Food in your games?

[TheYell]

Our gunslinger likes to cook the monsters we kill. He rolled a 1 and luckily for him the GM was merciful and just said it was badly burnt. I told him my monk had a vow of fasting.

We have to track our rations each day, and from the way my GM danced in his chair when somebody brought up the environmental hazards rules, we had better keep track of that stuff.

When I build my monastery it will earn a sizeable daily income according to the Downtime rules, so everybody can eat in the refectory for free, but it will serve one meal a day, with beans on the menu four days a week, so I hope they really are hungry.

[Nupo]

Years ago we were terrible about tracking rations. Frequently a year later, a character would still have the same seven days of rations that they bought when they created the character. They were essentially everlasting rations simply because we were negligent about tracking it. We do a little better job of it now.

Our current campaign the characters have a sailing ship. They made a point to purchase plenty of supplies, and even hired an NPC cook. Just last session, they rescued some elves whose ship had been sunk. When they returned the elves to their home island, the community treated them to a feast of lobster and other sea food as part of the reward.

[Pugwampy]

Well yes . I expect everyone to eat at least breakfast once per day , or use up trail rations or go hunting . My sessions usually start off from a tavern so we get that part over and done with . This includes drinking or sucking from your waterskin .

Food and water is only really an issue if they for some reason became bandits and have no hub town support which happens more often then i am comfortable with .

I enjoy starting the party off in sub standard taverns of the dwarf or half orc variety . So i can get to roll to see if the food is edible . Either its a 5 course ham , bacon and pork meal or you rolled low and it Goblin Turd Soup again in which case use up a trail ration .

If you have a high CON you could take your chances with the soup if you wish ....

As a start off I usually advise players to buy salt so if they are in the bushes they can go hunting and add to their trail rations.
Usually i introduce new players by having them in some sort of monster soup pot or some such and other players rescue them .

[Primus Beno]

I tend to use a system where if they are eating well and living the good life, I'll be throwing advantages their way, especially to Constitution and Charisma rolls. On the flip side, if they are on week 4 of iron rations with no bath and still sleeping out in the weather, they get some disadvantages to rolls.

[Kane0]

I once witnessed a character with the character trait: Violently allergic to eggs. That character payed very close attention to food.

Also, one DM of mine has a humorous and intriguing habit of referring to any kind of cheap or nasty alcohol as Ribena.

Edit: Tangentally related, every time my mage character uses an illusion spell he usually works in the codeword 'Muffins' as part of his turn in order to tip off allies but not enemies. This almost always has the side effect of starting a conversation mid-combat about muffins, the variations thereof and when the characters and/or players will next be consuming some.

[hifidelity2]

I once witnessed a character with the character trait: Violently allergic to eggs. That character payed very close attention to food.

I had a PC who chose to be Vegan (its was GURPS fantasy so he got points for it)
The party were being chased at one stage by a large group and had to hid in some mountains where they were running out of food and could only hunt for mountain goat etc. The PC nearly died from starvation (I reduced his St and HT (Con)) right down and in the end the party were almost carrying him until they got out of the mountains

[DigoDragon]

My local group has a simple system we've been using.

Per person per day: 2 pounds meat, 1 days trail rations (assumed to fulfill the daily fruit serving), 1 gallon water. As the party hunter, I track the weight of meat and dried fruit we're carrying and the bard tracks the water supply. We keep a group fund that is used to restock in towns we pass by. We don't worry about the meat going bad because we found a Bag of Holding where time flows crazy slow inside, so we just assume the meat will keep for weeks with nothing but a light salting.

[danielxcutter]

Me: Hey guys how do you handle food in your games?

Some people: nah we don't care about it much

Me: Damn. Guess it's not a big thing.

Other people: actually we do

Me: lol

#wait a sec this isn't Tumblr

[BWR]

I had a PC who chose to be Vegan (its was GURPS fantasy so he got points for it)
The party were being chased at one stage by a large group and had to hid in some mountains where they were running out of food and could only hunt for mountain goat etc. The PC nearly died from starvation (I reduced his St and HT (Con)) right down and in the end the party were almost carrying him until they got out of the mountains

Huh. the one vegan I know IRL would have chowed down on that goat without a second thought if he were in that situation. But he's pretty sensible about things in general. Vegan if possible, will eat anything if it's that or starvation.

