# RPG A DAY 2025: Day 11 - Flavour tags: #thoughts #thoughts/RPGaDay/2025 ![[RPG a Day 2025 (illo).png]] Ironically, as popular as the concept was when **[Delicious in Dungeon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delicious_in_Dungeon)** was freshly released, I only have one game supplement that explicitly creates a setup for the protagonists being chefs. Perversely, that game is **[[Spectres of Brocken]]**. Keep in mind that this is a game which is very much about child soldiers training at an academy to fight in giant robots and then ultimately ending up on opposite sides of a brutal, bloody conflict and how that plays out in their relationships. At least by default. ![[Spectres of Brocken - Full Spectrum (cover).jpg]] I've written about SOB elsewhere, and there are a lot of things I have an issue with within the text, but it's not the design. It's quite a cool execution, plus the layout is quite pretty. But that brings us around to **[Full Spectrum](https://ehronlime.itch.io/spectres-of-brocken-full-spectrum)**, which is a series of alternate setups. Different ways to conceive of the world and where the PCs are in that context. One of those setups is *Iron-Blooded Chefs*. This is one of the more gonzo concepts that are floating around out there in gaming, and I'm just going to run it down for you. Actually, no. I'm going to simply quote the first paragraph of this and let it sink in for a minute. > [!quote] > > WE HAVE BEEN COOKING for the dragon lords since the day we learned serving them elaborate feasts to their exacting prescriptions meant we could escape being their meals. It is not easy to work on the scale and to the discerning quality that they demand; to do so we climb aboard mechanized cooking Stations ten times larger than ourselves. To fuel these machines, we use the borrowed magic of dragonflame; to please our hosts, we fight ever-stronger, ever-stranger monsters to harvest their flesh for the feasts, and face each other head-to-head, honing our skills at the ritual combat of *Cuisine Conflict*. Yes, basically, the characters start as students at a supreme school of cuisine conflict, preparing to be pilots of giant robot cooking stations powered by dragonfire. And to that end, they need to do things like learn to plate dishes, chat amiably with a creature that may want to kill and eat you at any moment, deal with the results of a volcano erupting, which could remove access to an extremely rare cooking ingredient, or get involved in a complete rebellion against the ruling Dragon Lords and come up with a cunning plan to poison them at a massive feast. For the record, and to be sure that you know, *yes*, putting together your own custom mech and deciding what your anchor object or person is occurs during character creation. Before you ask, yes, a 10-foot-long chef's knife ground from titanium and inscribed with your family crest could be a thing that you use. [Chen Kenichi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen_Kenichi) is looking up at us in the afterlife with a certain amount of wistfulness at this moment. Is this a flavorful setting option? You better believe it. Flavor is literally the whole point. I never thought that I would see a mashup of **[Iron Chef](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0220265/)** and **[Gundam](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0159172/)**, but here we are. This is the world we live in today.