Welcome, delicious friend! I can see by the fetters on your ankles and the threadbare quality of your clothing that you are a recent arrival to our moonlit shores. Let me tell you about our famous, forsaken and Fallen London, in which you now reside. Pull up a chair - mind the weasel, he bites - and take some honey, if you please. You may be here some time.
Failbetter Games' Fallen London has been doing great business as a browser game, but this week it opened up for business on the App Store, for those of you with iPhones, iPads, and iMushroomWine. I was a big fan of it on browser, but I dropped out a while ago, so when it reappeared on the iStore I figured it was worth a return ticket to the Stygian Depths. Now here I am to tell you about it, like an explorer returned from savage shores.
Fallen London is a story game. You are a new-fledged inhabitant of this subterranean copy of London, a shadow of the magnificent city that was, dragged underground long ago by devils. Or possibly cats. Opinions vary. In any case, here you are, and the question is, what do you do about it? Vagrancy is a punishable offence, so to avoid prison you'd better find a place to live, which means better clothes, which means some kind of career ... and before you know it you're deeply mired in the plots, politics and tragedies of this Victorian Gothic, Steampunk-ish (heavy on the ish) nightmare realm.
It's entirely up to you what you do with your time. So far, to give you a taste, I've written a well-received book about mushroom cultivation, followed it up with a short story and a commissioned piece about the delights of honey, seduced a honey-sipping heiress (it did not end well), caught cats to learn their many secrets, and dealt decisively with two monster rats that had been terrorizing the populace and eating small children.
I prefer a sedate life, so I've taken up rooms above a bookstore - having paid for it with secrets won from the aforementioned cats - and currently wander the streets, humbugs in hand, looking for adventure, and inspiration for my next masterpiece. Also, I need wine. The 1882, if you please, for in secret I'm an amateur cracksman of the Raffles variety, and I'm on the track of a diamond as big as your head. I've hit a stumbling block; my contact demands payment if I'm to carry on in my quest, and will take nothing other than a crate of 30 bottles of the 1882. So far I've won 10, thanks to my honey-sipping heiress, and though I could buy the remaining 20, I prefer to get it for free if I can. The search continues.
It's a Dreamlands-style Gothic RPG, and Keepers looking for inspiration for their Arabesque Bookhounds games need look no further. Or just looking for a few minutes' diversion. It's the kind of thing that can easily drag you in and keep you there, mainly because the quality of writing is superb. This really is a winding, crafty, engrossing epic. The teaser I gave you doesn't cover the half of it, not even the smallest crumb, the slightest mite.
Pity about the mechanics, then, because they do their best to spoil what's otherwise an enjoyable experience.
You play by spending a series of action points, deciding which of the many plot threads to follow. It's usually one point per plot decision; sometimes a little more, but not much. You get 20 action points total, which refresh at one point per minute or so back up to 20. Though there are other important mechanics I'm going to focus on the action point system, because this - combined with its eternal desire to sync - is where Fallen London really lets itself down.
Everything has to sync with Failbetter's server. That means when you boot the app it takes about one to three minutes before you can do anything, as it checks for new images, new sounds, and so on. I'm not entirely sure why. If Failbetter was producing new content every hour on the hour it might make a little sense, but I'm pretty sure it isn't. So nine times out of ten the sync gets no new data, but that doesn't stop it eating one to three minutes worth of time before you can do anything fun.
My pet peeve is that it syncs for new sounds. I have this on my iPad, and one of the first things I do is mute the sound for nearly every game I own. This is because I play iPad games on the go, it being a mobile device and all, and I don't want it bleeping and burbling away when I'm, say, at the pub. It's not as if the sounds are absolutely integral to the experience, like Left4Dead, when the difference between you living and dying can depend on you picking up audio cues. It's just a nice-to-have, and it irks me that each time it boots the game spends thirty seconds or so trying to find new sounds that I will never, ever hear.
Moreover if your connection isn't that great - and mine isn't always, particularly when there's atmospheric interference - the game can quietly die behind that loading screen. Never syncing, it just tells you to wait. And wait. And wait. As I write this, the app has spent the last two hours syncing. Eventually it will realize something is wrong, and reboot. In its own sweet time. And then it will want to sync again.
