Can crafting ever be fun / interesting in a game?

[...You Lost Me]

Froging a sword in dragonfire and quenching it in the blood of and incest born king to creat the Sword of Fire and Ice sound's really cool but at the game table it's just a big hassle.

Except that is, you know, role playing. Seriously. If the Sword of Fire and Ice is actually supposed to be an important piece of the story, actually questing to go make the Sword of Fire and Ice makes a good deal of sense.

Is this actually an argument?

[Username17]

Froging a sword in dragonfire and quenching it in the blood of and incest born king to creat the Sword of Fire and Ice sound's really cool but at the game table it's just a big hassle.

Except that is, you know, role playing. Seriously. If the Sword of Fire and Ice is actually supposed to be an important piece of the story, actually questing to go make the Sword of Fire and Ice makes a good deal of sense.

Is this actually an argument?

Yes. Any plot point that is important and supposed to be memorable for the players is something that is worth performing multiple actions to get.

Example: I still remember a +2 Adamantine Greataxe that we quested for. It's just a +2 Adamantine Greataxe, so objectively it's not that big of a deal, but it was pretty good for the level we were and we did the dungeon delving for it, and it sticks in my memory. On the other hand, there was a Shocking Ice Bow or some fucking thing that a character in another game bought with our winnings, and I can't even recall what exactly it did. The acquiring of it wasn't really given screen time, so it doesn't stick in the memory.

Bottom line: if something is supposed to be memorable, it's worth taking extra time on it. If the thing that is supposed to be memorable is getting a thing, then it's worth spending extra time getting the thing. And getting segments of a thing and combining them is a good way to draw out the time it takes to acquire a thing. It provides tangible progress, while still taking an extended period. I mean, there's a reason that more people remember the Rod of Seven Parts or the Hand and Eye of Vecna than remember Kurath's Quill or the Jacinth of Inestimable Beauty.

-Username17

[hogarth]

Yes. Any plot point that is important and supposed to be memorable for the players is something that is worth performing multiple actions to get.

Example: I still remember a +2 Adamantine Greataxe that we quested for. It's just a +2 Adamantine Greataxe, so objectively it's not that big of a deal, but it was pretty good for the level we were and we did the dungeon delving for it, and it sticks in my memory. On the other hand, there was a Shocking Ice Bow or some fucking thing that a character in another game bought with our winnings, and I can't even recall what exactly it did. The acquiring of it wasn't really given screen time, so it doesn't stick in the memory.

This is tautologically true (doing something is more memorable than doing nothing), but so what? An adventure that ends up giving you vendor trash is more memorable than the GM saying in two seconds "you get some vendor trash", but that has nothing to do with whether it's a good idea to give out vendor trash in the first place.

[OgreBattle]

but so what? An adventure that ends up giving you vendor trash is more memorable than the GM saying in two seconds "you get some vendor trash", but that has nothing to do with whether it's a good idea to give out vendor trash in the first place.

If this was a Yugi-oh story arc where they're playing tabletop, this is the part where true Yugi comes out and challenges Hogarth to a shadowgame.

[RadiantPhoenix]

If this was a Yugi-oh story arc where they're playing tabletop, this is the part where true Yugi comes out and challenges Hogarth to a shadowgame.

Wasn't the plot of the D&D story arc of Yu-gi-oh that the villain trapped the heroes in the miniatures that represented their characters or something?

Anyway, the original topic of this thread wasn't about finding the parts to be used for crafting, it was about how to make the assembly interesting.

[Username17]

Anyway, the original topic of this thread wasn't about finding the parts to be used for crafting, it was about how to make the assembly interesting.

Have more than one resource.
Have tradeoffs and breakpoints.

Outfitting mechs in Battletech is fun. Once you're futzing around with ¢s, weight, heat, and ammo, you have an engaging system (even if all too often the correct choice is to load up on high-end energy weapons and double heat sinks and tell all the other options to go fuck all the way off). Contrariwise, crafting in 3e D&D is not fun, because the only thing worth worrying about is gold cost (while there is nominally XP and time as well, they comes in at a fixed ratio with gold cost, making them essentially similar resources). You just check how much "bigness" you can afford, and then you build that. Yawn.

