Over the last three days, we’ve established a new Genre Setup—Dying On The Pass—where characters operate a restaurant, precariously balanced between profitable potential and impoverished collapse. Every service becomes an adventure: impossible customers, absent staff, sabotaged deliveries, critics at table twelve, broken refrigeration, feuding suppliers and a wedding party of twenty-four covers arriving forty minutes early.

So how do you run this game? Well, here are some random ideas to establish the challenge, theme. and Intensity of play.

See what I did there?

Running Dying On The Pass

I would make one day of restaurant life the equivalent of a session, rather than making each simply four hours of simulated dinner service.

The beginning of the session must establish the day’s problem(s). Something has already gone wrong before anyone arrives (a little in medias res, because that’s where the drama lies): a staff absence, supplier problem, overdue account, major reservation mistake, transportation crisis, weather incident or sudden personal crisis.

The characters need to get ahead of those problems, before prep time runs out or something else crops up to make the day even spicier. There’s an opportunity to get a slight grip on the problem, throw characters into the mix, focus in one relationships or individual breakdowns, and just see how the group thinks they can restore order.

And then the doors open.

Service functions like the action climax. Problems that looked independent collide. The missing delivery matters because tonight’s table of eight ordered the tasting menu. The server covering an absence is also trying to conceal that their relationship ended that afternoon. The restaurant owner desperately needs the visiting food critic to have a good meal because the bank meeting is tomorrow morning.

After service comes the reckoning. Perhaps players meet all the Challenges or maybe some Regard must be spent. Money has been made or lost. Relationships shift. Someone says they cannot do another week like this.

Then, usually, they turn up tomorrow.

Loosely, the session probably breaks down 25%-50%-25% to cover prep, service, and the aftermath, but timeframes will vary and maybe the relationship stuff and the early saves might extend the prep. Service should usually be the meat of the session, but that might vary. Sometimes, the whole session might be set outside the restaurant, in someone’s home, at a party, on a field trip, or in a car caught up in traffic.

Trouble Belongs Everywhere

The useful distinction from other Sanction settings is that there need be no villain. The antagonist might simply be an accumulation of perfectly reasonable pressures.

A landlord wants the rent. A supplier or artisan producer needs to increase prices. A customer has an allergy or a panic attack. An exhausted chef makes a mistake. A server wants a weekend off. An inspector is doing their job with a little too much caution at just the wrong moment. A journalist writes what they genuinely think. Or you’ve suddenly run out of forks.

The GM’s task is not to establish who is secretly responsible. It is to arrange circumstances so that every reasonable decision costs something somewhere else, whether that’s a monetary cost or another sort of debt, relational, emotional, physical or whatever.

A few strong starting situations might help (though I cannot recommend watching all five seasons of The Bear enough).

Today’s Problem

Roll once at the start of the day, or choose whatever promises the most trouble. Each problem could (even, should) worsen through prep and service unless the characters intervene. You may also want to check Disposition (Sanction, pp 31–32) when it feels like it matters. You can role a customer’s Reaction, a supplier or inspector’s Attitude, or the owner or investor’s Manner.

d12	Today’s Problem
1	Cold Storage — The main refrigerator fails before lunch. Repairs are possible, but the engineer wants an outstanding invoice settled first. Meanwhile, valuable stock is warming by the minute.
2	Cash Before Delivery — A key supplier abruptly moves the restaurant to payment in advance, just as a large private booking makes a reservation for the evening. Tonight’s menu depends on ingredients still sitting in someone else’s warehouse.
3	Something They Ate — A customer posts that the restaurant gave them food poisoning. The accusation spreads quickly, but nobody yet knows whether the claim is genuine, mistaken or malicious.
4	Unexpected Company — A celebrated chef, critic, actor or influencer arrives without warning. Two staff have already called in sick1, and nobody agrees whether the attention is an opportunity or a catastrophe.
5	Better Offer — A vital member of staff has been offered another job with better hours, better money and fewer headaches. They need to answer tonight and someone else has already heard about it.
6	No Way Home — A transport shutdown strands staff2, delays reservations and sends unexpected walk-ins through the door. Just as every spare table fills, the late bookings begin arriving together.
7	Double Booked — Two large parties have confirmations for the same tables at the same time. One is a profitable corporate booking; the other is a family celebration organised months ago. Neither intends to leave.
8	Inspector Calls — An environmental health inspection begins during prep. Nothing is catastrophically wrong, but several small problems suddenly look much worse when written on a clipboard—and someone has misplaced an important record. If the team can’t resolve the problems now, the inspector is shutting the place down.
9	The Missing Piece — Someone or something crucial simply fails to arrive. A phone goes unanswered. Covering their section or a menu option is difficult enough, but as the day progresses it becomes apparent that the absence has more complex implications.
10	Wedding Cake — The restaurant agreed to provide something unusual for a valued customer: a wedding cake, specialist menu, outside catering or elaborate dietary requirement. The person responsible has made a serious error and service begins in hours.
11	Old Debts — The landlord, bank, tax authority or equipment lessor wants money now. There is enough cash to meet the demand, or pay wages and tomorrow’s suppliers. Not both. A some point during the session someone offers an alternative arrangement with uncomfortable strings attached.
12	Everything at Once — Tonight is unexpectedly packed. Then a pipe bursts, an argument erupts between two members of staff, a supplier sends the wrong order and a regular customer proposes an event that could transform the restaurant’s fortunes. None of these things can wait until tomorrow.

1. Rather than have non-player characters sickness, you might have players drawing lots and have the two with the short straws play on but hampered by sickness. You might consider suggesting this idea and see if you have any willing volunteers. Those who are sick have a non-Voluntary Loss die, a d8, that they roll whenever they make a check on a Resource. If the Loss die drops below a d4, they’re too sick to help and sit out the rest of service. They can roleplay between snivels and nausea, but they can’t roll Challenges or cover their station.
2. There might be an interesting approach to play here if you have the time to run this over two sessions, with the first focussed on roleplay and the traffic disruption, and the second session handling events at the kitchen—perhaps staggering arrivals creating additional challenges with stations empty and time for prep running out.

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How does Intensity factor in your game or character? I look forward to reading about it in your RPGaDay post.

#RPGaDAY2026