Hi, I''ve been thinking about how I would implement a crafting system for my RPG, and I came up with 2 ways to do it. The thing is, I''m not sure if either of them is perfect. I know that many people like having some control over what they "craft" in online games. Basically there should be lots of components around and lots of different skills to transform them into each other (or into finished items), in different ways, some of them having meaningful effects, while others are purely aesthetic (sp?). This is also important for the economy. The first one is a kind of a chain of components. For an alchemist to make a potion, he or she would need to boil some weird reagents together, creating a different reagent, then it would mix this with some other reagent, which could be obtained in some other way, etc. This is similar to real life and allows for lots of complexity, but that''s also a problem Also there''s no control over the "blueprints", it''s perfectly possible for someone to post everything on the internet. I was hoping that with enough components this wouldn''t be an issue, could turn out to be quite cool... but I''m not sure. Another one, much more generic, would be so that blueprints/recipes/formulae are kinda like items, they''re owned by players. So either your character knows how to cook a decent meal or it doesn''t (sorry it''s really late and I''m kinda low on examples ) . You can''t read recipes on the net. Some blueprints could be learned at special schools or guilds, run by other players, as rewards or simply as an apprentice progresses. Any player could "teach" a blueprint to another one, but each one has a quality factor that degrades with this. So not everyone would know how to make the best claymore in the game, some details would get lost as the information spreads. You would need to ask a master blacksmith or go to a blacksmithing guild/school ( ) to learn that. Actually I think this could be a lot cooler. It would be nice if you could be the apprentice of a great blacksmith and slowly learn how to make a better claymore (up to a certain point, a bit below the master''s level). Teaching could take lots of time (depending on the quality of the blueprint), and crafting too, which blends nicely with my offline activities system (your character works while you''re away). Well, after writing all of this I think I like the second idea best. What do you think?

I like your second idea better also. Maybe players could improve their blueprints through trial and error or crafting repeatedly.

Arcanum sort of did this. There were blueprints that you automatically earned through skills and there were purchaseable blueprints with a required skill level. Maybe you could make simple items to be crafted without blueprints and only really powerful items need blueprints.

Here are some of my thoughts on MMORPG crafting systems, and aspects that should be changed...

Currently the problem with most MMORPG crafting systems is that crafters spend an inordinate amount of time making ''junk'' equipment just to gain skill increases. For every item a crafter actually sells to a player that needs it, they make hundreds, if not thousands, of others that are just sold to vendors or trashed just for skill increase. The balance needs to be shifted. Make item creation more complex and more time consuming, and make advances from item creation more frequent.

Making a simple sword... Within a fantasy environment, I think this should require the crafter to create from complete scratch, from beginning to end. First, he has to go mine the iron ore from the local mountain mine. Next, he has to gather some coal as well so that he can forge himself some sturdy steel, or he can just use the iron and cast himself a not some valuable, not so durable, iron sword. He has to go to the blast furnace and heat the coal and iron to get his steel slugs. Then he goes to the blacksmith forge and heats and hammers at his slugs to turn them into a blade The player should have to keep track of how hot the steel is, if it''s too hot, it melts and he has to start over, if it''s not hot enough, his hammering is less effective and it takes them longer.

And that was just the blade. He still has to make the hilt and grip for the sword, perhaps having to harvest the wood, strip it, round it out on a lathe, chisel or saw it for the blade (or perhaps sear fit the blade into the wood. Then you need some animals skins to soak, cure, and tan into leather, and weave that leather over the grip.

If on the one hand you have a system where a player can make item X 20 times in 2 hours, and he has a 1% chance of skill advance per item, and then you have a system where it takes the player 2 hours to make a single item X, but with a 20% chance of skill advance (or whatever chance is required to equalize the two scenarios), you''re on your way to an actual player economy.

Require the player to go out into the world to get their resources. Take advantage of mining, harvesting, foraging, even scrounging/scavenging skills. Even require them to group with other players to obtain rare valuables from dangerous lands (or dangerous monsters) Resource sharing could be allowed, would make for faster turnaround times, but the downside there is you end up with players highly specialized in only one aspect of the process. You''ve got the blacksmith that can forge a blade with the best of them, but he can''t mine the ores or combine the raw materials into the final composite metal to complement those forging skills. A Master Blacksmith is going to make a mediocre blade with mediocre quality steel. So, if he chooses to rely on the master miner and master ore processor to make his master weapons, that is his choice. Specialized consumable stones could also be involved in the process of sharpening and polishing the final blade. Then you''ve got the potential for magic and alchemical enhancements.

You''re just never going to have a viable player economy with a crafting system that floods your market with tons of low quality or low value items that''s necessary for crafter advancement. There are certainly numerous other hurdles to overcome to obtain such an economy, but most of the crafting systems out there currently essentially make such an economy virtually impossible.

I prefer the 1st option with changes; I''m somewhat in agreement with Raskell''s concepts.

I don''t like the idea of specialized blueprints, especially not in a (supposed) medieval setting. I''d prefer the open idea of mixing various reagents for different reactions. Some work, some work better than others, most combinations may not work at all (and should have varying degrees of adverse effects, depending on the "intensity" of the reagents).

But if you create certain standard templates that will ALWAYS make "Formula X" or "Item Z", and allow the player the option to mix and match different types AND qualities of raw materials...you open up a world of possibilities for the crafter. Add in things like dyes and scents (which your alchemist can also make) and you get personalized touches for effects.