Once in, the sync then interferes with the action point system. You see, the action point refresh doesn't depend on time passing, or at least not just on time passing. It also depends on that sync, I suspect because the home server and not the mobile device's internal clock tells it when the action points have refreshed. This may mean that ten minutes will go by, or longer, with no refresh, because the home server hasn't told the app that you have points to spend.
When I first downloaded the game, I had to work out a way to trick the system to get it to refresh action points. Since then things seem to have changed in the last update, for there is an actual, honest to Murgatroyd, Push This Button To Sync Your Progress button. Allelujah. It's a bit well-hidden, though. Hint: tap the candle icon, and you'll bring up a menu. That menu will lead you to the Promised Land. Better late than never, and no, I don't know how you're supposed to figure that out on your own.
Speaking of figuring things out on your own, how much cash does my character have? Not the foggiest. I know what I can afford, because a little Buy icon flashes up whenever I go to the shops and see something I might be able to purchase. But I never know how much is in my wallet, so I don't know how much I need to save or earn before I can buy the thing I want to buy. Or how much I will have left after I've bought something.
Here's an odd one. The other morning I sold some gear and purchased a mask. Then I went into town to get some work done, and while there I stopped to check my account. Mask? What mask? It's not in my inventory. Where can it ... oh. Not only is the mask not in my inventory, but the rubbish I sold to get the mask is back in my inventory. The thing must have forgotten to tell the home server what I did this morning, so now I have to do it all again.
Or my current home, my rooms above a bookshop which I had to interrogate cats to be able to afford. I was so pleased to purchase that key from the land agents, but despite purchasing it, I had no key in my inventory. It existed; a trip back to the land agents confirmed that, but the land agents wouldn't let me activate the key from there. I had to activate it in my inventory. But it wasn't in my inventory. I'm still not sure what happened, but I think that because I bought the key while I was in the middle of a story the app couldn't put the key in my inventory until I backed out of the story. Then it allowed me to take possession of the key I'd bought ten minutes earlier, and I could move in. Guess how I spent those lost ten minutes. No, the answer isn't "having fun."
I can just about understand why Failbetter wants the game to constantly link to the home server. It must make it easier to craft the ongoing story and update the plot threads, as well as keep track of the player base.
Even so, I'm having a lot of trouble understanding why Failbetter wanted the server, rather than the app, to handle most of the admin side of things. It adds a layer of frustration to the experience that almost makes me want to quit the game. After all, this is a text-based experience, with some basic random number generation mechanics. Surely the app could have handled most of this on its own, without screaming for mummy to tie its shoelaces every five minutes.
I can only think Failbetter preferred total control via server because this is what Failbetter is used to, but hosting most of the day-to-day on the mobile device rather than the server seems to me at least to have been the better option. Even if it meant having what amounts to two separate player groups, one on the server and one in the mobile space. Better that than have the mobile space continually feel like the red-headed stepchild.
Frankly, if the story wasn't masterfully crafted, I'd have quit a long time ago. It's a testament to Failbetter's writing team that I want to fight past this dilemma, but the game badly needs a fix. Other games get past this with weekly updates. If it only sync'd with the server once a day, and did it automatically like a podcast update without waiting for me to activate the app, would that really be so bad?
Incidentally if you think I'm being harsh, trust me when I say I had a much harsher review all written, but that the recent update mollified me somewhat. Otherwise this piece would have involved much more swearing, and possibly a burnt building or two.
Honestly, I want you to play this game. When it works, it's the best kind of fun: engrossing, well-crafted, thoroughly entertaining. It's Flashman crossed with Sherlock Holmes and more than a dash of Doctor Moreau, with all the addled dreamscape a Dali or Brunel could wish for. Moreover it manages the rare trick of being a social game without pestering you for all your contact information, demanding money with menaces, or insisting that you invite friends to get the best experience. As a browser game, it's brilliant. But then, as a browser game it's got a direct connect; it doesn't have to sync with the mother ship every time it tries to use its brain.