-Username17

[MGuy]

Anyway, the original topic of this thread wasn't about finding the parts to be used for crafting, it was about how to make the assembly interesting.

Have more than one resource.
Have tradeoffs and breakpoints.

Outfitting mechs in Battletech is fun. Once you're futzing around with ¢s, weight, heat, and ammo, you have an engaging system (even if all too often the correct choice is to load up on high-end energy weapons and double heat sinks and tell all the other options to go fuck all the way off). Contrariwise, crafting in 3e D&D is not fun, because the only thing worth worrying about is gold cost (while there is nominally XP and time as well, they comes in at a fixed ratio with gold cost, making them essentially similar resources). You just check how much "bigness" you can afford, and then you build that. Yawn.

-Username17

This and once again having things that you can combine to create new effects also get people engaged. Being able to invent, modify, and abuse various crafting comboes is an easy way to get people interested in and engaged in crafting. See: Steam Powers from Dragonmech.

[hogarth]

Anyway, the original topic of this thread wasn't about finding the parts to be used for crafting, it was about how to make the assembly interesting.

Have more than one resource.
Have tradeoffs and breakpoints.

Outfitting mechs in Battletech is fun. Once you're futzing around with ¢s, weight, heat, and ammo, you have an engaging system (even if all too often the correct choice is to load up on high-end energy weapons and double heat sinks and tell all the other options to go fuck all the way off). Contrariwise, crafting in 3e D&D is not fun, because the only thing worth worrying about is gold cost (while there is nominally XP and time as well, they comes in at a fixed ratio with gold cost, making them essentially similar resources). You just check how much "bigness" you can afford, and then you build that. Yawn.

Optimizing is definitely fun. And players definitely optimize their equipment in 3E D&D, just like in any other game. Whether that equipment is "crafted" or "bought" is pretty much irrelevant (other than one being cheaper than the other).

I haven't played Battletech: does it have a distinction between "crafted" and "bought" equipment that's more sophisticated than 3E? I know that Car Wars had some rules for salvage, but we never bothered with them (because we only played one-off games, not campaigns).

[hyzmarca]

Anyway, the original topic of this thread wasn't about finding the parts to be used for crafting, it was about how to make the assembly interesting.

Have more than one resource.
Have tradeoffs and breakpoints.

Outfitting mechs in Battletech is fun. Once you're futzing around with ¢s, weight, heat, and ammo, you have an engaging system (even if all too often the correct choice is to load up on high-end energy weapons and double heat sinks and tell all the other options to go fuck all the way off). Contrariwise, crafting in 3e D&D is not fun, because the only thing worth worrying about is gold cost (while there is nominally XP and time as well, they comes in at a fixed ratio with gold cost, making them essentially similar resources). You just check how much "bigness" you can afford, and then you build that. Yawn.

Optimizing is definitely fun. And players definitely optimize their equipment in 3E D&D, just like in any other game. Whether that equipment is "crafted" or "bought" is pretty much irrelevant (other than one being cheaper than the other).

I haven't played Battletech: does it have a distinction between "crafted" and "bought" equipment that's more sophisticated than 3E? I know that Car Wars had some rules for salvage, but we never bothered with them (because we only played one-off games, not campaigns).

In Battletech, everything used the same system. Standard mechs are literally just custom that the designers created using the customization rules. Standard mechs, however, are often crap and customization can be rather complex.
You've got to balance crit slots, weight, heat generation, speed, armor, firepower, and cost.
Every mech frame is part of a class (Light, Medium, Heavy or Assault) which determines it's maximum weight.
Speed is determined by weight and engine rating. More powerful engines, unfortunately, weight more.
Weapons generate heat when fired. This is bad because overheated mechs shut-down or explode, meaning that a heat positive design has to be carefully managed. Heat sinks get rid of heat, but take add weight and take up crit slots.
Armor, of course, makes it harder to kill you, but has weight.
Then you have options like Ferro-fiberous armor, Endo-steel skeletons, and double heat-sinks, which weigh less but take up more crit slots.
It's a very delicate balancing act, even if you have unlimited funds.

But, as Frank Stated, loading up on PPCs and Double Heat Sinks is often the correct build.

