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The Foodie’s Guide to Greyhawk

Medieval image of bakers removing bread from an oven

My head has been in the world of Greyhawk recently for a project. One fun trivia fact about the campaign world is that Gygax came up with the map as a fantasy version of the United States, and its titular city of Greyhawk was based on the city of his birth and childhood: Chicago! As a Chicagolander myself, I was inspired to transform one of Chicago’s main claims to fame, its food, into the fantasy milieu, with the following result. Though tongue in cheek, I still hope this can find a use in your own Greyhawk campaign…

The Free City is well known throughout the Flanaess as a haven for those seeking adventure in the Cairn Hills or the ruins of the old castle. However, Greyhawk is also the premier destination for the culinarily curious. As people from disparate regions settled the metropolis, they brought their foodways with them, so that modern Greyhawk has something to offer whether you’re in a fine dining establishment or just sampling the fare at the local tavern.

Legend has it that the city was nearly named after the Flan word for wild onions, though its founders eventually settled on the region’s distinctive avian predators as a namesake. Still, before the profits of the local dungeons began bolstering the city’s economy, growth was largely based on the meat packing industry.1 Though no longer the engine of Greyhawk’s prosperity, cured meats can still be found in many of the city’s iconic foods, especially street foods.

If you ask locals what Geryhawk’s signature dish is, you’ll get a variety of answers, but most will probably tell you it’s the Greyhawk-style Sausage, if for no other reason that it bears the city’s name. Though other cities from Hardby to Rel Astra lay claim to originating a particular type of mild sausage served on a bread roll,2 a true Greyhawk-style sausage is topped only with specific condiments. These include diced local sweet onions (the same ones that almost gave the city its name), sliced tomatoes,3 a mustard seed sauce, and pickled cucumber both as a long slice and minced nearly into a slurry; in addition, the bread roll itself is generally covered with seeds of poppy. Spicy peppers are optional, but the most important rule of the Greyhawk-style Sausage is that it absolutely must not be covered in the sweet tomato sauce that is common on sausages in Aerdy! You can grab a proper Greyhawk-style Sausage from stalls throughout the city and even as far afield as Two Ford and Blackfair Manor. If one is looking for a snack rather than a meal, the Low Market is known for selling specialty popped corn. This can be buttered or covered in cheese or caramel; a mixture of these two is sometimes called the Greyhawk mix.4

Many of Greyhawk’s popular street foods are brought by the city’s immigrant communities, though sometimes they find themselves transformed from the original. Take, for instance, the Marsh Street Tenha, which is a traditional sausage from Tenh but served on a bread roll in the Greyhawk-style along with mustard seed sauce and sauteed wild onions.5 The Adri Beef developed from cheap cuts of beef that could be afforded by recent immigrants from Aerdi and Ahlissa, stewed to tenderness and also served on a bread roll. This can be topped with cheese, spicy peppers, even a sausage! The most authentic topping is Dejl, a mix of herbs and vegetables popular in as a sort of tea in the Adri Forest, but in Greyhawk it is diced and pickled as a condiment.6 More recently, Baklunish immigrants have added the Helix Kebab to the city’s culinary tableau; this dish is supposedly named after the Spinning Helix of the Archmages due to the way the meat is cooked on an upright rotating skewer. Traditionally the meat is lamb but others may be used, and unlike most Greyhawk street foods it is served not on a bread roll but on a traditional Baklunish flatbread.7

Cutaway of a Medieval Bakery by Madeline H., via ArtStation: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/04Qz24

Beyond street food, more of Greyhawk’s signature dishes can be found in the many inns and taverns. A particular favorite is a sort of savory pie of tomato sauce and Djekul cheese with various other ingredients from spinach and basil to different varieties of sliced or crumbled sausage.8 The “tavern style” is baked on a flatbread with just a thin layer of tomato sauce covered by the shredded Djekul cheese and other toppings, and is perfect for a quick meal. The Deep Djekul Pie is baked in a dish and usually has the cheese buried under the tomato sauce and other toppings. Over an inch thick, this type is more associated with Greyhawk than the tavern style, but is generally reserved for feasts and special occasions. Legend has it that the first Deep Djekul Pie was inspired by dungeons below Castle Greyhawk and prepared for adventurers returning after a successful delve. The Green Dragon Inn’s pie is sometimes considered the iconic, original formulation, but I personally recommend the Silver Dragon Inn’s pie in the Foreign Quarter.

