By: Jared B.
As an indirect follow-up to the previous articles about “Building the Market,” I wanted to go over how I make and advise others to flesh out menus for the taverns, restaurants, and yes, the occasional food truck in game settings. I will mainly be focusing on the fantasy medieval settings, but I will also touch on things for modern or sci-fi settings as well.
In line with my previous article, I will suggest you work out your description of the location and appropriate NPCs for the location. For a Tavern, that could be a server/barmaid and possibly a barkeep/owner. I would also suggest having some “regulars” in the area be featured. But let us move on to the food, shall we? The quick and dirty way of doing this would be the Tavern Generator (https://www.thievesguild.cc/tavern-generator/). It is a fast way to have a basic menu of a few area-specific dishes and drinks for your tavern. Personally, if something does not apply to the area, like this tavern does not have wine, or the like, just do not include it on your list. And obviously, if anything needs to be tweaked to fit your setting. You just change it to fit. Make all the dishes and stews, or make them all cooked over an open flame on the table. Whatever fits your tavern and setting.
Now, if you do not see settings in the customization for that generator that fit your needs, either because of your setting or something else. Then we move to making one from scratch. To do that, you can brainstorm what food types would be available in the surrounding area of a tavern, or where they might import things if the tavern is in a deep city center. Google is your friend here, as if you do not know what might be available, say in a savannah or a northern wilderness, you can Google that.
Next, you can look up restaurants or bars that fit the theme you are looking for. This has come more for me when I am doing a more modern or sci-fi setting where I want there to be coffee, or desserts and the like. Let us use an example here.
Let’s start with a Tavern on the side of a starport. The outside is made of leftover building materials and concrete from the construction of the starport. I will call it “Port Mess,” short for “Starport Mess Hall.” The inside is pretty spartan, with the concrete walls and stainless steel bar top. Steel tables and chairs are scattered around the room. One wall holds a growing collection of ship badges from various starship crews that have come through this frontier starport.
The proprietor is George Finnagin, a balding stout man in his 50s who walks with a limp. His clothes look like a dockworkers jumper with an apron over it, and he will tell anyone who will listen how “I used to be the best loader in the yard till that lift landed on my leg…” at which point he goes to tell the story in detail even if you try to walk away or change the subject.
The Port Mess serves both breakfast and dinner menus, so we will start with breakfast. George, also known as Georgey, believes in breakfast being “The a’ most important meal of da’ day”. Which is to say, strong coffee, eggs, and some sort of meat. To figure out the specifics, I am going to Google some breakfast menus.
Well, I got some good options. I settled for specific items that are the following: Omelettes of some sort, Biscuits and gravy, and some sort of “egg plate,” generally being some sort of egg, meat, potato, and bread.
You can stop there and just list the raw items, obviously spelling out what items are in the egg plate. I personally like having some sort of “flavor description.” So I am going to try and find these items on actual menus from actual places.
Here we go! For sausage and gravy, I found a nice description from Cracker Barrel. “Three warm buttermilk biscuits with our classic sawmill gravy and your choice of bacon or sausage.” So that is Cracker Barrel’s item. Unless you are planning to publish material and make money off your setting with this menu, you can straight up use this description. However, for my Port Mess it does not fully match what I want, so I am going to tweak it to fit.
“Bread and Gravy- 2 handmade butter biscuits drenched in white sausage gravy”
Sticking with Cracker Barrel for our “Egg Plate,” they have “The Country Boy Breakfast,” which is “Three eggs* with buttery garlic sirloin steak tips or choice of sugar cured or country ham. Served with biscuits & gravy and two classic sides.” And once again we will change this to fit the needs of the “Port Mess”
“Georgey’s Belly Filler- 3 eggs of your choosin’, 3 strips of shingle honey bacon, with toast and potato wedges”
For the omelette options, I am going to a place I already know. The Coffee Shoppe.
They have: Plain, Cheese, Meat & Cheese, Veggie, Western, Spanish, Steak and Cheese, and Big T. Almost all of those have a little description. For this application, I will probably just do a Plain, Meat & Cheese, and Mr G’s version.
“Plain- 3 eggs rolled and seasoned with our local spices, add a side of sausage for extra
Meat & Cheese- Them same 3 eggs, mixed in Sausage or Shingle Bacon
Mr G’s- 3 eggs mixed with all the sides, we got cubed potatoes, toast croutons, sausage and bacon.”
Now we talk about the coffee.
So what I did for this was search “Coffee Descriptions.” I got a bunch of articles that talked about what makes up various coffee types and how they are made. The recipe difference between an Americano and a cappuccino. This is not what I am looking for. I want a “flavor profile.” So I refined my search to “Coffee Flavor Descriptions”. Skimming those results, I got two promising articles about “Coffee flavors”.
Ok, so my first article really just talked generally about how the location the coffee comes from affects its base flavor. Not what I am looking for. So we look at the next one. More of the same.. Ok maybe this is not what I am looking for. My third option gives me some options of how to describe some of the flavor notes and the like, which is promising, but I need to wrap up this menu, so I am going to go to a coffee shop menu as I did for the food. For ease, I am jumping straight to Starbucks.
Here we have, “In 2008 our master blenders and roasters created this for you—a smooth, well-rounded blend of Latin American coffees with subtly rich notes of cocoa and praline” for their medium roast. This is the type of description I am looking for, but taking some of the flavor notes that are different for the locale I am working with, I flip back to that last article I was looking at and reword it as this.
“Black Gold-a smooth, dark blend of 6 different beans grown here at the port with subtly rich notes of cocoa and praline. “Milk and sugar on request”
So our menu will look like this:
I am out of time on this article, so next month I will get into that lunch/dinner menu using that tavern menu generator and talk about how I work out the pricing for all these items. I hope this has given you guidance and ideas on how you can add depth to your players’ next trip to a tavern or restaurant. Game on!
About the Author
Jared “Martel” B has been GMing and playing in several TTRPG’s since late 2013. Enjoys the challenge of bringing his players worlds and stories straight from his mind in the moment that it happens. He is one of the Founders of RPGCounterpoint, happy husband to an active historian wife, and father to two puppers and a toddler!
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