Okay, I will admit, hand on heart, that this is a silly idea. But it has been several years since last I ran a Christmas Hack 'n' Slash, so I think that I deserve a little silly.

I have decided to run an adventure using edible terrain. Almost certainly a single session. The system will be Fantasy Craft, and the setting will be the enchanted lands around Santa's not entirely real North Pole.

So far the sites include a witch's gingerbread cottage, and a meringue mushroom forest. A rock candy cavern is another location.

Anyone have any ideas as to what I can use to run a game that will give my players indigestion? I would prefer to avoid liquid locations - the idea of the adventurers crossing a hot cocoa ocean is only amusing until I picture my poor figures sinking into the cooling brown waters....

NPCs so far include Father Christmas, The Wicked Witch, and an Abominable Snow Man.

PCs include a hill giant Santa's Helper, The Great Big Christmas Tree (Rootwalker), Gringle the Ice Drake, and at least one Toymaker Elf, a friendly succubus (based on Reaper's Sophie - she is going to be the wheelperson or lancer) and the as yet unnamed Santa's Daughter (spellcaster). The hill giant actually has a history in this setting - he swapped sides way back when I was running a Christmas Hack 'n' Slash, abandoning the orcs when he was promised that he could place the star on top of the Great Big Christmas Tree....

I will run the game twice, once for kids, once for the adults, so any food stuffs chosen will have to be made twice - nothing overly complicated.

The Auld Grump

You could use fruit roll-ups or something to represent liquids. You can even cut them to shape!

Rolled Fondant is an awesome edible sculpting material. If you can make it out of clay then you can make it out of fondant. It comes white but you can mix in food coloring to make it any color.

My wife has made all sorts of things... mushrooms, butterfly wings, people, faces, small animals, etc.

A good thick frosting (like BetterCream based frosting) pipped from a decorators bag using the right tips can make lots of neat things as well. There's special tips for grass, flowers, leaves, etc.

Make some basic cupcakes, cut the tops off, and now you have a small hill. Take your decorators bag and pipe on some grass and flowers. Drop on a fondant mushroom and you've got a small piece of edible terrain! I'd recommend 'jumbo' muffing pans to make nice large cupcakes.

Here's some examples my wife has done. The grass is actually super easy to do and so were the mushrooms. The flowers and leaves are a little more tricky but you'll get the hang of it once you've got the right tip. The spots on the mushrooms and designs on the butterfly wings are actually an edible glaze mixed with a little food coloring and then just painted on. To get the wings to dry in that shape she rolled them out flat, cut them out, took a piece of cardstock and folded it into a /\ shape then laid the wings over it and let them dry. Afterward we painted on the designs.







We've done gingerbread houses for a few years. They are A LOT of work. Even getting a good recipe is a tough battle because you want something that's easy to work with as a dough, bakes well (doesn't shrink because that throws off your measurements! doesn't puff up too much) and is strong yet not brittle. I'd esitmate a 12"x12" 2 story gingerbread house has about 4 hours of design, making dough, cutting out pieces, baking, and assembling. Then another 2 hours of decorating. We did 2 large and 4 small houses last year and had 10 hours in desinging/baking/assembeling and about 4 hours in decorating.

Lots of candies can be used to decorate with. A sticky frosting is used for glue. Again fondant can make lots of shapes and such. I recommend hot glue for the actual building if you want it to stay together =) Frosting is a good glue for small things but not large pieces of heavy gingerbread.

I really hope you do some edible terrain! This is the coolest idea I've seen for terrain in a long time! Good think'n!

Coconut flakes can also work well for snow. For a fully themed (and absolutely delicious) terrain, perhaps a betty crocker boxed pineapple cake with a thin layer of white icing and a sprinkling of coconut? An entire cake should be good for 2 runs. You can carve cake to pretty much any contour.
A straight candy cane stick would be an obvious choice for the "North Pole". You could make a fondant sign and attach with royal icing.

Melt chocolate in a double boiler and pour into a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. If you want a bumpy, rocky look to it you can add rice krispies, peanuts, or use an underlayment of caramel to form terrain (like Nestle Crunch, Mr Goodbar, and Snickers respectively).

Dried fruits are a treasure trove of things! If they're candied, they would make great glittering gems in your cave. Candied ginger or pineapple would make a good glowing lantern. Cinnamon bears could be watchful golems, guarding santa's secret lair (okay - it's not terrain, it's a mini).
Red pixie stix sprinkled over an area would look like a blood stain.
Boston Baked Beans could be a cobblestone road

This is a neat idea! Post pictures of whatever you end up with!

Marzipan chocolates are all over the place and they look quite real. Go check at your finer establishments.

I noticed that cakes that have pictures printed on them use a fine rice paper. The rice paper isn't sticky or messy. You could use that if you're careful. And it would be easy to 'print out' a couple of encounter rooms. Tell the bakery to hold way back on the sugar or your friends will go into diabetic shock.

