EDIT: When I first POSTED THIS BLOG, I MADE AN ASSUMPTION BASED ON THE RULES AS WRITTEN. I WAS WRONG. tHIS POST HAS BEEN CORRECTED.
PER Kyle, CULINARY is +20 MIN PER CRAFTING LEVEL. the blueprint overrules the rulebook in this case. I’m sorry for any confusion - Jonathan
It’s time for our first Summer Break Edition of the Rules Ramble with Jonathan! Each month, I’ll introduce a topic in the DR Rulebook in a deep dive that focuses on explaining it in more detail than the book alone can provide. Today’s blog post will touch on a bit of things concerning ONE particular skill: CULINARY, aka crafting BREWS and MEALS. This can be a particularly confusing skill, and I’ll try to clear up some of that confusion for you today.
I’m going to spend a bit explaining some context of major rules changes that happened last year, so that you can understand what I believe is the heart of the confusion for most folks. After this, I’ll continue my normal rules deep dive, but I think the history is important to the story here..
APPLICATIONS FOR DR:TX STAFF CLOSE TODAY, 6/15! GO DO THE THING AND APPLY TO JOIN OUR TEAM!
Photo credits in this post are from Harlow Ulmer, Lainey Weiss, Sydney Betzina, and Earlena Soukup.
Culinary and the “Great Correction”
First, let’s talk about the Elephant in the Room for some of our older players. If you are a newer player, you can skip this section and go down to the CULINARY 101 part below.
You aren’t imagining things, Culinary really did work that way you thought it did.
For awhile, at least.
When 3.0 first started, CULINARY worked very similarly to how ARTISAN functions, in live play. Each level was ADDITIVE, and you could even increase the level of an existing Brew. We ran FIVE games of our 1st season in 3.0 using the rules in this way, before the pandemic stopped live games in Texas.
We even had rules in the Post Office for how you had to turn in the old cards to upgrade to a new level, and our Logistics Guides can tell you horror stories of writing dozens of new Brew cards when someone would upgrade a stack of Intoxication Brews.
(Sorry, I really needed that Hooch for my flamethrower…)
Funny thing is, that’s NOT how it was written in the book.
The CULINARY skill in the rulebook hasn’t changed much since the very first digital edition after the Kickstarter that began 3.0. (I may be the weirdo that saved every PDF update posted to DriveThruRPG in a separate file to track stealth changes between the various updates and editions…)
That’s right.
The book did NOT change at all on this skill. The only thing that changed was that the text gained a slightly darker color to make the contrast stand out more for printing. Check it out:
From an edition prior to the Blueprint Change, and the Current Edition that is in print now.
Unlike the Artisan skill, each instance of Culinary in the book never mentions anything at all about upgrading brews, or costing more Mind points per level. Compare this to the section on Proficient Artisan, on page 119:
Artisan clearly mentions the rules for upgrading an item within the DR Corebook. It details how to take an item from Basic to Proficient, and even includes rules for making an item from scratch by combining levels. But nothing like this is in the Culinary skill, and actually never has been.
The book never changed the rules for how Culinary worked.
BLUEPRINTS did.
When the Blueprint Catalog first came out at the start of 3.0 along with the first round of prints, Culinary prints were printed in the same way as Artisan prints. Each level was ADDITIVE, there were clearly plus signs by the mind costs, and most folks interpreted the skill this way. After all, the Culinary prints looked identical to the Artisan prints, so why would they not work the same way?
However, last year we released a big update to the Blueprints, on September 23, 2021.
This update was the one that changed base damage values of weapons, updated a bunch of Artisan prints, and effectively CHANGED how Culinary blueprints functioned to match what was listed in the book. You can see an example below:
The blueprints changed during the Blueprint Update at the restart of live play, in a release on 9/23/21.
You could probably blame a few things for this misunderstanding. I’ve got some theories, but that really isn’t relevant for this blog post. But it’s clear that at some point, someone assumed that Culinary items would work the same as Artisan items and never really checked the book.