It's just heartbreaking. If I didn't like Fallen London as much as I did, I wouldn't be as frustrated by the app. Things have improved since launch, but in spite of the improvements I would be very wary about recommending this title.
Wait a week. Possibly two. Then have a go.
Showing posts with label apps. Show all posts
Showing posts with label apps. Show all posts
Sunday, 24 April 2016
Saturday, 25 February 2012
Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land
Call of Cthulhu: Wasted Land is the brainchild of Red Wasp Design, a UK-based game studio. It’s a turn-based strategic skirmish wargame based loosely on the writings of H.P Lovecraft, though its gameplay reminds me more of the X-Com series than it does Call of Cthulhu. I’ve had a lot of fun with it this week!
The year is 1915. The Schlieffen Plan hasn’t worked, and Germany’s advance on Paris has stalled. The trenches that are to become symbolic of the Great War have just been dug, and your main protagonist, Captain Hill, is an ordinary soldier fighting on the Front. A mysterious branch of military intelligence sends a boffin, Professor Brightmeer, to help him root out and destroy a particularly insidious foe: Kaul, a nominal ally of the Germans who is using the carnage for his own ends. Brightmeer is joined soon afterwards by Carl Green, martial arts expert, and Emma Gold, a student of Freud, and they join forces with Hill’s platoon to rid the world of Cthulhoid horrors. Together they advance through No-Man’s-Land, at first gathering clues, trying to fathom Kraul’s plan, and later penetrating the villain’s lair to confront him once and for all.
Wasted Land is a strategy game. Your units (Hill, Brightmeer and their allies) have a certain number of Action Points, which they spend moving from place to place, shooting, or performing other actions. When their turn is done, the enemy have a go, and then the cycle repeats. The victory condition for the scenario changes each time; your goal could be to survive, or to shepherd Brightmeer to the objective so he can study it or blow it up. Win one scenario and you move to the next, until the end is reached. It’s a pulp-action plot complete with moustache-twirling villain but the writing is entertaining with some nice asides from Cornishman Sid Brown, the artillery spotter whose pigeons helped me out of more than one scrape.
Cthulhu tabletop gamers are known for their love of historical accuracy, and Wasted Land does an excellent job. I only caught one duff note, a reference to Salvador Dali’s artwork when, at the time of the scenario, Dali would have been eleven years old. Otherwise Red Wasp did a good job of tying together their timeline.
Veteran tabletop players may be a little surprised by the emphasis on combat. Generally speaking Call of Cthulhu teaches you to run away from, say, Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath as they’re extremely dangerous and nigh-on impossible to kill. When three of them turned up at once, my immediate reaction was to order my units to flee. What I ought to have done, as I soon discovered, was order my sniper to shoot holes in the lead monster while bringing my martial artist into close range for a few bayonet-hacks. By the time the campaign is over you’ll have depopulated an entire regiment of Dark Young, as well as many other Mythos beasties.
Sanity is another famous Call of Cthulhu mechanic, mental hit points that run out very quickly when your character faces off against horrors from beyond. In Wasted Land you lose Sanity for encountering horrors, but you also lose them each time you attack one, which means if one unit attacks a zombie three times they lose three doses of Sanity, and then they’ll lose more when the zombie attacks them. When Sanity runs out either the unit is paralyzed for a turn and loses all their Action Points, or goes manic. Mania gives them a double dose of Action Points, but at the end of their manic period they’ll fall unconscious and die unless someone helps them. Mania can be a godsend, but when your sniper, heavy weapons guy and martial arts expert all go manic in the same round you do start to feel sorry for the enemy, who’ll be on the receiving end of all that rage.
Sanity can recover naturally after a period of mania or paralysis, but if you want to keep your units in fighting trim then Psychoanalysis will plug those holes in their brains. Gold and Brightmeer start off with this skill, but anyone can learn it. This tends to result in a front line of hardened killers with a support character or two standing directly behind them muttering ‘tell me about your relationship with your mother’ as the undead close in, but needs must!
