Spice Up Your Campaign: Designing Food at the Table

When painting an image of your setting, the smaller details can be just as meaningful as the broader strokes you make. Focusing on the finer points of a setting can help tell your story in more subtle ways. There are many characteristics you can focus on, but for me I like to look at the food and drink of my setting. What the inhabitants of my world are eating and drinking tells so much about it. 

I recently did this in order to prepare and enhance my Curse of Strahd game. If you are not familiar with the setting, Barovia is a harsh land shrouded in an ever-lasting fog. Using my method, I could have a variety of foods that felt like they would fit into this world. I could use real-world items, adding fantasy elements to emphasize the fantasy nature. In the end, I had a variety of foods that while realistic, felt entirely unique to this world.

Real World Base 

For me, the first step in coming up with the food and drink is that I look for a real life example to base my creations off. Having something that actually exists that I can research through reading, sampling, or even making it myself helps me get a more thorough understanding of the food. This goes for the players as well. It helps everyone to visualize the food I am explaining during our games.

Often I find a region matching the setting I am trying to create and use that to start. This helps me match the climate and ‌resources, and ‌gives me a good starting point. Depending on the diversity and size of the setting, this can be over one location. A world will be full of varied climates and biomes, which affect the ‌resources, while a smaller setting might be a bit more uniform in its layout.

Barovia was the latter of those two examples, being a smaller region. In 5e, Barovia is under 300 square miles in size, only comprising a few permanent towns and cities. The setting draws a lot of influence from Eastern Europe, having a lot of roots in traditional vampire mythology and the class Dracula. The book itself uses a lot of Slavic names for its NPC generators. Since I was planning on keeping Barovia very similar so I replicated that with the cuisine choice. Of Eastern European cuisine, I already had a bit of personal knowledge with a lot of Slavic foods, particularly Russian, Ukrainian, and Serbian. 

Looking at a lot of traditional food from that area, I notice there are a lot of starch heavy foods. The recipes I found started with some sort of hearty bread or a root vegetable, often potatoes. Fish, poultry, caviar, mushrooms, and berries are also mentioned as being abundant in the area. With this information, along with a couple of recipes, I get a broad sense of the food that would be eaten. With this base, I can move forward.

Fantasy Flair

Now that you have your base for your food, the next step is to incorporate fantasy elements. Pulling some of the fictional fantasy elements from the setting helps to connect it to your setting, linking some of the particularly memorable elements to the food. You want to separate it out from the real world in both large and small ways. This can be something simple or mundane. It could be related to the climate itself. Maybe the world you are building has multiple suns, and would probably have more sunlight or a longer growing season because of it. It might limit the amount of cold-weather options you would make, and have you emphasize items that would be most available during the warmer months. 

But the fantastical elements could have a deeper root in the world's magic. Perhaps there is a certain creature that has overtaken the local ecosystem. Some being, that was a creation long ago by a wizard. Now it is everywhere, so the locals have figured out a way to use it. Through farming it or hunting it, it appears as a staple in a lot of their dishes. Or maybe some ancient fae influence has created a grove of very fertile soil. This could allow exotic plants to be more common, or extend the growing season through the influence of the Feywild. It really can be anything.

Returning to my setting of Barovia, I use a variety of these elements to add that fantasy spice to my dishes. The most noticeable thing about Barovia is that the entire land is shrouded in eternal mists. It can allow creatures that are sensitive to sunlight to wander the day. I also reasoned that it would influence crop growth. The lack of sunlight all year around would make it hard to grow all but the hardiest of crops. Fruit and vegetables that rely on a lot of sunlight, such as normal grain, would struggle to grow. This has most of the region focusing on using more hardy sources of food. You see an increase in using root vegetables in dishes. It also prevents the grain from being grown for standard alcohol. It surprised my players when they found no ale in the first tavern they arrived at. There is wine, however, which is because of a larger fantasy element.

