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Avianmosquito
2016-03-19, 06:01 PM
So, of all the things to get stuck on, I'm stuck on the crafting system for my tabletop game. Not weapon or armour crafting, and not consumable crafting either, I've got all those pretty well figured out. What I'm stuck on are crafting for utility and skill items, including the items you need to craft other items, which additionally presents a bit of a bootstrapping problem. I don't suppose anybody would either be willing to lend a hand, or recommend some systems that do this well?

Psilulz
2016-03-19, 06:32 PM
What exactly do you mean by utility and skill items? Is that just a catch all for everything other than weapons, armor, & consumables? What is your current system for crafting these items? How complex do you want the system? What is the setting's technology level? How does your system work? :smallwink:

Ninja_Prawn
2016-03-19, 06:41 PM
recommend some systems that do this well?

Dwarf Fortress? :smalltongue:

Avianmosquito
2016-03-19, 07:12 PM
What exactly do you mean by utility and skill items? Is that just a catch all for everything other than weapons, armor, & consumables?

Skill items are items used by skills, which is a pretty broad category. It's generally a "kit" of some form. A weapon crafting kit, for instance, would include tools for shaping rock and bone, sharpening edges, cutting leather, making thread, so on. A non-crafting example would be the climbing kit, which would include things like climbing picks, rope and a harness. Other skills can be pretty weird, like camouflage being the listed skill item for stealth, but actually being a modification made for your clothing.

Utility items would be anything not related to a skill or to combat that still serves a purpose. Bedrolls, waterskins, eating utensils, containers. This is a catch-all, pretty much.


What is your current system for crafting these items? How complex do you want the system?

It's kept fairly simple. You need these supplies, take this amount of time and need these tools to make items of this this type at this quality. Other items may reduce crafting times, and you generally need skill investment to make anything of decent quality. (As well as a lot of time. Every quality grade up takes ten times as long as the previous quality grade.) That's how it works so far, the problem is that I don't know all the tools you'd need in a lot of the kits, and have no idea how long they'd take to make, or what tools you'd need to make those tools. Or how to minimize the obvious bootstrapping problem of needing tools to make tools.


What is the setting's technology level?

Extremely primitive. The setting's tech is late stone age, borderline bronze age. It's primitive enough that having the resources to produce meteoric iron tools is a mark of considerable status, copper tools even more so.


How does your system work? :smallwink:

For what, crafting other items? Or just in general? I hope I explained the former well enough, and the latter would take a while to explain.

Psilulz
2016-03-21, 06:33 AM
It sounds like the crafting system needs to cover a lot! For this reason, I would suggest a broad, easily applicable system, so that you don't have to go insane codifying everything, like in D&D did with GP values. I'd maybe look at Numenera's system for inspiration. It essentially boils down to: on a scale of 1-10, how difficult should (action) be? After this, factor in circumstantial modifiers, such as being supplies being difficult to work with, lack of/ quality of tools, etc., and then simply roll against the adjusted number. It is a very adjustable system that makes DMing all of the weird things in that setting a breeze.
I'd like to know about your system's mechanics in general. Mainly, what is the dice system? D20? And how are skills & attributes determined & what are average amounts players can expect at different levels of play?

Avianmosquito
2016-03-21, 08:20 PM
It sounds like the crafting system needs to cover a lot!

Tell me about it...


For this reason, I would suggest a broad, easily applicable system, so that you don't have to go insane codifying everything, like in D&D did with GP values.

Well, I kept everything down to very simple material categories. Wood (has types, but only one in the core setting), stone (ditto), bone (same), hide (see previous), textile (once more, with feeling) and metal (meteoric iron and copper, which have very simple effects). There's more, but it's still simple. (I can tell you that there's no currency in this setting, for the record. Not that the system doesn't support it, there's item values, but currency requires infrastructure and there isn't any.)


I'd maybe look at Numenera's system for inspiration. It essentially boils down to: on a scale of 1-10, how difficult should (action) be? After this, factor in circumstantial modifiers, such as being supplies being difficult to work with, lack of/ quality of tools, etc., and then simply roll against the adjusted number. It is a very adjustable system that makes DMing all of the weird things in that setting a breeze.

Okay, see, our system is already simpler than that. The trouble I'm having is determining what would go into each item, and how long they'd take to make.


I'd like to know about your system's mechanics in general.

Well, I am releasing the core rulebook pretty much as soon as this is resolved. I actually already made a thread about it.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?481449-Core-rulebook-for-an-original-system-to-be-released-within-one-week


Mainly, what is the dice system? D20?