Regardless, the actual physical blueprints of the first season of 3.0 worked differently than how the new blueprints work now, and I think this is the heart of most confusion regarding CULINARY.
In a sense we have a bunch of different culture clashes happening, and people remembering different things about how Culinary works:
players from 2.0 remembering how Prepare Meal and Brewing worked
a bunch of players that played our first season of 3.0 with ADDITIVE Culinary prints
new players that came in after the Great Blueprint Change of September 2021
Anyone that has attempted to decipher the newly changed Culinary blueprints
So, understanding that it’s easy to be confused when it comes to this skill, let’s get into the part you are actually here for: how the rules work.
Culinary 101
(for real this time)
Let’s start out with the obvious: CULINARY is one of two CRAFTING SKILLS in Dystopia Rising, alongside ARTISAN. Crafting skills use BLUEPRINTS to create new items in game, and are one of the primary economic skills in the game. Blueprints allow you to use your hard earned Scrap and Herb to make CRAFTED EQUIPMENT, such as weapons, armors, brews, gizmos, and more.
Without Blueprints, Crafting skills don’t have much use. We might have the occasional Zone of Mechanics or plot effect that needs these skills, but the primary way you use the Skill is with Blueprints.
So, if you pick one of these skills you’ll want to find access to the most addictive side of the Econ game in DR… the humble blue sheet of paper known as a Blueprint.
The Basics of the Culinary skill
Culinary allows you to make items in the game from Culinary Blueprints, sometimes called RECIPES (in two places in the book, at least). Culinary Blueprints can create items like BREWS and MEALS, and these are very useful one-use items that can restore Mind points, restore Body, create interesting Roleplay effects, or even let you see into the Mortis Amaranthine.
The rules for Culinary are in a few different places in the book. Let’s start with the Basic rules of the Skill itself, from page 117 of the DR Corebook.
Basic Culinary: With this skill, an individual may craft items from blueprints that require the [Basic Culinary] skill. By spending [5 Mind points] and 20 minutes of Active Role-Play and Full Engagement in a culinary area, an individual may follow the prerequisites on the blueprint and craft the item on it. They can then turn in materials to the Public Works to receive a card for that item.
I’ve included the text from the book above, and the areas in the brackets are the only changes between each instance of the skill in the book. The skill itself doesn’t really tell you a lot about what it does, and the only real difference between the levels is the Mind cost, and the level (Basic, Proficient, Master) of the items you can make:
Basic Culinary (p. 117)
5 mind, can make Basic Culinary Items
Proficient Culinary (p. 120)
10 mind, can make Proficient Culinary Items
Master Culinary (p. 122)
15 mind, can make Master Culinary Items
Most of the magic of how you use the Culinary skill is on the Blueprint itself. But, before we discuss Blueprints, let’s look at some of the related rules mentioned in the Skill.
The Culinary skill mentions a few KEYWORDS, so let’s define those now:
Active Role-Play (p. 102) - When you use this skill you must roleplay doing an activity and it should be visible what you are doing. A lot of folks will use some collection of bottles, liquids, or even prop stills and chemistry sets during their roleplay. You can even do real life cooking if you like, and some characters with the Skill will use that same time to make lunch or dinner for themselves or their friends. Whatever the activity, it should be obvious to anyone nearby that you are using the CULINARY skill.
Full Engagement (p. 103) - This skill requires both hands to use, so you can’t prepare a meal or brew an Uncle Todd’s while you are wielding a weapon for instance. In addition, if you are INTERRUPTED (p. 104) while using the Skill, you lose ALL the Mind and ALL the resources you were using to make that item. Several things can INTERRUPT the use of the Culinary skill, including:
Using another Skill
This even includes defensive Skills like Avoid or Mental Endurance
Leaving the Culinary Area
Engaging in Combat
Since you are technically using a Weapon Skill when you swing a boffer…
Dropping into Bleed Out (p. 103)
In general, if you are going to be crafting an item, make sure you have some friends to guard you, especially if you are in the Wasteland! It’s expensive if you get interrupted!
