I can only sorta cook. I can follow the recipes just fine, Google substitutions when my cupboard does not provide, and reliably under-brown onions. For most of my life, I really only cooked because (people claim) a person cannot survive on a diet composed solely of popcorn and French fries. However, in the last few years, I’ve found more and more joy in the preparation and serving of food. 

This all relates back to role playing, I promise.  

You see, by some lucky happenstance, I have found myself surrounded by friends and loved ones who are enamored with the intricacies of cooking. From amateur dabblers to full-on gastro-engineers, my friends know the ins and outs of a kitchen the way some people can dissect the perfect combination of multiclassing builds for ultimate damage output in popular d20-based RPGs. 

Truly more proficient than I could ever hope to be wearing an apron, these friends love making food and sharing the things they made with others. They’re good at it – great, I would say, but I’m biased. 

Cooking is their love language; they express it by gathering their friends together and hosting the Most Adult™ of all Adult social gatherings – dinner parties. 

One day, while prepping the next session for one of my ongoing campaigns with an episode of Master Chef on in the background, it occurred to me that there are a lot of similarities between hosting a dinner party and running a TTRPG session, and examining one can tell us a lot about the other.

The Guest List

Before you do anything, you need to know who you’re inviting. Let’s assume you’re kicking off a brand new campaign, and let’s also assume you are lucky enough to have a large pool of potential players to choose from (recognizing that this scenario is a privilege, not the norm). Assembling your list of adventurers is an important task. 

Just like a dinner party that aims to bring separate friend circles together to meet and mingle, inviting players into your campaign is a chance to introduce new people to each other and create new (potentially long-lasting) relationships. 

When making the list, mix it up a little. Try to introduce some variety into the group. Consider introducing someone who’s only ever played D&D to your new PbtA or Year Zero game. Or invite the friend from work who’s always been curious about TTRPGs; introduce them to your veteran players! Varying the group composition will create new and memorable experiences for everyone. Variety and the spice of life and all that, right?  

Preparing the Space

Monte Cook’s Your Best Game Ever has an entire section devoted to preparing your space to host a TTRPG game. Most of the advice is standard “getting ready for company” advice. It all boils down to this: if you do nothing else, clean your location as much as you are physically able, double-check the hand towels in the bathroom (and the T.P. situation while you’re in there), and make sure there’s enough seating for everyone.

Every extra bit you can prepare in advance will make the event that much more enjoyable, but also be kind to yourself if limitations prevent you from making your space, as my mother says, “Company Clean.” Your friends will forgive you (as long as they’ve got somewhere to sit.)

You can even prepare your guests’ mental space with a well-crafted invitation. A parchment-style bounty poster. Military-style orders. Or a secret encrypted message (followed up with the actual details in case they forget). These will get your guests ready for the game before they’re even at the game.

The Hors D’oeuvres

In their essay “Having People Over,” Sarah Gailey talks about welcome snacks – little bites of food that let people settle in as they arrive. Small tastes that set the mood. And while I am 100% behind anything that involves snack food, in our case, let’s ask what we can do to vibe-check our game night. The two obvious answers are lighting and music. Both of which can elevate the mood. 

Stage the environment as your guests walk in. Low lighting with some creepy violin music pairs nicely with a horror game. Neon and EDM for a cyberpunk run. Heroic fantasy? Light up your fireplace (or just this YouTube video) and toss on some Two Steps from Hell. 

How else can you subtly set the mood? Incense and candles, if you can safely burn them, and they fit the theme. Decorations and costumes if you’re feeling theatrical. Heck, even your actual snack choice can say a lot about the upcoming session (candy for a Kids on Bikes game, tea and biscuits for a costume drama, MREs for a post-apocalyptic survival game…okay, that might be going too far, but you get the idea).  

The Main Course

The main course is, of course, the session itself. The dungeon delve or shadowrun. The heist or mystery or caper. The meat of the evening. (Or protein if you don’t like carnivorous metaphors.) And there are entire books, blogs, YouTube channels, podcasts, and more about how you go about preparing those. 

There are a few tips from articles on how to host a good dinner party that can translate to TTRPGs, though:

• Accept Help: if someone offers to help you make the salad or set the table, it’s rude to reject them. Likewise, accept the help your players are offering. Sometimes, that’s direct—the habitual note-taker becomes the party record keeper, or the rules lawyer becomes the system reference person. Other times, it’s more subtle, like when an eager player describes what they hope to find in the next town (hint: give them what they’re expecting with a monkey’s paw twist) or the bit of backstory you know the rogue character wants to avoid, but the player can’t wait to see come alive in the game. 
• Consider Your Guests’ Tastes: you’re (hopefully) not going to serve roast beef to your vegan friends, and similarly, you shouldn’t be running a horror game for the friends who cower under the blankets during Hotel Transylvania. Sprinkling in new flavors to help expand pallets is one thing, but know what your guests are allergic to. (I.E., know your lines and veils and use safety tools at your table.) 
• Don’t Make Them Do the Dishes: when hosting, clean up is your responsibility (though again if they offer…) So what does this look like for a TTRPG? Well, we can think of the cleaning up as the heavy lifting of the session. The chores that need to be done to keep everything neat and tidy. While that metaphor could be about knowing the system mechanics and organizing all your plot threads, it could equally apply to things like pacing and keeping the session going. Our time together is limited, so make sure the time is well spent!

Dessert  

This is the heartfelt bit of the article—a chance to be a little sweet. Whether you’re hosting a dinner or running a session of Pathfinder, you’re sharing a piece of who you are. You’re saying, “I made this just for you. I hope you like it at least a little or maybe even love it a lot.”

That’s a special gift you’re giving your friends; you should be proud of how brave and lucky you are to give that to them. 

Savor that time together and put in the effort to make it special. It’ll be worth it. 

The Online Caveat

This article focused on in-person games. Expanding it to a virtual space deserves to be its own post (which is currently in the works). But what do you think? Help me out: how would you take this idea and apply it to a VTT like Foundry or Roll20?