GM: Karen Twelves
Players: Dale Horstman, Sean Nittner, and Matthew Klein
System: Dogs in the Vineyard (rethemed to Kitchen Nightmares)
Oh wow, what an incredible game. Since Karen has already hacked Apocalypse World to Olive Garden, it only seemed fitting that 10 years later, she’d hack another of Vincent’s games to be about Olive Garden too, especially since we’re already doing Kitchen Nightmares with Dogs in the Vineyard.
The complication, was that a Olive Garden, or any chain restaurant, would be a place the DOGs would go, so Karen had the brilliant idea to have a store lose the franchise license. Originally the owner Hank Cosca planned to turn it into something completely new, but when the existing customers kept coming back for chicken ziti and breadsticks, he figured it was easier just to slap an apostrophe-s at the end of the name, cover up the old slogans and call it “Olive’s Garden”.
The DOGs entered because the place had two problems. The first was that the Olive Garden parent company Dardin had overlooked the near trademark infringement for a while now but pretty soon they were going to take notice and shut it down. Also, the head chef Frida Hoffman, who had been hired when Hank originally thought they would really change things up…well, wanted to change things up, and keep changing, and changing, and changing them. This was a formerly fast casual diner in New Jersey and she wanted to turn it into a Shaft (our fictional high end New York molecular gastronomy haute cuisine).
Love Letters
Karen made these great love letters that pulled us all in, and we decided that Reuben had reached out to Hank (and got credit as associate producer for the show) to try and save the restaurant, but we quickly determined that we had different ideas about what that meant!
The Drive There
We each shared what we knew about the restaurant and the staff.
Hank Cosca has been running a perfectly functional casual dining Italian-American chain restaurant. It wasn’t anything special, but it had steady customers and reliable profits. When you’re here, you’re family.
The Dardin Group (owners) pulled the franchise license and at first Hank had grand plans to change the restaurant into something new, something his own, something exceptional. He hired Frida Hoffman, an avant-garde chef with incredible passion but little discipline. Together they were going to rebuild “Olive’s Garden” into something amazing.
11 months later Frida still hasn’t figured out what she’s trying to do in the Kitchen and they fight constantly as Hank as realized that they customers just want to Chicken and Shrimp Carbonara. He’s convinced he can keep costing on the old menu but the Dardin group isn’t going to let this near trademark infringement slide much longer. If Frida get her way, the place will drive away all the customers who can’t keep up with her experimental menus. If Hank get’s his way, the Dardin group is going to sue him into the ground. Either way the restaurant is doomed. That why they called in the DOGS!.
The fun (and very predictable divide) between us lied in the Joel and Rueben being at odds. Rueben knew Hank to be a sound businessman and believed he just had to make a choice to let Frida have her way or fire her. As we learned more about the restaurant, firing her seemed more and more appealing. Joel on the other hand was Team-Frida. He saw some of himself in her and didn’t want her to fail.
Highlights
This game was such a delight. Not only the iconic staff members, but also the tensions between Mara, Joel, and Rueben, This was a delightfully mundane stage for them to play out all their personal (and interpersonal) issues.
Some of the best highlights:
- The cook off with Frida, Joel, and Ruben. We were all challenged to do our take on an Italian classic dish. Most importantly this had to be a dish that the existing customers would not try, but keep coming back for. Frida brought her aged, rare, and expensive ingredients. Joel brought produce from local farmers markets, and Ruben’s sauces brought out delicious flavors that reminded you of home. I designed Joel to be at his best in the Kitchen (I can cook like the Devil 3d10) so this was a delightful challenge where I got to use almost all of my traits.
- The follow up contest where Joel almost got fired (HR meeting).
- Ruben and Joel going head to head about whether we should work with Frida or fire her and bring in Mara’s friend Chef Mario Granucci to run the kitchen.
- Hank being a total weasel (Marketing whiz 1d10, Butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth 2d6, and I do what it takes 1d8) and resisting our efforts to do anything but the bare minimum for fear of losing the few customers he had, namely…
- Miranda, a regular who likes the bartender Gabe, remembers how it use to be, and just wants her Chicken Carbonara the way it’s always been. Miranda was a hoot.
- Gabe, the bartender who “knows what you need”. Gabe was a delightful thembo who everyone loved and also wanted to have more artistic expression in their mixology.
- Ruben continued his existential journey of self doubt and discovery.
Olivante Garden
In the end, we won Hank over to letting Frida design the menu and got Frida to pick a few specials based on the classics that would make the restaurant stand out but still make it feel comfortable to the regulars. I can’t quite remember what we settled on for the name, but that changed too!
Gabe got to have a “dealers choice” drink in the menu so they could keep making drinks based on vibe and we spiced up some of the common items so they could add flair there as well (“Just west of Manhattan”, etc)
Final Thoughts
Karen did it again. Another of the Bakers games ported to the Olive Garden, and done so well. This game was a delight and we all had a blast trying to save the restaurant.
We did a lot of tinkering with the mechanics to adjust for playing as a restaurant consultants reality TV show instead of Mormon child paladins. And for the most part we’ve been very happy with the rules conversions (we fleshed out ceremonies this game, I’ll get them posted on the next write up). However there is one part (Fallout results 12+) that isn’t sitting right with me.
If you’re just talking, the highest result you can get from fallout is an 8, which leads to long term fallout (which is just character growth). All good.
Once we get to physical actions (d6 fallout) we can get a 12, which in the game is called an “injury”. Mechanically this gives 2 long term fallouts (fine) and has a good chance of leading to the fallout being bumped to 16 (deadly injury) which in our game triggers an HR scene (getting fired from the show is our equivalent of death).
To me, HR scenes don’t seem like an appropriate response to a physical contest, since in our games that usually means a cooking challenge or something similar the show encourages.
I’ve got two ideas about what we could do:
- 12 on fallout does give two long-term fallouts, but it’s not an injury and doesn’t escalate. That way, the only way to get “injured” would be to have a fight (d8 fallout dice) or to call on authorities (d10 fallout dice). This would make Healing/HR scenes much more rare.
- 12 on fallout dice leads to an emotional/relationship/personal crisis or injury. This still calls for a healing scene but the stakes aren’t “you’re fired”. The stakes could be something like losing a trait, losing dice in Heart, Will, etc. Narratively the follow up conflicts would reflect self doubt, relationship challenges, etc. HR scenes would still be rare, but 12+ fallout would still lead to some kind of follow up.
It will take more design work, but I think that the second option would be fun (and stay true to the game design).
Reports like this are why I was so happy to learn you were blogging at GPNW! Incredible.