This was easily one of the worst stories. Getting forced to run a kitchen, getting to care about the characters and then systematically destroying everything despite trying to make the right choices…well I’ve had fever dreams that were more fun. No thanks
Was it because I took the wrong hat at the beginning?
I too came away from this feeling terrible at the abject failure on my characters part (not helped by the fact I played the story as a reward at the end of a bad day), but I’m not sure the forum has really worked out why it failed. I don’t think the random nature of the dishes should be improved, rather it should have been removed - but how it to remove it would depend on what the author intended for the audience.
I felt that the story could have been written with two possible motivations:
- You, hero of so many other battles in London, are placed in charge of a restaurant. Due to your many successes you assume you can manage anything, but instead everything you try backfires and you end in a smoldering wreck.
- You are thrown unexpectedly into a managerial role which usually requires a large amount of talent and training. Using your wits and instincts you need to walk a fine line of leadership to put your talented but disruptive staff’s skills to good use to save the day.
In the first case, the chance of succeeding on dishes should be removed - everything should either fail by default unless it is dead simple, in which case it should succeed but be so looked down on by the reviewer that it counts as a negative (what fancy restaurant serves plain toast as a main?) The methods of failure should be surprising and/or mildly comedic to replace the sting of ineptitude with a sense of amusement. Think the pen and paper RPG Paranoia for example.
The second case is more tricky, but I assumed that this is what the author was aiming for. In this case, you are not a chef. You have no cooking knowledge. But everybody else does. The problem is none of them agree upon what to do and they all hate each other. Your job is to convince them to do their job - and if you can do that then and only then should things work out well. Let’s take the first course as an example. From memory, this was prepared by the line cooks. At this stage we’d had (from memory) three decisions. What do do with the hat, what to do with the chef and how much freedom to give the line cooks. I don’t think the hat decision effected the line cooks (or at least it didn’t seem to in my game) so we’ll skip that. How to treat the line cooks is obviously a matter of freedom/trust vs control/centralised command. What to do with the chef can be seen in the same light - before the poisoning the chef treated the line cooks with disdain so it can be assumed that leaving the chef watching in the corner would cause them to feel under observation and hence controlled, whereas stuffing him in the closet would put him out of sight/out of mind. In this case the line cooks would be more inclined to experiment. Then when you select the dish to prepare, the descriptions should have some leading information. Some of the dishes are easier - you’ll probably succeed in making them regardless but the tiger won’t like them much. Of the harder two one should say it requires careful precision, the other intuition to balance the flavours. The precision dish will only be completed successfully if both the head chef is watching and the line cooks were disciplined. The intuition dish will only be completed successfully if the head chef is removed and they line cooks were given free reign. The success or failure descrpitions should also make it clear why you failed. Perhaps if the line cooks weren’t given any freedom to try their own ideas they wouldn’t have made that creative substitution that messed up the precise balance of flavours. Of course, your decision on the line cooks freedom will also effect the pastry chef and the critic with the later courses so each decision will ripple throughout the story. Something done to help you now may (and should) come back to bite you later. In this way the ending still depends on the skills of others - you’re job is just to guide them to a way they can work together.
This removal of the chance based succeed/fail and replacement by a system that can be worked out beforehand (with difficulty) and should be obvious in hindsight should remove the feeling of arbitrariness that pervaded the story. Success would feel very well earned, and failure would be understandable. After the first course, the player can say ‘Oh, I failed that course because …, next time I’ll make sure to avoid that mistake’. This would allow the player to possibly course correct through the story if they’re clever enough.
I can understand that cooking food that meets the tastes of food critics is indeed a miracle that needs to happen continuously for beginners. However, I still can’t understand why my character is willing to cook.
Even from the perspective of role-playing, a wise, sly, or powerful character played by the player, when facing the sudden death or coma of the restaurant owner, would not say: "Oh, let me do it Let ’s do it! Although I have never done it before. ”Or“ irresponsible people like you to let me be an assistant chef, I refuse ”, this story is fragile in terms of story. Even if this is a story about food, the author must ask me to experience the "wonderful randomness" of cooking. He should also add more dialogue options, emphasizing to the player that the situation is very urgent, and it is too late to use the player’s connections or detective investigation You have the ability to make your own dishes. Otherwise, the story will appear to have nothing to do with the characters we have previously shaped.
This makes me feel incredible. I am an important person who owns my own yacht and holds luxury dinners on the yacht every day. In this case, I couldn’t send someone to bring the yacht chef to help me make a dinner, or let my chef guide me how to cook. Or through my reputation in the artist or society, to hint, persuade or directly bribe food critics. The author can even make the role played by the player more cunning and crazy. After the restaurant was criticized and the customer was lost, it only cost a few hundred echos to acquire the restaurant at a low price, unlocking a new place for us, of course. It can also be considered as a new "Affiliation" device (it may be a bit dreamy, but if I were given the opportunity to acquire this restaurant, I would like to pause the story and make money, even if it needs thousands of echoes)
Yes, it ’s really challenging for beginners to try cooking. Our characters are beginners in cooking, but even for a “fallenlondon” beginner role, they wo n’t In situations, join a kitchen team without a leader. After all, they have escaped from unjust captivity, and by virtue of their ability to excel in one aspect, they succeed in the tenacious survival in London. They are not beginners in life experience.
edited by chiche on 1/16/2020
Does anyone have an echo for what happens if you tell the truth about what happened in the Kitchen during your presentation? I… um… failed spectacularly and my character is generally honest, but that worries me. Haha
Do not worry. Go with honesty. It is the only way to feel a bit better in the end.