[Stubbazubba]

Yeah, but that's not the actual 'crafting' part, that's the planning the crafting. The crafting itself is probably always going to be boring, unless you're dealing with sentient components which can be battled, as has been discussed.

[hogarth]

Yeah, but that's not the actual 'crafting' part, that's the planning the crafting. The crafting itself is probably always going to be boring, unless you're dealing with sentient components which can be battled, as has been discussed.

Yeah, I have no idea how any of that stuff mentioned would be different between "I'm playing a mechanic who builds stuff himself" and "I'm a rich guy who can buy customized stuff with money".

[BearsAreBrown]

Building a mech isn't crafting it's picking your class levels and feats.

[hyzmarca]

Building a mech isn't crafting it's picking your class levels and feats.

Crafting is just picking class levels and feats for your weapons.

[hogarth]

Building a mech isn't crafting it's picking your class levels and feats.

Like I said above, it's all optimizing. In D&D, maybe 80% of your optimizing is building your PC and 20% is buying equipment, and in other games (like Car Wars) it could be the other way around.

[MGuy]

Building a mech isn't crafting it's picking your class levels and feats.

Like I said above, it's all optimizing. In D&D, maybe 80% of your optimizing is building your PC and 20% is buying equipment, and in other games (like Car Wars) it could be the other way around.

The question is about how to make 'crafting' interesting is it not? If you're tinkering with your mech, equipment, whatever it is more 'interesting' if there are a bunch of options you can mix and match to create various effects, or customization that allows you to optimize what you want for various penalties (see: tradeoffs). It does not matter that it is optimizing what matters is that it is an effective way to make people care about finding, building, and refitting their gear.

[hogarth]

The question is about how to make 'crafting' interesting is it not? If you're tinkering with your mech, equipment, whatever it is more 'interesting' if there are a bunch of options you can mix and match to create various effects, or customization that allows you to optimize what you want for various penalties (see: tradeoffs). It does not matter that it is optimizing what matters is that it is an effective way to make people care about finding, building, and refitting their gear.

I have yet to encounter a game where customisation/mixing and matching requires "crafting" (i.e., your PC has to make stuff instead of just paying for it with some resource). If you can point out a game where that's the case, I might be able to comment further.

[fectin]

Basically anything in White Wolf.

Dnd 3E Effigies and Item Familiars.

Brave New World gadgeteer items.

[Vebyast]

I've been working on this theory for a while. Looks like it's come up again. Tell me how well I've generalized here and if the generalization is useful.

Successfully solving a problem is fun. More difficult problems yield more rewarding solutions. Creating a game, then, starts with convincing players to follow rules which set up difficult problems for them to solve.

From there, there are a few ways to go. Humans heavily discount future events, so the game has to feed players a steady stream of successes so to keep the expected perceived reward positive. A memory of a reward, while not as strong as the original reward itself, is still desirable. Rewards can be scheduled to induce operant conditioning, which can be useful for MMORPG operators. Games which are not difficult are boring because the opportunity cost of playing the game is greater than the expected reward from playing. Games which are too hard are boring because there are no successes. You can wrap a story or setting around your game ("fluff") to substitute literature for missing problem-solving opportunities, provide high-reward-value solutions (usually as problems which implicitly contain solutions, such as obtaining the Hand and Eye of Vecna), or lead players to mindsets which can apply the rules to find more rewarding solutions. If the rules "make sense", following them requires less effort and the solution becomes easier to find without losing a great deal of value. And so on.

These ideas let us characterise crafting systems pretty well, I think. The Battletech solution piles everything into the problem, presenting a gnarly multi-objective multi-bag knapsack variation that gives you the ability to shoot things if you find a good solution. DND in play dispenses almost entirely with problem-solving and goes for memorability and cool fluff; it seems to work. DND charop makes crafting part of the character progression system, which is itself a complex optimization problem (look at the name) that can provide pretty solid rewards. Video game crafting systems attempt to provide a steady stream of successes by having users do research (every new discovery provides a reward), apply upgrades to existing items, use smaller intermediate results for other purposes if desired (minecraft tech mods), or grind out piles of junk (MMOs and mobile games are disgustingly fond of this).

[BearsAreBrown]

Building a mech isn't crafting it's picking your class levels and feats.

