Good Soup is “a wholesome story game,” published earlier this year by Goosepoop Games. To quote the website, “Good Soup is a GM-less, rules-lite roleplaying story game where players are woodland creatures gathering ingredients to make soup to heal weary travelers.” Both print copies and e-book versions are available.

Disclosure: I received a free review copy of Good Soup.

Your story will require a sheet of paper for a map (or use the map provided), some pencils (colored is fun), a twelve-sided die (D12), and the random character/encounter tables included in the game ‘zine.

I played Good Soup recently with my indie game night group, three players in-person and one online. We are all experienced tabletop RPG players. We enjoyed a soup supper (Leek-Potato, in this issue of my newsletter) followed by the Good Soup game. (There is an in-game soup eating randomization mechanic, but we just used the D12.)

Good Soup Concept

In Good Soup, the players take on the roles of various forest animals (which you can determine off a random character table or make up your own). Your character has a name, an ability, and a favorite cooking utensil. All these animals have the same motivation: help others with good soup! Embellish that premise however you wish.

Good Soup Game Play

Lay out your map or blank paper, establish the creature du jour who needs soup help, and get cooking. After several rolls of the D12 and a consult of the appropriate random table, you will have the name, creature type, and problem of the visitor who wants soup therapy. You also consult a random table for the special ingredients the soup needs to successfully help your client.  The point value required to heal the problem is provided from the random problem table.

All adventures start in the center of the forest at The Bowl. If you are going to draw your own map (à la Dawn of Worlds), drawn The Bowl in the middle of the page.

…A giant golden ornate bowl dropped from the sky, toppled trees, and set itself to cooking. The magic that rang from the clattering filled the creatures around it with thoughts and feelings, and, of course, recipes.

From Good Soup

 The game progresses as the players take the lead in turns. They describe their action, such as “we travel toward the Meatcliff Mountains for the ingredient flowers we heard grow there.” Another player will roleplay the non-player character encountered, such as an “angry puppet who is tearing up the flowers.” Through the improv scene the team will work out a solution, such as “Hey, you hate these flowers? How about we boil them into soup for you?” A dice roll (action test) determines the success, partial success, or failure of our animal efforts. Thus, a turn consists of these general phases:

• Choosing a direction of travel or destination that the character hopes will provide an ingredient
• Exploring features and meeting new creatures along the way
• Gaining information or ingredients (or not)

If you group has chosen to make your own map, draw the geographic features as you encounter them.

Make the Good Soup

Every chef worth their salt has a few tricks up their sleeve, and our animal cooks do as well. The Favorite Utensil power allows the player to try the action test again. They need to describe how they would use their favorite utensil to correct the situation.

If the player would like to use their Ability, the action outcome moves up a success level: from “unlikely” to “maybe” or from “maybe” to “likely.”

With all ingredients gathered, return to The Bowl and determine how many points you’ve earned by rolling a D12 for each ingredient you gathered.  

Storytelling with Good Soup

My group plays a lot of Fiasco, so we seemed to settle into that game’s pattern: taking turns establishing a scene, then the rest of the group would join in. For time and simplicity’s sake, we used the map included with the module. Using a premade map meant we had premade prompts as well, to get us rolling as to what sort of places we might visit in the forest.

We told the story of Cordelia, the aardvark, hopelessly addicted to chocolate and suffering from a stubbed toe. Our party of Badger, Rabbit, Cricket, and Snail encountered nonplayer characters (NPC) such as golf-playing gnome, a fan-boy wizard,  and a suicidal lemming in our quest for healing herbal ingredients.  We had a lot of laughs, and the storytelling took about 90 minutes.

Tips and Tricks

I think it helped that we are not only roleplaying game people but also improv-oriented roleplaying game people. We can go whole Monster of the Week or Thirteen Age sessions without rolling dice even once, just talking to each other in funny voices. If a player is used to a lot of structure, the module’s tables do provided prompts, but such individuals might also appreciate a little brainstorming with the group about their best course of action.

The prompts provided can be taken as literally or figuratively as you want. We decided the ingredient “dragon blood” was actually a kind of flower, and that electronic devices do, indeed, yield liquid when crushed. ( aka,“Computer juice.”)

It’s your story and it can go wherever you like.

If you found this review of Good Soup interesting, you might like to read my blog about Fall of Magic.

I recorded my experience in my Gaming Journal. Perhaps you need one as well! Available from Lulu.com.

Click here to order The Big Cinch, new supernatural noir novel from Kathy L. Brown.

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You’ll find my latest Sean Joye short story in the St. Louis Writers Guild’s new members anthology.  Love Letters to St. Louis contains my first science fiction story, “Welcome to Earthport Prime: A Self-Guided Tour.” This adorable letter-shaped volume of short stories, poems, essays, and illustrations. Profits benefit the guild’s young writers’ program.