The Taste of Immersion: Great world building has flavor

The best world building advice I ever received was from my beautiful wife. She said something to the effect of “no one cares about the history of your worlds; they care about the people who live there”. Such a simple phrase, but it absolutely changed my perception of world building.

With that in mind, let’s talk about one of my favorite ways to add flavor to worlds: Food (see what I did there? Pls don’t hate me.). This doesn’t come up as much as I would like, to be honest. Word counts for sections in Promethium Games are tight, so I have to find places to sneak it in, but one of the best ways to show a culture to players is to talk about what they eat, how they prepare it, and what spices they use. Think about it, Japanese cuisine focuses on muted flavors with bold condiments and a focus on plating and aesthetic of the dish. If you were to describe Sashimi and sushi to a medieval audience, it would sound like fantasy.

This is one of the things I loved most about Final Fantasy XV – while the meals were beautiful, the imagining of contemporary dishes with fantastic ingredients was brilliant. Likewise, one of my favorite games, The Elder Scrolls Online had hundreds of recipes which I love, While the system design of the food is garbage, the recipes and the though of preparing slaughter fish stew or grilled mammoth is fun and above all, immersive.

When imagining cultures, people, and places talking about food, diet, and what that means to a society can breathe so much life into your worlds.

In Cursebrand Chronicles the desert dwelling Hassian Tribes subsist on a diet of giant whale-like lizards, small insects, and cactus like flora. They have few spices, besides the blubs of an otherwise toxic flower that produces a deep umami flavor after fermentation. In Epic Age, the Aerid Tribes, wild elves of the continent of Ruhl subsist primarily on game and wild barriers, the only cultivated food is a batter made from pureed nuts and maize fried into flatbread.

See, suddenly these cultures seem so much more real and alive, with just a few sentences. Of course, given my own devices I’ll also want to discuss fashion, art, music, and slang. These things together take a culture from impressions to impressive.