As a skirmish wargame it has a few flaws, chief among them lack of a Fog of War mechanic. The player always gets to see where everyone is, which does detract from the horror of what is meant to be a horror game. X-Com had this nailed, and it’s a bit puzzling when a series that’s nearly twenty years old has chops that an app released in 2012 doesn’t. The AI sometimes spawns new enemies in inconvenient places, so you can be attacked from the rear while facing off against something nasty, but as a general rule you’ll have plenty of warning of any attack. Most of your opponents are close combat specialists, so your sniper will have a field day as they charge in and your martial artist will enjoy ripping up whatever’s left. This is where Sanity really starts to make a difference, as the last thing you need is a unit in a vital strategic role suddenly lapsing into paralysis.
Another minor gripe is the battlefield itself. It’s beautifully laid out and there are plenty of obstacles, like poison gas or muddy ground, which either slow your units or injure them. However it can be difficult to tell the difference between open ground, which you can shoot over or move through, and an obstacle blocking your line of sight and movement. Level design is also occasionally uninspired, so that what could have been an interesting tangle of barbed wire and poison gas through which you have to choose one of several paths to your objective, becomes instead a linear route the boundaries of which are very clearly marked.
That said, there were enough challenges here to keep me occupied and I soon learned to tell the difference between terrain types, so my sniper never ended up in a useless location. Though the enemy started to feel slightly outclassed towards the end, the final showdown was appropriately climactic, and were I Field Marshal Haig I’d not have been stingy with the medals afterward!
On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being abysmal and 5 being near-perfect, I’d rate Wasted Land as a solid 3. A Fog of War mechanic would have made this a really great game, but it wasn’t to be. Even so, as a tactical skirmish horror game it works very well, and the atmospheric art design really drives home the feel of being on a Great War battlefield. Here’s hoping Red Wasp come out with a sequel sometime soon!
The year is 1915. The Schlieffen Plan hasn’t worked, and Germany’s advance on Paris has stalled. The trenches that are to become symbolic of the Great War have just been dug, and your main protagonist, Captain Hill, is an ordinary soldier fighting on the Front. A mysterious branch of military intelligence sends a boffin, Professor Brightmeer, to help him root out and destroy a particularly insidious foe: Kaul, a nominal ally of the Germans who is using the carnage for his own ends. Brightmeer is joined soon afterwards by Carl Green, martial arts expert, and Emma Gold, a student of Freud, and they join forces with Hill’s platoon to rid the world of Cthulhoid horrors. Together they advance through No-Man’s-Land, at first gathering clues, trying to fathom Kraul’s plan, and later penetrating the villain’s lair to confront him once and for all.
Wasted Land is a strategy game. Your units (Hill, Brightmeer and their allies) have a certain number of Action Points, which they spend moving from place to place, shooting, or performing other actions. When their turn is done, the enemy have a go, and then the cycle repeats. The victory condition for the scenario changes each time; your goal could be to survive, or to shepherd Brightmeer to the objective so he can study it or blow it up. Win one scenario and you move to the next, until the end is reached. It’s a pulp-action plot complete with moustache-twirling villain but the writing is entertaining with some nice asides from Cornishman Sid Brown, the artillery spotter whose pigeons helped me out of more than one scrape.
Cthulhu tabletop gamers are known for their love of historical accuracy, and Wasted Land does an excellent job. I only caught one duff note, a reference to Salvador Dali’s artwork when, at the time of the scenario, Dali would have been eleven years old. Otherwise Red Wasp did a good job of tying together their timeline.
Veteran tabletop players may be a little surprised by the emphasis on combat. Generally speaking Call of Cthulhu teaches you to run away from, say, Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath as they’re extremely dangerous and nigh-on impossible to kill. When three of them turned up at once, my immediate reaction was to order my units to flee. What I ought to have done, as I soon discovered, was order my sniper to shoot holes in the lead monster while bringing my martial artist into close range for a few bayonet-hacks. By the time the campaign is over you’ll have depopulated an entire regiment of Dark Young, as well as many other Mythos beasties.
