Can crafting ever be fun / interesting in a game?

[ishy]

First, let me clarify what I mean by crafting.
I'm talking about the process of making stuff into other stuff. (hereafter refered to as crafting)
Note:Not just talking about magic items, but also poons and stuff.

I can easily think of ways to make the gathering resources, getting tools, getting a craftplace or the result parts interesting, but I can't think of anyway to make the crafting part interesting or fun.

3.x just turns it into a craft roll + amount of time spend (depending on wealth and what you craft).
But imo, people just take 10 because they don't give a shit about a random d20 roll for this.

Would the game really change a lot if you just make it an autosuccess so people don't have to learn rules that are not interesting? Unless of course someone else can think of a way to make it interesting?

[hogarth]

In a game, I generally like the "main story" without too many side quests. And certainly you could have the main story in a game be about finding resources, tools, recipes, etc. I agree that making a "Success: Y/N" roll after all of that would be pretty boring, though.

[Dean]

I feel like poon crafting could be fun and interesting

[Avoraciopoctules]

Dominions 3 makes crafting fairly interesting. You automatically succeed at making stuff within your capabilities, but your capabilities are measured by 8 different stats, each of which can be changed and is also used for other things.

In addition, there are things you can do to change the cost of making something.

[name_here]

There's this video game series about doing alchemy and incidentally beating the shit out of things for reagents. It's pretty popular.

Though I'll admit that the "Success Y/N?" at the end will inherently be boring because you've just wasted all the stuff you've done, but the only adjustment I can think of is making it more rolls, which wouldn't be very interesting.

[angelfromanotherpin]

I always kind of liked the GURPS Powerstone enchanting system.

• You can try to add any number of points of capacity to a stone, one at a time - each is a separate roll, which requires its own time interval.
• Any failure adds a quirk, which is usually a limitation on how the stone can be recharged (e.g. only while immersed in water) or used (e.g. only while standing on one foot); but might also have a direct external effect (e.g. smell of brimstone, briefly numbs user).
• A critical failure destroys the stone.

So the general process is that a skilled worker can turn out small flawless items pretty reliably, but that big powerful ones will frequently have a pile of restrictions on them (and for simplicity's sake these should often be similar enough that they blend together, so an item that doesn't work on Monday nights eventually just doesn't work at night and so on). And people who push too far lose their investment.

I think that could be profitably expanded with a little effort. I'd incorporate using adventure elements like monster parts to let people re-roll or ignore fail and crit-fail chances within certain limits (no endlessly farming zombie bits, maybe parts only help with abilities similar to the monster's own, maybe tie monster CR to ability potency, etc.) so people with a big valuable item could hedge their bets when improving it. I'd probably also turn crit-fails from 'destroyed,' to 'needs quest to restore,' so people can repair their swords in mystic lakes and win back their magic hats from demons.

d20 baseline doesn't work too well, because the d20 is too flat; a die pool system like Shadowrun's or Framewerk's where the crit fails become far less likely as you increase in skill would be better. I'm not sure how I'd implement that in d20; maybe slowly scale the TN and implement a skill-rank based number of rerolls?

[Hicks]

The only time my wife ever wanted to play Traveller was when the ship was in the shipyard; it was the only time she ever would pore over the rulebooks, just to kit it out.

[fectin]

I spent much more time working on crafting (times, resources, etc) than anything else while playing Exalted. It was fun.

[Emerald]

d20 baseline doesn't work too well, because the d20 is too flat; a die pool system like Shadowrun's or Framewerk's where the crit fails become far less likely as you increase in skill would be better. I'm not sure how I'd implement that in d20; maybe slowly scale the TN and implement a skill-rank based number of rerolls?

You could institute a rule for a minimum result on the d20, like "if the result on the die is less than 3/4*ranks, treat it as 3/4*ranks" or something. That wouldn't have the same curve as a die pool but it would eliminate the low rolls.

The only time my wife ever wanted to play Traveller was when the ship was in the shipyard; it was the only time she ever would pore over the rulebooks, just to kit it out.

I have one player in my Star Wars Saga group who only ever plays Use Computer- and Mechanics-focused droid nobles with stupid amounts of credits for the same reason.

[shadzar]

i enjoyed making meat pies in EQ. waiting for a raid with nothing else to do, craft some pies and get lots of money from them in the bazaar and talk to people while you stand there letting the script sell your items, or ignore it and go auto-sell mode and play another game or search for your raid guide and such.