Greyhawk is also known for more elegant dishes such as Chicken White Plume,9 made by immigrants from the Shield Lands and named for the local volcano (though there is presumably no connection to the dungeon beneath). Chicken and potatoes are sauteed in oil and white wine and garnished with peas. Head to the High Tower Inn in the Garden Quarter for the classic take on this dish.

  1. The word Chicago is apparently from a word for wild onions; this was never actually true of Greyhawk but my own invention. Greyhawk being named for local birds of prey was first established in ‘From the Ashes’, while the reference to the city’s meatpacking industry (an intentional Chicago parallel) was first mentioned in 1998’s ‘Player’s Guide to Greyhawk.’
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  2. In real life the origin of the Hot Dog is contested, I used Hardby and Rel Asta as stand ins for two of the real world contenders, St. Louis and New York City respectively. ↩︎
  3. As far as I know, there are no canonical references to tomatoes in Greyhawk. However, there are references to potatoes (even from Gygax-era works), so I am running under the assumption that New World foodstuffs are available in the Flanaess. ↩︎
  4.  Popped corn is actually mentioned in 1989’s ‘City of Greyhawk’ boxed set, so I just took an extra step to bring it in line with Chicago’s most famous flavors. ↩︎
  5. Based on a Maxwell Street Polish. Greyhawk doesn’t necessarily have a clear analogue for Slavic people; in my opinion Tenh has that sort of vibe, as well as a canonical immigrant population in the city after the Greyhawk Wars. However, in your own game you could replace it with a Ratiker, Bisselish, or other place name. I chose Marsh Street mainly for the sound and connection to the Low Market, but it could also just as easily be River Street or Hothand Street. ↩︎
  6. I originally called this an Aerdy Beef, for the Great Kingdom definitely has a fallen Roman Empire theme going on. During research, I discovered Bejl in “A Return to Falcon’s Bazaar” (Dragon 271). Though listed as a beverage, it reminded me of Chicago’s peculiar topping Giardiniera, so I updated to Adri Beef (and Adri is in the region of Aerdy anyhow). ↩︎
  7. Gyro is the Greek name for a food known in Turkish as the Doner Kebab. Both refer to the spinning motion of the cooking, and the Spinning Helix of the Archmages first mentioned in ‘From the Ashes’ was the most relevant Greyhawk reference I could find. ↩︎
  8. There are many canonical cheeses in the World of Greyhawk (never thought I’d type that sentence, but here we are). None of them are a good match for mozzarella, a pretty essential ingredient for any type of pizza. Djekul seems to be more like a brie or camembert, but if you’ve ever had a baked brie, it’s closer to mozzarella than any of the hard cheeses found in the Flanaess, so I chose to go with it rather than making up a new variety. ↩︎
  9. Seemed like the perfect stand in for Chicken Vesuvio, for obvious reasons. ↩︎
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No Thank You, Bullywugs

rpg print out maps and materials with crayon colored on

For the past year, I’ve been trying different RPGs with my oldest son. Lately, one he really likes is No Thank You Evil! by Monte Cook Games. After we’d played through all of the adventures included in the box set, I ran for him the next adventure I had on hand, Frogs of the Feywild.

