House Ruling Your Recipes

In this blog I've written quite a bit about how to take pieces from one game and use them to improve another.  It's a great trick for making your game exactly what you want it to be without all the work of making up a whole new rule.  Cooking can work in much the same way. There are techniques and combinations that you will learn from recipes that you can use over and over again to improve your cooking.

Today I wanted to talk about three really simple techniques that will allow you to level up your recipes.  Trying out these tricks is an easy way to put your own spin on what you cook. 

Caramelized Onions

The first and easiest technique is caramelizing onions.   Most people have had caramelized onions before (and they're delicious), but I'm always surprised at how few people actually make them.  They do add a bit of cooking time, but are worth it.  They are very useful in dip or soup recipes, or just for putting on a piece of meat. However you choose to use caramelized onions will make your flavors pop. 

The first thing to do is slice the onion into thin strips.  Start by cutting the onion in half, slicing though the root end.  Take your halves and cut the tip opposite the root then slice the onion from tip to just before the root.  Slice this way until you've cut the whole onion half into 1/8th to 1/4th inch strips still attached at the root.  Now cut the onion half in half again, slicing all of your strips in half and cut the root end off leaving you with two sets of equal strips.  Repeat this with the other half of the onion.

Now, in a large non-stick pan add enough olive oil to coat the bottom of the pan.  You can also use butter or reserved bacon fat here, but be careful as both are more prone to smoking.  Heat the oil to medium. You can test if it's ready by flicking some water into the pot. it will pop when it's hot enough (when doing this, sometimes hot oil will spit out of the pan so be aware).  Add the onions and let them cook.  Move them around every 5 to 10 minutes while cooking and keep an eye on their color.  After about 35 minutes they should begin to turn amber brown.  Once you get a good even color throughout (you'll also find that you can flatten the pieces with your spoon like a jelly) remove them from the pan.  From here add them to any recipe that calls for onions, just skip any pre-cooking of them the recipe calls for.

Blooming Spices

Caramelizing onions takes a long time, so here's a technique that's even easier.  You'll find instructions to bloom your spices frequently in Indian cuisine but you can use it in almost any recipe you’re cooking.  You’ll just want to make sure your recipe calls for non-powdered spices.  If you're using ground spices or whole seeds (like cardamom, star anise, or coriander) all you need to do is set aside about 1/4 of what the recipe calls for before you start cooking. 

In the vessel you'll be cooking add a small amount of oil (this will depend on the recipe, but typically a teaspoon will be plenty, just make sure you have enough to coat the spices) and heat it at medium high.  When it's hot, throw the spices in and let them cook for about 5 minutes before you take the first step the recipe calls for.  This will infuse the oil with the spice’s flavors and really make them stand out in your final product.

Browning Butter

Browning butter is another technique that is very quick and can be used in almost anything that calls for butter.  It does take a little more attention than the other two techniques though, so be warned.  Browning your butter before cooking adds a rich and nutty flavor to your food. This is especially good for baked goods (chocolate chip cookies especially), white pasta sauces, and sautéed veggies.

For this you'll want a silver bottomed pan (this means non-stick pans are not a good idea).  Place the butter you'll be using into the pan and turn it to medium (you will be reducing the butter a little, so add an extra table spoon of butter for each stick the recipe calls for).  Let the butter melt but then you're going to want to keep a close eye on it.  At first the butter will boil/pop violently, after 7 or 8 minutes of this, it should start to turn a little brown.  Swirl the butter around as it cooks and wait for the popping to slow.  Around this time the butter in the pan will start getting darker, pull it as soon as you notice this (this is why you want to use a silver bottomed pan-it's hard to see the color change otherwise).  You want to be quick with this because browned butter is delicious but burnt butter is terrible.  You'll notice right away the nutty, buttery scent and that's the flavor you'll be bringing to the recipe.

With these three techniques you can start adding your own signature to dishes.  Let these experiences embolden you to try more techniques and combinations as you come across them.  Next week I want to discus genre emulation in games, how to use it and where it can go to far, but until then have some fun and get cooking.  Talk to you later.

Failing Forward

My recent harrowing adventure with falafel got me thinking about how failure affects games.  I’m not talking failure as a GM or Player.  I’m referring to how a character's failures affect the narrative and how to keep it from being too damaging.  Some failure on the parts of characters is necessary in a game, being unable to fail is ultimately boring. I feel that failure is too common in most games.