Culinary Area (p. 174) - Culinary items can only be made at a specific place on the site known as a CRAFTING ZONE. In Bravado, we have two main CULINARY CRAFTING ZONES — one in the Wasteland area of the Dive (Hopi Pavilion), and a safer one in the Terminal Station Depot (the Cafeteria). There can be additional Crafting Zones set up by spending CAPS, but that’s a discussion for another day.
Public Works (p. 105) - Also known in Bravado as the Post Office. Once you have completed the requisite amount of time roleplaying with a Blueprint in a Crafting Zone, you can go to the Post Office to collect the item card for the skill. In Bravado, the Post Office is located at the General Store (Kiva).
The Culinary Crafting Zone in the DIVE (Hopi Pavilion)
So, the basic cycle of Culinary crafting involves:
A player takes a CULINARY BLUEPRINT to a CULINARY CRAFTING ZONE.
They spend Mind points, and spend 20 minutes per level of the Item (20-60 minutes) of time ACTIVE ROLE PLAYING the process of making a meal or brew.
They complete the task without being interrupted, as a FULL ENGAGEMENT activity.
They take the combined of each level RESOURCES like Herb and Produce required on the BLUEPRINT to the POST OFFICE to get a new card.
There’s a bit of travel time involved in the crafting process as you have to physically walk between the Post Office and the Crafting Zone, but if you are a Crafter in Dystopia Rising you’ll become VERY familiar with this routine. It is possible to craft more than one thing at a time, but I’ll cover that in my next blog post.
Next, let’s consider the Culinary Blueprint, so you can understand a bit more about the Skill itself.
culinary blueprints: a Visual example
I’m going to do my best to explain a CORE CONCEPT when it comes to Culinary and use a time honored tool to do so: Paint 3D. This is one of the biggest points of confusion for Culinary, and I’ve found using visual aids helps best illustrate my point.
Let’s look at a common blueprint example - UNCLE TODD’S HEALING BREW. This is a popular healing brew because it can be used by anyone, no matter your Lineage. It’s cheap enough to make, and it can save your friend who is dying when a doctor isn’t close by.
So this Blueprint has a number of similarities with other Artisan Blueprints. It tells you which Skill is needed to make the item, where you can make it, if the item has any special requirement like a physical bottle to represent the brew, tells you how long it lasts with an Expiration Date, and includes the important Keywords. It even tells you how to make a COPY of this blueprint at the bottom of the page.
Here’s the key difference:
Unlike Artisan Blueprints, which make items like weapons and gizmos that can be improved and upgraded after they’ve been created, Culinary Blueprints are actually THREE separate uses of the Skill on ONE page.
Imagine the Culinary Blueprint split into three different “mini-blueprints”:
You create EACH LEVEL of a Culinary Blueprint as a separate item.
You cannot currently upgrade a Brew or Meal that has already been created. Instead, you have to make it at the correct level when you START using the skill. So, if you want a Proficient Brew from the Blueprint, you have to make it as a Proficient Brew when you begin.
In this blueprint, when I sit down to craft a Brew I can choose one of THREE options:
With Basic Culinary, I can make a single Uncle Todd’s Serum (Basic).
With Proficient Culinary, I can instead make a single Uncle Todd’s Elixir (Proficient).
With Master Culinary, I can instead make a single Uncle Todd’s Tincture (Master).
The next challenge and confusion on this comes from the MATERIAL COST and TIME. This part is a little confusing because ONLY TWO parts of the Culinary Blueprint use ADDITION. Like above, I’ll try to explain this concept visually, as it’s important to understand:
Time and Resources STACK at each level
When each item is crafted as a separate “mini-blueprint”, the cost of herbs and scrap in the RESOURCES section AND the TIME in the are ADDED together for each higher level of the item you are making.