[Guizonde]

aside from one-shots, all my games have tracked rations quite precisely due to inflicting morale damage if hunger or foulness of taste was involved. it's a house-rule that makes a lot of sense since a lot of us are hikers (and some were ex-military: an army marches on its stomach. a happy army eats well)

my dwarven cleric was a vegetarian (i always choose quirks like that to give my characters flavor). on a ship, he had to bust out "create bread and water" to feed the crew while we hung out fishing lines to feed the crew and us after a bad storm. the mood was pretty somber, eating boiled fish and bread for 3 weeks, almost going to a mutiny until we charmed the pants off the rebels with good roleplay (and some assassinations). the rest of the time, i specified i either ate fish or just the vegetables.

in my current universe, food is scarce. rations taste horrible, so you break them out when you've no choice (eating one forces an endurance check not to be nauseated). at least one member of the party has survival, and it's quite commonplace to hunt and scavenge. rats, mosses, mutants, humans on occasion... it gets pretty gross pretty fast. then again, it's after the apocalypse, and people have become quite adept at making fried rat taste palatable, and a small part of the population are cannibals, or more precisely, necrophages. i guess that puts into perspective what is considered "foul-tasting".

we track booze religiously as much to drink as to use it elsewhere. sterilizing bandages and wounds, purifying water, incendiaries, toasting with npc's... our characters go through prodigious amounts of booze, from rotgut to things that make dom perignon reserve champagne look cheap. we're always thrilled when we loot booze, and we have a private joke about the sanctity of barkeeps. now that one of the team (the teetotaler, of all people) has become a barkeep in camden it makes it even more hilarious!

[Haldir]

I have recently been designing some cities that are campaign neutral expansions and in all of them there are quests and substantial infrastructure dedicated to food and water management. It is a huge pull of man hours for any society, so large consequential events like a PC get into should relate to it somewhat.

[Lacco]

It depends on a game, however overall I use food all the time in games.

When we play Shadowrun, the players actually have their favourite meals, restaurants, soyburger-stands, and always argue whether soykaf or normal coffee is better. We often try to simulate this by ordering similar food as our characters.

When we play fantasy, the food becomes even more important - most of the time, the PC's first thing on "to-do while in a city" list is "find the best inn" (except the one that goes shopping for clean clothes - she always wants to find the inn with cleanest tub). They are able to spend lots of money just on fancy food, good drinks, an often leave an inn if I say that the wine is weathered or bread stale. When on road, they enjoy change brought by hunting.

And it's also used to highlight changes between different civilizations, further hammering home "you are not at home anymore" with food types & customs.

[Guizonde]

It depends on a game, however overall I use food all the time in games.

When we play Shadowrun, the players actually have their favourite meals, restaurants, soyburger-stands, and always argue whether soykaf or normal coffee is better. We often try to simulate this by ordering similar food as our characters.

When we play fantasy, the food becomes even more important - most of the time, the PC's first thing on "to-do while in a city" list is "find the best inn" (except the one that goes shopping for clean clothes - she always wants to find the inn with cleanest tub). They are able to spend lots of money just on fancy food, good drinks, an often leave an inn if I say that the wine is weathered or bread stale. When on road, they enjoy change brought by hunting.

And it's also used to highlight changes between different civilizations, further hammering home "you are not at home anymore" with food types & customs.

for us in our post-apocalyptic universe, plan a is litterally "let's hit the pub". we've gone through several to find the one where the booze and the food taste the best so as to get some much-needed downtime and morale boosts, but we'll never shy away from a dive bar to hit up the local rumors or find the local rackets to rough up and get intel. i've taken that saying "ok, what do we do?" "plan a?" "plan a" into my pf game, and aside from being rp-compatible (we're all disciples of cayden cayllean), it makes us blast through clues to get ahead, something the dm hadn't anticipated. he's progressing faster than expected, since he's of the "let the players have one session to find one clue out of 6" school of thought.

[Yuki Akuma]

In the first campaign my current D&D group was in, the DM (who we haven't played with since) was a very "DM vs. players" sort, who made us meticulously track rations and would penalise us if we couldn't eat for a day.

We had a Druid. After the first night, she cast Goodberry every day with all of her remaining spell slots before going to bed.

Suddenly the DM stopped asking us if we had food.

[goto124]

"The next morning, you wake up to a foul smell. It turns out that over the night, your Goodberries have turned into Badberries."

[Guizonde]

"The next morning, you wake up to a foul smell. It turns out that over the night, your Goodberries have turned into Badberries."

ouch. even my psycho dm was lenient enough to consider "create food and water" as spammable since it was hard tack and disease-free water... so, you'll survive but lunch will be crummy (no pun intended)

[meal5]

I think food is not an issue.

