Cooking in RPGs

[Alex]

it's more often than not tied to some half-baked hunger mechanic, which leads to situations of constant annoyances.

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Meh, hunger in Ultima 7 wasn't annoying. Personally, I rather enjoyed you could leave crates with mutton in your wagon so they were at hand easily. Then you could bring them to your ship and finally to your magic carpet. Also, it was fun to use the create food spell just to see what you would get.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Funny that i stumbled on this topic. I have always this idea on the back of my head, dungeon crawling RPG with in depth cooking element. I had the idea while playing etrian odyssey, atelier games and made in abyss.

The concept is basically this anime:



You fight enemies, get their body parts, cook with them. Various cooking will get you various buffs to help fight the enemies. You can cook by putting bunch of ingredients randomly, or you can find recipes that will produce items with unique effects. Some bosses will drop ingredients that gives you permanent stat bonus, etc.

In my mind the format is more of jrpg than crpg. The exploration works in the style of fear and hunger, but not as tense and survival horror-y.

 

[Falksi]

Bard's Tale 4 is the only game I've played where it's incorporated in a semi-interesting and practically useable way.

 

[thesecret1]

Funny that i stumbled on this topic. I have always this idea on the back of my head, dungeon crawling RPG with in depth cooking element. I had the idea while playing etrian odyssey, atelier games and made in abyss.

The concept is basically this anime:



You fight enemies, get their body parts, cook with them. Various cooking will get you various buffs to help fight the enemies. You can cook by putting bunch of ingredients randomly, or you can find recipes that will produce items with unique effects. Some bosses will drop ingredients that gives you permanent stat bonus, etc.

In my mind the format is more of jrpg than crpg. The exploration works in the style of fear and hunger, but not as tense and survival horror-y.

Funnily enough, Gothic 2 (and especially Archolos) kind of include this concept by giving you permanent stat boost from cooking rare stuff. Not especially deep, of course, but it is there and works well.

 

[Alex]

If you skip the cooking part, ADoM does this too.

 

[0sacred]

I like cooking unless it's some retarded "craft this applepie for +2 STR" prebuff shit

 

[PGG]

Nah, cooking mechanics in RPGs aren't my jam.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Funny that i stumbled on this topic. I have always this idea on the back of my head, dungeon crawling RPG with in depth cooking element. I had the idea while playing etrian odyssey, atelier games and made in abyss.

The concept is basically this anime:



You fight enemies, get their body parts, cook with them. Various cooking will get you various buffs to help fight the enemies. You can cook by putting bunch of ingredients randomly, or you can find recipes that will produce items with unique effects. Some bosses will drop ingredients that gives you permanent stat bonus, etc.

In my mind the format is more of jrpg than crpg. The exploration works in the style of fear and hunger, but not as tense and survival horror-y.

The author of the manga, Ryoko Kui, loves crpgs and in fact she was the artist who made the mangafied BG portraits you see all over the web.

 

[JarlFrank]

Funny that i stumbled on this topic. I have always this idea on the back of my head, dungeon crawling RPG with in depth cooking element. I had the idea while playing etrian odyssey, atelier games and made in abyss.

The concept is basically this anime:



You fight enemies, get their body parts, cook with them. Various cooking will get you various buffs to help fight the enemies. You can cook by putting bunch of ingredients randomly, or you can find recipes that will produce items with unique effects. Some bosses will drop ingredients that gives you permanent stat bonus, etc.

In my mind the format is more of jrpg than crpg. The exploration works in the style of fear and hunger, but not as tense and survival horror-y.

Have you played this?

 

[Desiderius]

I like crafting and consumables and exploring for rare ingredients and components that produce unique effects.

Too bad all you phaggots whine (or edgeclowns pose) so much that devs end up dumbing everything down so far that we’re deprived of that enjoyment.

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

In Ultima 7 it was good because it was tied to environmental interaction, which was a part of its worldbuilding strategy. You could see the baker baking bread exactly the same way you did. If it were just menu based crafting, it would instead take you out of the game. This is why people enjoy cooking in The Sims, btw. You're using the objects that you bought for your house to make a meal. It's not a generic meal, but something you made yourself.