In this Uncle Todd’s blueprint example, when I sit down to craft a Brew I can choose one of THREE options, and I’ll have to pay the following COSTS to make the item:
With Basic Culinary, I can make a single Uncle Todd’s Serum (Basic).
Spend 5 mind, 20 minutes
Spend 2 Basic Herb
With Proficient Culinary, I can instead make a single Uncle Todd’s Elixir (Proficient).
Spend 10 mind, 40 minutes
Spend 2 Basic Herb, 2 Uncommon Herb
With Master Culinary, I can instead make a single Uncle Todd’s Tincture (Master).
Spend 15 mind, 60 minutes
Spend 4 Basic Herb, 3 Uncommon Herb, 2 Rare Herb.
Culinary items can be VERY efficient to make.
Unlike Artisan blueprints, each time you craft a Brew or Meal you are spending the same amount of Mind points to make an item, regardless of the level of the item you are making. The Mind cost stays the same — it’s based ONLY on the level of item you are making (5/10/15). That means a Master-tier Brew only costs 15 mind to make, while a Master-tier Artisan item costs 30 mind to create (5+10+15)!
In a perfect world, all of this would be much more obvious on the blueprint itself, but there are LOT of Culinary Blueprints to edit. Editing the blueprints in this way would be a phenomenal amount of effort, and unfortunately I’m not that skilled at Illustrator. Regardless, this skill continues to mystify and confuse people, and I believe it’s largely because the Blueprints can be challenging to read.
So, let’s next talk about the types of Blueprints and types of Culinary items.
types of Culinary Blueprints
Culinary Blueprints (p. 172) can make several different types of items. In fact, Culinary prints represent a large portion of all the available prints in the game, as there are so many different options to make.
Each type of Culinary Blueprint that makes a Brew or Meal generally has TWO types of prints you can find in game:
A Generic version, that any character can use.
A Lineage-specific version, that only a character of that particular Lineage can use.
That means most categories of Culinary items have NINE different blueprints! One generic Blueprint, and EIGHT Blueprints for each Lineage in the game. Each blueprint is still the same basic type of item, it just determines which character benefits most from using them.
Generally, Lineage-specific items will be a bit more expensive to make, but the item will have a much greater effect in game. It might heal more, restore more Mind, create more servings, or even last longer. Restorative Lineage items are also the most efficient to craft when it comes to resources, as they can even restore MORE Mind than you would spend making it!
Every Culinary Item is a SINGLE USE item. This means that once you’ve used the last serving, you can rip up the card and throw it away. Once it’s used, it’s gone!
There are also several Keywords that refer to how you use or consume an item. You can find a complete list of the Keywords starting on p. 175, and you can find additional item keywords on the DR Lexicon page.
There are several types of Culinary Blueprints you can find in game:
Culinary Crafting components
These blueprints make items used in other Blueprints. By themselves, they have no real mechanical effect but they are often used as a MATERIAL COST in other Artisan blueprints or Procedures.
Culinary Procedures
These are blueprints that can be used with the Culinary Skill or other Skills to modify other items or create unique effects. They can let you extend the duration of a Meal card, add additional effects to a Meal, enhance someone’s use of the Hunting Skill, or even pull Crystal Candy from the brain of an unfortunate psion!
Non Mechanical Brews & Meals
These are items that have no mechanical effect like healing or mind restoration, but still count as a Brew or Meal for certain plot effects. You can also use these items to sell in-game food or drinks to other players.
Brews
Health Brews - These brews will restore Body when consumed. Who needs a doctor when you got a liquid pick-me-up?
Mind Brews - These brews restore Mind points when consumed. Great for a long fight, or restoring enough Mind to use a few more Skills..
Hallucinogen Brews - These are primarily a ROLE PLAY brew, providing a mechanical Hallucinating effect. While higher levels can have other effects, the primary reason for these brews is to allow you to role play using a hallucinogenic drug.
