Food in Games

When I run games I make a point to describe the food the party eats and what they have available, even if it's only rations. It's a little extra effort, but it's worth it. Taking the time to describe what the characters eat changes meals from simple resource management into something memorable and fun. It helps build a sense of place and make the game world feel richer.

Cuisine is a major cornerstone of every culture. Making a point to describe the particulars of the local cuisine and regional specialties gives each place the party travels a different character. Instead of a string of nearly identical villages you get differentiating details like "that town on the coast that made those dried sardines soaked in chili oil" or "the village with the orchards that made peach wine." Even if nothing particularly adventurous or exciting happened there the players remember it, the characters go back to stock up on favorite snacks, and it becomes a thing.

It also helps emphasize distances and scale while the party's traveling. Places that are close to each other share basic cooking styles and as you go farther afield you start encountering new and different foods. Running into these new types of food does more to make the players feel like their characters have moved through space and gone somewhere else than just knowing 'you've been on the road for a month' does.

The availability and variety of food on offer in a place also builds the local identity. How many places to eat does a village/town/city have? There may not be any restaurants in a small village and you end up eating a meal in someone's home. There might be an inn that's the town's only eatery and doubles as the town hall for gatherings every other week, or it could be one of several establishments. The larger a city is the more choices you have. The more chances there are for fancy restaurants, multiple types of cuisine on offer, niche little cafes and clubs, street food, and a whole gourmet scene. And all of it shares information about the people who live there.

A variety of options also makes the party's decision of where to stay and what to eat actually mean something instead of just being another tickmark on a downtime activities list.

Here's how I do it:

1 Decide what the area's main cooking style is.
I look at the environment and what ingredients would be available in the ecosystem, then pick a cuisine that would fit. Or if an area's already similar to a real-world place, I just pick that.

Ex: A coastal fishing village in the north gets New England-style cooking because it's close and I'm familiar enough with it to improvise.

2 Decide a few regional and local twists to the overall style.
I think about what notable features the local area has, then choose a few ingredients that could come from there.

Ex: The village is surrounded by pine forest so they have an abundant supply of bolete and chanterelle mushrooms, edible ferns, and juniper that gets worked into their dishes.

3 Think about seasonal ingredients.
Having all sorts of fresh food available at all times of the year is a modern thing. I think about how crops and wild plants grow; how animals reproduce, migrate, and hibernate, and what that means for what's available throughout the year. Fresh food, especially fruit and produce, have a narrow window and the rest of the year you'll have it canned, dried, salted, or otherwise preserved.

Ex: Corn is harvested in the late summer and early fall, salmon run in the fall, mushrooms sprout in the fall and spring.

4 Consider preservation methods.
Every style of preservation has the same goal: to prevent bacteria, fungi, and critters from getting to the food and spoiling it. The different methods reflect what resources are available to the people doing the preservation. If you're by the sea, salting is convenient. In the forest with plenty of wood? You probably prefer smoking. Somewhere with reliable strong, direct sunlight? That makes drying easy. There are more expensive and labor-intensive methods like canning, candying, pickling, and fermentation that rely on having equipment like airtight glass or expensive sugar. I pick a few that make sense for the area and think about how they could be incorporated into the dishes.

5 Bring it together into a menu.
Once I know the basics from 1 to 4 I can start improvising dishes. I usually ad lib them when the party stops to eat. It's not difficult to do it on the fly because I've already decided the edible framework. All I need to do is pick a combination that sounds tasty.

Ex: The party's in that coastal fishing village next to a pine forest. There's a large swamp and marsh nearby and the village has cleared a little land for fields. The main culinary style is New England. Local specialties come from the forest, swamp, and sea.

Spring - Fried fiddlehead ferns and mushrooms, a filet of whitefish with cranberry preserves, and beer.

Summer - Roast sweet corn, turtle soup, frybread with caramelized onions, and blueberry tea. Strawberry rhubarb pie for dessert.

Fall - Maple-walnut cornbread, crab chowder, fried clams, roast squash with molasses, and birch beer.

Winter - Smoked wild turkey, roasted root vegetables, barley porridge with apple chunks and chestnuts, and cider. Apple pie for dessert.

Everything comes from the surrounding environment, is in season or a preserved holdover from the previous year, and is in tune with the local cuisine. I just need a moment to think about the land, how things grow through the year, and where the food comes from.

6 Consider where the food's served.
My players usually don't find themselves in refined establishments. They're more likely to visit a tavern, get street food, or cook over a campfire. I still think about what types of restaurants might be around and decide the number and styles of cooking based on the size of the city. More people in an area means more options. It applies to places outside of cities too. If there's a busy road I'll put a few chuckwagons and food trucks along the way, and a little diner or two at natural waystops. If there's a fair or market I'll add a row of food stalls. And you bet there'll be roadside stands selling fresh produce in farm country. Good food is everywhere.

If my players went to a restaurant in a bigger city that had an entirely different culinary style from the rest of the area I'd improvise dishes in that style. If they went to a fancy joint that served the region's main cuisine I'd keep the basics I've already established but flex a little. Throw in ingredients that would be rare, expensive, or imported; use more labor-intensive and obscure preparation methods, and have a lot more courses. The aim is to make the meal feel different from what they're used to.

A nine-course meal in the area might be something like this:

A gin aperitif and candied chestnuts.
Lobster bisque.
Oysters.
Wild greens salad with candied walnuts, dried blueberries, blue cheese, and cranberry vinaigrette.
Lemon-pepper cod served with grilled asparagus.
Roast swan with pomegranate and mushroom stuffing.
Peppermint-cucumber sorbet.
Blueberry pie with plum and dark chocolate ice cream.
Maple-glazed eclairs, peach tart, baklava, a peach brandy digestif, and coffee.

All courses served with white wines except the main which is accompanied by a red.

The meal uses mostly local ingredients with a few unusual things and dishes incorporated, and is different enough from what the party regularly eats that it registers as something new.

Note: I'd never make my players sit through me describing an entire full-course meal like boxed text. If they asked I'd lay it out in one go, but otherwise it'd be mentioned as a backdrop to something else occurring at the fancy dinner/party with me describing a new dish as it's brought out, then going back to what they're doing.

7 If they're cooking for themselves.
My players cook about as often a they buy prepared meals, maybe a little more. For that I think about what's actually in a "ration" and use those ingredients to decide what meal gets made over the fire. Rations aren't bricks of nutrient paste, they're preserved foods packed for travel. If you buy them locally then they'll be made with the locally available foods and ingredients.

I also give the party chances to forage to supplement their rations. Whatever they find gets incorporated into the meal (or preserved) and they decide if they want to use it to stretch their rations and conserve resources or if they want to get some benefit from having had a more interesting meal with bigger portions.

Give it a try. You're already doing worldbuilding as a GM, take a few minutes to think about food when you do. It's fun!