Cook & Hero
A downloadable pamphlet game
You’re an aspiring master cook, in a face off competition amongst worthy rivals to create the perfect dish. Unfortunately, you’re supposed to make it out of scary and scaly monsters in very dangerous underground conditions.
INGREDIENTS
- This pamphlet, either printed or at hand digitally.
- Between 2 and 6 players.
- Special ten sided dice — d10s — or maybe an app to simulate them.
- Some blank paper, pencils and erasers.
- Around 2 to 4 hours.
- Snacks and drinks (optional).
DIRECTIONS
- Bring all your ingredients to a mostly clear tabletop (literal or digital). Reserve the dice/app for now.
- Take your players and sort them. One of those will be the Bard, the rest will be Adventurers.
- Have the bard player create their Tale, and the adventurers create their Cook Characters using the blank paper and pencils. Add erasers as needed.
- With the tale and characters ready, add the dice/app and have players go from scene to scene, following the rules and creating a story together for up to 4 hours. Whenever a character dies or the story ends, have them say their epilogue to wrap it all up.
- If you feel like it, add the drinks and snacks during the game, or take a small break to enjoy them before or after it’s all over.
ADVENTURES
If you like Cook & Hero, you should check out the Dwarven Lord's Feast, an adventure by Leon Reinstein made compatible for the original #RPGLatamJam!
Cook & Hero is a pamphlet game based on Honey Heist, and created as a system to run Bakto’s Terrifying Cuisine in — you’ll need some more weird dice for that, I’m afraid. The timber interior texture on the screenshots was made by kues1.
This game is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. You can create upon it, as long as you license your game in the same terms and give appropriate credit.
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- Cook & Hero (Herói de Cozinha)Apr 07, 2021
- Patch v1.5 - Mechanical Tweaks and PT-BR TranslationApr 07, 2021
Comments
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Cook And Hero is a short rpg about a high-stakes fantasy cuisine battle.
I can't tell whether this was an influence, but it has a *strong* Battle Chef Brigade feel.
Cook And Hero's PDF is 2 pages, with lovely art and a well-organized, easy to read layout.
Oddly, one of C&H's most interesting innovations isn't cooking related at all. The game leads with a pair of tables---one to determine the competition's host, and the other for the GM to determine the story's genre. This keeps the GM on their toes, and might be really refreshing. That said, some rolls (such as dating show, sitcom, or interview) may also be especially tricky to frame stories around.
And speaking of innovations, C&H's writing in the first half is also a little experimental, in that it frames the game's directions the same way you might frame a recipe. There are instructions to do things like "add the dice," which is neat but also briefly kicked my brain into high gear trying to process the meaning.
For players, C&H's gameplay is extremely easy to learn. A la Honey Heist, PCs have two stats, a style, and a class, and all rolls are resolved by trying to roll under or over a stat---using an extra die if you're doing something that fits your style or class. Succeeding and failing pushes your stat split in either direction, and letting your character become all cook or all hero is a death sentence. Before you get to that point, however, you can gather three key ingredients and put them together perfectly to win the game---or you can find a powerful artifact and try and kill the GM's celebrity chef. Your call.
Overall, Cook And Hero has a *lot* of experimentation going on, but the core is very solid and easy to play. Be prepared as a GM to play loosely and reactively---you'll have to throw together a lot of setting information and challenges on the fly unless you sit down and write an adventure in advance. That said, if you're looking for something quick and food-themed to run, this is a great pick---especially if you like highly chaotic, flexible storytelling.