In D&D, the standard has long been that failure should happen a little less than 50% of the time.  Your character should hit, succeed as a moderate skill check, or fight off a poison with the same consistency (assuming that you didn't specialize).  This ratio has advantages and disadvantages.  For an average character at a task there is tension every time the dice are picked up.  The strong possibility of failure makes every roll feel important.  This also allows the specialists to really shine. The archer that never misses and the expert climber who scales with ease stand out from the pack when their time comes.

There are significant drawbacks with the 50/50 standard failure rate, however.  With such a high rate of failure, your characters often won't feel very awesome. It gives the sense that they are stumbling through the world, getting by more on luck than skill.  Since the odds remain the same throughout the levels, this also leads to the feeling that the characters are static.  While you are adding higher and higher numbers to your roll as you grow in level, your odds remain the same. This can lead to the feeling of running in place.  There is also the issue of when multiple rolls are required for a single action and a single failure is all you need.  I see this most often when a group of characters is called to make stealth checks or a character is asked to climb a cliff or high wall.  The odds are so high that there will be at least one failure, it hardly seems worthwhile to roll at all.

You also have to look at the consequences of failure in your game.  A failed attack roll or stealth check is frustrating for the players, but ultimately serve the story.  If a character dies in combat, or the barbarian trips over a bunch of pots while escaping the prison, those scenes can become the highlight of an adventure.  When a character fails a Perception check or can't get over that wall, though, it can cause the story to stop progressing.  This seriously damages any momentum you've established at the table.

Many games have sought to solve this perceived problem.  Gumshoe takes failure out of the equation for your character's specialties, Fate provides aspects to undo a bad roll, and in Numenera players know their odds going in and can spend effort to improve them.  There is one solution though, taken from games like Leverage and Mouse Guard, that can be used with almost any game.  Practicing with it will greatly improve your skills as a game master.

I'm not sure who coined the term Failing Forward, but it is the idea that when a character fails at a check that failure should continue to move the narrative.  The Leverage RPG utilizes this concept best in my opinion, making it the central conceit of all skill checks.  In Leverage, you play elite criminals at the top of their game.  For obvious reasons the world’s greatest thieves should not find themselves at a loss for how to pick a lock and the brilliant con artist shouldn't have difficulty convincing the Prince that she's his long lost cousin.

Leverage doesn't however lack in tension when played, by simply redefining the stakes of a roll.  Rolling the dice in an RPG is an abstract action, so it can have whatever weight you want it to in the narrative.  The consequences of failed skill rolls don’t have to represent a character's incompetence, but simply that the character did not accomplish their ultimate goal.  Take for example a master thief trying to unlock a safe so he can steal the gold bullion hidden within.  When looked at in the traditional way, failing the open locks roll means that the safe did not open, that the thief couldn't do what he was trained for.

In Leverage and other games the GM is encouraged to step back and instead deny the goal without denying competence.  In this example a failed roll may mean that someone happens upon the thief before he opens the safe.  Another option is that the safe opens but the bullion is nowhere to be found because it was moved earlier that day.  In both of these cases, failure (rather than simply inspiring a request to try again), adds a new element to the story and keeps it moving forward.

I may revisit this topic in the future, as it is one that I am working on incorporating into my own games.  But next week I will be sharing with you a vegetarian take on my Turkey 'Chili' recipe that I've been working on.  Talk to you then.

I'd Falafel But...

As promised I started working on a falafel recipe this weekend, and it has not gone so well.  Ordinarily I wouldn't share a kitchen failure with you, but I thought it might be worthwhile to share my process. This will give you an idea of how I deal with recipes that just don't turn out well. 

Whenever I try making something new, the first thing I do is look up a few recipes using sites like Epicurious, Food Network, and All Recipes.  I look over each recipe, noting what they all have in common, where they differ and, if it's my first time making something like this, I will follow one of them through.  I generally choose the one that is the most basic and won't change anything the first time.  I think it's important to follow a recipe fully at least once so that when you start making modifications you know where the failure is: in the recipe or in your changes. 

