Dream Pastries of Despair and Wines of Optimism: An Analysis of Food and Drink as Emotive Narrative Devices in Dungeons and Dragons’ Curse of Strahd

The collaborative fantasy tabletop role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons has gained heightened popularity in recent years. However, the role of food and drink as narrative devices that shape player emotions has received limited scholarly attention. This paper addresses this gap by examining the official adventure module Curse of Strahd, which guides players through the gothic horror setting of Barovia, a realm within the “Domain of Dread.” In this bleak and nightmarish landscape, players encounter foodstuffs designed to evoke feelings of fear, disgust, and longing, while experiencing fleeting moments of hope through acts of perceived charitable reprieve and symbolic resistance amid crises. Drawing on queer and affect theory, and supported by autoethnographic reflections, module discourse, and associated online commentaries, we analyse how encounters in Curse of Strahd mobilise sustenance in ways that generate complex emotional responses. These scenes queer normative assumptions about nourishment, care, and moral clarity. Food and drink function not only as affective triggers but as symbolic devices that reinforce and subvert gothic tropes, creating gaps and openings that gesture towards alternative relational possibilities. Ultimately, this module, alongside the collaborative storytelling practices that sustain it, reveals how tabletop role-playing games offer distinctive spaces for exploring hope, community, and resistance within and against worlds defined by despair.