[Koumei]

I'm not sure crafting can be interesting until it emulates this.

I mean, the Atelier ___ games are awesome. But the crafting in that works a lot better for a video game, because it involves:
[*]Exploring - constantly roaming the place for weird ingredients, and I've yet to see ingredient-hunting work well in a tabletop game (maybe the closest would be to have optional ingredients that add interesting special effects so if you happen to find a snowrose plant in the game, awesome, your Staff of Vines or Poison Powder gains a special Ice effect but it isn't required)
[*]An addition to the above point: harvesting monster bits. Now usually that's "you killed a dragonmushroom, you gain arcane spores", it doesn't show the actual Repo scene. But that's the same problems as above plus "it's annoying to actually go searching for X low-level monster to slaughter just for its bits" and it's kind of icky (maybe you could simplify it to general rules of "X has magic natural armour. If you skin it and make it into leather or whatever like for normal things, it's now magic armour" and "If you use demon bits to make an item, it is demonic")
[*]Big recipe books, often with surprise results so you thought you were making a Witches' Chalice, but because you use high quality water and a slightly different herb, you actually made a Storm in a Tea Cup. You can't really do the hidden/discovery bit in a game when the rules are right there to read, and hiding rules from players is stupid. Also, do we want 100 pages of recipes? (Note: definitely find a way to incorporate using normal recipe books, that'd be awesome)
[*]The actual mechanics for making the stuff are simple and handled by the computer. That is the least involving part.

Obviously I wanted to make it happen - I made the Mana Alchemist and Gadgeteer after all. But I'm not that happy with either of them.

[OgreBattle]

I'm not sure crafting can be interesting until it emulates this.

Those girls... so... moe~
What's the artist's name?

[Koumei]

Mel Kishida - illustrations and character design. Kishida was brought on starting on Atelier Rorona, and has been kept on for Atelier Meruru and Atelier Totori and will probably be a keeper because, well, so much moe.

[Mask_De_H]

I'm not sure crafting can be interesting until it emulates this.

Implied drug-enhanced lesbian shenanigans?

[tussock]

Stealing from the combat system always works. Making an item could literally include summoning and trapping an elemental or something, while stopping it from destroying your tools and lab assistants, and then finding some unwilling high-level Fighter to stab to death with the partly-enchanted blade for extra bonuses.

Tail of a cockatrice is where you have to let the bloody thing out of it's cage and wrestle it in person on the alter. Enchanted gemstones actually throw random spells at you while you tap them into place, and deal out big random dice of lightning damage just for kicks. Want to make a Wand of Fire? Yeh, guess who's getting burnt. A lot. And guess what fire resistance stops from happening. That's right.

[OgreBattle]

I can easily think of ways to make the gathering resources, getting tools, getting a craftplace or the result parts interesting, but I can't think of anyway to make the crafting part interesting or fun.

Yeah, all of my suggestions would involve the "gathering materials" component being fun. After that you just put it in the magic pot and your magic item comes out.


This is how FFXIV is doing it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-v8WeZX4QQ

Materials have a Durability that goes down when you work on it. When it hits zero the progress stops.

The two main options for crafting are...
-The safe, standard method which will get the job done, create a decent quantity.
-The riskier method which may end in failure but increases the chances of a HQ (masterwork) quality item being created

You then have special limited powers to use like "Master's Touch" which adds durability to the craft.

So basically you have a limited resource to go for reliability, quantity, or quality.

As you go up in crafting levels you have a higher chance of creating HQ low level items, and access to creating more high level items.

And more powers that do stuff that I don't know about yet



*God damn, the Atelier girls are as innocent and seductive as delicious fancy little cakes. I will have to create a setting where miner/alchemest race are all little girls with hammers, flasks, skirts and bloomers... and conveniently the underdark is filled with slimes and tentacle monsters.

[Lokathor]

In Diablo 2 you get a thing and you put it in a slot of an item and it makes the item get extra powers based on what you put in the slot.

Alternately, you'd get several things, put them in a magic box, and your reward would come out. The fun was in learning what you needed and then finding all the things. The crafting part was just a button click.

So I think my answer is, "I'd rather have crafting be a single roll, or even an action that doesn't take a roll, and the main part being the ingredients hunting". If the process of getting the ingredients is at all a bother, then I don't want to ALSO have to bother with a crafting minigame to get them put together.

