RAW Cooking: The Proficient and The Master

Proficiency and expertise identified in the crucible

I’ve been watching a lot of Chopped recently. When I say “a lot of Chopped,” you may not comprehend just how much Chopped I’ve watched over the past two months. I’ve watched three years worth of episodes of Chopped in two months. Just a few short years ago, I would have wept openly if you told me that’s how I was spending my time, but it is the perfect show to have on in the background while I work on Guts N’ Glory. It also fuels my curiosity about cooking and how certain ingredients can be used. One of the biggest things I’ve noticed watching the show is that there are often massive skill gaps between competitors. Some people know why they’re there, understand the rules of the competition and compete accordingly. Some people moan about the ingredients in the basket, make excuses, and don’t play the game right. One set of competitors does well and the other set often fails to reach the final round. What’s the difference between these people? It’s the difference between proficiency and expertise. That’s what we’ll be talking about today. What does it really mean to be an expert and what does that teach us about RPGs?

Everyone who enters the Chopped kitchen has been cooking for a long time. A majority of the competitors are executive chefs, sous chefs, caterers or private chefs. Not all of them have extensive culinary training though. Some went to culinary school, studied in Europe, worked with high-powered chefs in New York and now operate kitchens in Manhattan. Others started out washing dishes to avoid being homeless and worked their way up the ladder the hard way. None of that background seems to matter when determining who is a proficient cook and who is an expert. Instead, it has more to do with who demonstrates an ability to understand what the circumstances are. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the format, Chopped is a show where four competitors are given baskets of ingredients and 20-30 minutes of time to prepare three courses for a panel of judges. The basket ingredients are often things that are difficult to prepare or that are not commonly found as ingredients in that particular course. Some of these ingredients are low-quality such as hard candy, boxed macaroni and cheese, or canned soup. Inevitably, someone complains about having to use these ingredients. It’s always funny to see these chefs insist that they’re above these low-quality ingredients all while some other chef is blowing them out of the water.

The chefs who complain are often very accomplished. They have positions at high-profile restaurants and their opening interviews are often filled with bravado. These chefs are not masters though. They’re highly skilled and certainly proficient at their craft, but a master wouldn’t complain about the challenge before them. Very few masters of the culinary arts find their way onto Chopped but you can always tell when they’re present. The judges, themselves masters, recognize one of their own and seem to delight in the work of someone truly blessed with mastery of cooking. These masters come from all walks of life and backgrounds, but they are unified by their understanding of the circumstances. To put it simply, they know the challenge and face it head on. It doesn’t matter to them that they’ve never made a dish that combines ahi tuna, Reese’s Cups and kimchi. Their goal is to figure it out. To do this, they need to rely on the skills of their chosen profession, use a little creativity and manage their time well. It’s simple, but not at all easy. That’s what makes the show entertaining as it places highly-skilled individuals in positions where the limit of their skills is tested.

How do we tie this back into roleplaying though? Well, those of you who have read more than one of my articles know how important understanding the rules is to me. You need to understand the game you’re playing. While RTFM is a very important point, what I’m getting at here is that the true masters have two things that the merely proficient do not have. The first is a command of the fundamentals. Master chefs know the basics of cooking so well that they are second nature. This comes in handy when it comes to clock management, but it also allows them to make adjustments to dishes on the fly. The second thing that all masters have is an understanding of meal composition. They know how certain ingredients are transformed by certain cooking methods. They know enough about the science of food, even if not in precise scientific terms, that they can make necessary substitutions to incorporate the basket ingredients. This is exactly what game masters and designers should strive for too. Whether you’re running a game or designing one, you should strive to understand the fundamentals of gaming and the inner workings of your game enough that, when you find yourself in those weird edge cases that so many rules arguments spring from, you can make a snap decision that doesn’t break your game. You can turn certain elements of the standard RPG adventure or dungeon on their heads while still presenting a coherent product that resembles something familiar while being different enough to be distinct. Remember that the dishes being made on Chopped still have to be judged for their quality. Likewise with any session or adventure. It’s not enough just to make a dungeon built around Flail Snails, you have to make a fun dungeon built around Flail Snails. Likewise, if you give the players free reign to make decisions and impact the campaign world, you may find yourself in a situation where you’re asked to make a dessert that includes gochujang, Oreo cookies and durian fruit. You might have a task ahead of you, but it’s the competition you signed up for.

As with all things worth doing, this is a process. It doesn’t happen overnight. You have to work at it. The first step though is not to throw up your hands whenever your basket ingredients aren’t filet mignon, Dom Perignon and Beluga caviar. Sometimes you’ll get bologna, cacao nibs, strawberry Pop-Tarts and pineapple. In an open campaign, that’s what you get sometimes. It takes a long time and a lot of failure to pull something like that off. When you win RPG Chopped though, you have accomplished something substantial.