Have you considered hiding miniatures in a cake? You get the hero you find in your piece? (My grandma hid money in cakes that way. It may be an interesting way to 'randomize' things.

Have you considered Actually having a food fight. You know... let them win treasures all night, then show them to the dining room where the treasures are all waiting for them in a garbage bag lined room... FOOD FIGHT!

Those are pure win morganm! My compliments to your wife.

Looks good.

I decided to stick with tradition, gingerbread witch's cottage - and gave her a Paralyze attack with window dressing. The effect turns the victim into gingerbread, a short duration, but made permanent if the victim is 'baked'. A short time in the oven and the victim becomes animate gingerbread, longer and its cookie time.

I had fun putting expressions of horror on the gingerbread girls and boys, a few are kneeling and crying....

The meringue fungal forest, some ice cream cone conifers, a small (smaller than planned) rock candy cave (rock candy takes longer than I remembered). A graham cracker covered bridge, a fruit roll-up river, a marshmallow monster, and the witch's familiar is a licorice black cat. (Black cats were one of my favorite candies as a child - they are darned near impossible to find now. Dark brown, sticky, tarry licorice....)

Friday and Saturday the terrain is getting eaten.

The Auld Grump, I think that I have forgotten some things, but I have been up almost 24 hours, so I am allowed.

There'll be pictures, right? We know you have a camera now...

Sorry, I packed it in storage when I was moving - I tend to not use it, even though I have it. I just don't seem to think that way. (If I were to get a cell phone with a built in camera, I would use neither... some tech just does not appear on my radar. But I have three MP3 players, if I count both my IPod and my Archos. And this in spite of giving two others away. People - stop giving me MP3 players! I love my IPod, for goodness sake! )

I swear, I have used Molly's Rebel SLR more than my own Kodak. The Rebel is a sweet camera. Molly got it for a trip to the Caribbean... me, I couldn't afford either the camera or the trip... (and would go to Ireland rather than the Caribbean).

The Auld Grump

Ran the adults version tonight, fairly short - three and a half hours. Most of the terrain has been eaten, but there was a stay of execution for the witch's cottage - apparently it was thought too good to just tear apart and eat, and has become a Christmas decoration.

In truth, it is a pretty basic gingerbread house - I just used one of those house shaped cookie cutters, baked, trimmed, frosted it together, added a porch and some Necco wafers fro roof tiles and slates for the path. Oh, and a skull made by frosting over a licorice gumdrop, leaving spots for eyes, nose, and mouth. that got plucked off and eaten, they will put something Christmassy in its place on the porch. I guess that the players had never seen a really good gingerbread house, 'cause this wasn't one. Nice, maybe, but nothing special.

The player with the Hill Giant got to use Screaming Club with one of the goblins of the Fungal Forest encounter - the first time that it has been used in game. I think that I will be seeing it again.

The Marshmallow Troll encounter was also fun, moving out from under Graham Cracker Bridge, while goblins are pursuing the rest of the PCs. The giant and the Great Big Christmas Tree engaged and destroyed the troll, the Elf throwing some fire at it, so that there was a marshmallow roast. The GBCT took a position at the mouth of the bridge to old off goblins, while the giant started picking up gumdrop boulders to hurl.

The team decided that they did not trust the nice clear path of Necco wafers, though I had just put it down because it looked nice. The giant tossed the toymaker gnome onto the roof, so that he could sneak in through the chimbley while the rest brought the witch out of the house. (Some of the players thought that the gingerbread victims were a bit disturbing - just the reaction that I wanted.)

Two PCs got gingerbreaded, none permanently, before the witch got thrown into her own hot milk cauldron and melted.

Now I get to do the same game tomorrow for some kids.

The Auld Grump - total cost was less than twenty dollars for both sessions together.

Ran the children's version this evening, it went in a fairly similar fashion - no playing Screaming Club with goblins this time around. The high points, for me, occurred back to back - the giant, trying to sneak up on the witc's cottage with the toymaker gnome (spelled 'pech') on his shoulder rolled a natural 20, and then spent two dice to activate it. This was followed by the pech rolling a natural 1 on his attempt to sneak down the chimbley, and my spending two dice to activate it! (Apparently big, wide, flat feet are remarkably silent.

The only down side *scratch, scratch* was because some of the store bought jelly cookies *scratch, scratch, scratch* that I used to create campfires and to decorate the witch's cottage *scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch* contained raspberry *scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch, AAAIIIGGG!*

The only store bought cookies involved in this whole project, and I was allergic to them! Not badly so - I love raspberries, and on the average, once a summer I decide it is worth it, and eat a pint of 'em - even though they give me a mild case of hives. But I wasn't expecting it this time, the cookies were a last minute addition because I saw the assortment at the grocery store. (Proof, again, that improvisation is not my strong point.)

The Auld Grump *scratch, scratch, scratch....*

Still dying for pics, Auld Grump!