Heroes' Feast Flavors of the Multiverse

An Official D&D Cookbook

Explore the cuisines of the Dungeons & Dragons multiverse with more than 75 delectable new recipes from the New York Times bestselling authors of Heroes’ Feast.

“Celebrate with delicious game-inspired recipes to feed your fantasy, fill your hearts, and swell your bellies.”—Todd Stashwick, actor, Star Trek: Picard

Never adventure on an empty stomach! From the D&D experts behind the bestselling Heroes’ Feast comes Heroes’ Feast Flavors of the Multiverse, a mouthwatering cookbook stuffed with eclectic fare for solo adventurers and party quests alike. This culinary tour presents original recipes inspired by regions and settings from across the Forgotten Realms and beyond. All seventy-six dishes, developed by a professional chef from one of the country’s top test kitchens, are delicious, easy to prepare, and composed of ingredients readily found in our world.

The immersive recipes in Heroes’ Feast Flavors of the Multiverse are perfect for sharing and entertaining. Dishes are organized by location with options for every occasion—especially game nights!—including

• otherworldly appetizers such as Talyth and Goldenstars
• savory main courses such as Steak of the Deep and Eldeen Banquet
• alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages such as Elverquist and Kaeth
• and desserts such as Green Ice Rime and Vada’s Vanilla Bean Buns

Adventure has never tasted so good!
Introduction

Can you name a tabletop activity that is highly social, builds community, and has infinite possibilities? If you said dining with friends, you’re right. If you said Dungeons & Dragons, you’re also right! Today, some fifty million people have played the game; D&Dinspired shows and movies top the charts; licensed D&D products fill retail shelves (ahem); and video games based on D&D’s concepts rule the screens. In short, D&D is everywhere—including the kitchen!

Initially published in 1974, Dungeons & Dragons was the world’s first role-playing game and would go on to revolutionize all aspects of the gaming industry and pop culture alongside it. It introduced an array of now-pervasive gaming concepts, from leveling up to gamified role assumption, but it notably held on to some aspects of its war-gaming past. Born out of a gaming culture that prized realistic simulation, the notion of needing food was inherent in the earliest versions of the game, usually represented in the simple tracking of weekly rations. To have any hope of surviving a protracted excursion in the dungeon underworld, you needed to stay fed. Simply put, in D&D, you must eat to live. But adventurers also needed a place to meet, carouse, and gather information, and what better venues to place in front of them than taverns, public houses, and other places of food and drink?

As the game developed through different communities, food became a key part of the game’s narrative experience. In many of the early modules, it was not uncommon for taverns to have long lists of food and drink from which adventurers could choose. For example, in the iconic Keep on the Borderlands, adventurers have the option of no less than five drinks and eight dishes, from honey mead and bark tea to pudding and roast joint. By the time the Forgotten Realms campaign world was in full force, there were entire books devoted to rating and discussing inns and dining establishments (thanks, Volo!). More cosmopolitan venues in the multiverse boasted restaurants that might seem worthy of a Michelin star or two.

Why so many options for an element of realism that could just as simply check the box? Perhaps it’s because early designers realized that food could provide new avenues for the narrative experience. Would a haughty aristocrat be content with iron rations? How well can that halfling hold her drink and what does she do when she doesn’t? This is to say, the unexpected, memorable, and hilarious moments of any given D&D session are as likely to come up over an in-game tankard of Neverwinter Nectar (page 30) as they are while battling a feisty gaggle of kobolds.