Frogs of the Feywild played into some fairy tale tropes, so the adventure seemed like a good fit to play for young kids. Of course, the adventure is written for 5e, so I had to do an on the fly conversion into the Cypher System that forms the core of No Thank You Evil! Besides that, the adventure consists mostly of combat encounters; this was the first adventure I published for sale, and combat was what I was most comfortable designing for at the time. I decided to alter some of the combats, both to better fit the No Thank You Evil! aesthetic, and because I felt better about presenting an adventure with more nonviolent options throughout.

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Note: I’m spoiling the whole plot of Frogs of the Feywild, you are warned.

No Thank You Evil! takes place in the world of Storia, with thematic regions that the protagonists can access from their homes. ‘Into the Closet’ is the vaguely Narnia-esque land of fairy tales and fantasy; ‘Under the Bed’ is the spooky realm of ghost stories; ‘Behind the Bookshelf’ is a diverse land for historical or mythological adventures; and ‘Out the Window’ leads to distant sci-fi worlds and high seas adventures. With the strong Feywild connection, Frogs of the Feywild seemed to fit best within ‘Into the Closet.’ I decided to nix the entire plot hook involving the dastardly Prince Jermyn, and instead used something direct for young kids: a wedding invitation! This got the characters to the venue quickly and also provided an excuse for them to have access to a map of the gardens. I noted that the wedding was for Princess Tania, but made no mention of her suitor.

The opening of the adventure remained fairly unchanged: the characters witnessed Bullywugs chasing guests out of the garden where the wedding was taking place. I decided the difficulty level for checks against these Bullywugs should be fairly low, a 2 or 3 at most. A ‘Smarts’ check allowed the characters to recall what they knew about Bullywugs; namely, that they could sometimes act like bullys, but like all bullys, were cowards at heart. (Is that too Dad of me? Oh well.) The wizard was able to use an illusion to scare off most of the Bullywugs with ease. Since my son still seemed to want to fight, I decided that the leader of the Bullywugs at the gate was unfazed an stayed to fight (in 5e, this was a Bullywug Croaker who also does not flee). However, this Bullywug did surrender when disarmed.

Gale the Gardener remained unchanged, giving the characters information about the current goings on and explaining the challenge of the Chaotic Maze. This challenge worked well; my son initially tried to just navigate it normally, regardless of the warning, but kept getting popped out. He figured that the Bullywugs had probably gotten through by jumping (they are frogs, after all), so he made some springs to jump over himself; I ruled that the magic vines were suitable for this task. As long as a character comes up with a way to get through, the difficulty should still be low at this point, 2 or 3.

In the section of the ruined party, my son got excited and grabbed a bunch of stuffed animals to play the lingering party guests. This led to a new NPC, Madame Elephante (a stuffed elephant), who was able to give more information about Tania and the events of the morning. I added a detail of a bright light and a swirling cloud emerging from the fountain when Tania dropped in the Golden Ball that summoned the Bullywugs. These two phenomena settled in either of the terraces, giving a clear choice for the two paths forward. My son chose the Summer Terrace to proceed.

rpg print out maps and materials with crayon colored on
The adventure got an art upgrade too!

Now, the Południca in the next section is sort of a wicked character from folklore, and here I decided to soften the encounter somewhat. I described how the terrace felt incredibly hot, like the hottest summer day, and how the characters felt overcome with sleepiness. This sort of mirrors the Południca from folklore, which personified sunstroke in the fields. Once the characters had their nap (they failed the 3 difficulty) and found the giggling Lady Midday, she told them how she and her sister, Lady Snow, were accidentally pulled into the garden from the Land of Faerie (rather than the Feywild), and how they’d very much like to go back. No combat, just an environmental challenge and some flavor. She was able to come along to the next stop, but then went off to find her sister. If the characters were to choose the other path, the Snegurochka could be played fairly similar.

At this point, I decided to simply skip the fight at the fountain with the Wodnik Watercrafter. This was actually for time reasons, more than anything: I was making dinner at the same time, and wanted to wrap the adventure before we ate. I do think the Wodnik would be a fun character to describe, turning into water as he does, but since there is another combat immediately following, I’d probably tilt this more towards non-combat like with the Południca. Maybe the Wodnik could play tricks on the characters, without actually fighting? The Wodnik would have had a medium difficulty of 3, maybe even 4.