Since I had never made falafel before, I followed my above process and chose this recipe.  This is one of the few that didn't call for soaking the chickpeas for 24 hours which I didn't really have time for.  It also seemed straightforward.  Reading through the whole recipe I knew that I was going to have to make some changes for when I eventually posted it here.  For instance, I find non-specific measurements to be unhelpful, so coming up with a description of pinch and dash would be important.  You will also see that it doesn't specify the type of oil you should fry the falafel in and how long they should cook.  These types of omissions don't make a recipe useless of course, but clarity helps increase your odds for success.

As I said, this recipe was a failure for me. What I ended up with was tasty, bready, and oily. The tzatziki sauce I made to serve with the falafel was quite good, though.  Some of this was my fault and some of it the recipe’s. One of the most useful skills you'll develop as you cook more is identifying which is which.  Everything in the recipe came together well, until it came to frying the falafel.  I noticed immediately that the oil level the recipe called for seemed to be too high.  This is not a fully submerged frying recipe so the falafel shouldn't have been more than half covered.  I made a note to reduce the oil on my next attempt and continued on. 

My failure in the recipe became apparent when I went to flip the falafel.  Since the recipe didn't indicate when this should occur I flipped the 5 pieces I had in the skilled at 1 minute intervals.  This would allow me to identify when the best level of browning occurred without risking burning more than one of them.  As I started doing so, they began to come apart.  Not dramatically, but each time I moved one a small layer would separate into the oil. 

This is when I realized what I did wrong.  Not wanting to go to the store to buy breadcrumbs and not having time to make my own, I instead crushed some unseasoned croutons that I had on hand.  I hadn’t anticipated how important it was to crush them finely, so some mostly unbroken croutons made it into the mixture.  These larger pieces of crouton sabotaged things in two ways:1) they absorbed more oil than they were intended to and 2) they were not an effective binder, so they would drift away when the falafel was disturbed.

With this new understanding, and a new bag of bread crumbs I'm going to jump back in and tackle the recipe again.  I'll share my results with you later this week.  Since this experiment has put my mind on failure, next week we'll discuss the concept of failing forward in RPGs.  I’ll talk about how it can improve your games pacing and make everyone feel more awesome.

Fate Accompli

Note: Last update from my phone, I promise.  It's Bernard harrowing experience and I'll be going back and editing these posts when I get back home.

Narrative Based Timing

We've covered how to integrate Aspects into your Numenera game, and how Fate's character creation can improve  a Champions game.  Now let's look at how narrative based timing can enhance the experience when playing 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons.

What I mean when I say narrative based timing is Fate's system for tracking damage on character.  In Fate when a character suffers a significant injury it will be marked on their character sheet as a temporary aspect, called a consequence.  Most character can be effected by 3 consequences before they are overcome, a minor, moderate and severe wound.

These wounds don't heal like you see in most games, with hit points recovering in hours or days.  They instead remain for a given duration at the table.  A minor consequence will fade at the end of the next scene, moderate consequences last until the end of the next session and severe will be with you until the end of the next senerio.  That's no nearly all there is to the consequence system in Fate and I recommend you look at the game to learn more.

This system of tracking has a couple of interesting effects on a game.  When used for wounds it makes combat feel like a more real threat.  Characters in 4e need only wait a few hours to fully recover from anything and so quickly groups can fall into the one fight a day pattern in which so long as they don't die they are never at less than full resources.

There are ways that you can deal with this like putting time pressure on the characters but do that to much and it will begin to feel contrived.  This system however will remind the players that their characters are in real physical danger and will make them seem more badass for it.  

To use this sort of system I you game the first thing to decoded is what the would threshold will be.  With 4th Editon the easiest places would seem to be when a character reaches their bloodied value and when they drop below 0 HP.   I personally would also include when the character dies, allowing them to take a severe wound to stabilize, thus avoiding the need to resurrect. This last is sort of a olive branch to the players, you fights will have more long term consequences but you are now harder to kill.

When a character reaches one of these thresholds assign them a minor, moderate or severe injury and some penalty appropriate to the damage.  You can do this either with a table (the iCrit app has a lot of options for minor and moderate wounds) or you can just come up with them on the fly.  

