Tips/ideas wanted for running a royal ball/banquet situation

[Schmoe]

I don't have too much to add, specifically. But I can offer a couple of resources that could be useful.

First, the Shackled City Adventure Path (by Paizo) has a ball in chapter 3 or 4. While the material in the adventure itself was kind of skimpy, some people did a LOT of work to flesh out the ball and make the event an entire evening's worth of adventure. I can't for the life of me remember the site where fan contributions are archived, but if you go to the Paizo boards and poke around you can probably find it. The user behind lot of the best stuff was delvesdeep.

Second, the adventure "Prince of Redhand", from the Age of Worms Adventure Path (also by Paizo), features a banquet held by the ruling Prince. This adventure has revolutionized how I think about social adventures and events. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Edit: Here's the site I was talking about above. You'll need to register to access the archives, but it's free to do so and they don't send out any spam.

Edit2: And here's a link to the thread where delvesdeep converts the Demonskar ball into an all-night event.

 

[NewJeffCT]

I don't have too much to add, specifically. But I can offer a couple of resources that could be useful.

First, the Shackled City Adventure Path (by Paizo) has a ball in chapter 3 or 4. While the material in the adventure itself was kind of skimpy, some people did a LOT of work to flesh out the ball and make the event an entire evening's worth of adventure. I can't for the life of me remember the site where fan contributions are archived, but if you go to the Paizo boards and poke around you can probably find it. The user behind lot of the best stuff was delvesdeep.

Second, the adventure "Prince of Redhand", from the Age of Worms Adventure Path (also by Paizo), features a banquet held by the ruling Prince. This adventure has revolutionized how I think about social adventures and events. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Edit: Here's the site I was talking about above. You'll need to register to access the archives, but it's free to do so and they don't send out any spam.

Edit2: And here's a link to the thread where delvesdeep converts the Demonskar ball into an all-night event.

Thanks, I'll look it up.

 

[CoatRackOfDoom]

on a recent visit to London, my wife and I visited Hampton Court Palace; the kitchens were the highlight of our trip and we learned about how the feasts, and indeed, even regular meals for hundreds of England's most powerful men and women were handled. Here's a quote from the website referring to Tudor meals:

We see from Wolsey's Eltham ordinances that two courses should be served at the table of "the King's Majesty and the Queen's Grace" for dinner. For a first remove, the kitchens served up 15 dishes from a choice of bread and soup, beef, venison, red deer, mutton, swan (alternating with goose or stork), capon, cony, (rabbit), and carp. The remove was completed with a custard or fritters. This was followed by the second remove of nine dishes. These were composed of jelly, spiced wine and almond cream, followed by a selection from practically every bird in the sky - pheasants, herons, bitterns, shovelards, partridges, quails, cocks, plovers, gulls, pigeons, larks, pullets, and chickens. To this, was added lamb, kid, rabbit, venison, and tarts. Supper was a variation on dinner, with the addition of a blancmange pudding, butter, eggs and perhaps quinces or pippins in season.

During Lent, on Fridays and on meatless days, a 'lighter' fare was set before the King. His first course of a meagre 15 dishes was taken from bread and soup, ling, eels or lampreys, pike, salmon (which ran up the River Thames in Tudor times), whiting, haddock, mullet or bass, sea-bream or sole, conger, carp, trout, crabs, lobster, porpoise or seal, (which counted as fish in those days), custard, tart, fritters and seasonal fruit. The second course comprised nine dishes from a menu of another soup, sturgeon, bream, tench, perch, eels, lampreys, salmon roes, crayfish, shrimps, tart, fritters, fruit, baked pippins, oranges, butter and eggs. The saltwater fish was brought up the Thames to the palace in seaweed packed barrels.

The King might order anything or everything from these menus. His entourage fared scarcely less expansively. His Lord Chamberlain was entitled to two courses of ten and six dishes for dinner, and seven and four dishes for supper. And so the list of dish allowances carries on down to the end of the line where the maids, servants, porters and children had to exist on two meat dishes for dinner, (beef and mutton), and two for supper (beef and veal). Leftovers found their way, by royal custom of centuries, dating back to the banquets of William the Conqueror in his Great Hall at Westminster, to the poor at the gate.

These royal menus enshrined in the Eltham Statutes are notable for their high-protein content and lack of green vegetables, prompting some medical historians to wonder whether Henry VIII suffered from scurvy, (among other ailments), in his later years. Needless to say, such gargantuan royal meals served up in the Great Hall required prodigious quantities of home-brewed beer, ale, and wine imported from Burgundy and the Rhineland, to wash down these vast quantities of food. Accounts show that 600 barrels of alcohol were consumed each year at Hampton Court.

If you can get your hands on a copy of "The Taste of the Fire", you'll find all kinds of interesting tidbits on the cooking, serving, eating, and traditions surrounding table manners, that could really add some realism to your feast.

For example, leftovers were traditionally handed down to the lesser classes, and so hundreds of commoners would typically be outside the palace looking for a handout when a feast was held. Another interesting thing to feature would be fanciful entrees prepared by imaginative cooks, such as a chimera created by sewing together roasted meat of several different animals - like some fowl sewn to some swine sewn to some fish. Mmmm!

Have fun!