Ghoul Diet and Food Spells

[bmattos]

Hi everyone, I’m new here.

Well, I was thinking of playing with a ghoul character and them I remember that I always wanted to play a char based on Hannibal, not the same, but some cold-hearted cannibal that no one knows the truth about.

In a normal fantasy game, while the group, I don’t know… hunt some deer meat in the woods. It’s hard to my char come up with human flesh and keep secret of his secret diet.

Using the Hannibal from series, I have the idea to make a character who make some good dishes from… human flesh, that nobody knows its human meat.

My idea: Food spells

Soo my questions:
1-The Restricted Diet (Human Flesh) restriction, implies that I can only eat human flesh, or I can use spices and seasons?

2- Kind of easy that but just to be sure… Create Food “Produces edible food” can create human flesh? Can I specify what is the food I want?

3 – without the people seeing me killing and taking…let’s say a human leg and cooking and giving it to them eat, how can they know that I cook a human flesh meal? Since I create the meat with magic… the taste gives it away?

4 – If there is some way to discover, by sense of taste that my meal is a human flesh, the spell “Fool’s Banquet” will do the job right? Since it says the food will be delicious no matter what.

Thank You for your time.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by bmattos

Soo my questions:
1-The Restricted Diet (Human Flesh) restriction, implies that I can only eat human flesh, or I can use spices and seasons?

I would say yes. Your calories need to come from human flesh.

Originally Posted by bmattos

2- Kind of easy that but just to be sure… Create Food “Produces edible food” can create human flesh? Can I specify what is the food I want?

It's unorthodox, but sure. It's magic.

Originally Posted by bmattos

3 – without the people seeing me killing and taking…let’s say a human leg and cooking and giving it to them eat, how can they know that I cook a human flesh meal? Since I create the meat with magic… the taste gives it away?

God help me, I just googled "how does human flesh taste". Seems that it tastes like pork but has the texture of beef. I would say that someone who has eaten human flesh before can recognize the taste, but otherwise you can say "it's a type of meat from my home far away."

Originally Posted by bmattos

4 – If there is some way to discover, by sense of taste that my meal is a human flesh, the spell “Fool’s Banquet” will do the job right? Since it says the food will be delicious no matter what.

Not sure about this. It might just taste like deliciously cooked and seasoned human flesh.

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by bmattos

Hi everyone, I’m new here.

Congratulations for choosing GURPS!

Originally Posted by bmattos

1-The Restricted Diet (Human Flesh) restriction, implies that I can only eat human flesh, or I can use spices and seasons?

IMHO, Restricted Diet (Unadulterated Human Flesh) (or Raw Human Flesh, or both) is a more severe Disadvantage than just (Human Flesh), so unless you have the former specifically, I'd say spices and seasonings are A-OK. They don't provide nutrition of course, but they don't for normal people, either, they just make your human flesh more palatable and possibly discreet. If you want to get fancy, you could stick the Can Substitute Limitation on there, letting you eat human flesh that is cooked, spiced, etc with the tradeoff that it might make you sick.

[Proteus]

Some Polynesian groups, apparently, refer to human flesh as "long pig", which further supports the idea that we taste like pork.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by bmattos

My idea: Food spells

The thing about Food Spells is that if you learned this many I would start to wonder why you didn't go one step farther and learn Essential Food. That would be perfect nutrition (and very tasty) for everybody at the same time.

[AlexanderHowl]

Ghouls should also have Odious Personal Habit (Anthropophage) [-15] and Social Stigma (Monster) [-15] and, depending on the version, some ghouls will also have Appearance (Horrific) [-24], Bad Smell [-10], and Disturbing Voice [-10]. In any case, the vast majority of humans either will run screaming from ghouls and attack without mercy.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by bmattos

I always wanted to play a char based on Hannibal,
not the same,
but some cold-hearted cannibal that no one knows the truth about.

In fairness to Lecter: that probably describes him the vast majority of his life. He was born in 1933 and wasn't arrested until 1975, so that's 42 years of operating under the radar.

[RedMattis]

I wouldn't let you get full value from restricted diet if you can conjure it up yourself, but aside from that it makes sense.

Food's Banquet would deal with the taste if that becomes an issue, though it would probably be safer use spices an obfuscating cooking techniques when possible instead of magic, if magic is common in the setting: another magician might recognize that magic is being used and decide to investigate, which might end badly.

@Alexander
OPH and Social Stigma would only apply if people would quickly identify the characters, er-, dinning habits. Otherwise it would be the Secret disadvantage. I think we can assume that the OP is going for one of the more subtle types of ghouls since he intended to have the character hide it.

[AlexanderHowl]

Yes, a -30 CP Secret would be appropriate.

[DangerousThing]

Unless the entire party is evil, I think that this character would only divide the party. Think about this: if the character had no other food source, and couldn't manufacture human flesh, he would eat on of the other PC's.

As GM, I don't allow such characters.