For a minor wound the penalty should be mild, a -1 to movement or AC, a -2 to a single skill, or even a visible scar which could interfere with social encounters.  Moderate wounds can be more severe but still should not be crippling.  Halving movement, removing the ability to critically hit, a -2 to BaB or the inability to speak all seem like appropriate penalties.  Severe wounds of course should much more serious but shouldn't render the character unplayable.   Making the character slowed, preventing them from getting above their bloodied value or making whole sets of skills impossible all would carry the weight of their injury.

For the timing on these injuries I would keep them them similar to fate.  Sometimes defining a scene can be difficult in D&D but as a rule of thumb having it last until the end of the next encounter in which it was relevant will work.  The end of the next session of course is self explanatory, and the end of the next story should be approximately the duration of an adventure module or level if your game is more free form.  

In most 4e games magical healing is fairly common place and so of course has to come into play here.  Since the point of these injuries is to create a lasting effect you shouldn't allow them to be eliminated entirely by a Cure Light Wound or Inspiring Word.  I would allow a healer to reduce the duration of these injuries by one level of severity if they use enough powers heal the character 4 healing surges, thus reducing the penalty and duration.  The healing surges would have no other effect (although I would still allow and bonus healing the character provides to apply to HP) and I would only allow this once per injury.  Even if a Cleric can grow back your hand it's not going to be 100% right away.

Try this idea out in your game and see how it effects how your PCs approach combat, and how much more important their Leader becomes if they have one.

So that's it for breaking down Fate (for now), I hope that you found it illuminating.  Later this week I'll share with you a falafel recipe I'm trying out this weekend.  Talk to you then.

The Fate of All Mankind

Note: Sorry for the poor editing and formatting on this post friends, I seem to have overestimated my ability to update while on vacation.  Later this week we'll finish this discussion with narrative timing.

Today we return to our discussion of Fate and how to use elements of its rules for other games.  The week we'll cover the team based city and character creation rules, specifically those that appear in The Dresden Files RPG, and the narrative based timing Fate uses for wounds and healing.

Group Character and City Creation

The Dresden Files RPG (DFRPG) focuses heavily around making the characters and their world feel deeply interconnected.  The PCs feel as though they have a shared history throwing off the clichéd trope of murder hobos meeting in a bar and becoming fast friends.  Additionally the game encourages making the city feel like another member of the ensemble, emulating stories like The Wire or (of course) the game's namesake.

The primary way it achieves this is by making character creation part of the game.  During  character creation players incorporate at least two other characters into their narrative, leaving you at the end of the process with an interweaving web of relationship on which to draw.  Before this happens though, and I think that it is very important that this happens first, the group as a whole work together to create the city the characters inhabit.

While the book calls this City Creation it's important to note that this process can be scaled up or down for the story.   The same principles apply if your describing a college campus or and multinational agency of super spies.

For our purposes though we're going to look at using this process to handle a superhero game.  My game of choice for supers is Champions but as this process doesn't have to interact with the rules it can apply to any system.  

The first session of your Champions game, sit everyone down and encourage them not to settle on a character yet.  As soon as you say superhero game ideas will have already started to form, but bring open minded at this stage is helpful. First, as a group decided which  city you want the game to take place in.  You can also at this point decide on a globe spanning game but the process remains the same.  The next step is defining important locations that the characters will be interacting with.

A useful way to think of this is like you were making a TV show, a fee key locations is all you have the budget for so you have to make them each have their own sense of character.  In our superhero game you may have the local PD, the city tabloid's office, the roof tops, the villain's corporate HQ, the here's base of operations and the city limits sign for example.  To save on effort make sure that each location you detail has a rule to play in the game and people other than the PCs associated with it.  Pepper Pots at Stark Tower, Commissioner Gordon at Gotham PD and J. Jonah Jamison at the Daily Bugle all breath life into what would otherwise just be set pieces. 

One you've established your locations and populated them you should define their expected impact on the story.  In the DFRPG this is done through aspects but even if your not using that rule module writing down a phrase or two here will help to cement the location in your mind. Going the examples I mentioned earlier you might note Stark Tower with "boundless wealth and innovation" and "everyone knows where to find you".  Gotham PD on the other could be described as having "a tense peace with heroes" and being "rife with corruption".  This descriptor will help you know the sorts of scenes to set at the location and give the players a sense of how to act there. 

Now that you've established the where of your Champions game you can get to the who of the characters, some of whom may be inspired by this process.  When you think about what really is the difference between Lexcorp and Stark Tower other than the association with a PC.  

