Fast Food Role-playing

 

If you've been reading my blog for a while, I am sure you have noticed that I am not above some of the more cheesy aspects of our role-playing hobby. And one of the cheesier is the fast food fandom role-playing sub-genre. While the most famous of these efforts has been with the Wendy's role-playing game released in 2019, this isn't all that new. I personally have been inserting the abominations of fast food concepts and their advertising gimmicks into my games since like the 80s.

It is at the highest levels of US culture. At least since Bill Clinton would go jogging to grab some Big-Macs up to Donald Trump's fast food extravaganza, there is the unspoken acceptance of how much fun the junk is in terms of Americans' imagination. Indeed, it can be said to be one of the finest expressions of Americana. Nobody sits around to discuss how borscht or sauerkraut is more popular in Mississippi, but we all know Burger King is more popular in the UK than Taco Bell.  So it coming to some of our daydream places in Adventure Gaming should not be surprising. 

Not available at DTRPG as far as I know

 The earliest example of this trend being kind of official that I can think of is Rat on a Stick by George R. Paczolt. Things were a bit more abstract back then. In one of my own RPG impressionable days, in the city-state of Atinsinsin, from the second of my T&T campaign, Cow Mack competed with Monarchy Burger while Tunnel Tacos took a solid third seat. As was the custom in Our Game, the world around around us was okay to parallel for fun.

In the Aughts, I would blatantly drag players from their cozy high fantasy concepts into the degenerate depths of McDonald's advertising gimmicks while they explored a house of the fairy Lands. This was in counteraction of GMs, like Thess (of DT&T-ilk) doing muppets. You see I am an artiste, don't you know. My PCs found out that it was Grimace that was behind the whole Golden Arches that drove away the leprechauns and their rainbows not really Regent Ronald the Red and Gold.

So when I played Feast of Legends in February 2020, the experience wasn't that new to me. For all your beholders and tieflings, nothing says true fantasy as the world as seen through the eyes of the hungry.