Development Process of Bake, Bread & Oven

Bake, Bread & Oven started from this madlib:

A game about coming of age where players spin. We play it to bake bread and feel calm.

The initial game idea derived from this madlib was a storytelling game where each player controls their character to interact with each other within the game. When the players successfully interact with each other, each player receives an ingredient to bake a bread randomly chosen by spinning a roulette.

From here, I preserved the narrative-centered structure, and chose Beak, Feather & Bone SRD to further develop the idea, because the storytelling component of BFB was fitting to the game. Then, I changed the details on how the players will reach their goal and interact with each other to fit the system of BFB SRD. The randomizing factor of the game changed from roulette to a stack of cards, and player interaction developed into a competition rather than a cooperation between the players. I took the idea of creating a rival character when drawing a face card from BFB and changed it up to a disadvantage card to the rivaling player, and Joker providing the most powerful disadvantage came from a game of Crazy Eights, since most rules follow the convention that Joker is the most powerful card in the game. I omitted the map factor of BFB from this game after few drafts, because I found it difficult to give map an active role in the gameplay. The initial idea was to make a fictional town map where the game takes place, and make the players colour the parts of the town to mark their popularity somewhat taken motif from Monopoly, but it didn't fit well with the concept of the game where players must compete with baking. Second idea was to make the map a list of ingredients/cooking utensils, but it limited the player's choice too much. The final version of Bake, Bread, and Oven ended up becoming something closer to a competitive board game rather than a tabletop role playing game like I first intended to as the storytelling element got washed-up as the game progressed, but other elements centered around the competition between the players were added instead to keep the gameplay dynamic.