Group character creation is an easy step to incorporate into your game that in my experience greatly enhances the experience at the table and the ultimate narrative that ultimately forms.  In the DFRPG this is tied directly to the Aspect system, but it doesn't have to be in your game.  

To bring this stage into you game all you have to do is get everyone at the table before the characters are made and have each player look to the person to their left  and the person to their right.  For a Champions game I would have the players use the classic types of superhero interactions.  The player to left's character is someone they initially fought with but then the teamed up to fave a bigger threat (let the players come up with the threat and that's one less villain you have to come up with a concept for).  The player to their right is someone who they owe their life to, either because they saved them or for some other reason.  Finally, after there's decisions are made, have the players switch seats at the table.  With the interconnected stories this will help prevent it from seeming silly, and will encourage other characters to get involved when these stories come up in the game.

To prevent me from having to type evenore on my phone for now I'm going to leave it there and we'll come back to narrative based timing later this week.  On Monday I'll share with you a falafel recipe that a great snack and vegetarian friendly.

Aspects in Play

In my recent Hack(Host) article, Unraveling Fate we started talking about Fate Core and the ways you can use it's mechanics in other games.  One of my friends pointed out to me that the mechanic in question, Aspects, can be a bit challenging to figure out how to use at the table.  Aspects are the central mechanic of Fate and one of my favorites so I wanted to give a couple of examples of them in play.  This is a bonus post and on Monday I will finish what I started in Unraveling Fate.


At their core Aspect descriptors which give what they are attached to story significance.  They can be applied to anything in the game from objects to environments, or even to the story itself.  The most common type of aspect you will interact with in the game though is Character Aspects so that is what we're going to focus on.

Character Aspects can be used to describe just about anything  the player wants to be important to the story.  A well written aspect will be both an advantage or a disadvantage dependent on the situation and will give anyone who reads them a sense of the character.  The number of aspects your character will have will very from game to game, as will the importance of those aspects, but the core mechanic remains the same.

There are two broad ways aspects come into play, Invoking and Compelling.  Invoking is when a player or the GM uses an aspect to modify an action they or someone else is taking.  In Fate this is represented with a +2 to the roll or effect, if your porting it to another game that will change but it always should be a significant bonus.  Compelling is using an aspect to limit a character or NPC's options or abilities.  Invoking costs a Fate Chip for the player doing so and in the case of a compel the player or GM who suggests the compel pays a Fate Chip and the character effected by it receives that Chip.

Let's look at a scene between three characters to see how aspects work in play;

James is player 1's character, a star ship captain with; Encouageable Lady's Man, Always Ready for a Fight and Loyal to a Fault.

Pavel is player 2's character, Kirk's subordinate who as the aspects; Talented but Inexperienced, Charmingly Meek, and Funny Accent.

Kado is an NPC who runs the bar the characters are currently patronizing.  Since he's just an NPC the game master only gave him one aspect No Fan of Trouble.

In this scene James and Pavel want to learn from Kado where some stolen goods that passed through the bar ended up.

GM: You enter the bar and you can see it's not a place that takes well to military types.  Loud and dark this is the sort of place that shady deals can happy right out in the open.

Player 1: James looks around the bar for someone in charge.

GM: Well, all you look around the room you see a number of women dancing and sweet talking patrons.  As an Inveterate Lady's Man you think that getting close to one of them is a pretty good idea.  Pavel needs more experience anyway right?

(The GM offers a Fate Chip to the player.  Here James' player has the option of accepting the Fate Chip, there by letting Pavel be the player who first approaches Kado.  James is far better equipped for interrogating the bar's owner, but to refuse the compel he must give the GM one of his own chips.)

Player 1: Yeah, Pavel should learn to take the lead more often, and that green dancer looks particularly appealing.  James tells Pavel to ask that the bar while he goes to interrogate her.

Player 2: Great.  Pavel goes to the bar and asks to speak with the owner.

GM: A very tall man from Bathar 6 by the looks of him eyes you suspiciously.  He introduces himself as Kado and asks what you want.

Player 2: Pavel says "We are looking for a case of Veridian igniters that were seen here in the past couple of days."

Player 1: Don't you mean Weridian?

GM: Kado chuckles at your accent and says "Don't know what you're talking about."