The final battle with Dragomir and Tania I played as written, with one important difference. The original was a trick battle, where Tania’s antagonism towards the PCs was disguised as part of Dragomir’s action in order to throw off the characters a bit. In this version, I specifically called out the fact that whenever Tania spoke, that made the effect that made the characters want to run away (higher difficulty here, at least 4). My son had been wondering why Tania had dropped that Golden Ball into the fountain to begin with, so this caused him to flat out ask her: what’s going on? At this point, I immediately stopped the battle and gave Tania’s exposition which would normally come after Dragomir was defeated. In this version, though, Dragomir was always the intended groom, and it was always a misunderstanding that made the guests flee the Bullywugs, and the Bullywugs in turn act rudely towards the guests. Dragomir and his soldiers all apologized for their part in it, and Tania had the characters assist in a magic spell to send the fey magic back. Afterwards, the wedding proceeded as planned, with a heart shaped cake (my son’s idea 🙂).

This conversion is all completely unofficial, given the terms of DMs Guild’s licensing agreements; however, I do like how the story turned out with the ad hoc changes. As I mentioned, Frogs of the Feywild was the first adventure I wrote for sale, and since then I’ve developed more of a personal design philosophy which I’ve added in after the fact here. If you’re looking for a fun RPG to play with kids, I can’t recommend No Thank You Evil! enough, and if you want to try my adventure (with the above notes), since you’ve made it through the article, help yourself to a discount code to get it on DMs Guild.

Have you changed adventures to run with younger kids? Leave a comment below!

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Social Sciences at Strixhaven

Wizard students amid a pile of books, from the cover of Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos

This is expanded from a Twitter thread I wrote a while back. See the archived original (link)

Even though I don’t play much Magic: the Gathering, I was excited by the release of their Strixhaven setting and its a D&D crossover book. Between graduate school and my work in instructional design, I’ve never strayed far from academics in my life. Even my favorite TV show was set in a community college! #SixSeasonsAndAMovie So, an official educational setting for my ttrpg hobby was a natural fit. I immediately knew I would set my next big project there.

Wizard students amid a pile of books, from the cover of Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos
Time to get academic in this roleplaying game. ‘Strixhaven: Curriculum of Chaos’

The idea for a pub crawl came up early in my brainstorming. Once I’d settled on that, it was obvious I would need at least five pubs to correspond to the five Strixhaven colleges, which are tied to the subjects of classes you’d take in the real world. Between working in education, being a parent, and playing a lot of ttrpgs, I spend a lot of time thinking about the educational value of roleplaying games. Somewhere along the line I thought, why not look at how rpgs interact with each subject area, and use that as the basis for the pubs and their puzzles?

RPGs’ relation to some subjects is fairly obvious: for instance, handling all of the stat bonuses, adding dice rolls, and judging probability on the fly is good practice for math skills. RPGs also seem to be beneficial for developing language skills based on the number of nerds who got their first introduction to words like alacrity, expeditious, and simulacrum, Baudrillard notwithstanding.

History and the social sciences are a bit less straightforward, but this is the area closest to my heart, since I majored in history. D&D developed from historical wargames, and it’s true that there is a learning there, like the difference between a glaive and a halberd. The quasi-medieval flavor of the game can definitely foster an interest in the past, but a lot of the facts you could pick up from the game are superficial at best and inaccurate at worst (look up banded mail for a benign example). To better understand how RPGs might relate to social science education, I want to discuss the question: what *is* the purpose of studying history and the social sciences? This has no easy answer, and there is no single consensus by scholars, but I’ve developed my own ideas that I think are often reflected by a good number of them.

