Cheese and Nuts

What might a battle against snack food look like? Let’s take a look as I fight against a Babybel Mini and some Wonderful Pistachios.

The little cheese has about 70 calories, so I’ll call this a Level 7 Food Monster. My level is just 1, since I just started this adventure. I scream, “I want to eat some cheese! Aargh!” The cheese taunts, “Eat me!” I roll 1d20 and come up with a 2 + my willpower modifier of 3 = 5. This does nothing to my foe as I did not roll greater than or equal to its level (7). I eat the cheese and take 7 HP of damage for the day, and look to the next creature.

A half cup of pistachios in their shells costs me 160 calories, so this is Level 16. I roll an attack of 1d20 = 18 + willpower 3 = 21. The enemy is defeated, so I can choose whether to take the 16 XP or eat the nuts. I haven’t eaten so much today, so I eat the nuts as well.

Analysis

This is obviously a super simple way to fight in The d20 Diet. Food is assigned levels based on their calorie content divided by 10 – simple enough to calculate. The fighting is done with a single d20 die, and the outcome is decided by whether the roll plus willpower is greater than or equal to the food’s level.

There could be a lot of problems with this, but the first that comes to mind is that an adventurer might never actually eat low-calorie foods because they are so “weak.” There needs to be some kind of incentive to eat healthy food. I am still mulling this over, trying to determine the best way to get players to shift from junk food to good stuff.

For today, I chose this simple example to show the idea that one might choose between XP and eating. This gives them a moment to think about pros (XP) and cons (calories) of deciding to skip a snack. This system doesn’t directly address the player’s level, but assumes that their willpower might be lower at first, but increase as they level up. (I chose a somewhat arbitrary willpower of 3 for the example, but this is something that will need to be explored later.)

I like that I lost to the weaker cheese, and was able to decide whether to kill the nuts. In the end, this exercise gave me a moment to think about my decisions before eating, and showed that I am in charge of what I eat. Next time, I might take the XP. But I might just eat some more pistachios.