The Sims is kind of a survival RPG without the scarcity, which is to say, it's all playacting. That's fine for a casual game like The Sims, but when "real RPGs" insert such playacting mechanics without consideration it just adds bloat. "Why would my character be doing this?" is the question that some games can't answer.

Project Zomboid is one my favorite games and it's very Sims-like in presentation and even in some of its character progression. There's a Cooking stat and better meals enable more recipes and higher Hunger and Happiness bonuses. It feels very satisfying to be able to make a nice meal, specially in very low loot settings. It's usually the result of time spent foraging in nature, looting houses and stores, studying and logistics. My favorite character class is the Burger Flipper, who has a bonus to Cooking.

 

[thesecret1]

The key is to make the effect meaningful, so that the player WANTS to cook. If you give him the standard "+10 heat resistance for 15 minutes" for each meal, then few players will bother - it'll just be seen as busywork. If you make it a permanent stat boost or something equally valuable, you'll see the player busting his ass to collect ingredients to cook that shit.

I think the problem in most games is that they don't really want cooking to affect the game's balance, so they give it some meaningless trash buffs and call it a day.

 

[Arryosha]

If there's a cooking mechanic there should also be a pooping mechanic where if you don't go often enough you get a speed debuff (*constipated*) which can only be removed by a "cure"

 

[NecroLord]

Both Fear and Hunger games have cooking in the form of a book of recipes you find. Really simple, nothing too complicated, which is a good thing.
No one cares about cooking, they want to get on with the adventure.

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

I genuinely found cooking (if you can call it that) in Gothic relaxing and liked it as an option.

Cooking is the same for me as crafting, will need to be supported by other design choices because only focusing on the mechanics is not enough. Scarcity in terms of money, no health regen, etc. Immediately makes the most bare bones cooking mechanic a great option. Also don't want my inventory just stacked full of random stuff.

However, I don't trust any dev to make cooking mechanics more in depth than Gothic and it be anything more than annoying padding.

 

[Iucounu]

If there's a cooking mechanic there should also be a pooping mechanic where if you don't go often enough you get a speed debuff (*constipated*) which can only be removed by a "cure"

In ARK your character poops wether you like it or not. Fortunately you don't need to take off your pants.

 

[Harthwain]

Dragon's Crown (2013) has a food-related game mechanic in which the party occasionally has an opportunity to select ingredients while camping and receive certain benefits for the next level depending on what meals are eaten. The luscious artwork tends to arouse hunger in the player. Though the game is really a beat-'em-up with RPG elements (equipment, character progression and customization), not a proper RPG.

Damn. You're making me hungry, and I ate already.

Stoneshard is probably the best "cooking RPG" that I have seen so far:
https://www.reddit.com/r/stoneshard/comments/17ye246/devlog_cooking/

It was also nice to cook meat in Gothic and have it heal you a bit more. Nothing major but contributing to making the world feel more organic by having to perform certain activities. You can do the same thing in Kingdom Come: Deliverance.

 

[Semiurge]

I don't know about RPG mechanics but the captain's favorite dish in Thief III instills me with the desire to make DIY clam pasta in "strong" wine and garlic.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[JarlFrank]

I think the problem in most games is that they don't really want cooking to affect the game's balance, so they give it some meaningless trash buffs and call it a day.

As usual, muh ballinse ruins game design.

 

[Abu Antar]

Vanillaware strikes again. A few dishes from Unicorn Overlord. (Ogre Battle inspired game, coming next year.)

 

[Doctor Gong]

The issue isn't cooking, it that most of the time the systems feel tacked on and not very creative.

 

[vitellus]

The issue isn't cooking, it that most of the time the systems feel tacked on and not very creative.

you could always make something like



your cooking mechanic/minigame, make the meal wrong you get no buffs, make it with an "excellent" rating and the buffs are doubled.