Timing is a fascinating thing. You never know what will suddenly become relevant again, or how something from the past will reemerge with new context and impact later.
Now, Feast of Legends made a big splash in 2019, but it’s fair to say that six years later, it’s not as relevant in RPG circles as it once was.
However, it’s funny that I wrote about it just a few weeks ago, and now it seems like Burger King is suddenly getting in on the roleplaying game scene!
Yes, Burger King’s Quest is a playable supplement for Dungeons & Dragons, featuring the Burger King Kingdom as its setting, and resurrecting several characters from Burger King’s promotional efforts in the 1970s and 1980s to counter McDonalds’ McDonaldland and its characters.
You definitely know the Burger King, but do you remember Sir Shake-A-Lot, the Duke of Doubt, or The Wizard of Fries? I sure don’t! (Who knew that The Home of the Whopper was a real place, not just a slogan?!)
Well they’re getting new life in this RPG supplement, which was unveiled at Lucca Comics & Games as part of Milan Games Week.
Right now, the game is only in Italian, so we’re not sure if English-speaking roleplayers will get their own version in the future. But thankfully the hardworking crew at the Burger King WIKI have some details on the game for non-Italian readers.
I don’t speak Italian, but I did download the game’s PDF, naturally. The art is beautiful, and clearly a lot of work went into this promotional stunt.
But you can already see a rivalry brewing with the Feast of Legends loyalists in the RPG community. (After all, I only found out about Burger King’s Quest BECAUSE of the Feast of Legends subreddit!)
I reached out to the Burger King Public Relations team to try to learn more about the promotion and any plans for it to expand beyond Italy, but I haven’t heard back yet.
So, for now at least, this remains a roleplaying curiosity. But who knows what the future holds. Wendy’s, Arby’s, and now Burger King. The fast food/roleplaying crossover space is certainly heating up!
Thanksgiving is coming soon, and with some time off looming, I’ve got both food and gaming on my mind.
There are plenty of food-fueled board games and card games out there.Just Desserts, Sushi Go!, Devil Bunny Needs a Ham, and Bread Basket (which we just reviewed!) all come to mind, alongside the dozens of food-themed Monopoly games out there.
But I’m a roleplaying game guy at heart, which means my thoughts turn to food-fueled RPGs. Thankfully, there are some choice options there.
Ninja Burger casts you and your fellow players as ninja deliverypersons, with the goal of sneaking into the customer’s house, delivering their food, stealing the correct amount of money from them, and leaving, all without being seen.
It is a riotously good time and one of my all-time favorite RPGs.
The Tasty Lands of Silverplate, on the other hand, isn’t a game on its own. It’s a setting for Dungeons & Dragons, allowing you to create characters made of food to go on adventures. Yes, as one of the foodfolk of Silverplate, you will trudge through mushroom forests and cotton candy swamps while engaging in acts of derring-do.
Silverplate is a terrific setting, welcoming lighthearted and pun-riddled gameplay to your table.
Oh, if you’re looking for food/RPG entertainment, you should definitely check out Dimension 20’s campaign A Crown of Candy on Dropout, which is Game of Thrones if it took place in the fridge. It has big Silverplate vibes and it is excellent and heartbreaking all at once.
You know, it’s funny that one of my favorite roleplaying games is fast food-related, because there is (as the title of this blog post promised) some unexpected crossover between the worlds of fast food and RPGs.
Oh, I don’t mean roleplaying games ABOUT food. I mean roleplaying games and materials manufactured BY fast food companies.
For instance, on two separate occasions, Arby’s produced a short run of Arby’s-themed roleplaying dice.
The original set was designed with an Arby’s hat at the center of each die, as well as the Arby’s logo for the number 20 spot on the D20. They sold out instantly in 2021, and a restock in 2023 was snapped up equally fast.
The second time around, Arby’s went to the company Norse Foundry, who are known for high-end quality dice, particularly their metal ones, and the newest iteration of Arby’s Dice were the beautiful beefy boys pictured above.
