Gluttony: Buffet vs Banquet

[ImpalerWrG]

In my group and I suspect most others folks groups food gets served in a very 'Buffet' fashion. The Cooking mule converts all the raw foods into as great a variety of cooked foods as possible and then dumps them into a row of containers possibly organized, often not. Then the glutton comes along and walking down the line of containers fills their inventory of what they consider to be the best foods for a gluttony session, they place them on the one table and gobble the food and then return any left-overs to the container row (or not if they are a slob).

I'd never seen anything wrong with this set up other then the fact that cooking food is boring and repetitive, while gluttony planning and execution on the other hand has a certain redeeming value in it's complexity and mental challenge. But then I read this thread viewtopic.php?f=21&t=10816 in which a fellow is basically asking to BUY the meal planning and the food involved in a gluttony session as a service, it's an interesting idea all right. And it got me thinking, if a 'cook' were more involved with the meal planning of his fellow townies wouldn't that be a lot more rewarding and less mule-like, wouldn't they feel more like a CHEF and perhaps be a more valued member of the town if they were good at it.

But the current Buffet paradigm mostly blocks this from occurring, because you eat primarily out of your inventory the glutton must pick up the food at the time of the gluttony session, so any organizing/planning done before that point is merely a suggestion. If we had a different paradigm around food which allowed and even forced gluttony planning to occur at the time food is cooked, thus any town or group in which cooking is delegated to a specific person also delegates gluttony planning to that person as well.

How could such a paradigm be created, well first off you would need to eliminate gluttony from inventory and allow gluttony only from a single gluttony capable container such as a table. Naturally table capacities will grow to compensate and a small 'picnic basket' object would exist for newbs to gluttony from but by breaking the link between inventory and gluttony it allows the preparation of the full gluttony session independent of the character that will consume it. Second freshly cooked food could be made to decay or go 'cold' over the course of a few house when not inside a gluttony container, this debuff to the food would only reduce it's gluttony value, not it's heal value so it forces food destined for gluttony to be placed onto tables promptly, once there they retain gluttony effectiveness indefinitely. Unless that is that they are removed, this immediately renders the food cold and good only for snacking. Foods that are not cooked don't suffer the cold debuff and can be freely moved around like food now.

The net effect of these rules would mean that gluttony has to be planned when the food is cooked by the person cooking it as they must make the critical choice to place it on the table for gluttony or not, and what mix of foods to use. The cooking need not all be done at the same time, but each time a choice needs to be made and the chef needs to consider several factors.

* Any left-overs still on the table and if they should be removed
* The humors of the intended glutton and what foods would be level appropriate
* Currently available ingredients and what might become available later
* Interactions between each food when eaten

That's a lot to think about, much more then needs to be considered during a typical Buffet style inventory filling. Obviously you would need more tables, I'd even expect a table per character to become the norm (or we could make each of the 4 sides of a table is a separate inventory allowing 1 table to serve 4 characters), but I'd consider that a good thing because it would increase immersion, after all every family will have a table big enough to seat all it's members. The new picnic basket item for newbs might be an undesirable bump in learning to gluttony, but I've never seen a new player that did NOT have to be walked through gluttony step by step, and with the ability to move the typically non-cooked forage foods without penalty they should be OK if we have a good tutorial in place. The hermit player also doesn't suffer too much of a burden, he cooks for himself and only himself so doesn't face the diversity challenge a chef in a larger group dose. The trade in prepared foods would almost certainly plummet though and would be impossible though stalls, a few dedicated 'restauranteurs' would cook and deliver food to order but I'd see this costing a premium and the synchronization would limit their customer base quite a bit. The trade in food ingredients though should largely replace what's lost in the fresh market.

[TotalyMeow]

Some time in the next couple days we're going to drop a huge food rework patch. Your town Chef will have plenty to work with then, I'm sure.

[Procne]

I'd never seen anything wrong with this set up other then the fact that cooking food is boring and repetitive, while gluttony planning and execution on the other hand has a certain redeeming value in it's complexity and mental challenge.

Hehe, intreresting, cause it's totally opposite for me. I like cooking different foods but gluttony bores me. Therefore I have full containers of food and not much to do with it

Also:

1. Cook already does some planning by choosing what foods to cook, from which ingredients and purity
2. Cook cannot design meals for people simply because different people may want to concentrate on different biles. Then you have the randomness factor involved. People may be more or less lucky with one food so may need some extra fillers.

[DarkNacht]

This would be funny just to see towns filled with tables. Many players cook large batches of food so they don't have to cook every day, this would mean towns would have to have many tables of each person.

[kai]

When i grow up i want to be a town chef.