You know what they say about too many cooks...

[xaq_the_aereon]

Well, as ravenworks gave me the idea a few weeks ago with one of his weird dreams, I've been working on yet another TCG idea.

Blade Clash has been tabled for a while due to my realizing that I'd made it way too complicated, so having a new idea to toy around with is rather refreshing!

Conceptual name: "Too Many Cooks" (as per Raven's request.)

Basic concept:

You and your opponent each have a deck consisting of ingredient cards (beef, potatoes, oregano, salt, water, milk, vinegar, etc.) and cooking action/utensil cards (heat to represent stuff like baking and boiling, spoons for stirring, knives for chopping, etc.), as well as a small number (I'm thinking around 5) of larger "recipe" cards and a "finished meal" section that readied ingredients go into.

You each start with a recipe and X number of cards, trying to get the correct ingredients and actions (example: for a Spaghetti recipe, you could need spaghetti noodles, sauce, water, and ground beef (beef with a chopping card used on it) for ingredients, then a few heat cards for cooking the meat and boiling the water as well as a knife to chop the beef and a strainer for draining the noodles.)

For added excitement, however, if you don't draw the stuff you need, you can try sabotaging your opponent's recipe instead, such as using an unneeded heat card to overcook and, eventually, burn the beef in that spaghetti recipe. If an ingredient gets ruined prior to being added to the "finished meal", you can just scrap that lone ingredient and try again. If the finished meal gets screwed up, however (such as pouring BBQ sauce on a salad), ALL the ingredients in it have to be scrapped, then that player can either start over on that recipe, or discard it for no points and start on their next recipe.

When a player finishes a recipe, they score X number of points for it based on the point value of the recipe, then get a new one. First player to reach a pre-determined score, or to have the highest score when both players are out of recipes, wins!

It's a rough idea at the moment, but like I said back then, this could be much more feasible than it first appears!

Comments

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

Hahah, nice -- hooray for being a random inspiration :)

It feels like the ability to ruin someone else's recipe so easily would lead to nothing getting finished... that was what I liked about the 'communal' concept it had in the dream, where you could 'steal' someone else's meal by finishing it first (but the enormously higher value of more complex meals would make it worth risking continuing to build instead..) - the tendency would be to collaborate until you manage to stab each other in the back, trying to guess what recipe your opponent is trying to make.... (in my version, anyone is free to make any recipe at any time; the factor that would influence someone's choice of recipes would be their hand at the moment... basically, the more I think about it, I think my game is something like Mahjong Hold 'Em....)

The dueling idea is neat, though! Maybe if it just cost a lot more to interfere with someone else's recipe, like if it were only possible to interfere by swapping your ingredients with someone else's, but you can only swap if their ingredient actually does have a role in your recipe... so people would leave holes in their own meals, hoping to fill them as an offensive move if their opponent plays an ingredient they need (and also trying to play cards that they suspect their opponent might swap with as early as possible, so as little damage as possible is done -- but earlier in the round is also precisely when it's hardest to guess what your opponent might need...)

[xaq.livejournal.com]

The ease of ruining a recipe had crossed my mind, so I figured the easiest way to handle that would simply be to limit how any given recipe could be ruined. One way I considered that was by letting the player making the recipe also have access to a list of things that could be added to it that would actually improve it, as well as what would ruin it. The easiest way to do that would simply be to have a player's recipe be secret from other players; you might see that your opponent's prepping chicken and lettuce recipes, but are they making a salad or a sandwich?

If something were added that had no positive or negative benefit (such as throwing olives on a steak), you could spend an action next turn simply removing the offending ingredient. If, on the other hand, your opponent inadvertently tried to ruin a recipe by putting something helpful on, you'd end up scoring extra points on their behalf!

As for how to balance things out...I was thinking limiting the amount of stuff you could do in a turn, making a player think stuff like "Okay, so do I put some mayo on the BLT I'm making, or do I dump it on what appears to be my opponent's goulash?"

...Which, by itself, would completely justify the creation of such a game now that I think about it. :D


All that being said, though, I'm rather glad you put this idea in my head; this is sounding pretty fun!

[davidn]

This... should seriously be made :) Get some recipes and ingredients together, play it out, see what works and doesn't...

[xaq.livejournal.com]

Guess it's time for me to cut up another stack of index cards and break out the magic markers again!

Kinda crazy how this fits two of my favorite pastimes (card games and cooking) so perfectly, to be honest!

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

Hmm... I guess I was seeing a recipe as something much more easily ruined than improved... but yeah, if they try to burn your egg salad but wind up actually toasting your egg salad sandwich, that's an interesting risk...! Maybe have the benefit of an added ingredient be worth way more points than the points removed for having an 'interfering' one, so the person interfering is taking a much larger risk unless they're sure they've figured out their opponent's recipe :)

I'm thrilled you were there to hear it -- I'm excited just to be involved in this! :D

[davidn]

You seem to have had a talent for inspiring game creation recently ;)

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

My subconscious is a lot more unburdened when it isn't expecting to be held accountable for its ideas. ;)

[xaq.livejournal.com]

Had a couple more ideas last night in regards to the "sabotaging someone else's recipe" idea.

1) Make it not guaranteed to work. Simplest way of doing that: when you try to sneak over to your opponent's side of the kitchen to screw their stuff up, you each roll a die. If you beat their die roll, sabotage successful! If not, you get caught and don't get to do anything that turn, perhaps with score penalties for repeated failed attempts at foul play.

2) On top of using the same action cards that would normally be used on your own recipe, also have some cards specifically made for the purpose of sabotage that do some cooler stuff.

Example: "PANTRY RAID!!" If you don't get caught, your opponent discards the top 5 cards of their deck. If you do get caught, lose 10 points. And yes, there's an R in "Pantry" there, perv. :b

Other Example: "Look, Look! A Cookbook Crook!" If you don't get caught, you swipe your opponent's recipe card for the next 3 turns; you can see it, but they cannot, and they must continue with that recipe until they get it back! If you get caught, your opponent can choose to steal 15 points from you or to get a look at your recipe card.