At New York Comic Con (NYCC) 2019, Wendy’s (the fast food chain) brought an unexpected product to market: Feast of Legends, a tabletop roleplaying game, as well as a set of promotional dice. This free PDF (grab a copy here) is a full RPG with what you’ll need to play an extremely stripped down version of Dungeons & Dragons 5e. It’s a brilliant piece of advertising that won the Friday NYCC news cycle and picked up additional promotion when it was played by Critical Role. As a sign of how much RPGs are becoming accepted, we paused our regular campaign to save Queen Wendy’s land, Freshtovia.
What is Wendy’s?
A Dublin, Ohio-based corporation (a suburb of Columbus where GAMA’s Origins Game Fair is hosted each year… hmm…) fast food chain, one of the generation that offers kid’s meals with prizes. While Feast of Legends and the promotional dice are unlikely to be in their kids’ meals (the dice may represent a choking hazard, the PDF is 97 pages and would be an expensive book to print, and, of course, the Satanic Panic crowd would boycott Wendy’s), it represents a great moment of advertising, showing how far tabletop RPGs have moved into the mainstream.
Beyond the game itself, Wendy’s offered kids’ meal prizes that work well with Feast of Legends. Among those prizes at least two collections dubbed Create Your Adventures. Each Create Your Adventures is a themed cardboard pop-out diorama with cardboard figures that could easily stand in for miniatures and scenery for an RPG. It’s a small, separate series that adds to the fun.
What is Feast of Legends?
97 pages (covers included) of advertising via RPG. It’s a variation on D&D but not so close that it needs the Open Gaming License (OGL) to be published. The game has fourteen classes based on Wendy’s menu such as the Order of the Chicken broken into options like Order of the Spicy Chicken or Order of the Chicken Nugget. Rules are simple and covered over a page with examples elsewhere in the book. There’s equipment, magic items, and seventeen monsters that range from easy to difficult and can be lifted for any d20 fantasy RPG. The back portion of the book, the majority of it, really, is an adventure that will take the players from level 1 through 5 as they save Freshtovia. The adventure is a mix of combats and Wendy’s based puzzles, many related to their current promotions like 4 for $4 or their Wendy’s logo. It’s indoctrination, but it’s cleverly disguised.
Does It Work?
If you’ve never roleplayed before, this product has holes that will make the RPG engine sputter when you attempt to run it. If you’ve roleplayed before, you’ll see those flaws and house rule them (all with processes taken from Dungeons & Dragons 5e) to make this flow (and, as a result, more 5e). What do I mean by house rules? The game does not break down exactly how to roll attacks. It says it’s a straight out roll but you’re meant to add your Strength bonus to your To Hit roll (as best we could tell). Grace, their name for Dexterity, is used for ranged weapons and Defense (AC) but that’s not explained, more known because you’ve played Gary’s version of this since the 70s. They mention things like being Skilled With Fancy Clothing but there is none listed (instead you have to infer that they mean things like the Foil Wizard Robe or the Shift Lords Tunic). Another example, being Skilled With Shields, which are not listed as items (though, they may mean the Fresh Baked Bun). There are a few minor pieces that need you to connect the dots on.
Is this broken? No. A thousand times, no. Where it shines is its non-D&D 5e options. Lots of instances where you’ll have Advantage (roll the To Hit die twice). Their crit system is superior to D&D’s. In theirs, a Nat 20 results in you “do the maximum amount of attack damage, plus an additional roll of the normal attack dice. You also get advantage on your next roll.”
Where this is at its most crassly capitalist are the Buffs and De-Buffs. During the game, if you eat food from Wendy’s (specifically, from your Order), you gain +1 and Advantage on attacks for the session. If you eat non-Wendy’s food, you take -2 penalties to certain stats. I’ve read about game stores offering in-game perks for purchasing items from the store, but this is another level. I’m not endorsing this, but if you’re going to play, make it a theme night with Wendy’s fast food.
Who Made This?
This is one of the two* areas that Feast of Legends’ detractors take issue. The product only credits the artist (Alex Lopez) and cartographer (Collin Fogel), not the writer, developer, editor, etc. The meta-narrative is that the game was written by Wendy herself. Not listing creators breaks with RPG industry standards. However, as a piece of promotion for a fast food chain, I’m sure it is in-line with their standard practices.
Despite not listing the creators in the book, the secret is out. Daniel D. Fox of ZWEIHÄNDER and Andrews McMeel Publishing shared that Tony Marin of VMLY&R and members of Wendy’s were responsible for writing this project. Russ Morrissey at EN World added another name to the list: “It was designed by Matt Keck (Twitter link), Tony Marin, and others.”
*The other area of concern for those that are upset about this game because it’s an ad for a billion-dollar-a-year corporation in the form of a free RPG. J.R. Zambrano at Bell of Lost Souls looks at the backlash that Critical Role faced for running a one-shot of the game.
Should You Play With Your Food?
In place of one of my regular weekly games, we played Feast of Legends: Rise from the Deep Freeze, the included adventure. The game’s joys are in its unwavering commitment to re-imagining the Wendy’s restaurant chain, and the Burger Wars, into a mythological fantasy setting. Should you play it?
Assuming you see Wendy’s ads and/or eat at Wendy’s, this setting will be familiar enough that you’ll know the key players, the enemies, and what the mythology references. If you have kids and want to introduce them to an RPG that they have some passing familiarity with, this is an excellent option. If you’ve collected some of Wendy’s Create Your Adventure playset dioramas, while not the same art style as FoLs, they help visualize this world. Feast of Legends is free and worth grabbing just for the art and monsters, assets that easily fit into your 5e and OSR games. Grab your free PDF copy here.
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