Interview with Sharang Biswas

We talked to interactive artist, game designer, writer, and professor Sharang Biswas about his food-centric and award winning roleplaying games Verdure and Feast, and the release of Feast/Verdure, which brings both games to print for the first time in one volume.

Hi Sharang, thanks for chatting with us! Tell us a little about yourself and what you do. 

I’m a freelance game designer, writer and interactive artist, and I also teach at the NYU Game Center and Fordham University (as well as guest teaching and the like at a number of other places). In my work, I tend to focus on speculative fiction with themes of queerness, but I’d say my work can be quite broad!

A little more about me…I like to cook, am part of an LGBTQ+ swim team, am upgrading my rope bondage skills, and frequently participate in Nordic-style LARPs!

Feast/Verdure brings both of your food-centric games to print together. What do you do in the games?

Verdure is a solo, non-journaling RPG/ritual/recipe where you’re casting a spell as you prepare and consume a salad. It’s a little bit about witchcraft, and a little bit about revenge, and the consequences of it. 

In Feast, your group plays some sort of possessor entity—ghosts, aliens, demons—who take over and then slowly consume the personality and memories of different individuals. You do so by eating actual food at the table, in small portions, letting the taste, aromas, and textures influence your storytelling. Essentially your gustatory experience is also that of your entity-character, but while you’re getting those sensations from food, your characters are getting it from thoughts and memories.

Why food?

I’m really interested in the various verbs that games can make use of (I even lecture about this at NYU). When I was first thinking of Feast, I asked myself, “What verbs do I find interesting, and can I ask players to engage during an RPG?”. 

I came up with Feasting & Fucking. I have since made games using both.

Both games won awards for innovation, and Feast was played at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia as a live performance. What was it like watching your creations be recognized and come alive?

Feast was one of my earlier works to get attention from the movers-and-shakers of the gaming world. So that was awesome! It kinda catapulted me upwards in the RPG space (where before, I’d done mainly boardgame work).

It’s actually really heartening to see a tabletop game get attention from museum and gallery curators. TTRPGS deserve attention in the Fine Arts world!

What’s the response been like from players?

Both games have elicited varied interpretations from folks, which I find extremely cool. There’s an article out there where the author said that Feast reminds them of their childhood meals in China, another which talks about the game as being about colonialism. People have sometimes called Verdure a poem rather than a game, which is…not entirely wrong. 

Do you have some favorite salad ingredients to use with Verdure?

Becoming prediabetic recently has made me appreciate variety in salads! Suggestion: as a “spice”, try adding some preserved lemon!

What else are you working on these days?

I’m currently putting a lot of energy into Bloomfall, a TTRPG commissioned by the National Academy of Sciences! Yeonsoo Kim and I have had a great time working with scientific experts and educators on a game that’s not only a fun TTRPG, but also might make you look at our natural world a little bit differently.

After 5 playtests at kink festivals and sex parties, I’m also currently writing up the text of Leatherbound, a simple heroic-fantasy RPG that asks the players to engage in kink and other sexy-fun at the table while playing the game! It’s coming soon to Plus One Exp!

What do you like to do when you’re not creating games?

Mentioned some earlier, but I love reading spec fic, as well as occasional non-fiction (I already read a bunch of scholarship as a professor, so I read less of that for fun). TV-wise, I’m into various things, but just started rewatched Gilded Age with a friend so that’s been excellent! And of course, The Great British Bake-Off, whose new season I was watching with neighbors! I also recently started Kieron Gillen’s new comic Power Fantasy, which I’m reading as the collected anthologies release and it’s EXCELLENT.

Games wise, Hades 2 (obviously) has been occupying my time, as well as Dispatch and Tiny Bookstore. I’m also in a campaign of ARCS, Earthborne Rangers, and Triangle Agency!

Feast/Verdure is available in both print and PDF format, and you can see more of Sharang Biswas's work here.