alright, here’s an idea i’ve been mulling with for a while. a delicious in dungeon inspired rpg, where all exp gains come from eating. the basic system is that you go delving into areas, beat up monsters, collect their parts(and maybe some herbs and whatnot from gathering spots), and either bring everything back to town to cook, or cook it in dungeon.
now here’s the part where i dump general ideas:
-cooking is divided into two main types, simple cooking(campfire in dungeon) and complex(in town using various stations). simple cooking can provide you with decent healing items(with some minor drawbacks), but sacrifices a lot of the exp you could get, and doesn’t let you add much in the way of boosters(herbs and spices).
-going into various areas, you can gather various herbs and spices to apply while cooking for bonus things, like curing ailments, adding temp stats, or even permanent stat boosts, along with a general minor exp boost
-a general idea for complex cooking is that the more effort and processing you use to make a dish, the much greater exp you’ll gain from eating it. compare a basic monster meat roast(meat chunk>oven>dish), to "monsterous manchester(beef wellington), which requires breaking down meat chunks into various parts, breaking down mushrooms into mushmash, then combining base dough(water flour salt), mushmash, mustard, and prime monster meat and cooking that.
-one other thing to consider is where you receive ingredients from. if you were to take meat from a minotaur, compared to a cerberus, the minomeat would provide a small perm boost to strength, while the cerberus would provide agility. meanwhile if you take meat from a lamia, simple cooking it would provide you with a meal that has a debuff attached to it (poisonous), while complex cooking can either nullify, or turn that debuff into a resistance
-finally as for characters, a fair bit of customization based around personality, hair style and color, and eye color. and finally some weight gain elements based around class and class advancement(hitting levelcap as a knight will change the knight’s portrait, so that her chubby form will be straining her armor, but advancing from knight to lord will provide her a snug well fitting outfit for her new mass)
and that’s about it. i know this sounds like a big thing, but i figure it’d be better to just kind of get the idea out