None. Whether an action will work or not is determined entirely by scores, which are modified by bonuses and penalties, most of which are based on your actions, and no die roll ever enters the mix. (Combat, for instance, has a lot of potentially massive penalties related to movement and bonuses from aiming, making the most important parts of melee combat about timing and distance.) We also use an action point system, and managing AP is extremely important in combat, because running out before your opponent does is a death sentence. Removing the randomization means all that's left is preparation and tactics. It also, so I've seen with my family, creates an absolutely wonderful level of caution and paranoia.


And how are skills & attributes determined & what are average amounts players can expect at different levels of play?

You start with a certain amount of experience (a pretty massive amount), and experience is directly spent purchasing attribute upgrades, skill ranks and talents. You have a base value for attributes listen on your species entry (modified by age and sex), but skills and talents are always a blank slate before you spend the XP. (Even *language* requires spending XP.)

Really, it depends on you whether you want to prioritize attributes, skills or talents. You could leave all your attributes at their base values and focus solely on skills and talents, or you could dump most or all of your XP into attributes and be really powerful but not have any useful skills. (You want to do something in between most of the time, and the second one would be really dumb.)

Psilulz
2016-03-22, 04:00 PM
Sounds interesting, much like another rpg (the name eludes me) that was focused on realism.
Have you made a list with all of the skills? You could go through the list and determine what kind of kit each skill would need, and then from there just determine how many resources are required. High skill might be able to use less/ replace required resources, crafting time, or quality.
For instance, a sewing kit might require 1 bone and 1 textile resource, and the ability to replace bone with metal, maybe.
Having a standard format is also helpful. Something like:
Required Skill -
Required Resources -
Crafting Time -
(Other factors too, maybe. I'm not sure of everything your system takes into account with crafting.)

Avianmosquito
2016-03-22, 09:38 PM
Sounds interesting, much like another rpg (the name eludes me) that was focused on realism.
Have you made a list with all of the skills?

Yeah, crafting is almost the only thing not done. (Okay, I don't have traits in either, and I haven't written the rules for throwing weapons. And I'm still experimenting with grappling rules. I said "almost", okay!)


You could go through the list and determine what kind of kit each skill would need, and then from there just determine how many resources are required.

Yeah, see, I did that. And then my answer for many was "I don't know".


High skill might be able to use less/ replace required resources, crafting time, or quality.

Skill just allows you to craft better equipment. Better crafting supplies is *also* a requirement of better equipment. There are fast crafting talents, though.


For instance, a sewing kit might require 1 bone and 1 textile resource, and the ability to replace bone with metal, maybe.

Well, we write things by mass here, but mostly that's how it's been going. Like the mixture for sutures is 1g (smallest unit in the game) of textile per unit of sutures (enough to stop a single point of bleeding). It's probably the cheapest medical item in the game, though you need a needle to use it, and that takes 1 gram of bone, stone or metal.


Having a standard format is also helpful. Something like:
Required Skill -
Required Resources -
Crafting Time -
(Other factors too, maybe. I'm not sure of everything your system takes into account with crafting.)

Well, here's the current format in use. This is what it takes to make a long spear. (A fairly common weapon, and a very effective one.)

Long spear:
Head material: 540g stone/bone/metal or 600g wood (Note: These give different properties to the weapon.)
Shaft material: 3kg wood (Metal, bone or stone shafts aren't an option because your tools aren't that good.)
Other: 60g textile/hide UNLESS using a wooden head
Crafting time: Crude 6m, basic 1h, fine 10h, excellent 100h, superb 1000h (Fast Crafting III would make these all 1/4 as long.)

And now, for another very common weapon, a fighting knife.

Fighting knife:
Blade material: 150g stone/wood/bone/metal
Handle material: 20g wood and 5g hide/textile
Scabbard: 25g textile/hide/wood
Crafting time: Crude 6m, basic 1h, fine 10h, excellent 100h, superb 1000h

As a quick note, the materials that go in exactly equal the weight of the weapons that come out. And the scabbard is including in the crafting, but you could probably talk your GM into letting you skip that part, if you're okay with having to carry the weapon instead of wearing it. (That is a problem. Either it has to be in your hand, in in a compartment where it's harder to reach. A scabbard would keep it right where you need it.)

As for skill requirements, you don't need any skill to make crude items. You only need to be proficient (one rank, we don't use points) to make basic items. You need to be adept to make fine items, an expert to make excellent items and a master to make superb items. That all make sense?

