A few months ago, I proposed a wild idea: Dungeons & Dragons—except you cook what you kill. After a little tinkering, I’m happy to report that my mechanics for cooking in D&D are now widely available.
There aren’t always easy-baked ways for players to collaboratively role-play in every D&D game. Cooking is a great way for players to goof off after a long day of very serious saving-the-world or, alternatively, give purpose to the average combat encounter. In a recent homebrew campaign, I asked players to find a dungeon’s two largest monsters, make them fight each other and cook up the survivor to a judge’s liking.
Here is a link to my cooking mechanics, which are are up on D&D’s Dungeon Masters Guild, a site where players post their homebrew adventures, rules and the like. I offer suggestions on how dungeon masters can incorporate cooking into their game and look at their campaign setting through a culinary lens. Also, I explain how players can forage for ingredients in the process of dungeon-crawling. When it comes to actually frying up some mandrake tempura, cooking works in three parts that depend on different skill checks: prep (Dexterity or Wisdom), execution (Intelligence or Strength) and plating (Charisma and Constitution). Two skill checks are listed per stage-of-cooking so any character can get involved. Check out the mechanics and let me know what you think!
Full disclosure: There isn’t an option for “Do not pay me” on the Dungeon Masters Guild, so the price is “Pay what you want” with a suggested price of free. Wizards of the Coast, who I write about, takes a cut of what’s purchased on the site, FYI.