Normally you would not think of wine with the climate and conditions of Barovia. Even aside from the colder climate, the eternal fog would seem to stunt any potential grape vines from growing and producing fruit needed for fermenting. Barovia makes wine despite all this, and is known for its wine. All the wine in the region comes from one location, The Wizards of the Wine Winery. The winery, one of the older establishments in Barovia, is rumored to have some magical help in growing their grapes. Those who work the winery, as well as some particular individuals in the region, know that this is in fact true. There are a few specific sources of magic that allow this winery’s grapes to thrive in an environment where they would normally struggle. This use of magic circumvents the normal requirements and allows wine to be a readily available resource in Barovia. Tangentially, I determined this would also affect the availability of Barovian spirits. Brandy and even Grappa would be more common than something like whiskey.

In a similar situation, the available wild game is unusual. The local wolf population outnumbers just about anything else in the woods. The reasons are unknown to most, but it influences the protein sources available. Wolf Hunters are a common sight, managing the wolf populations for the safety of citizens and livestock. Since they are often dispatching wolves regularly, it is not uncommon to be offered Wolf Steak as a dish at the taverns across the mist-shrouded lands, something that was very shocking to my players when they first entered the lands. Using a mix of these elements took my original idea and added that wonderful fantasy twist that drew my players in, highlighting some of the unique elements of the world.

Add Variety

The last element I like to work on is to determine different dishes based on some smaller differences in my setting. I like to separate out based on specific locations, occupation of the individuals, and the relative wealth as well. I try to ask myself what the Mayor of a town would eat, vs the Forester, vs the Tavern Keeper. This step can really depend on the specifics of your setting and require some thought to flesh out entirely. But these finishing touches add additional facts about your world.

In Barovia, it is quite expensive to import any sort of resource into the lands. The mists that isolate the land are impossible to travel by all but a select few groups of people, such as the Vistani. Known to all in the setting of Ravenloft, and some of those outside it, these traveling people are content to trade with the communities they come in contact with, for a price. This means that anything not produced in Barovia is going to be more expensive than normal. With Barovia being isolated except for the occasional trade, I decided that certain commonly available resources would be too expensive for most commoners. This means that items like tea and coffee would be only had by the upper class. 

Most tea would be of the foraged variety. Pine needles and other herbs would make for a beverage that, while palatable, might not be what the party is used to consuming. A wealthy individual might can get normal tea. Noble looking to impress or flaunt their wealth might be happy to break out a rare Waterdeep Vintage of Tea, something common to my party. In the same realm, you will almost see no sort of ale in Barovia. Since it's hard to grow and would be quite costly to import, Barovia sticks to its wine for everyday alcohol, and brandy and grappa for the hard liquor.

Final Thoughts

Food can really tell you a lot about a culture. It’s one of the best ways to subtly deliver information to the table. It is something I have always done, but have tried to hone and perfect the method so that I can get as much out of it as possible. I usually start off with an example of the real world, looking for something that I feel matches the setting. This helps create a base that the players can relate to with a bit of ease, to help the imagination process. Then I look at my setting in particular and try to identify some of the fantastical elements. Identifying and seasoning with those elements that make the setting unique and fantastic help separate out the food in your setting from the real world just enough to remind your players that they are in a fantasy world. Finally, I go back through and try to add some different meals to add variety. Separating out what different occupations would have, as well as different levels of wealth, helps tell your player what the luxuries are in this world, in case its something that may not entirely be a luxury in the real world.

One of my favorite things about doing this kind of work is that it helps me learn a bit more about food I might not normally have time to experience. With Barovia, it was a lot of Slavic foods that I knew about but had not really known a lot about. For your setting, it could be any of the many foods out there. I see it as a great opportunity to search out the type of food you are basing it off of, and sampling it. If you like to cook, trying making it! Some times I think that can make the total experience even more fun. You can also share recipes and dishes with your party as well, helping to enhance your immersion by tying in another sense.

I would love to hear about your experiences with food in fantasy settings! Let me know below what you have done. I would love to hear about it!