Amechra
2016-03-23, 03:39 AM
So your key resources are Wood, Textiles, Stone, Metal, Bone, and Hide, right (no Ceramic? Or is that incorporated into Stone)?

Well...

At the base level, you don't have Textiles or Metal; those require a lot of pre-existing tech (Textiles are processed cloth, which is woven yarn, which is spun thread, which requires that you have a way of getting fibres, which requires that you have some form of agriculture...).

So let's focus on Wood, Stone, Bone, and Hide.

At the level of Stone, you can knock a rock against another rock to break off chips and get a sharp edge or a point. Now you have a scraper/knife, a hammer, and an awl.

You can use a scraper/knife to prepare Hides and cut Wood; the awl lets you drill holes into Wood, Bone, Stone, and Hide. That hammer you've got can be combined with the scraper/knife to get a chisel, which can be used to further process Wood, Bone, and Stone.

Find a rough rock (OK, sandstone); now you have a whetstone, which can be used to refine your crude basic tools (sharpen the scraper/knife, sharpen the point on the awl, etc).



I just noticed that you specified borderline Bronze age. Whoops.

Avianmosquito
2016-03-23, 05:51 AM
So your key resources are Wood, Textiles, Stone, Metal, Bone, and Hide, right (no Ceramic? Or is that incorporated into Stone)?

Actually, ceramic is separate, but I was going from memory and I forgot. The only ceramic here is made from clay and not suited for use in tools, weapons or armour, but pots and urns made of the stuff are often the first sign that a village is going to be around a while.


Well...

At the base level, you don't have Textiles or Metal; those require a lot of pre-existing tech (Textiles are processed cloth, which is woven yarn, which is spun thread, which requires that you have a way of getting fibres, which requires that you have some form of agriculture...).

You're *mostly* right, except for the statement that agriculture is required for textiles. Textiles have been manufactured by nomadic societies before, and were invented before agriculture. Our earliest suggestion of the possible use of textiles is sewing needles from 40,000 years ago, though the earliest definitive proof is from 8,000 BC and that is post-agriculture. Further, textiles wouldn't always have to be made out of plant fibres, hair is a perfectly valid textile and that's *probably* what they were sewing with in 38,000 BC. Dried sinew is another animal textile.

Some people here *do* grow plants, even if there's... Issues with this setting's people and their sanity is questionable, many are still together enough to do that. Even if they didn't, this setting is... Unique, and textiles made of dried mycelium are common where sufficient quantities of fungus grow.


So let's focus on Wood, Stone, Bone, and Hide.

At the level of Stone, you can knock a rock against another rock to break off chips and get a sharp edge or a point. Now you have a scraper/knife, a hammer, and an awl.

You can use a scraper/knife to prepare Hides and cut Wood; the awl lets you drill holes into Wood, Bone, Stone, and Hide. That hammer you've got can be combined with the scraper/knife to get a chisel, which can be used to further process Wood, Bone, and Stone.

Find a rough rock (OK, sandstone); now you have a whetstone, which can be used to refine your crude basic tools (sharpen the scraper/knife, sharpen the point on the awl, etc).

So... I actually knew all that. Unfortunately, this setting is about a hundred thousand years more advanced than that. (Though if you're by yourself it doesn't matter one little bit, and you'll be using these techniques anyway.)

And actually, when I was a kid I must have gone camping about a hundred times, and I always made a spear. So at least I know the basic process of weapon making from various materials. I also have pretty good wilderness survival skills as a whole, everything from making fire to crafting weapons and even sewing and tanning leather. I could give a step by step explanation of the manufacture of plenty of *primitive* survival tools, from weapons to waterskins.

The problem is that I don't know in detail any sort of crafting more advanced than in primitive survival situations, excepting metallurgy, cooking and historical medicine. It's also a pain in the ass to learn, few people study the most similar periods very well, and most of the setting is in that big grey area.


I just noticed that you specified borderline Bronze age. Whoops.

It's alright, it's easy to miss. And as for the exact technological level, that's hard to describe and varies massively throughout the setting, even over periods of a couple years or distances of only a few miles, as infrastructure varies here more than knowledge. Take metallurgy as one example. Some people can, rarely, manufacture meteoric iron and copper. They cannot remove impurities from their metal effectively, however. As common as meteoric iron is, it can only be made in to crappy meteoric iron if you don't know how to bring down its obscene carbon content. Meanwhile, work-hardening is something they know how to do, and work-hardened copper is just as good as meteoric iron, with the benefit of greater longevity, so copper is preferred when available.