[Bohandas]

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...-in-the-Tavern
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...asy-Foodstuffs

[Tipsy_Pooka]

I always try to make food important in my campaigns. I think it's great at adding verisimilitude to the game, especially for new players. While it loses importance at mid- high-levels, I find it encourages proper book-keeping, especially at levels where you might find yourself without "enough". It definitely helps with emphasizing in-game cultural differences as well.

Then again, I'm the guy that plays spellcasters fussing over every individual material component...

[Whyrocknodie]

If there was some kind of plot making food relevant it might get a look in, otherwise it would be in the dustbin with bathroom visits, brushing teeth, waiting for busses, small talk about the weather and other such uninteresting material.

[Yuki Akuma]

"The next morning, you wake up to a foul smell. It turns out that over the night, your Goodberries have turned into Badberries."

Given he was a stickler for 100% Rules As Written I think there would have been a riot if he'd said that.

[Velaryon]

In my games, food only ever comes up in certain circumstances.

1. If the PC's are at the inn, food and drink is usually just part of the cost of staying there, unless they want to make a thing out of how much they're eating or drinking.

2. If they're on the road for an extended period, then I'll ask them to track rations or have someone make Survival checks to hunt and forage.

3. If there's some other reason why food would be scarce, such as the massive nationwide drought that caused all the crops to die and food prices to skyrocket to exorbitant levels.

[goto124]

Given he was a stickler for 100% Rules As Written I think there would have been a riot if he'd said that.

People these days don't appreciate good wordplay

[Xuc Xac]

Given he was a stickler for 100% Rules As Written I think there would have been a riot if he'd said that.

Going strictly by Rules As Written, you can't just cast goodberry for infinite free food. You have to cast it on a handful of freshly picked berries. Unless you camp every night next to a berry bush that has fruit on it, you're not casting the spell. Fruits are seasonal, too, so you can't cast the spell every day even if you live next to that bush.

[goto124]

5e requires 'a sprig of mistletoe', no word on the freshness of the mistletoe. The spell also states that the berries 'appear in your hand'.

[Yuki Akuma]

Going strictly by Rules As Written, you can't just cast goodberry for infinite free food. You have to cast it on a handful of freshly picked berries. Unless you camp every night next to a berry bush that has fruit on it, you're not casting the spell. Fruits are seasonal, too, so you can't cast the spell every day even if you live next to that bush.

Nope. The material component is a sprig of mistletoe - which doesn't get used up by the spell, so you can use the same mistletoe forever. The berries appear in your hand from nowhere.

[goto124]

I wonder how many PCs tried to kiss the Druid during Goodberry casting...

[Guizonde]

I wonder how many PCs tried to kiss the Druid during Goodberry casting...

only on new year's. last time, poor druid was almost crushed to death.

[goto124]

I'll admit, I feel like I missed a reference.

[John Campbell]

Going strictly by Rules As Written, you can't just cast goodberry for infinite free food. You have to cast it on a handful of freshly picked berries. Unless you camp every night next to a berry bush that has fruit on it, you're not casting the spell. Fruits are seasonal, too, so you can't cast the spell every day even if you live next to that bush.

It's edition-dependent.

In AD&D 2E:

Casting a goodberry spell upon a handful of freshly picked berries makes 2d4 of them magical. The caster (as well as any other caster of the same faith and 3rd or higher level) can immediately discern which berries are affected. A detect magic spell discovers this also. Berries with the magic either enable a hungry creature of approximately man-size to eat one and be as well-nourished as if a full normal meal were eaten, or else cure 1 point of physical damage from wounds or other similar causes, subject to a maximum of 8 points of such curing in any 24-hour period.

The reverse of the spell, badberry, causes 2d4 rotten berries to appear wholesome, but each actually delivers 1 point of poison damage (no saving throw) if ingested.

The material component of the spell is the caster's holy symbol passed over the freshly picked, edible berries to be enspelled (blueberries, raspberries, currants, gooseberries, etc.).

In 3.5:

Casting goodberry upon a handful of freshly picked berries makes 2d4 of them magical. You (as well as any other druid of 3rd or higher level) can immediately discern which berries are affected. Each transmuted berry provides nourishment as if it were a normal meal for a Medium creature. The berry also cures 1 point of damage when eaten, subject to a maximum of 8 points of such curing in any 24-hour period.

In 5E (where at least the character I referenced was operating):

Up to ten berries appear in your hand and are infused with magic for the duration. A creature can use its action to eat one berry. Eating a berry restores 1 hit point, and the berry provides enough nourishment to sustain a creature for one day.

The berries lose their potency if they have not been consumed within 24 hours of the casting of this spell.

The spell doesn't appear to have been around in 1E, and I abstained from 4E.