Snacks, Survival, and the Natural 1 of Convention Nutrition
There is a particular kind of hunger that only exists at conventions and long game sessions. It is not ordinary hunger. It is not, "I could go for lunch." It is a feral, time-warped condition in which your body suddenly remembers it has been running entirely on coffee, one granola bar, and the ambient magic of a dealer hall pretzel since 9:15 a.m.
And yet, somehow, convention food remains an eternal mystery.
At home, I can make thoughtful choices. I can eat a meal with colors in it. I can look at a vegetable and recognize it as part of a healthy ecosystem. At a con, all dietary planning collapses within hours. You are no longer choosing food, but rather, negotiating with fate.
Convention eating starts with optimism. “Maybe this year will be different,” you think. Maybe there will be balanced options. Maybe there will be something green that is not a decorative lettuce leaf under a turkey wrap. But soon reality sets in. The options narrow, the lines lengthen. Your schedule (especially if you overplan like me) becomes a hostile force.
Snacks for Dungeoneering
Behold the famed walking taco of GaryCon. Mayhaps Lake Geneva has an eternal devotion to Fritos. Or perhaps it’s that the con organizers understand you’ll likely be shoveling chili into your face while you walk-run to a table on the entire opposite end of the venue because you were SURE you’d only spend 15 minutes in the expo hall, but here you are 45 minutes later and $50 bucks poorer, thankful you can walk and taco at the same time.
And then there is the great character sheet dilemma. There are few more complex logistical challenges than trying to eat convention food while also preserving your pristine gaming materials. Every snack is a risk assessment. Orange chips? Reckless. Chocolate? A betrayal waiting to happen. Anything with grease? Congratulations, your rogue now has a translucent corner, and your spell list smells faintly of regret.
We have all attempted the impossible balancing act. One hand on the character sheet. One hand holding a drink. Dice corralled in the elbow pocket. Trying to open a protein bar with your teeth because the table is already occupied by maps, minis, pencils, a mysterious plush owlbear, and someone’s aggressively large convention tote. This is not leisure — it’s a tactical operation.
But oh, the pricing. Convention center food has achieved a kind of mythic confidence. A bottle of water costs as much as a minor artifact. A basket of fries arrives with the solemn financial weight of a car payment. You do not buy food at a con so much as enter into a binding economic arrangement. But in some places at least, they deliver it to the table!
Did I pay $7 for this hot dog?
Yes, yes, I did.
Did it arrive at the perfect time before the Big Bad fight to let me both refuel mentally and gather my thoughts before chaining together an almost perfect sequence of specialized Kingdom of Keshanar sub-class spells and abilities that left the DM rolling at disadvantage for 3 rounds straight in the single most EPIC con battle I’ve played?
Yes, yes, it did.
And I salute that hot dog as a result.
Do You Have Rations?
Now, of course, you can avoid that by packing your own table snacks. I, like Brennan Lee Mulligan, love almonds at the table. Full of brain-amping protein, easy to stretch out across a 3-hour session, and able to double as mini’s in a pinch, a package of mixed nuts is both a party descriptor and the perfect snack. You just need to remember to pack them.
Pictured here:
the photo of my favorite snack mix, IF I had remembered to pack them instead of the 4th set of dice.
Con food might have you eating at disadvantage, but still we persist.
Because there is something noble about it, really. The shared meal between sessions. The slightly stale cookies at the hotel lobby. The weirdly excellent nachos someone found on level two. The party-sized bag of snacks cracking open at 11:30 p.m. as everyone settles in for one more game they absolutely should not be sacrificing sleep for. Convention food may not be elegant, affordable, or recognizable to modern nutrition science, but it is part of the ritual.
This a photo of my favorite snack from GaryCon:
the half of a Rice Krispies treat that Sean Rawly (fellow CTGA board member) shared with me during our game of Fabula Ultima.
I’d just driven in that morning and got up too late to get food on the way and not miss my 9am game. But in the way that conventions go, not only was I greeted by a familiar face at the table, my brother-in-imaginary-arms offered to split a treat with me that only minimally stuck to my character sheet. Perhaps the greatest sustenance for the games is the friends we make along the way.
So here is to the snackers, the schemers, and the brave souls carrying trail mix in dice bags. May your drinks have lids, your fries be hot, and your character sheets survive the weekend with only minimal cheese-related damage.
Come Join the Party! Bring Snacks!
This article was written by Susan Haarman, PhD, a board member of the Chicago Tabletop Gaming Association. If you’d like to get more involved with the tabletop convention community, check out our list of upcoming cons and use the button below to join the conversation on Discord!
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