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Scripten
2018-01-10, 01:43 PM
Crafting subsystems in TTRPGs have always somewhat eluded me. I enjoy creating homebrew content and sit in the DM chair more often than not, so I understand the draw of creativity and imagination in the context of RPGs, but I've never seen the appeal of in-character crafting mechanics as gameplay. Cool items are neat, so if you design your own item and submit it to the DM, then maybe I could see that being interesting, but even then, that's more just about bringing homebrew items into the system and quantifying their cost. I guess I'm just missing something.

So I'd like to hear it from the people here on GitP: What systems do crafting really well? What about those crafting subsystems do you enjoy the most? The least?

Basically, how do you separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to making your own items and equipment?

NichG
2018-01-10, 11:29 PM
I think there are three main dimensions to what crafting adds to a game, and a good crafting system could do one or the other or both well.

- Personalization: in games that let you build your own tools, you can tune the mechanics or feel of a thing to something that works best for your own tastes. So for something like this, a good crafting system should avoid having options which are globally optimal, but rather should try to give lots of flexibility in terms of changing how things feel. Crafting systems with a focus on super-rare ingredients or strong resource commitments tend to not be as good for this, because you'll hold off on exploring the space of possibilities in favor of saving up for that one best possible item. For this kind of system, there's a lot of overlap between what makes for a good character building system and what makes for a good item design system. The more flexibility or openness this has while remaining navigable, the better you can achieve this goal.

- Distributing power: In this sense, a character who focuses on crafting can be thought of as acting on the world through selective, passive buffing. Their role and agency is in what kind of power to amplify, and who to give that amplification to. This lends itself towards certain kinds of roles that are hard to represent with someone who has to personally act every time they want to exercise power. This kind of crafting system lends itself towards the sort of industrial revolution type games, where characters gain importance and power not through single instances of heroic deeds or strict leveling up, but rather by providing leverage to forces much bigger than themselves (e.g. improving the performance of an army or entire civilizations). I think the key concept for designing this kind of crafting system is 'scale' - you want the system to enable characters to act on scales much greater than the individual, but balanced against some sort of cost (time, effort, resources). A non-crafting comparison would be the difference between playing a wizard who casts a one-off single action spell, and playing a wizard who spends a month constructing an elaborate ritual.

- Optimization puzzle: Crafting systems themselves are often, gameplay-wise, puzzle games. Cleverly constructed ones allow for complex outcomes to be constructed from simple modules. Finding out how to get to those outcomes via rearranging the simple modules is, for some players, an intellectually stimulating challenge and is one which can extend past the actual time spent at the gaming table if they're so inclined. So for players who like to hit the books and figure out new builds during the week or things like that, crafting systems can provide another source of that kind of stimulation.

Knaight
2018-01-10, 11:47 PM
The big thing is focus - if crafting items is central to the game, if characters are likely all doing it, and if it gets detailed mechanics because of that it has the potential to be interesting. If they're clearly tacked on in a game not actually about them then they tend to cause problems even if the mechanics would be good.

As for systems I've actually seen work, that would be Fudge. Specifically, largely qualitative never written down homebrew that just worked, in a game built around the discovery of magic and also magitech.

Anymage
2018-01-11, 03:07 AM
"Good" depends on your goal. The 4e crafting system is basically spending enough gold in a ritual, so you can get back to the encounters that the system is designed around. Sometimes "getting out of the way" is the best thing a subsystem can do.

So yeah. Between scope of gameplay, power tied up in gear, and how much it's expected to be a single character's shtick vs. a gamewide theme, I really can't say anything for sure. Even Exalted 3e's crafting system (needlessly finicky and annoying so that charms can exist to mitigate said annoyances) could be doable if everybody was a crafter, instead of creating extra overhead for one character archetype.

Glorthindel
2018-01-11, 05:17 AM
- Personalization: in games that let you build your own tools, you can tune the mechanics or feel of a thing to something that works best for your own tastes. .

This is my motivation. More so than crafting, I am very much a fan of spell research. From my characters point of view, it is the last step in "mastering" the art of magic. Any old apprentice can copy other masters works, it is only the true experts who take the ideas and principles, and bends them to suit their needs. Use a Chef as an analogy - it is the difference between being a chef who just follows other peoples recipes, and the chef who takes the idea and creates his own version of the dish. My Mage isn't happy just copying out of cookery books, he wants to perfect his own versions.

JeenLeen
2018-01-11, 09:09 AM
I don't know of any system that does it well, but I think a good system should have...

1) Crafting can be by a competent character
That is, being a crafter does not mean you invest so many points/xp/skills/whatever into it that you can't also be good at other core stuff (like fighting, or mix of fighting and social, depending on the system/setting/game.) In games where gold equates to power in many ways (e.g., D&D 3.5), gold costs should not be so prohibitive that it weakens the character (BUT SEE #3)

2) Crafting can be done in a reasonable time
Too many systems have the time needed to make items such that it generally is impossible. Take 3.5's making mundane full plate, or Exalted 2nd edition's making a manse or most artifacts. Months to years of year. Great if you have long downtime, but otherwise essentially precluded to PCs.

3) Crafting does not yield overpowered items (and thus characters)
In 3.5, the personalized crafting rules (I think in Magic Item Compendium) allow for some pretty good custom-made items, but also allow you to make some really broken, over-powered stuff.
In games where gold equates to power in many ways (e.g., D&D 3.5), gold costs for crafting should be less than the cost of buying the item -- otherwise, why craft? -- but should somehow be balanced (xp costs). Note that time costs are fuzzy enough that they probably don't count as real costs.

