyone?).

Three to five local dishes. Most eateries have dishes that are found in almost everywhere. American food for example will always include a hamburger, or an Italian will have pasta dishes. What’s the local color food for your setting? If playing in a smaller town or medieval setting these dishes could appear at every inn or restaurant in town. These descriptions should be shorter, and should be fairly common.

Drinks! The all important aspect for any thirsty patron, coming up with 2-3 special drinks and 2-3 common ones will serve this purpose fairly well. The local ale house might have an especially strong wine that just came in, but also serves the local ale. Grab a cocktail book and substitute a few ingredients unique.

More than just a menu. For added props, for the cooking inclined, try making a couple of dishes before hand to be served at the table during the game. They’ll allow the players to interact over the meal while planning their next move, or unwind in character, and of course most people won’t turn down a good drink.

After all of this has been done you should have four to seven meals, and around six drinks for a menu. If your running a smaller, town most of these menu items can be moved from one location to another, making it so one only needs to come up with a couple of items per place to give it a unique spin.

How do you add flavor to your bars or inns? Do you have any tips or tricks that we’ve missed?