Sanity is another famous Call of Cthulhu mechanic, mental hit points that run out very quickly when your character faces off against horrors from beyond. In Wasted Land you lose Sanity for encountering horrors, but you also lose them each time you attack one, which means if one unit attacks a zombie three times they lose three doses of Sanity, and then they’ll lose more when the zombie attacks them. When Sanity runs out either the unit is paralyzed for a turn and loses all their Action Points, or goes manic. Mania gives them a double dose of Action Points, but at the end of their manic period they’ll fall unconscious and die unless someone helps them. Mania can be a godsend, but when your sniper, heavy weapons guy and martial arts expert all go manic in the same round you do start to feel sorry for the enemy, who’ll be on the receiving end of all that rage.
Sanity can recover naturally after a period of mania or paralysis, but if you want to keep your units in fighting trim then Psychoanalysis will plug those holes in their brains. Gold and Brightmeer start off with this skill, but anyone can learn it. This tends to result in a front line of hardened killers with a support character or two standing directly behind them muttering ‘tell me about your relationship with your mother’ as the undead close in, but needs must!
As a skirmish wargame it has a few flaws, chief among them lack of a Fog of War mechanic. The player always gets to see where everyone is, which does detract from the horror of what is meant to be a horror game. X-Com had this nailed, and it’s a bit puzzling when a series that’s nearly twenty years old has chops that an app released in 2012 doesn’t. The AI sometimes spawns new enemies in inconvenient places, so you can be attacked from the rear while facing off against something nasty, but as a general rule you’ll have plenty of warning of any attack. Most of your opponents are close combat specialists, so your sniper will have a field day as they charge in and your martial artist will enjoy ripping up whatever’s left. This is where Sanity really starts to make a difference, as the last thing you need is a unit in a vital strategic role suddenly lapsing into paralysis.
Another minor gripe is the battlefield itself. It’s beautifully laid out and there are plenty of obstacles, like poison gas or muddy ground, which either slow your units or injure them. However it can be difficult to tell the difference between open ground, which you can shoot over or move through, and an obstacle blocking your line of sight and movement. Level design is also occasionally uninspired, so that what could have been an interesting tangle of barbed wire and poison gas through which you have to choose one of several paths to your objective, becomes instead a linear route the boundaries of which are very clearly marked.
That said, there were enough challenges here to keep me occupied and I soon learned to tell the difference between terrain types, so my sniper never ended up in a useless location. Though the enemy started to feel slightly outclassed towards the end, the final showdown was appropriately climactic, and were I Field Marshal Haig I’d not have been stingy with the medals afterward!
On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being abysmal and 5 being near-perfect, I’d rate Wasted Land as a solid 3. A Fog of War mechanic would have made this a really great game, but it wasn’t to be. Even so, as a tactical skirmish horror game it works very well, and the atmospheric art design really drives home the feel of being on a Great War battlefield. Here’s hoping Red Wasp come out with a sequel sometime soon!
Sunday, 22 January 2012
The Joy of Cooking
I've recently become an iPad convert. One of the apps I installed almost as soon as I got the Pad was The Recipe Box, which allows users to store all their recipes. I've been transferring pretty much everything (I love cooking; good job I'm a fast typist) over to the Box.
Like most of us, when I'm doing something dull and repetitive, I crave distraction. I had the Escapist's most recent podcast on, and as it happens they're almost as obsessed with food as I am. Which is to say, about half as obsessed as the folks over at YSDC; the Bradford Players' audio games are liberally mixed with food references (about 2 tablespoons food to 1 cup game, I find), and they're particularly fond of hampers. Thus as I typed my mind turned to thoughts of food and gaming, particularly RPGs.
