Can we eat that?

[Totte]

Hello,

I had an interesting experience DM-ing 4E session last evening. The players were my son and two of his friends (16-17) and one of my old game buddies who is a very experienced player. The youngsters really like to play with some experienced player in the party.

Now, they killed some mages on Hippogriffs, and afterwards someone says: Hmm, can we eat Hippogriff, what do they taste like? So they had Hippogriff around the campfire. I let the cleric roll a Nature to prepare the food (and a 17 made him find some spices in the woods too)

A little further down the adventure path, they killed a few blood drakes, and they agreed that they probably needed cooking over night, or they wont be any good.

So, anyone else had PCs that eat what they kill to save rations? I've never had this happen, ever before.

And, what is the eatability of such things? Any thoughts?

// Totte

 

[Mesh Hong]

I still get grief about a character of mine who cooked and ate a Silver Dragon (not a whole one of course, that would be outrageous!). Admittedly the silver dragon had died while it was protecting him, but “waste not want not”, he had never eaten Silver Dragon before and it was right there in front of him, and fresh too. He was quite put out when his travelling companions all gave him a strange look and said they weren’t hungry.

That character also had a Halfling Druid follower who was also an expert cook. He was quite useless in combat but at least he was helpful in the kitchen and shared my characters culinary curiosity.

Also on a food note we had an Eberron campaign where our characters insisted on eating only “finest fair”. Everywhere we went the most important thing was to find the best and most expensive restaurant and sample its “finest fair”. Afterwards we would then either bicker about who was going to pay or better yet try and find a way not to pay at all. Adventurers claiming to be renowned food critics sent by the Sharn Inquisitor can make or break a restaurants reputation!

The importance of food in roleplaying is well known. Its value for maintaining morale and a sense of decency is probably best understood in Call of Cthulhu where having a nice piece of really good cake can give you a welcome break from the horrors of the world. In fact in our group we refer to any RP activity or information that is not strictly plot related as “Cake”.

 

[lukelightning]

In one of my adventures, I forced my players to make "rôti de owlbear à la compote de rose et pommes" (Google French for "Roast Owlbear with Rose Apple Sauce" for an extremely snooty and annoying restaurant critic (they owned a cheap tavern). First was the skill challenge to find special ingredients, followed by having to find and kill an owlbear.

 

[Totte]

Yes I agree, eating, or dining, is an important part of RPGs. My son was introduced to RPGs at the age of 6, with the JamesBond RPG, so he is "raised" in the way that posh dining is fun ;-)

When the PCs were in urban areas, they did visit the best inns. One PC said at The Golden Dragon Inn "I'm up for shrimp today, what do you have?", and the chef gave him 5 different choices, so he said "I can't decide, give me one of each" ;-) PCs with a lot of gold that really go playboy style.

The question still stands. Can you eat a hippogriff or a blood drake, or a silver dragon?

// Totte

 

[Totte]

Love that idea!

I could use that, have them "please" some eccentric nobleman that they need to impress to get the information.

 

[Mesh Hong]

The question still stands. Can you eat a hippogriff or a blood drake, or a silver dragon?

The simple answer has got to be yes.

The complicated answer is probably.

It all depends on how deeply you want to go into it. Really you should be able to eat the fleshy part of any Natural creature, its where meat comes from after all. You should also be able to eat the vast majority of a natural creatures internal organs (usually refered to as offal). The mark of a good chef is to be able to take the cheaper cuts of meat, or indeed offal and make fine dining out of it.

For instance if you see sweetbreads on a menu, they are usually a throat gland from a cow or a sheep.

The only things you can't really eat are things like poison sacks. However this is D&D we are talking about and it is possible that even poison glands are a fine delicacy to people who have access to poison resistance. Perhaps that could be used as a right of passage in a tribal culture, or maybe a test to ensure that only members of a cult of Zehir are involved in after dinner secret talks.

The real complication comes when considering other types of creatures.

Fey - You can probably eat it but there could be some sort of residual effect.

Shadow - I would doubt that you could eat an incorporial creature after death (they just fade away), and anything with the undead keyword is probably best avoided (in polite society anyway). But standard shadow creatures might me edible, though possibly not very tastey.

Elemental - I find it unlikely that you could eat any elemental with a (type), eg an Efreet Fireblade (elemental; fire). But you could probably eat a demon or a fire giant if you wanted.

Immortal - You could probably eat most immortals if you wanted, even if you had a moral onjection to eating an angel or celestial charger you probably wouldn't mind a hellstinger scorpion kebab.

Aberrant - This is possibly where I would be most cautious, aberations come from a completely different universe. A lot of them might be edible and some are probably quite tastey but who knows what effects a diet of gibbering mouthers might have on you? Do you really want to take the risk?

So yes I would imagine that you can eat most things, and many will be quite palitable if prepared in the right way.

The more complicated question is not if you can eat it, but should you eat it?

Some races get offended if you eat sentient creatures, or creatures you can communicate with, or creatures that claimed to be you friends before they unfortunately died.

This is one of those areas that the more you think about it, the more troubling it becomes.....

Let us assume you eat beef, no problems with eating a cow right?

Now let us assume you can cast a ritual that allows you to talk to a cow and you have a pleasent conversation. Can you still eat it without feeling any guilt?

If that raises an interesting point what about a ritual that allows you to talk to plants? What are you supposed to do then?

 

[Totte]

Very nice put Mesh, I agree with you. If you killed it, by hunting or in mortal combat, eating it would be ok as long as it is something the PCs could eat without any moral or religious dilemmas. Or as my friends PC put it "We leave the mages, the meat is so dry anyway.", really meaning "I won't eat a humans, even if I am a gnome ;-)".

Eating dog is not a problem if you live in rural China, but not in the western world. The french eat snails (delicious btw), and in India, no one would eat a holy cow, unless you are a non-hindi person.

Applying logics to it make sense, and I think we did well, and everybody enjoyed the overnight blood drake stew, and thats what DnD is all about, enjoy and have fun.

 

[renau1g]

And sometimes it's possible to overthink things, if the players are having fun, let them eat their kills. In Fallout if you ate corpses there were reprecussions to it and I'd apply to same in D&D. If you are eating your kills you might attract unwanted attention, especially if they're a noble species. Ex. if that silver dragon was found by its mate eaten it might surely work to track down those responsible. Also, good-aligned PC's should at least feel a twang of guilt over eating a sentient creature, especially a humanoid. A paladin (in pre-4e) should certainly suffer consequences for that action.

 

[UltimaGabe]

For anyone who's played or DMed the Age of Worms adventure path back in 3.5, you may remember that in the first adventure (The Whispering Cairn), there's a magical basin in the bottom of this old tomb that magically produces this substance that tastes like gravy, and if you eat a small portion of it, will provide you with sustenance as if you had eaten a day's food. Well, one of my players was playing a gnome Barbarian/Cleric who decided he loved the gravy so much that he took as much of it as he could get- and whenever he would run out, he'd make a trek back to the starting town so that he could get some more. He would occasionally try mixing the gravy with other things, and write down on his character sheet which combos tasted better than others (if I recall, gravy + black dragon = good, but gravy + used scroll = bad).

Not only that, but he made his axe intelligent, and his axe loved to eat, and we had a lot of fun with it. That was a good campaign.

 

[radja]

corporeal undead are probably edible, provided the flesh is fresh enough. I've had at least one evil dictator raise a cooked centaur so it could serve its own meat to the party-goers. also, I once had a paladin who ate halfling (when you see some orcs roasting meat over a fire, carefully examine the roasting meat after killing them. it may look good, and well-cooked, but halfling on a spit is still halfling).