First just a quick plug. We talked about this series a few weeks back, and the weekly posting work is easy. Making a list of topics is harder. If anyone has ideas for topics, please PM me! I’ll shuffle anything awesome into the larger list I’m working through.
This week - what’s your preferred food and drink while gaming?
Have you ever ventured into thematic refreshments for a game night?
That said, what else off the table have you ever done / been a part of to enhance the mood of the game? (e.g., music, attire, setting, playing Nusfjord in Nusfjord, etc.)
Our house is full of Taiwanese Oolong and similar, so Formosa Tea is never played without a teapot nearby.
My friend is a musicophile and assembled a playlist of Russian House music for Red Cathedral, followed by Irish pub music for Irish gauge. Both pretty good!
Scotch is usually poured for Clans of Caledonia. Talisker specifically for Isle of Skye.
We once planned to play Dark Moon (hidden traitor on a broken space station) in the dark, cold depths of February. It ended up being 72F that day (~21C) and we played outside in sun hats. Ah well.
My first and only time to ComicCon they were demoing Great Dalmuti. There were special chairs and costumes, from an empty crate and potato sack for the Peon up to a full thrown and velvet gowns for the Dalmuti. We had fun with it, though I can’t imagine going to all that trouble now.
But in general I prefer beer. My preferred bar for games has mostly hoppy stuff (dang it Americans) but the one that isn’t is Kona Longboard. So I always associate Kona in particular with game night.
Yes, to Formosa Tea with tea. We‘ve done that. And that‘s about it for thematic enhancement as far as I can remember.
We mostly play dry theme-poor beige-rich Euro-y games… so…
Thematic enhancements were mostly reserved for our RPG sessions. We used to have a set of soundtracks. By the end of our RPG sessions we all knew the Conan intro by heart. But lots of other soundtrack music often fitting the session was on.
For my Unknown Armies campaign I had created a lengthy playlist together with the mailinglist for the game (yes way back when there were mailinglists for such things). I still have it. It is a bit on the odd side just like Unknown Armies
We usually don‘t have music on for boardgame nights. Might consider putting on some Dune airs for Dune games
For the RPG sessions we also sometimes did food that fit the region we were visiting in the game world. But that was tons of work and only happened a handful of times.
Usually the only snacks allowed around my games are those that will not stick to fingers. So it‘s Pretzels, M&Ms, Haribos and maybe some cookies—but no crumbly ones either. No chocolate. No crisps/chips (we call them chips but with all the Brits here…)
With the RPGs we had a tradition to try out „experimental“ food from the „lots of chemistry was harmed in the making of this Bauschaumriegel“-aisle. Actually Bauschaumriegel (whatever that was) was something a friend imported from UK. It was truly an abomination that started it all.
Drinks: beer (often without alcohol these days), whisky, mostly (carbonated) water. Sometimes espresso—we have some friends who do late-night coffee.
I don’t really understand eating/drinking and playing at the same time. For me, they are entirely discrete activities. So, game until lunch, break for lunch where we eat in a different room, then return to gaming.
The most thematic thing I can recall doing is just something simple: a prop like a crown for the grand dalmuti in The Grand Dalmuti.
We usually have some kind of munchies around, chips, pretzels, candy or chocolate sometimes, but nothing thematic. We also have soft drinks or water, or whatever each player wants. Maryse and I basically don’t drink alcohol anymore, but everybody can consume whatever, as long as the game stays intact.
We typically have our friends over for lunch and then game afterward. Occasionally we will have some candy or chips out, and sodas are always present. My wife and I don’t really drink. If someone wants to bring an alcoholic beverage to the table, that’d be fine, we just aren’t supplying it.
Haven’t really done anything thematic for snacks or music or anything. At most, we may have had a Star Wars film on in the background during a game of Imperial Assault or something.
When we played Distilled, we did make each player only drink the relevant drink for the character. If you loathed the drink, then you could swap with others but there was a penalty, can’t remember what now tho!
Around 1990/91, one of our gaming group was working for a well known pizza takeaway chain. Every game night he’d arrange for us to get at least one large pizza and a case of 24 cans of drink. All free or heavily discounted. However, he would spike one slice of each pizza by hiding anchovies underneath the layer of cheese. It was like playing Russian Roulette with every first bite.
We had a running snack theme of “the weirdest thing you can find at the neighborhood asian grocery” which devolved into “I found something else pandan-flavored”. I still don’t really know what a pandan is. Every time I look it up, it falls into the memory hole. Perhaps a Flavor That Was Not Meant To Be.
A reminder that https://melodice.org/ exists. (Not everyone follows the rules, so you occasionally get songs with vocal content, but mostly it does all right.) I’ve curated some playlists out of my own collection for RPG sessions to set the mood—film soundtracks are particularly good for this—but mostly I prefer no background music these days.
For food we tend to have snacks on an adjacent table, though most people don’t eat much, and/or a pause for Proper Food late in the day (usually we start a session after lunch).