That said, all you need to gather meteoric iron is a trip to the surface, though most people would never go up to the surface even at night for fear of getting caught up there at sunrise (as I said, unique setting). This means only villages willing to force people to make night trips to the surface have large amounts of iron.

Copper needs to be found in native copper veins, which aren't overly common and there's no easy (if morally questionable) way to get a lot of it. It's not like there's a lot of copper in meteors, unless you count malachite and azurite. Both of those have their applications, but not really in tools. (And mostly, they're used for decoration. They are quite nice looking.) Not to mention that they know how to melt metal just fine, but separating the different materials in it is beyond them, so most of the copper in the world is unusable.

Other metals, aside from gold, are largely lost on them. A few places managed bronze or tin, but so few and so rarely that the world as a whole was unaffected in any significant degree, and in the last hundred years one person on the entire planet has manufactured swords, and while the exact number is unknown it is likely double-digit. One hundred miles in any direction, nobody knew he had managed such a thing.

Most communities are highly isolated, sub-subterranean (though there are, insane as it may sound, communities on the surface) and often have little or no communication with eachother. Technology varies wildly here, and somebody living alone can be largely limited to banging rocks together while somebody in a village mere miles away is putting an edge on their copper dagger.

JBPuffin
2016-03-24, 08:09 PM
What's an example of a skill kit you're having trouble with? Like, what skills do you need the most assistance with determining what their kits are composed of?

Avianmosquito
2016-03-24, 09:55 PM
What's an example of a skill kit you're having trouble with?

Ideally, all the tools you would need to be able to make *anything* within a given category, out of any of the game's materials, within the technological limits of the setting.

For the weapon kit, that'd be all the tools needed to make weapons with heads made of wood (in which case, it's not really a "head", per se), bone, stone or even metal (heat not included), sharpen edges and refine points, hatch with hide or thread, reinforce hatching with pitch (or for high-end knives, even implanting a tang), as well as smoothing a wooden shaft or handle (or even cutting one, which is a lot harder than it sounds) and of course cutting hide. I'm not as familiar with bow construction from the period, but I do know that for higher-end ones you'd need tools to shape wood as well, and to prepare sinew for bowstrings.

There's... Rather a lot there, I know. These kits are heavy. In fact, they're hopefully heavy enough that you won't keep them on your person most of the time, and will mostly leave them at your camp, though they're also hopefully also light enough to carry if you need to move your camp.

As a side note, the game actually allows crafting without specialized tools, but you can only craft crude equipment.


Like, what skills do you need the most assistance with determining what their kits are composed of?

The skills I need help for are:
Chemistry
Cooking (I *do* cook, thank you very much, but I cook in a kitchen, and that is NOT the same)
Fabricating (Catch-all for crafting things that don't fall into the other categories, clueless here)
Repair (Very broad, only one skill for all repair work)
First aid (First aid doesn't have kits, I just need somebody to tell me if I missed any items)
Surgery ("But they didn't have surgery!" "Yes they did, they did suturing and excision since time immemorial.")

And that's actually it. The last two are fairly simple, at least, but the third and fourth are a doozy. I reckon with Google, a bottle of vodka and a couple Rockstars I could get the first two taken care of, but those I will need some help on. My focus is pretty narrow, it's in the "not dying" category. Most of what even goes into "fabricating" is beyond me, that's 80% of it, and a solid 15 of the remaining 20% is that fixing things also isn't my forte and other than knowing that you'd need a whetstone I don't know what you'd need, or if it'd even be separate from the kits you used to initially make said items in the first place.

Psilulz
2016-03-25, 01:19 PM
I feel like Repair should just be something you're able to do if you have the same skill to make the item.
As for Fabricate, it feels too large & vague. Without knowing all of the options for crafting, it's hard to see exactly what it covers, but blanketing 'everything else' has potential for chicanery. I think it'd be better to simply have option to confer with the DM if a player wants a crafting option different from the other ones listed. That way, underwater basket weaving and paper-making aren't lumped into the same skill (these are purely for example, I have no idea if you made these skills separate already.)

Avianmosquito
2016-03-25, 08:59 PM
I feel like Repair should just be something you're able to do if you have the same skill to make the item.

I don't know about that, there's plenty of people who can make stuff but not fix stuff, and even more who can fix stuff but not make it.


As for Fabricate, it feels too large & vague.

That's because it's a placeholder.