Your diner doesn’t exist yet. Before it can start traveling between worlds, you have to build it. Name it. Draw it. Fill the kitchen with people who have reasons to cook. After this, every session begins with the diner landing somewhere new. But it always starts here.
This takes ten minutes, or an hour if the group gets into it. Both are correct.
Name Your Restaurant
Restaurant Name
Flip a card. Red or black sets the column. Rank gives you the name.
| Rank | Red | Black |
|---|---|---|
| A | The Golden Ladle | The Iron Whisk |
| 2 | Fork & Fury | Something's Burning |
| 3 | The Wandering Pot | The Midnight Course |
| 4 | Ember & Salt | Crumble & Co. |
| 5 | The Hungry Oracle | The Reluctant Chef |
| 6 | The Misfire Kitchen | No Reservations |
| 7 | Twice-Cooked | The Charred Raven |
| 8 | The Brass Spoon | Salt & Consequence |
| 9 | The Simmering Kettle | The Unlikely Kitchen |
| 10 | Last Bite Inn | The Second Course |
| J | The Florentine Disaster | Blackened & Beloved |
| Q | The Velvet Crumb | The Tasting Incident |
| K | House of Flames | The Final Garnish |
Restaurant Tagline
Flip again. Same rule. Red or black, check the rank.
| Rank | Red | Black |
|---|---|---|
| A | Where every mistake is a signature dish. | What happens in the kitchen stays in the kitchen. |
| 2 | We've never poisoned anyone. Probably. | We put something in it. You won't know what. |
| 3 | Cooked with love. Served with confidence. | Feeding people since an incident we don't talk about. |
| 4 | Fine dining for the adventurously hungry. | Come for the food. Stay because you can't leave. |
| 5 | It looked better in our heads. | Our chef has opinions. |
| 6 | Famous in at least three neighborhoods. | Nothing on the menu is accidental. Mostly. |
| 7 | Food that starts conversations. | The critics called it "bold." We're choosing to agree. |
| 8 | We're not responsible for what the soup does. | Results may vary. Flavor guaranteed. |
| 9 | Aggressively homemade. | We tried it first so you don't have to. |
| 10 | Technically edible. Genuinely delicious. | Open until something goes wrong. |
| J | A kitchen with ambitions beyond its means. | Under new management. Still us, though. |
| Q | Award-eligible since last Tuesday. | More experiments than recipes. |
| K | Our disasters are legendary. | The legendary kitchen of [your town here]. |
Write the name and tagline on an index card. That’s your restaurant. It lives on the table every session.
Draw Your Restaurant
Sketch the exterior. A sign out front, a door, a window. It doesn’t need to be good. It needs to exist. Hang the sign.
Create Your Characters
Everyone flips three cards and follows the Character Creation section. Write your class, personality, and calling on your character card. Draw yourself on the back.
Then, why does your character cook? Use your calling as the seed. Don’t overthink it.
A Baker with the calling “A Rivalry” might write: “There’s another bakery across town that once called my croissants ‘adequate.’ I will not rest.”
That sentence is your backstory. One sentence is enough.
The Menu
The menu starts empty. After every session, any dish the group loved gets a name and goes on the menu. The restaurant’s history is its dish list.
That’s Session 0. You’re ready.