Crafting is just picking class levels and feats for your weapons.

Is it? Not in 3.5e it's not, you just pick one from a book and say, "I make that!"

Unless you advocate Weapons Of Legacy being the only craft-able items.

[Emerald]

Crafting is just picking class levels and feats for your weapons.

Is it? Not in 3.5e it's not, you just pick one from a book and say, "I make that!"

Unless you advocate Weapons Of Legacy being the only craft-able items.

I'd say so. 3e weapons involve allocating +X slots, adding on +X gp enhancements, accounting for synergies, and so forth. There are plenty of specific weapons that you just craft as-is, but those are just the "monk" weapons in the system with everything pre-chosen compared to the "fighter" and "wizard" a la carte weapons.

[hogarth]

Dnd 3E Effigies and Item Familiars.

Did you read my comment? I said I didn't know of a game where customising and mixing/matching your equipment required crafting. In D&D, it's trivial to have a character with useful, customised equipment who doesn't make effigies.

Taking the Item Familiar feat has little or nothing to do with "crafting" so I don't know why you mentioned it; you don't need to build the item, you just pick out its abilities. Picking out abilities for an item isn't "crafting" any more than ordering from a restaurant menu is "cooking".

[MGuy]

Dnd 3E Effigies and Item Familiars.

Did you read my comment? I said I didn't know of a game where customising and mixing/matching your equipment required crafting. In D&D, it's trivial to have a character with useful, customised equipment who doesn't make effigies.

Taking the Item Familiar feat has little or nothing to do with "crafting" so I don't know why you mentioned it; you don't need to build the item, you just pick out its abilities. Picking out abilities for an item isn't "crafting" any more than ordering from a restaurant menu is "cooking".

What? In DnD there's a whole section about how o craft your own customized magic items. In Dragonmech (the thing I've been referencing) you have to craft your own steampowers. I don't know about mechwarrior but I know at least those two require crafting. In either case there's no reason we can't have a discussion about a hypothetical system when we're talking about what would hypothetically make crafting more interesting.

[hogarth]

What? In DnD there's a whole section about how o craft your own customized magic items. In Dragonmech (the thing I've been referencing) you have to craft your own steampowers. I don't know about mechwarrior but I know at least those two require crafting.

I have no idea what you're talking about. I've made dozens of D&D characters where I've been able to customise and mix-and-match their equipment without doing any crafting. Please explain to me how I was required to do so, in retrospect.

[hyzmarca]

Dnd 3E Effigies and Item Familiars.

Did you read my comment? I said I didn't know of a game where customising and mixing/matching your equipment required crafting. In D&D, it's trivial to have a character with useful, customised equipment who doesn't make effigies.

Taking the Item Familiar feat has little or nothing to do with "crafting" so I don't know why you mentioned it; you don't need to build the item, you just pick out its abilities. Picking out abilities for an item isn't "crafting" any more than ordering from a restaurant menu is "cooking".

Technically, nothing you do in an RPG can be considered crafting, unless the minigame has the player physically forge a sword to specifications in order to obtain his +2 keen vorpal rapier (which would be cool, but expensive and time-consuming). No matter what, the player is just picking features out from a series of lists. It doesn't matter if he then pays a little extra GP to outsource his craft roll. It's really the same thing. Ordering custom material to specification is ultimately the exact same thing, mechanically, as paying extra resources for an autosuccess.

[shadzar]

If this was a Yugi-oh story arc where they're playing tabletop, this is the part where true Yugi comes out and challenges Hogarth to a shadowgame.

Wasn't the plot of the D&D story arc of Yu-gi-oh that the villain trapped the heroes in the miniatures that represented their characters or something?

Anyway, the original topic of this thread wasn't about finding the parts to be used for crafting, it was about how to make the assembly interesting.

well Yami did get taken back in the shadowrealm to where he relived the events of the past with the others there with him and they were seeing through their predecessors eyes as to what happened. so they were trapped in the past i guess in the "cards" or stones in the shadowrealm...

it would really depend on what you are making. forging swords all day is done with some hand waves and dice rolls. hunting a rare ingredient for some potion could be an adventure in and of itself. EVERY component needed for something being an adventure ALL the time, would get boring fast.