Popverse's top stories of the day

• How Disney+'s What If...? is the moonshot for the next 50 years of Marvel Studios & the MCU
• Watch: Dune: Prophecy's Desmond Hart explained: His secret identity, his past, and his possible future [SPOILERS]
• Dune: Prophecy's Desmond Hart explained: His secret identity, his past, and his possible future [SPOILERS]

Take it from Popverse's resident anime expert Trent Cannon: Delicious in Dungeon is the best unintentional D&D anime ever made. It's got a ragtag adventuring party, magic threats, and a premise that only the silliest of DMs would develop - that is, that characters treat monsters as cuisine as much as they do enemies. Unfortunately, while the anime may satisfy roleplaying fans, the same can't be said of the other way around; a of now, there's no official Delicious in Dungeon TTRPG. But at PAX Unplugged 2024, we learned about the next best thing.

Critical Role's Daggerheart, coming to shelves in 2025, will feature an edible monster campaign titled, appropriately, BeastFeast.

BeastFeast is one of the several campaigns created for Daggerheart, a brand new fantasy TTRPG that uses two d12 to play and utilizes a card system for character creation. Just like Delicious in Dungeon, the campaign is set in a hopeful, often comedic fantasy world. PAX Unplugged attendees were introduced to the campaign during a panel featuring Critical Role cast members Matthew Mercer, Ashley Johnson, and Masood Haque, plus Daggerheart creatives Spencer Aitken, Shaun Ellis, Dani Gage, Elise Rezendes, and Rowan Hall, the designer responsible for BeastFeast.

"BeastFeast begins in the small village of Elmore," Hall began, "It's up in the North Woods and they haven't had anything bad happen there for decades and decades and decades, and that's because a wizard created something called The Lure and put it down at the bottom of this deep deep system of caves. It attracts all the monsters and villains that might want to try to make their way and attack Elmore."

"Unfortunately," she continued, "The Lure is no longer working; it started to go out and these beasts are starting to encroach upon the village, so someone has to go down into the cave system and fix The Lure. But after all this time, everyone has forgotten how to fight, and there really aren't any weapons in the village anymore. So the starting weapons in this campaign frame are all household items, like a butcher knife or fishing rod or fireworks, and you may wear a baking sheet as your armor or a barrel lid."

Spencer Aitken, who was essentially the DM of the panel, jumped in to further explain.

"This is a game that's designed to function like a bunch of people who don't know what they're doing," he told the crowd in Philadelphia, "going into this cave and having to survive. Part of that is making a meal out of the creatures that they slay, because they have to sustain themselves while they're down there. That's actually something that Elmore is good at: cooking food."

"There is a whole minigame for the campaign mechanics that is designed to teach you how to create meals based on ingredients," he explained, "Depending on what you face and what kind of creature it is, it'll drop certain ingredients, and you use those in this mini game to roll them all together. [...] Instead of being able to heal hit points and clear stress and gain hope during downtime like normal you're instead having to rely on the stuff that you cook."

"You'll see," Aitken wrapped up, "we'll do an example of it here." And see we did, as the Critical Rolers onstage decided to give the crowd a demonstration, beginning by creating five fantasy characters with food-based names. PAX Unplugged-goers got to sit in on a session as their culinary champions were attacked by melting cheese chickens, slew a (shaved) ice dragon, and cooked up their remains into a beautiful fantasy Philly Cheesesteak, a dish they developed using BeastFeast game mechanics specifically made for cooking.

Perhaps someday we'll get a proper Delicious in Dungeon TTRPG, but for now, the audience as PAXU seemed to have their appetites satiated by BeastFeast. 

Delicious in Dungeon is currently streaming on Netflix, and you can preorder Daggerheart (and by extension, BeastFeast) on its website.

Want to know what's coming up next in pop culture? Check out Popverse's guides to:

• Upcoming movies
• Upcoming TV shows
• Upcoming comics
• Upcoming comic conventions

And if you're looking for specific franchises or genres, we've also got lists for the:

• Upcoming MCU
• Upcoming Star Wars
• Upcoming Star Trek
• Upcoming DC movies & TV

Finally, if you're a fan of superheroes and not specific to just Marvel or DC, we have overall guides to:

• Upcoming superhero movies
• Upcoming superhero TV shows (and new seasons)