[Basic] Skill of the week: Cooking

johndallman · 12-06-2014, 03:42 AM

Cooking is the IQ/A Everyman skill of preparing good food from basic ingredients. Simpler food preparation - pre-packed food, or rat-on-a-stick - is done with Housekeeping or Survival. Cooking defaults to IQ-5 or Housekeeping-5, and is useful with Discriminatory Taste. Cooking equipment is in Group Basics from the Basic Set, with much more detail in High-Tech and LTC3, and machines that allow you to dispense with the skill in Ultra-Tech; equipment quality modifiers definitely apply. The Food college in Magic is rather more useful if the magician has Cooking skill. While Cooking is not a TL skill, I'd expect familiarity penalties to apply when using equipment from different TLs.

Many professional cooks have an optional specialisation, and Basic suggests baking, beverage-making and regional cuisines as plausible specialisations. Cooking in large volumes is certainly a familiarity; some GMs might feel it actually had penalties, in which case a Technique to buy them off is very plausible. Chefs in charge of large kitchens with many subordinates need Administration and Merchant (they traditionally buy materials themselves), and likely Leadership and Teaching.

Cooking appears on templates in Dragons, Fantasy, Horror, Lands Out of Time, Martial Arts, Psis, Tales of the Solar Patrol, and Zombies. PU3 and PU7 have examples that include Cooking. Finding these by searching PDFs would have been easier if fewer GURPS writers listed "cooking" in their capsule biographies.

Really good cooks can have surprisingly large social networks: there was a historical chef who cooked for and knew Napoleon, Wellington and the contemporary Tsar of Russia (thanks to Phil Masters for this point).

Cooking for adventurers seems to be mostly a question of "We have someone with Cooking and time to use it, so we get nicer meals, and feel better. We'll adjust the watch structure so that the cook can do his job." I've seen it used as an entertaining complementary skill to social skills for peace-making and match-making. What have you done with it in a game?

12-06-2014, 03:42 AM	#1
johndallman Night Watchman Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Cambridge, UK	[Basic] Skill of the week: Cooking Cooking is the IQ/A Everyman skill of preparing good food from basic ingredients. Simpler food preparation - pre-packed food, or rat-on-a-stick - is done with Housekeeping or Survival. Cooking defaults to IQ-5 or Housekeeping-5, and is useful with Discriminatory Taste. Cooking equipment is in Group Basics from the Basic Set, with much more detail in *High-Tech* and *LTC3, and machines that allow you to dispense with the skill in Ultra-Tech; equipment quality modifiers definitely apply. The Food college in Magic* is rather more useful if the magician has Cooking skill. While Cooking is not a TL skill, I'd expect familiarity penalties to apply when using equipment from different TLs. Many professional cooks have an optional specialisation, and Basic suggests baking, beverage-making and regional cuisines as plausible specialisations. Cooking in large volumes is certainly a familiarity; some GMs might feel it actually had penalties, in which case a Technique to buy them off is very plausible. Chefs in charge of large kitchens with many subordinates need Administration and Merchant (they traditionally buy materials themselves), and likely Leadership and Teaching. Cooking appears on templates in *Dragons, Fantasy, Horror, Lands Out of Time, Martial Arts, Psis, Tales of the Solar Patrol, and Zombies. PU3* and *PU7* have examples that include Cooking. Finding these by searching PDFs would have been easier if fewer GURPS writers listed "cooking" in their capsule biographies. Really good cooks can have surprisingly large social networks: there was a historical chef who cooked for and knew Napoleon, Wellington and the contemporary Tsar of Russia (thanks to Phil Masters for this point). Cooking for adventurers seems to be mostly a question of "We have someone with Cooking and time to use it, so we get nicer meals, and feel better. We'll adjust the watch structure so that the cook can do his job." I've seen it used as an entertaining complementary skill to social skills for peace-making and match-making. What have you done with it in a game?