Food and Drink: Never Adventure on an Empty Stomach

"I'm starving.  Let's break out some rations before we rest," Folg suggested, patting his rumbling dwarven stomach.

"There are no rations," Kyliss shot back. "Daldreth was carrying all our food."  She cast a deadly glare at the cleric, who was dusting himself off in the corner.  

"Hey, if you guys hadn't taken your sweet time getting me out of that gelatinous cube, maybe we'd still have some rations left!" he shot back defensively.  "Or if you guys carried some of the food, for a change..."

"We had a week's worth of rations.  Your saying all of it's gone?  What are we going to eat?"

Kyliss thought for a moment.  "Well, we killed all those dire rats a few rooms back."

Daldreth pulled a face, but Folg lit up.  "Now you're talking," the dwarf said.  "Fresh meat!  Daldreth, go get some of those R.O.U.S.es! I'll break some of this furniture up and get a fire going; this is a vaulted ceiling, there should be enough space for the smoke to go without smothering us all."

Kyliss rubbed her hands together decisively.  "Right, I'll attach a rope to this bucket and draw some water from the well."

Daldreth turned.  "A dungeon well?  Do you want throat-leeches?  Because that's how you get throat-leeches!  No, I'll just cast create water."

"Into what?  That gross-ass old barrel?  It smells like someone stored jellied fish in it."

Kyliss sighed, walked over to the barrel, and cast prestidigitation.  With a flick of her hand, a cloud of dust and unidentifiable ancient muck shot up out of it and splattered against the wall.  "We're good."
~~~~~~~~~~

Food and drink should be important considerations for any adventuring party, because you need that stuff to live.  But, like weight and encumbrance rules, such things are often neglected in favour of gameplay expediency.  A lot of gaming groups feel that keeping track of rations is too 'simulationist' and slows things down or distracts from the fun.  Well I'm here to champion the right of every PC to eat a square meal a day, and not just for the sake of realism.