Review of Bakto's Terrifying Cuisine

What It Is

Your party finds themselves in the kitchen dungeon of Bakto, a picky eater for a demon. Satisfy his culinary demands or die trying. This is a small hardback book written for The Vanilla Game or OSRs, and easily adapted for anything else. Here is one of the monster stats. It should look very familiar. If you can't work with this, I don't know what to tell you:

Bakto's was written by Giuliano Roverato, Gustavo Nassar, and Rodrigo Melchior, with art by Sam Mameli. Lovingly inspired by Iron Chef and other frantic cooking shows; the party scours the dungeon for ingredients, encountering wild situations, engaging NPCs, deadly foes, and powerful magic items all the way. I found it has a lot of replay value as the ingredient randomization and time limit make it different every time you run it.

Get it at Spear Witch, itch.io, and DrivethruRPG. As far as I can tell, the only way to get the physical book is through Spear Witch, so do yourself a favor and get it there. If you do itch.io you get a coupon for the physical book, I gather. That's kind of second-best stuff though, and you are better than that.

What It Isn't

One misconception I had going in is that this was a scavenger hunt. Turns out, Bakto was apparently not prancing around the dungeon like a demonic Easter bunny beforehand, hiding just the right things for your players to find. Maybe they were never supposed to succeed. Try to concretely find the abstract flavors he demands like "Drama" or "Nuclear" and you will fail. As you should, fool.

To survive, the party has to shoehorn dungeon debris and monster giblets into some passable mockery of bespoke cuisine, and do their damnedest to cater to his flavors. This is how my game went - my players grabbed what they could and somehow made it work. Barely!

The Time Limit

There is a time limit, which means the party can only explore some of the rooms. Think of the mad shopping cart dash through the grocery store in cooking contests - they can't get to every aisle, can't get everything they wanted. Probably don't know where to find them in the first place! It is small, but every party you run through it could viably experience a different dungeon. You and your party can be surprised even if they already ran this, and the latter part of the book gives some solid ideas for changing things up on repeat runs: teams, secret ingredients, etc.

The Tone

Due to the art and theme, you can forgive people for thinking this is light in tone. It's definitely gonzo, but it is a very deadly adventure with great risks and rewards. Think of the lore lurking behind the bright palette of Adventure Time or the deceptive depth of most Troika! adventures. There are rooms that defy the visual tone, my favorite of which can easily lead to transforming and stranding the party, or worse.

Just some light-hearted whimsy, as long as you don't look too close.

This leads into one of my only concerns about this adventure; curiosity can really kill the cat here. Several rooms I am sure I would lose character after character to as a player. If you run this game you will need to calibrate how many cues and chances you give the party to notice something is amiss. Read it beforehand and you will know which rooms I mean. Definitely memorable though, and not as light-hearted as the tone suggests.

My Bakto Session

 

My Bakto was transparently based on Aku from Samurai Jack. The author says he was based off the 1st edition AD&D DMG cover, and I can see that. Once you picture Aku in your head though it is hard to get that impression out. I doubt I am the only one. I had him really brag about the rubedite cookware he had, pulling from the real life memory of one of my foodie friends always boasting about his goddamn copper pans.

 

Brothers from another mother (maybe, I don't want to think about that.)

My party found out about the allergy from an NPC but were deceived about its nature. This lead to a great moment where they expected Bakto to die upon eating their dish, were baffled when he didn't, started to feel horror that they now had to go through with the contest they thought they would fail, then did not, barely.

 

They only got into actual combat once, on a random encounter. I can see less fortunate parties finding themselves in great danger, especially at the low levels suggested.

 

It was a fantastic game overall, everyone loved it and I begrudgingly admit they may have enjoyed it more than the foray into B4: The Lost City they were amidst (I run B4 a lot). 

 

I now keep this game in my bag, not on my shelf. Loaded and ready for the slightest window of opportunity to play it.

 

How to Enjoy

I ran this as a one-shot and feel like this is its best use. Spreading it out over more than one session might squander the beautiful anxiety from the time limit. As a one-shot, it would also make a great palate cleanser when switching game masters or settings. The best thing I did was to make sure the party would occasionally hear Bakto's booming voice announcing the dread passage of time, describing exactly how he would cook and eat each of them, etc. Normal stuff.

End Note: Author's Discussion 

I generally refuse to read anything about the author explaining their game before I play it, and you should too. If you already played it or just don't care what I think you can read the author's story about its development here.