In the first book, Heroes’ Feast: The Official D&D Cookbook, we posed the question, “How can food elevate and enhance the D&D experience?” In Heroes’ Feast Flavors of the Multiverse, we ask, “How can cooking and dining play an essential part of the communal gaming experience?” The book that you are holding is both a guide to D&D food and a culinary companion to your game nights. It includes more than seventy-five delicious recipes, which you can enjoy alongside your in-game character. We’ve even created some food-loving characters of our own (once nameless adventurers taken straight from the cover of the first Heroes’ Feast) whose madcap, multiversal adventures provide the locational basis for the dishes herein. Our hope is that this book not only adds a visceral and delicious element to your games but also becomes another avenue to connect with fellow gamers. So, in the immortal words of the original Player’s Handbook, “enjoy, and may the dice be good to you.”
© Stefan Simchowitz
Kyle Newman is an author and award-winning filmmaker who has directed numerous feature films including the Star Wars-fueled comedy Fanboys, A24 Films’ Barely Lethal, the e-sports comedy 1UP, and the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons documentary for Hasbro, Inc. He has directed the music industry’s top artists, and produced films such as Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made. As an author, he is known for his work on Dungeons & Dragons: Art & Arcana, the New York Times bestselling cookbook Heroes’ Feast, and its follow-up, Heroes’ Feast Flavors of the Multiverse. An honors graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of Film/Television and a member of the Directors Guild of America, Newman resides in Los Angeles with his partner, Cynthia, and their three sons. View titles by Kyle Newman
© Jon Peterson
Jon Peterson is widely recognized as an authority on the history of games, best known as the author of Playing at the World, The Elusive Shift, and Game Wizards. He also co-authored Dungeons & Dragons: Art & Arcana, Heroes’ Feast: The Official Dungeons & Dragons Cookbook, and Heroes’ Feast Flavors of the Multiverse. He has contributed to academic anthologies on games, including MIT Press’s Zones of Control and Routledge’s Role-Playing Game Studies: Transmedia Foundations. Jon also has written for various geek culture websites, including Wired, Polygon, and BoingBoing, as well as maintaining his own blog. View titles by Jon Peterson
© Brian McConkey
Michael Witwer is a New York Times bestselling author known for his work on the Hugo-nominated Dungeons & Dragons: Art & Arcana, the critically acclaimed Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons & Dragons, and the bestselling Heroes’ Feast: The Official Dungeons & Dragons Cookbook. His most recent works include Dungeons & Dragons: The Legend of Drizzt Visual Dictionary, Heroes’ Feast Flavors of the Multiverse, and his debut novel, Vivian Van Tassel and the Secret of Midnight Lake. He holds degrees from Northwestern University and the University of Chicago and resides in Chicago, Illinois, with his wife, two daughters, and two sons. View titles by Michael Witwer
© Tim Sabatino
Sam Witwer is an American actor and musician, best-known for a series of sci-fi genre roles spanning a twenty-year career. He led the SyFy drama series Being Human, playing down-and-out vampire-gone-straight Aidan Waite (8+3 Hit Dice), and played conflicted Raptor Pilot Crashdown in the Hugo Award-winning series Battlestar Galactica, Superman-killing Doomsday in CW’s Smallville, misunderstood Mr. Hyde in ABC’s Once Upon a Time, and antagonist Agent Liberty on WB’s Supergirl. Sam is also well-known for his continuing work for the Star Wars saga, bringing various characters to life in video games, film, and television, including Starkiller in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, and a multi-year, Emmy-nominated run voicing the villainous ex-Sith lord Darth Maul. Recently, Sam served as the main character in Sony’s Days Gone videogame. He is a longtime fan of science fiction and fantasy, and an avid player of both electronic games and pen-and-paper role-playing games. View titles by Sam Witwer
Dungeons & Dragons launched the great tradition of roleplaying games in 1974 with an unprecedented mix of adventure and strategy, dice-rolling, and storytelling. Wizards of the Coast continues to honor that tradition, bringing to market a diverse range of D&D game and entertainment experiences and influencing numerous writers, directors, and game designers by tapping into an innate human need to gather with friends and tell an exciting story together. View titles by Official Dungeons & Dragons Licensed

About

Explore the cuisines of the Dungeons & Dragons multiverse with more than 75 delectable new recipes from the New York Times bestselling authors of Heroes’ Feast.

“Celebrate with delicious game-inspired recipes to feed your fantasy, fill your hearts, and swell your bellies.”—Todd Stashwick, actor, Star Trek: Picard

Never adventure on an empty stomach! From the D&D experts behind the bestselling Heroes’ Feast comes Heroes’ Feast Flavors of the Multiverse, a mouthwatering cookbook stuffed with eclectic fare for solo adventurers and party quests alike. This culinary tour presents original recipes inspired by regions and settings from across the Forgotten Realms and beyond. All seventy-six dishes, developed by a professional chef from one of the country’s top test kitchens, are delicious, easy to prepare, and composed of ingredients readily found in our world.

The immersive recipes in Heroes’ Feast Flavors of the Multiverse are perfect for sharing and entertaining. Dishes are organized by location with options for every occasion—especially game nights!—including

• otherworldly appetizers such as Talyth and Goldenstars
• savory main courses such as Steak of the Deep and Eldeen Banquet
• alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages such as Elverquist and Kaeth
• and desserts such as Green Ice Rime and Vada’s Vanilla Bean Buns

Adventure has never tasted so good!

Excerpt

Introduction

Can you name a tabletop activity that is highly social, builds community, and has infinite possibilities? If you said dining with friends, you’re right. If you said Dungeons & Dragons, you’re also right! Today, some fifty million people have played the game; D&Dinspired shows and movies top the charts; licensed D&D products fill retail shelves (ahem); and video games based on D&D’s concepts rule the screens. In short, D&D is everywhere—including the kitchen!

Initially published in 1974, Dungeons & Dragons was the world’s first role-playing game and would go on to revolutionize all aspects of the gaming industry and pop culture alongside it. It introduced an array of now-pervasive gaming concepts, from leveling up to gamified role assumption, but it notably held on to some aspects of its war-gaming past. Born out of a gaming culture that prized realistic simulation, the notion of needing food was inherent in the earliest versions of the game, usually represented in the simple tracking of weekly rations. To have any hope of surviving a protracted excursion in the dungeon underworld, you needed to stay fed. Simply put, in D&D, you must eat to live. But adventurers also needed a place to meet, carouse, and gather information, and what better venues to place in front of them than taverns, public houses, and other places of food and drink?

