OT - Fantasy food vs Real Life

[Buttercup]

Has anyone worked exotic fantasy foods into their games?

Well, in our last session the party discovered that the luscious, fluffy, delectible scrambled eggs they had just eaten were lizard man eggs. There are some brooding females kept chained up somewhere in town to satisfy the restaurant trade.

It's generally true though, that I don't use food as much as I could.

 

[Shadowdancer]

Yeah, we use it all the time. Especially when the party is traveling a great distance, and they stop frequently at various inns along the way. I try to vary the menu, especially to show regional and cultural differences. Sometimes, I'll come up with something really exotic, and the players will say, "Ohhh, gross. I ain't eating that." And I have to remind them, "It's just a fantasy game, your characters are the ones eating it, and they probably wouldn't mind."

 

[chatdemon]

We've got a couple of relevant articles on Canonfire (http://www.canonfire.com) that yall might find interesting.

The first is an overview of medieval cooking and food preparation and storage by canonfire author Shakey:

http://www.canonfire.com/html/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=140

And these two detail some of the wines and otehr drinks found in author Alasdair's campaign:

http://www.canonfire.com/html/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=137

and

http://www.canonfire.com/html/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=204


I've also always enjoyed the material for the Forgotten Realms that detailed some of the food and drink of the land. The Aurora's Whole Realms Catalog and Volo's Guide to .... books always gave me ideas for how to develop of little of the flavor of my campaign.

 

[mmadsen]

The first is an overview of medieval cooking and food preparation and storage by canonfire author Shakey:

http://www.canonfire.com/html/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=140

He makes some good points: restaurants didn't exist until chefs no longer had noble families to serve, sauces and spices served to disguise spoiled meat, you used your fingers and bread to eat, silverware was a luxury (and didn't exist in modern form), etc.

 

[Alaric_Prympax]

When I was first introduced to the game my first DM had an NPC halfling that everytime the party made camp served Hydra Head Cheese, a delicacy from where the halfling came from.

I love the idea of the the Lizardman Eggs, I might just have to use that one IMC. One of my NPC's just happens to have Profession (Chef) as a skill and he serves a pretty good Omelette (yes he actually did that in a game session so when 3e came I gave him a few ranks in it).

 

[mmadsen]

I've never bothered to come up with gourmet dishes of fantastic ingredients, but I have made sure to have goblins eating stray dogs, ogres sucking the marrow out of human thigh bones, etc. That comes naturally.