You could do some sort of game where you can buy the ingredients in a shop for small amounts of money and then the hard part is getting them to all craft into a thing, but I'm not sure how much people would like that, because it'd probably be less mysterious if you weren't hunting for things.

[Prak]

I feel like poon crafting could be fun and interesting

What I'm wondering is what exactly you're crafting, there... medieval fleshlights? Evergreen trees? artificial women?

I spent much more time working on crafting (times, resources, etc) than anything else while playing Exalted. It was fun.

Yeah, one of my favourite roles in Runequest is that of the party enchanter. It's a lot of fun taking the guidelines of what spells there are, what effects are codified, and runic affinities and using those to either reliably turn out simple, useful effects, or craft something bigger and more impressive (and seeing what the GM gives you based on their interpretation of what you did). For example, a party member had a pet sylph/air elemental. It was pretty small, but could grow bigger if fed. He's new, so he couldn't really guess at what sylphs ate, but with my experience, and character, I was able to guess that they just ate power. So between Enchantment-Spell Effect, the spell True Tap Power (ie, drain power from opponent, get power for self, rather than magic points), and the core runic affiliations of the character, beast/air/death, I talked to the GM about creating a medallion that syphoned small bits of power from the character's slain enemies to be fed to the sylph. When all was said and done, we wound up with something that had to be attached to the character's weapon, which would channel the power from a slain enemy, through the hammer, him, and then into the sylph.

Similarly, the most fun the Mushroom Men DS game, to me, was combining dropped loot into new weapons and trying to find something strong and useful from combining tacks and pencils and batteries and shit.

An addition to the above point: harvesting monster bits. Now usually that's "you killed a dragonmushroom, you gain arcane spores", it doesn't show the actual Repo scene. But that's the same problems as above plus "it's annoying to actually go searching for X low-level monster to slaughter just for its bits" and it's kind of icky (maybe you could simplify it to general rules of "X has magic natural armour. If you skin it and make it into leather or whatever like for normal things, it's now magic armour" and "If you use demon bits to make an item, it is demonic")

The other thing to do about this is to just embrace the fact that at a certain point, there will totally be a market for reagents. If you don't feel like hunting down lemures for 9 pints of Ba'atorean Ichor, especially given that you only get about a cup from each, due to the messy slaughter, you can seriously just go down to the shop and buy the stuff that someone already harvested and sold to the shop. This is basically what you're doing in D&D when you craft and give up thousands of gold. The other side of this is that cash strapped parties get their own motivating force, so that rather than walking into the bar and basically holding a sign saying "will do any job for booze/hooker money" they just go out into the forest, kill a bunch of Strangleshrooms, then bring back the harvested Cough Spores to sell to the magic shop, or directly to wizards.

Big recipe books, often with surprise results so you thought you were making a Witches' Chalice, but because you use high quality water and a slightly different herb, you actually made a Storm in a Tea Cup. You can't really do the hidden/discovery bit in a game when the rules are right there to read, and hiding rules from players is stupid. Also, do we want 100 pages of recipes? (Note: definitely find a way to incorporate using normal recipe books, that'd be awesome)

Hidden Discovery doesn't need to be codified. If the players/MC want it, they can add it in. The book can encourage it, but it doesn't need to be codified in anything more than a "MC: don't be a dick just because you can" manner.

Implied drug-enhanced lesbian shenanigans?

Maybe that's what Poon crafting is?


But, so basically, I'm agreeance with people here that the interesting part is in ingredient hunting, whether that be going out and killing basilisks for eyes to grind up and turn into a reagent for a wand of stone shaping, or looking over your spells, random magical substance/material/etc. and what enchanting can do and figuring out the right combination to get what you want. I think the hidden discovery bit is also fun, but that it needs to be almost entirely table side. That or random table, because if it's in a rulebook, players will read it, or MCs will try to hide it from them, and that gygaxian hidden rule bullshit is fucking pants on head retarded.

[Parthenon]

The only way to make the actual crafting fun is to do something like the Papa's series of games (A list of games including the Papa's series).

For those that don't want to try them, you run a restaurant where you craft food in increasingly difficult ways, with increasing numbers of options. The Jacksmith game is a similar game where you actually craft weapons and you get a choice of parts and can upgrade them in many ways before they get used to fight enemies.

