A player of mine is playing the Fighter, and has the whimsical concept of a grizzled, scarred veteran who finds peace through the art of cooking, which he learns from a sensei-type samurai ghost living in his knife (don’t ask).
I was looking around for a good cooking based CC, especially one that evokes martial art chef tropes like the excellent God of Cookery movie, but couldn’t find any good ones. So I made my own, using Anglekite CCs as inspiration.
I quite like it, but I’m not sure of a couple of things:
I’d love to get feedback!
– I’m not sure about the STOCK mechanic, bc the way to refill it is pretty passive. Not sure if I should ditch it.
– Is the core move straightforward enough, or is it too complex as written?
– Any suggestions for other moves / tweaks?
EDIT: Thanks for the feedback, everyone! Have changed the class and linked it below. For the Core Move, Flaws have been ditched and a Hit heals, regardless. All Base moves are now character-development questions, for consistency.
I find it interesting though it Don’t convey to me the idea that you described first, it seems more of a “monster magic cook” than a veteran which finds solace in cooking.
Also, the 6- seems pretty dangerous and risks making people don’t want to try the recipes of the cook, spoiling maybe his fun in that area.
Maybe you can expand that move to other ingredients apart from monsters (herbs, fruits, normal animals), simplify the list by unifying accent and base, and make something more interesting but less “dangerous” for others and more personal with the 6-, for example things like the ghost is unappaled of your recipe and torments you with his japanese proverbs all night (take a -1 forward etc), or your mates liked the recipe but not so much, they also whined a lot about a specific thing they don’t understand because they know shit ’bout modern cuisine, thus they don’t get the beneficial effects of your recipe (or something else)
Giorgio De Michele Good point on the 6-: I was trying to balance the move, and I think I made the downside too harsh. I’ll think about how I can tweak it.
I really wanted a move that represented combining flavours, though, so I quite like the base and accent. I’m open to a simpler system that does that, though!
Hmm…I spoke to the player to clarify a bit more and they said, yes, what they wanted was a ‘martial arts chef’. Does that come across?
In general I think yes!
THe base and accent are really a matter of preference, if you like it more nuanced and think you and the player can follow the bonuses it’s ok!
Just think about the 6-, because I feel it can be funny at start, but then can devolve in other PC not wanting to take part in any cooking 😀
Giorgio De Michele Fair point! I’ll probably switch it to losing STOCK on the 7-9 🙂
A lot of moves don’t even define the 6- result, leaving it up to the GM to make a move. For example, they roll a 6-, you “Put them in a spot”… the food is delicious, but the party is so engrossed with the meal that they don’t notice the gathering pack of panther-bats who have also been drawn by the savoury smells.
I really love it, and having a grizzled Fighter do this as his relaxing time is just flavour. Cudos, man, and honestly disagree about 6- results, I’d leave it in. “Changing” PCs doesn’t have to be a big deal (having them spend extra rations because they puked their guts earlier is also “changing” them), so you leave it vague enough for anyone to apply to their game styles. I really want to play this now…
And definitely post this somewhere in a document when you finish it, like I said, I’d play it as is but would love to see if you get great recommendations and improve upon it. I mean, brigands and thieves are technically monsters, imagine playing in a barbarian-cannibal campaign! :O
Emir Pasanovic Aw thanks! Haha, you noticed that: I left ‘monsters’ a little vague and wondered if/when the PC would decide to experiment 😀
Robert Rendell True! I’ll probably drop the wording of the 6- and might drop the Flaws too. The move could be too punitive as a Core move
Why would anyone not take the sweet base? Another tack could be the meditative cook. I think it would be cool but hard to write up somehow the monster ration gives the players some aspect of a monster move?
steven stewart I thought about a monster-move thing but it could get really arbitrary. Some monsters have moves like the Orc Warchief’s ‘Start a War’ or ‘Enrage the Tribes’ which are so monster-specific they wouldn’t make fictional sense, and I can see a game bogging down as the GM has to improvise lots of different effects for all the monsters a player might eat.
Totally agree with you on the ‘Sweet’ Base. I think I’ll redesign it to give a flat 1d8 Heal for a hit, and leave the Base as a PC-character development question.
docs.google.com – The Battle-Chef
I’d just edit the text to delete the “You may”‘s. It’s shorter to just say. Take +2 or whatever to your rolls. 🙂