the Dungeon Menu?

[Richards]

My gaming group consists of myself as DM, my son, and the other three players are a former co-worker, his wife, and their oldest son. (They also have a younger son who doesn't play with us.) As a result, we've found it works best that we play at their house; we used to alternate between our houses but that just means providing entertainment for their younger son.

So, despite the fact that the other family always hosts our sessions, we alternate between the two families as to whose turn it is to provide snacks. Snacks usually include a cheese-and-cracker tray (usually with at least one meat as well - salami, ham, turkey, whatever) or a vegetable-and-dip tray. We usually supplement the healthier snacks with a bag of candy; M&Ms or Swedish fish candies are both popular. My son and I are also avid Mello Yello drinkers, so we've taken to bringing a 12-pack of that as well when we're doing snacks.

Regardless of whose turn it is, the host family almost always has an extra bowl of candy and/or a plate of cookies available, and they provide sodas and iced tea as well.

As for the PCs, we usually just assume they're eating well enough at the appropriate times behind the scenes unless it's important to the plot to focus on their food.

Johnathan

 

[Bastard Child]

The girls in the group look at gaming as another chance to entertain friends, so most of the cooking is home-made and we usually all eat together in a pot-luck sorta way. Our snacks are mostly just vegetables and fruit with stuff like hummus. On very special occasions our parents cook stuff and get to have stuff like goi cuon or sfouf.

We don't even worry about encumbrance so I doubt eating rules will feature anytime soon.

 

[Alan Shutko]

When I ran a Saturday game, I'd cook for the whole group. Usually some big one-pot meal like bolognese or Beef bourguignon.

Now that the game is on Friday nights, we usually coordinate a delivery order through our local bike delivery service (which can choose between pizza, chinese, lebanese, afghani, italian, or locavore American). Folks who don't want in bring their own.

We start around 6:30 so we'll be eating during the game.

 

[was]

we bring our own snacks, but will often go on a dinner run

 

[DragonLancer]

For my main Pathfinder group it's usually a case of we pitch some cash together for ingredients and one of my players (she's an awesome cook) does us a chilli or something. If thats not possible for whatever reason we order a take out.

 

[Desdichado]

We occasionally actually meet for dinner; either grilling some brats and burgers at someone's house, or meeting at a restaurant nearby and eating together before playing. We also frequently order pizza to be delivered mid-sessions.

Most often, though, we just snack. We'll have a bunch of two-liters of something to drink, including (usually) Diet Coke and Mt. Dew, we'll end up with a few bags of assorted chips (the Kettle brand Sea Salt and Cracked Pepper, or whatever it's called, being a favorite), and by tradition we seem to always have red Twizzlers and Rold Gold's pretzel rods. Sometimes someone will have bought or baked some cookies or brownies or something too.

As for the characters and food, our characters eat about as often as a character in a movie, TV show or book; i.e., it will happen if it make sense in the environment we're in or something like that, but otherwise it's completely ignored. We never stock up on rations before heading out of town either, or worry about foraging and hunting, or any of that jazz.

 

[Verdande]

It generally depends. I game with my buddies, and I'm kind of the responsible one in general and we wouldn't eat if I didn't arrange for food to be brought somehow. This generally means that I get to delegate who's buying what, which can be fun. Generally we just eat dinner at some point during or before the session anyways.

I think it's remiss if you neglect your characters' eating habits when dungeon-crawling or exploring overland just as much as it'd be if you neglected the rules for advancement. It puts an external timer on what would otherwise be limitless wandering, and creates a form of tension- do we forge onwards into the dungeon and possibly run out of food and starve, or do we go back and risk the chance of new monsters moving in, or being beaten to the punch by other adventurers, or even a roving band of orcs?