They sold out in less than a day, despite the price jumping from $12 for the 2021/2023 dice to $40 a set for the Norse Foundry dice.
Those dice are impressive to be sure, but not nearly as impressive as the complete, standalone roleplaying game designed for Wendy’s. It was called Feast of Legends.
Feast of Legends sets players in Freshtovia, one of the nations of Beef’s Keep, trying to ward off the impending threat of The Deep Freeze by rival nations with more than a passing resemblance to some other fast food franchises.
By taking up arms and representing organizations like The Order of the Spicy Chicken or The Order of the Sides, players can battle in honor of Queen Wendy and protect the realm from mediocre food and the horrors of freezer burn.
The PDF of the game was released for free, and a limited number of physical copies were produced for New York Comic Con. It was even played as a one-shot by internet actual play juggernaut Critical Role, though some negative press generated by some of the executives at Wendy’s (and through no fault of the hardworking team producing the game), caused the one-shot to be removed from YouTube, hurting the promotion of the game.
Still, Feast of Legends resonated with some RPG fans, and to this day, there’s an active subreddit dedicated to the game. Physical copies of the game are obviously quite rare, so fans were surprised to learn in an Instagram post last year that there are some physical copies in the hands of the game’s creator, Matt Keck.
I reached out to Matt (who was also the absolute wizard behind Wendy’s social media at the time, particularly their Twitter account), and he kindly took some time out to answer my questions about the creation of this unique roleplaying property.
What did the creative process look like? Who had the initial idea for the adventure?
I’m actually the reason it even got made. I worked on the Wendy’s team at the agency VML in Kansas City. My primary work was doing the Twitter jokes/roasts/etc., but I really got to work a little on everything. I love TTRPGs and I wanted to write a Wendy’s module.
When I realized they probably wouldn’t do an official partnership I took it upon myself to write it. I didn’t want too many questions about how we would get it done, so I had written the majority of the finished project before even pitching it. I still have a notebook with old sketches of maps and monsters. I really had all of the classes or Orders built out, the world drawn, and most of the story planned before showing anyone. That made it easy to get it made.
There’s a subreddit dedicated to Feast of Legends that still gets attention from the fan community. Does the game’s longevity surprise you? Were there plans for additional content? (A post from the Wendy’s reddit account suggests there might have been.)
It does and doesn’t surprise me. I had boasted it as a long-term brand play, but just because I say something that doesn’t mean it will always play out that way. I’m pumped any time someone has a good time playing it, or makes their own content for it, or even just tells me they enjoyed reading it. That was truly my passion project on that account, and I can only hope to do more in the space.
There were plans for more content, but after the pushback from the Critical Role episode, future plans got scrapped.
I had a breakfast module ready to go, along with exploring even more of the map. Plans always change, but I would’ve loved to make more in that world.
Is there a piece of lore/worldbuilding or idea of yours in the game that you’re particularly proud of? Or, conversely, one that you can’t believe actually made the cut?
I’ll tell you about one that got cut I loved, and that was the Grimagorgon. He was a two-headed grimace monster, and the first thing the lawyers said no to. My favorite piece isn’t something a lot of people would expect, but anyone who watches my videos will see my partner and friend Paul. In Feast of Legends there is a character named Old Man Paul that I wrote into the book just to roast him. As a good friend does.
As someone who really enjoyed playing Feast of Legends — and totally didn’t print out the PDF in its entirely at work so I could play it that week, no siree bob — it was a joy to talk with Matt about the game. Learning that it was something fun and important to him, and that it was a result of the famous axiom “don’t ask for permission, ask for forgiveness later” makes it an even more epic endeavor in my eyes.
These creative and unexpected crossovers between fast food and roleplaying games proves there’s an untapped market there, and I wish more companies would make the leap into the RPG realm. (Matt himself said “the card game space is still untapped and wide open. Give me a Secret Lair x Wendy’s.”)
