The Humble Trail Ration - It's Use and Abuse

[LordVreeg]

After all, it doesn't have to stay about food for long. The entire plot arc in the current Cad Goleor game started off when Sorcha just went hunting for some breakfast...

Yep.  It's not about the detail, its about where the details can lead you...

[Lmns Crn]

As for using food to flavor a campaign, I've never really done that (I usually use sounds and music for that), but the prospect is intriguing.  It would certainly help further immerse people, since it would incorporate more senses.  I think I may start trying to work food into scenes more often.

My favorite example of this is Sean Nittner's running of the Burning Wheel scenario The Gift, which is a diplomatic meltdown between elves and dwarves (all of them PCs), with all the typical high-fantasy baggage and assumptions in place. When setting up for play, Sean arranged for the players to be drinking the same things as their characters-- "elven" wine for the elven PCs (and their players), and "dwarven" ale for the dwarven PCs (and their players). It's a fun little detail that might increase player buy-in; it blurs the lines a bit between what happens in-game and what happens among players.

As it turns out, in the world of this game, dwarven ale and elven wine are incredibly powerful intoxicants when consumed by someone from a non-matching culture (so elven wine will totally mess up a dwarf, etc.). So, in Sean's version of The Gift, diplomatic tensions got much worse when one player offered a drink to another player, and (player actions and character actions already being somewhat blurred) this offer was interpreted as an underhanded attack. :yumm: