Magical Fruits To Make Your Games Immersive and Sweet
/The world of tabletop roleplaying games is vast and strange. The strangest monsters imagined by your Game Master populates the fantastical townships and distant planets your games happen in. The situations have the fate of worlds hanging off your technical and magical mastery.
Such big and otherworldly things leave players excited and overwhelmed. These are the events that draw players in every single time. Details about the world, how bodies govern, how countries operate, customs, rituals, and social norms; these are what build immersion. This is what makes the player feel like they're somewhere real and lived in. But immersion doesn't even need to have anything that grand or elaborate.
Mystical Fruit
The village market or grand bazaar is a place that unites all people of many walks of life in a town, city, or settlement. The wares of traders and peddlers across the realm is varied and essential for a person's day to day. In a world of magic and mystery, the things that are on offer should hold some amount of magical mystery to match the world it's in.
It's fundamental, people have to eat. The fruit stall is an institution. It caters to everyone and has featured as a turning point in many stories. Apples, pears, bananas, and quinces are always going to be on sale, but I enjoy bringing magical and weird fruit to the marketplace.
The golden sheen of the sun apple is an alluring thing for those on a quest.
Sun Apples
The myth of golden apples are consistent in many worlds. They've been written in myths and legends as a thing to truly quest for.
Sun apples are the more common name for gold skinned apples found in many worlds. The skin of these fruits are a shiny yellow, with an almost metallic sheen to it. There's a noticeable sourness to these apples compared to red or green ones.
Ice Pears
The notorious ice pears have featured frequently in the games I've GM'ed for years.
The deep blue skin of the ice pear holds the most and least delicious thing you’ve ever eaten.
These relatively common fruits grow in wintry biomes at high altitudes. They grow easily in mountain soil and against harsh elements. Planting as few as one seed will usually grow a reasonable tree within the first year, making them a common crop for those living in arctic environments.
The unique thing about ice pears are their unique and wildly differing tastes. Like most pears and apples, they go brown when left out in the open air. Ice pears go brown very quickly which has a huge impact on their flavour. Ripe, fresh ice pears have a thick juice and a warm sweetness has been described by bards worlds over as the most delicious thing they've eaten. That flavour is fleeting. When the brown sets in, all that sweetness vanishes. The ice pear has an intense, ashy sourness which often repulses anyone out of finishing it.
The most delicious thing anyone's ever had has to be eaten quickly to be enjoyed.
Fruit's Basket
Exploring fantasy tabletop roleplaying games involves exploring fiction. As a fiction writer as well as a Game Master of over 5 years, good fiction makes for good games. Now we want to hear from you. How have unlikely story tidbits made the games you've GM'ed all the better? What strange magical fruits would appear on your grand bazaar stall? Let us know on our discord server or in the comments below.
Adam Ray contributes much for adventurers here on Apotheosis Studios. As co-founder of fantasticuniverses.com, he writes about card gaming and PC gaming to a corner of the internet he carved out himself. On Youtube, he can be found game mastering for No Ordinary Heroes, or editing the antics on The Hostile Atmosphere. Follow his Twitter @IzzetTinkerer.
