Tired of always playing the same RPGs ? Booze & Ooze is for you !
Playing almighty heroes is easy: try playing a real loser for once....
In a world full of might and magic, RPG heroes rule supreme, cracking heads, bashing skulls and laying waste to whater they encounter on the way, all this while getting filthy rich and ever more powerful thanks to all the killing and plundering.
They have a dream job: being their own boss, abiding with laws and regulations when they see fit, plus they get to do stuff that heroes and adventurers do.
Things like having a party with friends at the local tavern after the adventure is over, said party involving binging on booze and liquors, and possibly various entertainment such as bar fight, brawls, the occasional killing of a waiter after a heated argument about the quality of food, and even setting the place on fire and robbing the owner if they are in the mood.
These guys rock. You don't. You are no hero material. You are a destitute leprechaun: no more money, no more powers. A total loser. And your future looks quite bleak.
Forget dungeon crawling, say hello to bar crawling !
You find yourself trapped behind the counter of a ruined inn, at an abandoned crossroads in the middle of a barren desert, on the edge of a backward kingdom plunged into a bloody civil war.
In addition to raids by soldiers from the various warring factions, the region is teeming with monsters and undead, and is renowned for the ferocity of its wildlife, from wolf packs to giant spiders, so many good reasons for you to do not to leave the (very relative) safety of your four walls, however rickety they may be.
Even within these four walls, your life is put in danger every night when heroes come to your home expecting free-flowing alcohol, exquisite food, and information about potential adventures in the area, all for a small fee.
Needless to say you'd better deliver up to their expectation...
So make the best of a bad situation, extort as much money as possible from your customers thanks to massive use of contraband alcohol and food of dubious composition and, since these fools love danger and take you for a travel agency, let them take the risks for you, and launch them into quests, each one more perilous than the last, not forgetting to take your commission on the loot.
A game of Booze & Ooze is organized in turns, each turn having a night period followed by a day period.
Night period
Your tavern opens for business at night, and you have to make sure things run as smoothly as possible, while maximizing your revenue. The night period is divided in rounds, each round consisting of four phases.
Door management phase:
Each individual, regular folk or hero is represented by a playing card, your deck of cards representing the whole of the potential clients of your tavern for a given night. Four cards are drawn during this phase. While you can accept or refuse entrance to regular folks and heroes alike, some heroes in need of cash might also accept to be hired for the night, occupying various positions in your staff.
Refusing entrance to a regular folk or a hero might generate negative consequences, from bad buzz to outright fight. In addition, some heroes, when being barred from entering your tavern, might not show up for multiple nights or not show up anymore at all, resulting into their card being temporarily (or permanently) removed from the deck.
Accepting the wrong kind of people, or people a given hero has a beef with might result into dire consequences, such as a brawl or the killing of a client in your premises, which is bad for business.
In some situations, you might simply have no room to accomodate new clients, and might face the cornelian choice of which client you should disappoint.
Service phase:
Each client, once inside the tavern, will stay until closing time and drink and/or eat, unless:
- You fail to take or prepare his order fast enough
- The client runs out of money
- The client passes out because being too drunk
- The client is killed during a dispute
- You decide to kick out the client.
What the client drinks and eat pretty much depends upon the quality range of the food and alcohols available, the atmosphere of the tavern, the success of efforts of your waiters and bartenders to guide them to more expensive meals and drinks, along with many other parameters.
Each client should leave your place satisfied, which will increase your reputation, hence the quantity and quality of potential customers.
Interaction phase
Any good heroic fantasy innkeeper knows that heroes do not come only for food and drinks.
In order to satisfy heroes, you also must fulfill your implicit obligation towards heroes, which means you should be available for the usual chit chat and to hear their rant while at the same time carrying your tasks of:
- providing general informaiton, gossip and news
-buying and selling various more or less useful items
- being a quest giver
All of this is facilitated by your interaction with your other clients, the regular folks, amongst which should be a suitable number of travellers and merchants.
Atmosphere management phase
Your customers interact with each other in a multitude of ways, most of which lead to tension and a shift in the overall atmosphere from warm and comfortable to heavy and electric and even dangerous.
You might successfully defuse such situations by providing entertainment to your guests, should you have taken the precaution to hire some of the bards or jesters which come to your doorstep on a regular basis, but in case of failure, things will turn evil quite quickly.
From brawl to outright battle passing by discrete assassination, each hero has its own unique way to deal with such situation. You will have to learn to deal with it too, and you might even earn a little coin by betting on the outcome.