But those are flash games with real time skill, time pressure and trying to fit things in order. And even then it gets boring after a couple of hours. I don't see the actual crafting in a TTRPG being fun.

[Chamomile]

It occurred to me while playing Jacksmith that you could port it into an MMO and have a great crafting mini-game, but you can't translate it into a TTRPG. It relies on literally nothing else but hand-mouse coordination and timing. The only equivalent would be if you played Jenga when crafting or something.

[PoliteNewb]

It occurred to me while playing Jacksmith that you could port it into an MMO and have a great crafting mini-game, but you can't translate it into a TTRPG. It relies on literally nothing else but hand-mouse coordination and timing. The only equivalent would be if you played Jenga when crafting or something.

Even if you went the Jenga route, it wouldn't work...because crafting is tied to player skill, not character skill.
So the hypothetical jenga master's PCs are all awesome at crafting, regardless of whether they are clever, dextrous gnome smiths or dumb, clumsy ogres who only recently discovered how to knap flint.

[Surgo]

Crafting is usually immensely satisfying in a video game, but this has never transitioned well to a tabletop game. I wonder what piece is lacking?

Of note, that sort of crafting is often of the "gathering materials" sort. Rarely is it ever attempted to make crafting its own minigame.

[hogarth]

Crafting is usually immensely satisfying in a video game, but this has never transitioned well to a tabletop game. I wonder what piece is lacking?

In a video game, it isn't crafting per se that I like. It's the sequence of constantly getting newer, better, cooler loot that's fun. In D&D, I usually get the loot fully formed in treasure hoards instead of having to assemble it from two purple flowers and three wolf pelts, but it's the same principle.

[Ice9]

Crafting is usually immensely satisfying in a video game, but this has never transitioned well to a tabletop game. I wonder what piece is lacking?

Depends on which video game, but part of it could be the sense of "tactile fun", which doesn't really carry over to a TTRPG. For example, building a house is fun in Minecraft, even if you just make a fairly simple one. Saying "I build a cabin out of 16 logs and 55 planks" is not the same at all, nor would adding some rolls help much.

As far as the "many recipes / hidden recipes" thing goes, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, it's fun in a lot of games. On the other hand, Dungeons of Dredmore has that, and it got so convoluted trying to remember which things I needed for each component part and what had to be combined in what order and how that stacked up to the gear I already had that it was completely demotivating. I didn't get past the first five floors or so until I found a build that didn't require crafting.

[Ice9]

The concept of discovering things in a game where the rules are already known is an interesting one though, and something I've been working on. Here's a possible concept for crafting:

Aspects - Components have aspects. For example, Roc feathers might have the aspects of Air, Strength, and Predator. Most of these aspects are known (and in the book), but some are rolled/decided the first time an component is encountered, secretly by MC (but then written down, and true in all future cases). Components probably also have a level.

Crafting Stuff - Items have a few requirements: A list of required aspects, a component level (sum of all components used), a skill level, and in some cases a required ratio (at least 50% Fire, for instance). This is all public information, in the book. Also, they can have factors that modify the component or skill level needed, which are determined (once) by MC and kept secret.

Improved Stuff - Items can have additional requirements (either public or secret) that give them improved powers if filled.


Example:
Bob wants to craft a flaming sword.

Flaming Sword
Aspects: Fire, Hate or Courage, Iron or Tooth
Component Level 15, Skill Level 5
Secret: Earth hinders (doesn't add to Comp. Level), Sun improves (sword is dazzling to enemies)

He collects red dragon's teeth (providing Fire, Hate, and Tooth, among other things), and some deep magma (Fire + Earth) to get a higher ratio of Fire involved (not needed in this case, actually). He provides 10 levels worth of dragon's teeth and 10 worth of magma - but since Earth hinders, that's insufficient. At this point, probably do some kind of roll to see:
* How much material you were able to salvage
* How precisely you can identify the failure cause
* If you can turn it into a success by making the item flawed

Bob rolls well, saving the majority of the components and realizing that the magma was what made it fail. At this point, the reason could be either the Earth aspect on the magma, or that magma has another unknown aspect that's causing the failure. Bob tries again, substituting salamander blood for the magma and succeeding.

For figuring out the pitfalls ahead of time, or determining stuff that's hard to stumble onto, like Sun enhancing the sword, you probably want some kind of research skill that can be used (at the cost of time and consuming some materials), as well as looting/trading for the recipes of other craftsmen.