Review: Letters from the Flaming Crab: Culinary Magic

Its exactly what it says on the tin. There are recipes that are very well formatted and easy to understand. Each dish is special in that it creates some sort of magical effect. But this product makes me angry. Why?

We spend four and a half of the 12 pages of the book on traits, feats, items, and even two archetypes, which is all well and good, most of them aren't that noteworthy but they're cute and flavorful and some of them have some real mechanical value, definitely things I'd pick up on a character that likes to cook, but what I really wanted was more food.

Yes its petty but the fact that this product is not it's own series but part of the Letters from the Flaming Crab series makes it worse. I need more food! There are 16 recipies which add well to the wondrous food from Red Dragon Inn: Guide to Inns and Taverns, and can add some flavor (Ha!) to Dire Rugrat's Tavern guides, but the book is only 12 pages long and nobody ever has enough food. Why can't books like this be 100 pages long? I feel like a fat guy at one of those expensive trendy places that have sliders that take one bite to eat. Sure it's delicious. The format and wording is good, the addition of instructions is flavorful, its crunchy enough to be interesting, but its over before I'm ready so now I'm just hungry.

I need more food. And for that matter, I need more exotic ingredients too. Some of the recipes require things like a Prestidigitation spell or an owlbear egg and things like the owlbear egg is the kind of thing that turns breakfast into an epic quest. That needs to happen more.

So despite it's shortcomings is it worth a bite? Well as I said above, its a nice product. If your players are like me or my players cooking is something a lot of people want to do but there's no mechanical incentive to invest in the skill so you're just throwing skills in the garbage can just for kicks. I also hear about all kinds of questions about cooking and cooking magically. I've seen only one other product that actually tackled the subject adequately and even then I was still starving so this product is a huge step in the right direction. Someone over in Flaming Crab Games knows how to make some fluffy crunch that's cute and relevant. I will say that in terms of actual flaws, some of the effects could easily be first level spells so a rare ingredient or steeper monetary cost could be more desirable, but overall its pretty good. Just not as good as the food, of which there needs to be more of. I'll give it 5 out of 5 stars but it comes with my expression of disappointment that it's not longer.

You can find this over on Paizo.com here.