Why not start offering ancillary services, such as discrete body disposal, selling powerful poisons (and antidotes) or organizing the bets yourself?
Day period
During the day period, you'll need to prepare everything for the next night's opening, and you will have the opportunity to plan your strategy for the long term.
Repair and upgrade your tavern
The interior of your tavern consists of several zones: the door and surroundings, the dining hall, the bar, the kitchen, the entertainment area and a VIP area.
Each of these zones can be upgraded in order to bring you bonuses and abilities, with over 50 different upgrades available at each level.
Fights erupting inside or outside your tavern, monster attacks and other various incidents might damage your tavern, so it is not only about upgrading but also repairing to maintain your business afloat.
Manage your staff
Hire new members for your permanent staff, or fire the ones which are inefficient, a danger to themselves and others or otherwise problematic. The more your reputation increases, and the easier it will be for you to hire qualified personel, meanwhile you'll have to make do with whoever has a pulse (unless you decide to hire some undead of course).
In addition to the need to have a proficient team when it comes to cooks, bartenders and waiters, it is strongly recommended that you do not neglect to staff your bouncers team with the biggest baddest bersekers you are able to hire, just in case some clients would have reclamations regarding the quality of the food or the exact degree of moonshine present in their drinks.
Be creative when it comes to recipes
Your clientele expects the best traditional dishes, tasteful and mouthwatering entrees and unforgettable desserts. Of course, at the cheapest possible price.
There is only one way: trying to put your hands on these legendary and long-lost cooking books, of which only a few rare copies remain, in the depth of abandoned mansions and deep dungeons, or on recipe scrolls carefully kept by high society members with a delicate palate in inviolable chambers and safes protected by locks so incredibly hard to pick...
Once this is done, will come the problem of ingredients. You might want to cheat a bit, provided always that you've hired a good alchemist, and replace the rarest and most expensive by cheap and easy to find alternatives. What's the real difference between tender veal and rat anyway?
Of course, such swaps of ingredients might have unwanted side-effects....
Resupply your store, stocks and ingredients
Proper logistics management is key in your business, and you would not want to run out of food or drinks during the birthday party of Thrall the Slayer or when the well known group of assassins "The Butchers Boyz" have decided to honor your establishment with their presence. Here, as always, money is not everything, and the quantity and quality of your supplies will depend upon your good relations with some of the local villagers, so make sure you don't turn them away or send them home unsatisfied.
Policies management
Of course, you will need to set a pricing policy for your customers, trying to maximize your revenue. Be wary of the impact of drastic changes on your regular customers, as each has their own preferences when it comes to food and drink, and may take it as a personal affront to have to pay much more for the same dish from one night to the next.
Also, the lesser races and monstrous humanoids inclusion policy of your establishment will have an impact on your sales turnover and your ability to hire. Not only there are not many humans, dwarfs, halflings or elves willing to work for a leprechaun, but the so called "lesser races" which the heroes and regular folks usually despie could be good customers too.
Will you align with strict conservative heroes values by keeping the lesser races (goblins, trolls, ogres and the like) in their servile position of staff members, or will you champion inclusivity by allowing them to mix with your clientele? Would you go as far as to welcoming some undead? What is your stance on ghouls admission? All these decisions will shape your business and determine your future.
End of turn
A turn ends automatically whenever a general brawl or an attack on your tavern occurs, or when you run out of supplies. Otherwise, you get to decide when the turn will end either at the end of the day period, or at the end of any round during the night period.
Your score for the turn is computed, giving you experience points and purchasing power, which can be spent to purchase various useful items, abilities and bonuses for the next turn.
Levelling up
The experience you gain allows you to increase your abilities through bonuses in various areas, and you can also upgrade your staff abilities, increasing your aptitude to serve efficiently an (hopefully) ever growing clientele.
End of game
The game ends whenever no hero shows up on a given night, in which case you lose the game, or if you get killed (permadeath).
You win the game if you manage to reach the maximum upgrade level for your tavern and the required quantity of cash (remember that gold pot thing). However, you can continue playing after having won the game.
Replayability
While the heroes cards are fixed, as well as some other cards representing key NPCs (merchants, VIPs and other special character), the "regular folks" part of the deck is procedurally generated, leading to a great variety of starting configurations. As each regular folk will potentially impact the game, through the triggering of various events, this creates further novelty guaranteeing a high replayability level.