Food rarely appears in game, except for the occasional quick reference. I find this odd. In RPGs particularly, the Keeper often needs to create a mental image, or a sense of foreign climes, and the senses, including taste, are inextricably linked to memory. Sweet, sour, bitter, salty, umami, all evoke certain memories or reactions, and there are kinds of cuisine that automatically signal particular associations in our minds. Moreover history shows us that the search for food has changed our world. When Columbus went looking for the Indies, one of the things he was after was spices; Spain wasn't happy paying the high Venetian tariff for access to saffron and cardamom. When he accidentally came up with tomatoes, potatoes and corn he changed European cooking forever. It's almost impossible to imagine what Italian cuisine, for example, was like without the tomato, or what the English roast would be like without potatoes. Ireland's history would be very different were it not for the Famine, and there are hundreds of other examples of food gone wrong that had terrifying consequences. There ought to be all kinds of stories to be told about food, but we don't seem to tell them that often.
In game, I tend to set up a shortlist of locations and NPCs that I know the protagonists will encounter at some point. For instance, no matter what the setting, it's a pretty good bet that the characters will meet law enforcement officials at some point, or criminals, or innkeepers. That's just the nature of the beast; characters commit (or avenge) crimes, occasionally work for crime lords or the authorities, and always need a place to lay their weary heads. That's true almost regardless of setting, and in some cases the setting only reinforces the truism. Ars Magica had its mighty wizards deviously plotting their advancement, possibly even assassinating their rivals, but everyone wanted to stay on the good side of the Guernicus, and the sensible Storyteller always had a couple of them on hand for those moments when power-mad players started getting above themselves. Cyberpunk 2020 wasn't big on law enforcement, but crime ran rampant and more often than not it was the players who were up to their neck in the mud. Bond wouldn't be Bond without his encyclopedic knowledge of Chateau Lafitte. So on and on, and to that list of 'NPCs I know I'll use' can be added the Restaurant/Bar.
As Keeper, you know full well the characters are going to want to eat at some point. You also know that there are plot points that can be reinforced by eating. In Cthulhu gaming, the most popular plot point is cannibalism, and there are groups within the setting whose entire culture is defined by their dietary needs. Even without this direct plot link, there are going to be times when you as Keeper want to reinforce the nature of the setting by referring to the characters' surroundings. Or to put it another way, the characters have a different expectation of standards aboard the Orient Express than they do of the Stumbling Tiger Bar, Shanghai. Food is an excellent way to reinforce the nature of the setting. There's no reason why you shouldn't dwell on the excellence of the cuisine (or even borrow some inspiration from alternative sources). Alternatively the Keeper could focus on the liquid side of life, though I suppose it's not impossible that the Stumbling Tiger laces its brew with formaldehyde.
In each case I'd recommend simplicity. With any commonly encountered NPC type or situation, you shouldn't need more than one index card's worth of data. As this is information that isn't linked to a particular scenario, this is a mini database you can build whenever you have a free moment. Half a dozen restaurants, each with a shortlist of House Specials, or the same number of bars, each with its own peculiar cocktails or brews. That's enough for everyday use, and then they can be dropped into the game whenever you see fit. If you know you're going to be running a particular campaign, then plan tailored restaurants and bars to suit the setting. You don't have to know exactly what a fillet of beef pickled with juniper and coriander, served in a red wine sauce, tastes like, but you do have to be ready to use that menu information on the players so that they know they're on the Orient Express, not some trunk service to Brighton.
Point being, in an RPG the players need to feel as though they're playing roles, getting into character. For that to happen they need to have a clear sense of identity, and the senses are part of that identity. Food and drink helps reinforce identity, by giving a clear, unambigious message straight to the brain. 'This tastes good.' 'This reminds me of home.' 'Ugh! Funny stuff these foreigners eat.' 'Mmm . . . spicy!' Anything you, as Keeper, can do to reinforce the players' sense of identity ought to be done, since this can only help the game progress.
Of course, if their first reaction is 'dammit, now you've made me hungry. Let's order a pizza!' you'll know you've done your job properly!
Like most of us, when I'm doing something dull and repetitive, I crave distraction. I had the Escapist's most recent podcast on, and as it happens they're almost as obsessed with food as I am. Which is to say, about half as obsessed as the folks over at YSDC; the Bradford Players' audio games are liberally mixed with food references (about 2 tablespoons food to 1 cup game, I find), and they're particularly fond of hampers. Thus as I typed my mind turned to thoughts of food and gaming, particularly RPGs.