A wizard historian surrounded by floating books with an unhinged look on his face.
Please, sit back while I expound my many theories! ‘Conspiracy Theorist’ art by Svetlin Velinov via artofmtg.com, copyright Wizards of the Coast

The adage that “those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat it” implies that history is useful for its predictive power, but I know of few historians who would actually make this argument. Knowledge of the past certainly gives us insight into why things are happening today, and it can give us good ideas on some possible futures, but it is a fallacy to think that a historian is therefore better equipped to predict the future than anyone else. We can’t be like Maxwell’s demon, able to tell the state of future objects because we know their trajectories in the past. Too much of history is contingent on factors beyond what we could model. The most compelling argument we can make about the analytical value of history is that it can help foster critical thinking, a valuable tool for navigating the present, but still limited in knowing the future.

At its best, I think that history, and the social sciences writ large, give us an appreciation of the diversity of human experience. Just, seeing that people think differently in different times, different places, and different contexts, and that’s okay! This can help us learn how to interact with people who are not like us; incredibly important in an ever more global society. My favorite quote along these lines comes from Robert Darnton, that “nothing is easier than to slip into the comfortable assumption that Europeans thought and felt two centuries ago just as we do today – allowing for the wigs and wooden shoes. We constantly need to be shaken out of a false sense of familiarity with the past, to be administered doses of culture shock.” 

I think there is a benefit to studying the past for its own sake, just because it is interesting, but if I were to justify the place of history and social sciences as a curriculum requirement, I would defer to the appreciation of otherness. In an RPG, we can go further than observing or even immersing in otherness, we can embody it! Now, there is a danger here in thinking that because we read about otherness we understand what it is like to be other, but keeping this in mind I believe the benefits to empathy outweigh the risks.

Lorehold campus, an ancient ruin emerging from a desert canyon.
History is worth studying for its own sake, if only for all the cool ancient ruins. ‘Lorehold Campus’ by Titus Lunter, via artofmtg.com, copyright Wizards of the Coast

As I mentioned on Twitter, the ultimate design accommodates both the wargaming-style traditional military history as well as a more empathic approach based on cultural understanding. I hope it is a good summation of ways we can approach history and social studies through the lens of roleplaying. In future posts, I’ll visit the other subject areas of Strixhaven and how they fit into the design: mathematics, language, science, and art.

Did RPGs spur interest in any particular region or time period for you? If you’re a social studies educator, how would you use (or how have you used) roleplay in the curriculum? Leave a comment below and please subscribe for more updates on Revue 

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RPGs with Kids: The Knight Story

As a dad who enjoys playing ttrpgs, I’ve always hoped to one day play rpg games with my kids, but never quite knew where to start, especially since many published games have suggested ages of 4 or 5. However, I thought there could be ways to start to introduce the concepts before sitting down to a formal game.

So, a couple of months before my older son’s 4th birthday, I started telling him a story. And I started asking him what the characters should do, and what comes next. After a few minutes of the story, when I’d normally end the story as it was time for bed, I instead told him that we’d have to find out what happened the next time. After a few nights of this, my son wasn’t just asking for a story at bedtime, he started asking, “Could we tell part of the knight story?”

Eventually, I also had the idea to draw pictures of some of the characters. I folded up a piece of paper into eight rectangles, and I started drawing. First of course was brave Sir Knight, aka “Sir Knight was on his Pite,” the hero of our story. Then I drew more characters, including some characters we hadn’t met yet. I didn’t fill up all of the rectangles at first, but drew more over the next day or two as I thought of more to add, and my son added a character we hadn’t met yet as well, and elephant named Blowey. The unmet characters added some extra excitement, especially as we got closer to meeting the whole roster.

Crayon drawings of fantasy characters
Clockwise from top left: Sir Knight (was on his Pite), the Wizard of Odd (and his cat), Blowey the Elephant, Zeti the goblin, Ladders the dragon, Princess Elma, Mr. Nettlebottom, Sir Bams-a-lot

The “Knight Story” eventually reached a satisfactory conclusion as Sir Knight completed his quest, though of course left open for Sir Knight and his friends to have more adventures. And indeed, after a few “one shot” stories, Mr. Nettlebottom started his own adventure, and my son eagerly asks to continue the “Knight Story, I mean, Elf Story.”

