Photographer Arranges Fantasy Menus for Different RPG Races

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Video games don't often give their RPG characters blatant meal breaks. This is a little concerning. How are the good guys supposed to take on world-destroying threats if they're bothered by grumbling tummies?

RPG characters, you need to unionize and get yourselves a decent lunch hour.

Look to pen-and-paper RPG characters for inspiration. The orcs, elves, halflings, and lizard people in this slower-paced medium aren't afraid to tuck into second breakfast in between exploring a dungeon and hamstringing a dragon. There's no shame in it. Adventurers live active lives, and you gotta feed the machine.

Redditor "wats6831" understands RPGs are more fun when everyone plays on a full tummy. They constructed and photographed a series of on-the-go menus for several common RPG races, which they posted to /r/RPG (the pics were subsequently collected on Imgur).

The pictures are a lot of fun to pore over. Though each photographed food item is actually some kind of victual from the real world (obviously), wats6831 spiced things up by assigning fantasy D&D descriptions to otherwise-normal piles of bones, fruit, nuts, fish, and dried meat. A beef femur becomes a Rothe femur, Amaretto liqueur cake becomes elven bread, and paprika-crusted Fontina cheese becomes spiced goat cheese.

Here's a handful of my favorite arrangements. Don't forget to visit the Imgur gallery for the full spread.

All Races

"Homemade artisan herb bread, home grown and dried apples and prunes, uncured beef sausage, munster cheese. Made a small bag from cheesecloth and tied it closed."

A simple but healthful bag of food adventurers of any race should find energizing. Bread, fruit, dried meat … the basics are all here. Hey, RPG, characters: Eat the prunes. Don't just throw them to the forest animals. Your colon will hate you in two days' time.

Elves

"Evereskan Honey Comb, Elven Travel Bread (Amaretto Liquer Cake with custom swirls), Lurien Spring Cheese (goat cheese with garlic, salt, spices and shallots), Delimbyr Vale Smoked Silverfin (Salmon), Honey Spiced Lichen (Kale Chips), and Silverwood Pine Nuts."

Unsurprisingly, the elven spread contains a lot of fish, nuts, and cheese. You think elves would sully their refined palettes with the flesh of their forest-dwelling brethren? Tsk.

(Fish are OK. They're ugly, so they're better off as a pink paste at the bottom of an elegant elven stomach.)

Orcs

"Orcs aren't known for their great cuisine. Orcs prefer foods that are readily available (whatever can be had by raiding), and portable with little preparation, though they have a few racial delicacies. Tough strips of lean meat, bones scavenged from recent kills, and dark coarse bread make up the bulk of common orc rations. Fire roasted rothe femur (marrow is a rare treat) [beef femur], Strips of dried meat (of unknown origin) [homemade goose jerky], foraged nuts, only edible by orcs....nut cracker tusks [brazil nuts], coarse black bread, made with whatever grains can be pillaged [black sesame bread], Pungent peppers [Habanero peppers stuffed with smoked fish and olives]."

If I was an orc (and maybe I am, for all you know), this would be my ideal lunch. Got lots of protein here, plus the opportunity to exercise my big ol' tusk-like teeth by cracking into thick marrow-stuffed bones, and tough-shelled nuts.

OK, I'm not actually an orc. My teeth are normal (i.e. boring) human teeth. However, I am that person who sits beside you and gnaws the cartilage off chicken drumsticks and T-bones. No wonder this orcish picnic immediately grabbed my attention.

Lizardfolk

"Lizardfolk are known to be omnivores, forage for a surprising variety of foods found within the confines of their marshy environs, in this case the Lizard Marsh near Daggerford. Fresh caught boiled Delimbyr Crayfish on wild chives, coastal carrageen moss entrapping estuary brine shrimp (irish moss, dried brine shrimp), Brackish-Berries (blackberries), Blackened Dart-Frog legs (frog legs) on spring sprouts (clover sprouts), roasted bog bugs on a stick!"

I'm not much of a seafood person, but I'm still impressed with the variety in the lizardfolk diet. The blackberries – er, pardon, the brackish-berries – seem like they'd be a nice palette-cleanser after chowing down on roasted swamp bugs.