(Player 2 looks at their sheet and realizes that they aren't well equipped to talk this guy into giving up the info.)

Player 2: Can I invoke Charmingly Meek to give me a +2 on my roll?

GM: Kado isn't really impressed by meek people.

Player 2: He laughed at my accent though, can I invoke Funny Aspect, everyone likes to laugh.

GM: Yeah, that will work, roll your Rapport with a +2.

Player 2: So Pavel keeps pestering him "Look, we know the Weridian came through here.  This is wery important we need the Weridian to restart our wessel. "

(Player 2 rolls, but still fails.  The GM decides that Kado likes Pavel but that telling him would cause more trouble than it's worth)

GM: Kado says, "Look, I don't want no trouble in my place.  You military types bring all manner of problems with you."

Player 2: I want to see if I can discern one of his aspects.

(Player 2 rolls his Empathy skill, succeeding)

GM: Kado is No Fan of Trouble, right now you don't seem like trouble though.

Player 2: Pavel will keep pressing him, indicating back to James to emphasize that they are together.  I want to compel James' Always Ready for a Fight to get him to start an argument with another patron.

(Player 1 offers one of his Fate Chips to James)

Player 1: Not very Captainly of me, but I might need the chips later.  Sure, me and another patron get into over the green skinned woman.

Player 2: Good, can I now compel Kado's aspect, since getting me out of there will get James out too?

GM: Makes perfect sense to me.

(Player 2 hands the game one of his Fate Chips, Kado spills the beans and the story continues).

So ask you can see, Fate Chips allow characters to really make a scene about who the character's are and can give them some influence over the story that other games don't allow.  For a fuller explaination on the use of Aspects I highly recommend looking through Fate Core, it's a great game and is pay what you want on Drive Through RPG.

Asian Lettuce Wraps

One of the most important things about feeding gamers (or really any group of friends you have over for a casual get together) is ease of eating.  Making a complex meal like pasta or steaks can really wow your guests, but it also sets restrictions on the night’s activities.  While it’s often good to have everyone sit down, eat a full meal and then clear the table, sometimes you need something that is more free form.   Soups are good for this, and I’ve already shared with you several recipes down that road.  For something more interactive though, Asian lettuce wraps is a delicious and simple choice.

This recipe is adapted from Sunny Anderson's recipe with a couple of tweaks for flavor.  I also find that the trench shape of romaine hearts make this much easier to serve and eat.  This particular recipe will serve 3 to 4 for dinner or 8 for lunch.

• 3 tablespoons sesame oil
• 2 pounds ground beef
• 4 inches of ginger (when using a root the diameter of a quarter) finely grated
• 4 scallions diced fine
• 5 clobes of garlic, minced (each clove should be about the size of a finger segment)
• 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes)
•  ½ cup hoisin sauce
•  ¼ cup chopped peanuts (unsalted)
• 1 package hearts of romain

In a large skillet or pan, heat the sesame oil over medium high heat.  Add the ground beef, working it with a spatula until all of the meat is evenly browned.  If you’re not using lean beef (less than 10% fat), you’ll end up with a fair amount of fat at the bottom of the pan, that’s fine.  If you think there might be leftovers, I would recommend draining the excess grease, he extra fat will make them greasy and unpleasant.  If you’re planning on serving it all, though, the fat will disappear into the sauce so don’t worry about draining the grease.

Once the meat is browned add the remaining ingredients, stirring constantly.  Keep everything moving in the pan over medium high heat until it is incorporated.  Once it seems fully mixed give it a taste and add salt or pepper, as needed.  Remove it from the heat.  Mix the beef mixture with the peanuts in a bowl and serve with the lettuce.  The handy shape of the hearts of romaine makes it easy to grab as much or as little as you like.

My wife and I love these wraps.  We make them once every couple of months as an easy weekend meal because it has the advantage of producing a small amount of dirty dishes.  I haven’t yet served this to my game group but I’ll be bringing it out for our next Shadowrun game.  I’ll report back on the results.

Later this week I’ll be posting a more in-depth look at the Aspect system.  Next week I’ll finish with the Fate mechanics and how to use them in other games.  It looks like the recipes I’ve already served at my games have all been meat-base. I’m going to have to start stretching my vegetarian cooking muscles a bit more so expect something along those lines for the next recipe I share.  Until then, have a great week.