As the game developed through different communities, food became a key part of the game’s narrative experience. In many of the early modules, it was not uncommon for taverns to have long lists of food and drink from which adventurers could choose. For example, in the iconic Keep on the Borderlands, adventurers have the option of no less than five drinks and eight dishes, from honey mead and bark tea to pudding and roast joint. By the time the Forgotten Realms campaign world was in full force, there were entire books devoted to rating and discussing inns and dining establishments (thanks, Volo!). More cosmopolitan venues in the multiverse boasted restaurants that might seem worthy of a Michelin star or two.

Why so many options for an element of realism that could just as simply check the box? Perhaps it’s because early designers realized that food could provide new avenues for the narrative experience. Would a haughty aristocrat be content with iron rations? How well can that halfling hold her drink and what does she do when she doesn’t? This is to say, the unexpected, memorable, and hilarious moments of any given D&D session are as likely to come up over an in-game tankard of Neverwinter Nectar (page 30) as they are while battling a feisty gaggle of kobolds.

In the first book, Heroes’ Feast: The Official D&D Cookbook, we posed the question, “How can food elevate and enhance the D&D experience?” In Heroes’ Feast Flavors of the Multiverse, we ask, “How can cooking and dining play an essential part of the communal gaming experience?” The book that you are holding is both a guide to D&D food and a culinary companion to your game nights. It includes more than seventy-five delicious recipes, which you can enjoy alongside your in-game character. We’ve even created some food-loving characters of our own (once nameless adventurers taken straight from the cover of the first Heroes’ Feast) whose madcap, multiversal adventures provide the locational basis for the dishes herein. Our hope is that this book not only adds a visceral and delicious element to your games but also becomes another avenue to connect with fellow gamers. So, in the immortal words of the original Player’s Handbook, “enjoy, and may the dice be good to you.”

Author

© Stefan Simchowitz
Kyle Newman is an author and award-winning filmmaker who has directed numerous feature films including the Star Wars-fueled comedy Fanboys, A24 Films’ Barely Lethal, the e-sports comedy 1UP, and the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons documentary for Hasbro, Inc. He has directed the music industry’s top artists, and produced films such as Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made. As an author, he is known for his work on Dungeons & Dragons: Art & Arcana, the New York Times bestselling cookbook Heroes’ Feast, and its follow-up, Heroes’ Feast Flavors of the Multiverse. An honors graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of Film/Television and a member of the Directors Guild of America, Newman resides in Los Angeles with his partner, Cynthia, and their three sons. View titles by Kyle Newman
© Jon Peterson
Jon Peterson is widely recognized as an authority on the history of games, best known as the author of Playing at the World, The Elusive Shift, and Game Wizards. He also co-authored Dungeons & Dragons: Art & Arcana, Heroes’ Feast: The Official Dungeons & Dragons Cookbook, and Heroes’ Feast Flavors of the Multiverse. He has contributed to academic anthologies on games, including MIT Press’s Zones of Control and Routledge’s Role-Playing Game Studies: Transmedia Foundations. Jon also has written for various geek culture websites, including Wired, Polygon, and BoingBoing, as well as maintaining his own blog. View titles by Jon Peterson
© Brian McConkey
Michael Witwer is a New York Times bestselling author known for his work on the Hugo-nominated Dungeons & Dragons: Art & Arcana, the critically acclaimed Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons & Dragons, and the bestselling Heroes’ Feast: The Official Dungeons & Dragons Cookbook. His most recent works include Dungeons & Dragons: The Legend of Drizzt Visual Dictionary, Heroes’ Feast Flavors of the Multiverse, and his debut novel, Vivian Van Tassel and the Secret of Midnight Lake. He holds degrees from Northwestern University and the University of Chicago and resides in Chicago, Illinois, with his wife, two daughters, and two sons. View titles by Michael Witwer
© Tim Sabatino
Sam Witwer is an American actor and musician, best-known for a series of sci-fi genre roles spanning a twenty-year career. He led the SyFy drama series Being Human, playing down-and-out vampire-gone-straight Aidan Waite (8+3 Hit Dice), and played conflicted Raptor Pilot Crashdown in the Hugo Award-winning series Battlestar Galactica, Superman-killing Doomsday in CW’s Smallville, misunderstood Mr. Hyde in ABC’s Once Upon a Time, and antagonist Agent Liberty on WB’s Supergirl. Sam is also well-known for his continuing work for the Star Wars saga, bringing various characters to life in video games, film, and television, including Starkiller in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, and a multi-year, Emmy-nominated run voicing the villainous ex-Sith lord Darth Maul. Recently, Sam served as the main character in Sony’s Days Gone videogame. He is a longtime fan of science fiction and fantasy, and an avid player of both electronic games and pen-and-paper role-playing games. View titles by Sam Witwer
Dungeons & Dragons launched the great tradition of roleplaying games in 1974 with an unprecedented mix of adventure and strategy, dice-rolling, and storytelling. Wizards of the Coast continues to honor that tradition, bringing to market a diverse range of D&D game and entertainment experiences and influencing numerous writers, directors, and game designers by tapping into an innate human need to gather with friends and tell an exciting story together. View titles by Official Dungeons & Dragons Licensed