A Campaign Frame by Tracy Barnett

Friends, Food, and Freaky Places

“We’ve been driving for hours, now. Is this place gonna be worth
it?” The landscape is almost a blur around you as you flex your
hands on the wheel of the car you bartered for outside of New
Bromptonshire. Klegg’s been like this every trip, so you just smile.
“Definitely,” you answer, like you do every time. Klegg’s a
producer and is always certain the next location is going to be a
disaster. “They’ve got a Myconid-spore grinder that’s to die for.
It’ll be a good segment.”
Diners, Dungeons, and Dives (DD&D) is a thematic overlay for any
game system or campaign setting. It’s a framework you can use
to tell campy, food-centric, reality show stories about a group of
friends traveling around, trying strange food rumored to be great,
and capturing it for an audience to see later.
Key Components
Theme - DD&D is a framework
about friends, moments traveling
together, and the drama/fun of
working to put together a reality
show-style experience centered
around the strange food found in
any setting.
Scenic Pauses - During travel
from one destination to another,
any player may take a moment to
describe what their character sees,
without narrative involvement
from other players, or any conversation. Imagine a camera shot
that pans across a sere desert, or one that shows the approach
to a city. Think of the feelings those shots evoke. Describe
those feelings and how the scene appears to your character.
Mechanically, this action should grant a system-specific bonus
(inspiration, a fate point, stress recovery, etc).
Asides/Confessionals - For narrative purposes, any character
may take a beat during a scene to cut in with an at-camera aside
like a confessional in a reality show. These moments often reveal
the true thoughts of a character that they wouldn’t say during a
segment as it could disrupt the flow of the segment.
In-Setting Food Experiences - Food is a vital part of life and
every game setting is sure to have food as a central part of its
various cultures. We often don’t see that represented in games.
DD&D focuses on the food experiences of the taverns, villages,
roadhouses, ruins, forests,
swamps, hyper-trams, megacity
alleys, and post-apocalyptic
hovels that make up the
panoply of places people live in
game settings. This framework
views all of those locations
through a food-centered lens:
wherever beings live, they
source ingredients, have food
culture, and want to share it.
That’s how you explore the setting in this framework.
Companionship - The characters in this framework might not
explicitly be friends, but they all support one another for various
reasons. Even if the person in charge of capturing the scene
storms off in a huff, they’ll be back for the next scene. The
relationships between characters should all be supportive at some
level, even if the characters themselves don’t always get along.

How to Use It
- As a GM or group of collaborating players, ask about the food
that can be found in the setting and how it can be explored.
Use references such as TV shows like No Reservations, Bizarre
Foods, and of course, Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives (Guy Fieri
analogue optional.)
- Use scene framing tools that reflect what you see in reality TV
shows, including the prep that goes
into setting up the shots you see on
TV. Imagine how many takes have
to happen to get the final shot and
the hilarity and drama that would
ensue because of that.
- Have lots of in-character
conversations about the food
you’re eating in-game, and reflect
on the experiences you’ve had
together. A key component is
the characters’ relationships, so express those relationships
conversationally.
- Get creative with the types of foods. Think about what
fantasy races, alien species, far-future cultures, or people in
an alternate universe wild west may eat. Give the foods vivid
descriptions. If you’re not hungry (or grossed out) by the end
of the session of play, you’re not being descriptive enough.
- Decentralize violence and combat. If you’re in a system
that prioritizes those things, apply those rules to the social
situations and challenges you face rather than to the killing of
an enemy. Give hit points to social challenges or crowds you
need to win over. Talk in terms of emotions and agendas, not
physical or mental damage.
Final Notes
Credit for this idea goes to Jeff Kinter, who came up with it on
Twitter. The scenic pause comes from Kira Magrann’s Powered
by the Apocalypse game, Sync. The confessional comes from a
framework my group used for a playtest of Kira Magrann’s Fate
World and Adventure ‘Til Dawn. I don’t think it’s an actual rule in
that setting, but it was too fun to not use.

All of the art was done by Elissa Leach.

Have fun eating your way through your campaign setting!

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