Intoxication Brews - These are popular ROLE PLAY brews, giving you a mechanical Intoxicated effect. These are also used in most Artisan prints that need HOOCH or fuel of some kind, like vehicles, Doctor’s Bags or FLAMETHROWERS.
Injected Brews - These are expensive, but incredibly useful Brews that can even be used while in Bleed Out. Literally a LIFE SAVER.
Death Brews - These are unique brews that allow you to observe someone else’s Grave Mind scene, similar to the Skill Necrokinetics. However, unlike the skill, higher craft level brews can even let you interact with the scene (with the consent of the deceased). There are no Generic Death Brews — you gotta use a Lineage-specific one.
Poison Brews - There are two types of Poisons - Applied and Ingested. Ingested poisons have to be consumed by your victim, so you better have them Subdued or trick them. Applied poisons are normally coated on a weapon to deliver a powerful effect on your next swing.
Meals
Health Meals - Meals that restore Body. There’s really not a lot to these. Simple, efficient healing in a pinch when you can’t find a doctor.
Mind Meals - Meals that restore Mind. This is probably one of the most efficient ways to regain Mind points in between the 12s.
That’s a LOT of blueprints to collect. That’s NINETY-EIGHT different Culinary Blueprints to find or trade with other characters. Gotta catch ‘em all!
Types of Culinary Item Cards
There are THREE main types of item cards that can be produced with a Culinary Blueprint: BREWS, MEALS, and INJECTIONS (p. 169). Culinary Crafting Component Blueprints are the one exception, as they make Single-Use Gizmos instead.
Brews
Brews are one of the most common types of Culinary Blueprints. They generally last 6 months, and have many different types of effects. Brews cannot be used when you are in Bleed Out unless someone else gives you the Brew. This means they are excellent for saving another character, but you’ll need help to survive that Raider attack if all you have is a Brew on you.
IMPORTANT NOTE: There are currently NO Brew items in play that require less than ONE MINUTE to use. The book mentions a minimum of 10 seconds to use a Brew, but there is no Blueprint in the game at the moment that activates that fast. Sorry!
Meals
Meals are very powerful items that provide some of the MOST efficient healing or Mind restoration in the game. Each time you make a Meal, you generally produce THREE different servings. For the single cost of Mind, Herb, and Produce, you can help out three of your friends (or save all three Meals for yourself). However, they come with a BIG drawback — each Meal only lasts until the END OF THE EVENT. There are some items and Procedures that can extend this expiration time, add effects, or create more servings, but I’ll cover that in my next blog post.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Meals USED to last longer than a single event before September 2021. It’s possible you might see a few of the “legacy” items that last longer in play but most of those will be expired by time we see our next live event in DR:TX.
Injections
Injections are essential and popular items, but often are very costly to make. These are a technically a type of Brew, but they always get written on a unique Injection card instead of a Brew/Meal card. Injections are healing brews that can be used EVEN WHEN IN BLEED OUT. That’s right, you can use the item to save yourself, even if you are stuck far from your friends or caught alone on the lake path by Hunters. However, Injections always cost RESOLVE to use, so they can cause Fractures or become unusable if you try to take one when you are already exhausted.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Since you cannot use Items that cost Resolve after you’ve expended your last point of Resolve, that means you can no longer gain a benefit from an Injection! Make sure to save that last point of Resolve to use your Injection!
The most important Non-Mechanical Brew is COFFEE!
wrap up
So that covers most of the basic interactions of the Culinary Skill you might see in game. I hope you’ve enjoyed this deep dive into a very confusing Skill. As you can see, it’s a unique Skill that has a bit of a complicated history. I hope my silly visual aids helped you better understand the important concepts, so let me know what you thought in the comments on Facebook or in our Discord.
I’ll have another installment on Culinary soon, as this post was getting a little too long. In my next post, I’ll talk about common Culinary items you should look out for, and some additional items and mechanics that change how Culinary works in game, and some best practices for using this Skill in the game. See you next time Vados!