I must say I enjoy the breakdowns of why this story didn’t work for so many people: it’s like a crash course on game design do’s and don’ts. It’s also fun to see why others liked the story.
Fallen London always had a limited agency compared to a TRPG, but I think the player is likely to forgive the lack of agency if they enjoy the story… and are more likely to enjoy the story if their characters are not made fools/responsible for someone’s misery. I liked chiche’s suggestion that depending on your means, you could bribe/bring your chef/inspire people to work together. Since you weren’t given a chance, you automatically assumed the game would give you a way to make it work on your own, and that’s where the fun would be. So I guess it is a lot about expectations not been met, which is very different from upturning/subverting expectations (generally a good thing).
Huh. We do sound like the greatly dissapointed tiger, don’t we?
Well, this did really take me back to being a waitress at a fancy hotel. The chaos, the politics, wanting to help but being unqualified to do so, that feeling when you look at a professional kitchen and just wonder how no one has murdered each other yet, the gang is all here.
It did trigger my flight or fight response, so on the one hand Great Job at flavor, but it also meant i couldn’t exactly enjoy it. I just decided early on not to engage with it too deeply, and if everything went wrong, oh well lets burn the place down.
Usually I’m deep in the camp of "lets all just be nice and work together". Which is why I could not work in a kitchen. Still haven’t read the review, I’m hoping that taking responsibility for the disaster I send out will at least shift the blame to me, person who shouldn’t have been in the ktichen in the first place.
If real restaurants are anything like that, it’s no wonder that chefs are stereotyped as neurotic psychopaths.
Also I strongly suspect that the Critic secretly hates the Tiger for some reason.
edited by The Elfin Cannibal on 1/22/2020
Actually this is only my second exceptional story. But I really liked it! It’s lighthearted so I didn’t dislike the chance-based gameplay. And I do feel it’s fitting given that the player doesn’t know how to cook (presumably.) But I also don’t have a character in mind when I play.
I know a lot of people tried to succeed, but failing every success check and then claiming it was the Illustrious Chef? Would be fantastic. And really liked the Critic, and the Tiger. Still, in the Covered Black Market the shopkeep says that the Tiger probably lies about his allergies. Which wasn’t true.
A little clarification:
When I am forced to choose between the Critic and the Pastry Chef, which choice aligns me with who? If I ‘push back on the Critic’s chaos’, is that aligning me with the Pastry Chef or the Critic? I’m a tad confused.
That’s aligning with the Pastry Chef. “Pushing back” means you’re resisting the Critic’s demands and trying to get her in line.
Thanks, I appreciate the clarification.
Just played this one, and I loved it. The chaos! The drama of it all! I literally grabbed my face and went "OH NOOOOO!" like three times throughout the story, and I laughed out loud! Everything kept going wrong so quickly and catastrophically! It was amazing.
Forgive me for putting on my meta tiara for a second, but a lot of role-playing games forget that life isn’t about choices and consequences. IRL consequences are mostly unknowable. Trying to predict the future is a straight shot to getting flanked by the unexpected! Life is chaos and tragedy and laughter at the same. That’s kind of what’s beautiful about it. And this is like… the perfect low-stakes story to invoke those ideas. ^_^
edited by Gul al-Ahlaam on 1/30/2020
A final reminder that the new ES will knock in a few 1-2 hours. Don’t forget to unlock this one!
So, I’m pretty sure I unlocked this one from the seasonal hub, but hadn’t played it yet. Now I can’t find it. Any advice?
Intriguing. I seem to have the same problem. I concluded I must have misremembered unlocking it, but maybe it is some sort of a bug with more people affected?
I have contacted support, we’ll see if I get any word about that.
edited by Aardvark on 1/31/2020
Lo and behold, the Fine Dining has reappeared for me.
Thank you to the support team/whoever fixed the situation for me (and hopefully for others as well).
edited by Aardvark on 2/3/2020
[quote=Aardvark]Lo and behold, the Fine Dining has reappeared for me.
Thank you to the support team/whoever fixed the situation for me (and hopefully for others as well).
edited by Aardvark on 2/3/2020[/quote]Did support tell you if it was a widely spread issue? I saw that some people on Reddit had similar problems.
It affected me and I filed a support ticket. FB got back to me and indicated it had been temporarily locked and that was now fixed, so it seems to have been widespread. I presume by use of the word "fixed" on their part it was unintentional. All is good now for me.