I'm surprised to say it, but old World of Darkness Mage (I think 2nd edition revised) had decent crafting rules for talismans. Not prefect, but decent. It violates my #1 a little bit since you need Prime 3 (which is not that great otherwise, at least in my opinion), but the resources it takes are costly but not prohibitive, the time long enough to matter but not so long to preclude making talismans, the the cost to make it is a permanent Willpower.* Talismans weren't overpowered, since they were basically extra ways to cast spells we already had, but it was a great tool.

*by the rules, you lose the Willpower (which you likely bought with xp) and then have to buy the Talisman background. In my group, we houseruled that we got the xp back from losing the Willpower (though we generally then spent it to buy the Background.) Still, it's generally worth a good item, and if you use the rules variant where you don't pay xp for backgrounds earned in-game, then it sorta balances out.
Also, this probably depends on the game. Our game had weeks to months of downtown, so we had enough time to accumulate Tass (the 'currency' used to make talismans and do some other magical workings, which basically was quest rewards or generated x units/week at magical places of power.)

Grod_The_Giant
2018-01-11, 11:58 AM
I think the best, most functional crafting "system" I've seen has been in Mutants and Masterminds 3e. You've basically got three different types of "crafting." There's a cheap Advantage you can take, which lets you make one-time gadgets with an investment of time (quite a while normally, or very quickly with a hero point). You can buy powers with the Removable flaw and fluff them as gadgets; throwing in the Also Affects Others modifier lets you pass them out to allies. And the Variable power with the Slow flaw works very well for a flexible inventor type who can build any gizmo with a little time, and have it work until he goes into another fit of creativity.

The key, I think, is that M&M is already centered around a spectacularly modular power-construction system, which is recycled wholesale with the crafting/gadget-type options. You can build very quirky gadgets in a (mostly) balanced way because the system is already set up to let you construct very quirky gadgets in a (mostly) balanced way. That's a lot harder in a game like D&D that has all of its items and powers as unique entities.

Scripten
2018-01-11, 01:09 PM
- Personalization -snip-
- Distributing power -snip-
- Optimization puzzle: -snip-


The big thing is focus - if crafting items is central to the game, if characters are likely all doing it, and if it gets detailed mechanics because of that it has the potential to be interesting.



1) Crafting can be by a competent character -snip-
2) Crafting can be done in a reasonable time -snip-
3) Crafting does not yield overpowered items (and thus characters) -snip-

Thanks for the answers so far! So what I'm mostly seeing (and please correct me if I'm wrong) appears to suggest that the appeal of crafting is similar to that of building a character, in that the object being crafted should fit into the mechanics of the character making it and amplify or specialize their abilities in some way. It seems that the actual, out-of-game mechanics of crafting aren't as important as the result, as the player is not interacting with the crafting subsystem while at the table (fairly obvious) and can take their time if need be, meaning that deeper, more complex, and less streamlined mechanics are more acceptable.

What Grod_The_Giant talks about in M&M seems to embody that kind of design paradigm, though it seems that few other systems manage to pull it off? Does anyone happen to know of a system that has successfully created a table-appropriate, on-the-fly crafting system that isn't just pure DM fiat via MacGyver-ing?

Lord Torath
2018-01-11, 01:29 PM
Any thoughts to Shadowrun? Deckers can "Craft" programs, Magicians (Mage, Shaman, or "other") can craft foci, and anyone can craft weapons or vehicles. Downtime is generally a thing (1 run a month), and most of the items can be crafted a bit here and a bit there. Allowed customization depends on edition, of course.

Knaight
2018-01-11, 03:32 PM
Thanks for the answers so far! So what I'm mostly seeing (and please correct me if I'm wrong) appears to suggest that the appeal of crafting is similar to that of building a character, in that the object being crafted should fit into the mechanics of the character making it and amplify or specialize their abilities in some way.

There are parallels here, sure. There are also differences in the appeals.

I should probably just detail my Nomad's Gift campaign I ran, because that one campaign really shone in terms of fun item crafting. Without going into detail though, the appeals were different there. Character creation's appeal was one of coming up with an interesting character (the system used emphatically rejects the concept of a character creation minigame); the magic item crafting's appeals were different. Part of it was exploration; the magic system in general was tied to both literal exploration (magic was gained by reaching certain difficult to reach areas in deeply hostile terrain) and exploration of the system itself by experimentation (the mechanics were hidden, because my players explicitly asked me to make a game about discovering magic and that made discovery work). It also had the general appeal of mechanical advancement tied in, as well as of solving problems with a large and growing tool set, made all the more enjoyable because you can only do so because you cracked the question of how to use those tools.

The items crafted were largely magical items, and the appeals there mirrored those of the magic system. There was the exploration in terms of how the magic worked when enchanted into items, the enjoyment of advancement that came with having some pretty powerful magic items, and the enjoyment of solving problems with a tool set made more enjoyable by figuring it out first.

Those appeals don't apply to every crafting system, the same way that not every character creation system has the same appeal. Still, the general idea of a crafting system as a complex tool that's fun to use is pretty widespread, and it's one of several points shared with character creation systems.

ross
2018-01-11, 10:39 PM
Here's one: don't make me take a full week to make an friggin' acid flask, so that I take one look at the crafting system and decide to spend my skill points on something else