Since I began the “Knight Story,” I’ve discovered the StoryGuider ttrpg, which takes some of the stuff I’d been doing and adds some more structure. Before our next story (my son has requested Princess Elma get her own story next) I want to try to ask some of these questions ahead of time. I love how we’ve been telling the story so far, but I want to make sure I remember to give my son plenty of inflection points to make decisions so I don’t end up hogging the story telling! You can find some StoryGuider products here: https://ttrpgkids.itch.io/

I wanted to chronicle the rough course of the Knight Story, mainly so I can remember some of the finer points, because my son has a much better memory for it than me. As an example, I once mentioned that Mr. Nettlebottom was good with animals, and days later my son suggested that he solve a task by working with animals, because he’s good with them, just like I said! So, without further ado…

The Knight Story

The quest started when Sir Knight met a wizard who wore grey robes with a gold sun on them, and she told him where he could find a treasure. He took the treasure back to his castle but went to look for the wizard again, and she was gone. He wanted the wise wizard to tell him where he could find some friends. He did meet an elf named Mr. Nettlebottom, who thought that the best place to look for a wizard would be the nearby mountain.

At the base of the mountain, they saw a red dragon flying around the summit. They climbed up the mountain to look for the wizard, even though they were scared of the dragon. There was no wizard, but the dragon was friendly,her name was Ladders, because she always carried two ladders. Mr. Nettlebottom thought to try the swamp next, and Ladders flew them there.

In the swamp, the met Zeti, the goblin with the triangle face, who brought them to his hovel and made a meal with something for everyone to eat: sandwiches (I think?) for Sir Night and Mr. Nettlebottom, swamp grass for Ladders, and an old boot for Zeti. Sir Knight and Mr. Nettlebottom briefly became lost in the swamp, but found their way back to the hovel, and found a talking frog, who was actually Princess Elma. A kiss turned her back. She had been transformed by the Wizard of Odd (not the wizard with the grey robe), but the Wizard of Odd was sorry, it had only been an accident.

They found a mine, and en elephant named Blowey who was able to climb walls. She helped them down by climbing straight along the mine shaft. In an ornately decorated room, they met Sir Bams-a-lot. He’d seen the wizard go through a door, but couldn’t find the door again because it blended in with the walls.However, they found a doorknob with a triangle-shaped lock on it. They fought a series of dragons in the mines, recovering keys of varied shapes, but finally discovered that the triangle key was held by the biggest, meanest, orange dragon who had triangle claws and triangle teeth and triangle horns. The dragon loved triangle things, so he grabbed Zeti (who had a triangle face) and flew off.

They followed the orange dragon to his lair in the desert but were stopped by a gate they couldn’t get past. They went back to the Wizard of Odd’s house, and Mr. Nettlebottom found Odd’s cat in the basement under an invisible couch. They returned, and the cat was able to slip under the gate to pull a lever, opening the way. Sir Knight and Mr. Nettlebottom padded Sir Knight’s armor so they could enter the dragon’s lair stealthily, then the two snuck up on the dragon and tickled him while the other companions grabbed Zeti and the triengle key.

They returned to the mine, unlocked the door, and after going through a long tunnel, they found themselves in a valley open to the sun. There they found the wizard in the grey robe, whose name was Magic. Sir Knight asked where he could find some friends, and she pointed out that he’d just made seven of them! (yes, yes, the real treasure was the friends he made along the way… fyi, the quest to find friends was my son’s idea) She cast a spell to return them all to Sir Knight’s castle, where his new friends were able to hang out in all the extra rooms whenever they wanted. Magic the wizard walked off, but she told Sir Knight she would see him again some day.