Food rarely appears in game, except for the occasional quick reference. I find this odd. In RPGs particularly, the Keeper often needs to create a mental image, or a sense of foreign climes, and the senses, including taste, are inextricably linked to memory. Sweet, sour, bitter, salty, umami, all evoke certain memories or reactions, and there are kinds of cuisine that automatically signal particular associations in our minds. Moreover history shows us that the search for food has changed our world. When Columbus went looking for the Indies, one of the things he was after was spices; Spain wasn't happy paying the high Venetian tariff for access to saffron and cardamom. When he accidentally came up with tomatoes, potatoes and corn he changed European cooking forever. It's almost impossible to imagine what Italian cuisine, for example, was like without the tomato, or what the English roast would be like without potatoes. Ireland's history would be very different were it not for the Famine, and there are hundreds of other examples of food gone wrong that had terrifying consequences. There ought to be all kinds of stories to be told about food, but we don't seem to tell them that often.
In game, I tend to set up a shortlist of locations and NPCs that I know the protagonists will encounter at some point. For instance, no matter what the setting, it's a pretty good bet that the characters will meet law enforcement officials at some point, or criminals, or innkeepers. That's just the nature of the beast; characters commit (or avenge) crimes, occasionally work for crime lords or the authorities, and always need a place to lay their weary heads. That's true almost regardless of setting, and in some cases the setting only reinforces the truism. Ars Magica had its mighty wizards deviously plotting their advancement, possibly even assassinating their rivals, but everyone wanted to stay on the good side of the Guernicus, and the sensible Storyteller always had a couple of them on hand for those moments when power-mad players started getting above themselves. Cyberpunk 2020 wasn't big on law enforcement, but crime ran rampant and more often than not it was the players who were up to their neck in the mud. Bond wouldn't be Bond without his encyclopedic knowledge of Chateau Lafitte. So on and on, and to that list of 'NPCs I know I'll use' can be added the Restaurant/Bar.
As Keeper, you know full well the characters are going to want to eat at some point. You also know that there are plot points that can be reinforced by eating. In Cthulhu gaming, the most popular plot point is cannibalism, and there are groups within the setting whose entire culture is defined by their dietary needs. Even without this direct plot link, there are going to be times when you as Keeper want to reinforce the nature of the setting by referring to the characters' surroundings. Or to put it another way, the characters have a different expectation of standards aboard the Orient Express than they do of the Stumbling Tiger Bar, Shanghai. Food is an excellent way to reinforce the nature of the setting. There's no reason why you shouldn't dwell on the excellence of the cuisine (or even borrow some inspiration from alternative sources). Alternatively the Keeper could focus on the liquid side of life, though I suppose it's not impossible that the Stumbling Tiger laces its brew with formaldehyde.
In each case I'd recommend simplicity. With any commonly encountered NPC type or situation, you shouldn't need more than one index card's worth of data. As this is information that isn't linked to a particular scenario, this is a mini database you can build whenever you have a free moment. Half a dozen restaurants, each with a shortlist of House Specials, or the same number of bars, each with its own peculiar cocktails or brews. That's enough for everyday use, and then they can be dropped into the game whenever you see fit. If you know you're going to be running a particular campaign, then plan tailored restaurants and bars to suit the setting. You don't have to know exactly what a fillet of beef pickled with juniper and coriander, served in a red wine sauce, tastes like, but you do have to be ready to use that menu information on the players so that they know they're on the Orient Express, not some trunk service to Brighton.
Point being, in an RPG the players need to feel as though they're playing roles, getting into character. For that to happen they need to have a clear sense of identity, and the senses are part of that identity. Food and drink helps reinforce identity, by giving a clear, unambigious message straight to the brain. 'This tastes good.' 'This reminds me of home.' 'Ugh! Funny stuff these foreigners eat.' 'Mmm . . . spicy!' Anything you, as Keeper, can do to reinforce the players' sense of identity ought to be done, since this can only help the game progress.
Of course, if their first reaction is 'dammit, now you've made me hungry. Let's order a pizza!' you'll know you've done your job properly!
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