Anyway, I’m hungry. I’m gonna go grab some fries and ponder a Feast of Legends one-shot centered around dipping French fries in Frosties. Perhaps Queen Frostina and Fryderick of House Starch have run off together, and the party must keep them safe, seeking to turn the hearts of those who disapprove of the marriage of Frosties and French Fries!
Will you be indulging in any food-fueled gaming over Thanksgiving, friends? Let us know in the comments section below. We’d love to hear from you.
Some of my all-time favorite puzzling experiences have been part of roleplaying games, so it warms my heart to see more and more people discovering Dungeons & Dragons and other tabletop RPGs. Not only are they a wonderful way to connect with friends and tell stories, but they inspire me to create new and innovative puzzles.
Both the Netflix series Stranger Things and the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory have helped bring roleplaying games to greater mainstream attention (as shows like Community and Freaks and Geeks did in the past), and now, even fast food chains are getting in on the pencil, paper, and dice-loaded pastime.
Yes, Wendy’s has created its own roleplaying game.
Feast of Legends is a self-contained roleplaying adventure that is both staggeringly detailed and shamelessly self-promotional. This NINETY-SEVEN page downloadable PDF contains the rules for building your character, equipment, rules, setting details, and different character classes (like the Order of the Frosty or the Order of the Spicy Chicken Sandwich), each with their own bonus abilities.
It’s actually a terrific introduction to roleplaying games as a whole, discussing concepts like how many actions you can take on a given turn, how combat works, and which dice to use.
They even created an online dice roller for you to use if you don’t own roleplaying dice!
(For RPG aficionados, the system is reminiscent of both D&D’s fourth and fifth edition rulesets, though not nearly as involved, obviously.)
Once you’ve created your character — an easy task, given the streamlined (but effective) character creation instructions in the first half of the handbook — there’s an entire campaign included to play through!
Yes, a five-part adventure awaits players willing to explore Freshtovia, battle the evildoers who seek to force frozen beef on people across the land, from Costa del Spicy to Roast Beach, from The Box to Biggie Vale.
Oh, you were curious about the shameless self-promotion? Trust me, we’re getting to that.
It starts with the setting — the mythical land of Freshtovia, in the realm of Beef’s Keep, where Queen Wendy requires your help to battle the monstrous threat of frozen beef. You can arm yourself with various implements (the spork caught my eye) as you prepare to do battle with the Ice Jester (a thinly veiled take on Ronald McDonald) and his minions, including violent versions of the Hamburglar (aka the Beef Bandit) and the Fry Guys.
Not only that, but there are rules regarding the bonuses you get for eating Wendy’s food while you play (as well as minuses for any characters eating from a different fast food chain during the game).
It’s seeded throughout the game, and on the website as well. On the page explaining how RPGs work, readers will find this text:
Beef’s Keep is a wide open world waiting for you to explore it. Make the world your own, expand your adventure, and most importantly, buy Wendy’s. Wait, we meant to say have fun. Also, buy Wendy’s.
As a writer and a content creator, I was a little disappointed to see that this voluminous and impressive PDF was lacking in one crucial detail: credits for all the hard work that must’ve gone into it.
Yes, there is a brief credit near the end — illustrations by Alex Lopez, maps by Collin Fogel — and a few signatures and identifying marks hidden in some of the art, but what about the writing? What about the well-crafted adventure? What of all the puns?!
Designed to launch in time for New York Comic-Con — coinciding with a play-through on the popular webseries/podcast Critical Role — Feast of Legends seems like a rousing viral success.
Yes, there is naturally some pushback on the Internet — some for campaign donations made by the CEO of Wendy’s, some for how Wendy’s employees are treated — and some directed at the RPG itself, viewing it as a thinly-veiled propaganda tool (or an anti-union screed designed to brainwash the puny minds of roleplayers).
Politics and social issues aside, I’m calling this project a win. People that have never played a roleplaying game before have asked me about it, and roleplaying games in general are in the news because of this. If this brings more people into one of my favorite activities and opens up a new world of puzzles and games for them, then I thank Wendy’s for making that possible.
And yes, we’re probably going to end up playing this at the office at some point.
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