Looking for those raw materials - or paying others to get them instead - become mini games in and of themselves.

Give the player the ability to "create" formulae in-game, recording them in some player-kept book - and give them the ability to sell these "recipies" to others, perhaps in a trade window. A particular recipie, stumbled upon by luck, could become the hottest commodity in the game world.

Then base the success ratio of these combinations off intelligence stats and knowledge skills, and you can either have great, knowledgeable crafters or dabblers whose stuff is more often than not junk.

The recipe system is just the ticket. It''s similar in concept to the "knowledge as item" concept that''s been discussed before. I think that being able to acquire knowledge and exchange it would be superb. However, there are two additions that must be included: Proficiency and innovation.

Proficiency: You should be able to be better or worse at something. I think that a standard practice-to-get-better system is appropriate here. You might have a "recipe" for a great hat, but until you''ve spent some time learning to make hats and trying to make that particular hat, you won''t be able to do it very well.

Innovation: Once you become an expert hat maker, it should be possible to gain access to hat "recipes" that nobody else has. Perhaps a random chance to invent a new hat could be included.

Here''s an idea: Combine the two systems, so that you can learn recipes, not for entire items, but for components of items. Say a wizard''s hat is a combination of "pointed hat" and "magical thread" and "glowing cloth". Your character would learn, from schools or books, how to make a pointed hat, how to work magical thread into the seams, and how to handle the magical cloth that makes up the lining of the hat. If you took a course in "wizard hat manufacture" you would gain rudimentary skill in all three of these skills. Then you could increase your levels in each to make awesome wizard hats, or else you could use the pointed hat skill with your metalworking skill and your visored helmet skill to make a sugarloaf helmet.

If you try to make a really nice felt hat with a light-emitting ruby on it, and your hat-making is through the roof but your jewelrymaking skill is a little rusty, you''d make a really good hat with a mediocre light-emitting ruby on it. A sword might be a two-man job. A bladesmith would produce the blade and other metal parts, with all the metallurgical and technical elements there, and then a leatherworker would make the scabbard and grip wrap for the hilt. Maybe a belt, too.

Great ideas!! Iron Chef Carnage made a good point that it''s perfectly possible to mix the two. So for you to be a weaponsmith you only need to learn the "recipes" for creating whatever weapons you want, but it would be better if you could forge the steel yourself, as well as the handle and scabbard - which are just other items, with recipes that can be learnt.

With a simple scripting engine this could be really flexible. When you try to "mix" a list of components together and say that you want to create a specific item using them, the code that checks if the components are right and creates the item could be a script, so it''s easy to add a new possible component for anything, with any effect you might want (the script checks for the correct components and creates the finished item according to their quality and attributes - like if you want to create a sword using a polished gem too, the script adds a socketed gem to the sword).

There''s another question, which system is better if you use a crafting system like this: having an item that contains other items, or a simple item, based on a template, just with some special attributes according to the base items? The first one could make everything too complex (checking for the quality of the steel of the blade of a weapon to calculate damage and stuff like that), and the second one is not very flexible.

Hmm, which is better...?

Maybe, again, you could have both but have entirely different results from them. Perhaps you can have a "simple" method, where a wizard/enchanter/alchemist can add a tincture and/or enchantment on a weapon that will give it a specific special property. That could be extra damage, a flaming halo, a lightning strike, a vampiric effect, etc. - but in doing so you lessen the overall longevity of the item itself. Perhaps it could just be a "charge" that has a limited number of uses/time frame, and once done the item itself is damaged. The item can also only be enchanted once, and once discharged it just becomes a lower-grade item than it was before the enchantment. This would keep the price of such services low and readily available to the "everyman".

At the same time, you can forge an enchanted item from scratch. It will be involved, expensive, require a lot of resources and time and perhaps the combined efforts of blacksmith and wizard to create - but the end result is an "epic" item that will make others drool. It's special abilities don't degrade over time, and the weapon itself isn't damaged by the process because it's included. Very few people would have such weapons, and - depending on the game mechanics - would become much-sought-after items in their own right. The mini-quests for obtaining the materials for those items could be legendary on their own.

The former method results in the casual trinkets - Ring of Strength, Belt of Feather Falling, Boots of Speed, etc. The latter method results in the Excaliburs and Stormbringers of the world.

Here's a question I've argued about with others in the past: should everyone have the ability to check an item's quality/abilities, or should you have to go to an expert and have it evaluated? Should such evaluations be broken down by type and character class (i.e., a wizard looking at the quality of a sword)?

[edited by - EricTrickster on April 22, 2004 12:02:03 PM]

K, this ideas is kind of random, but... There's this kind of toy called a snake which consists of 24 triangular prisms fastened in a row, so that you can twist them relative to each other but they can't come apart. Extremely simple - yet you can make a large number of unique shapes with it, and despite havinghad one of these toys since I was I child, I just discovered a new shape in the one I was playing with yesterday. A celeste orb an a rubiks cube are similar types of toys. Why not hae a crafting system like this, where there are a small number of base elements and the player can manipulate them to get to a large but finite number of functional configurations out of them? Also, the player might have to earn these base elements one at a time, thus having new technologyto experiment with whenever he found one.

A slightly different example would be the computer game the incredible machine, where the player can use different simple physical objects like tennis balls, walls, balloons, ropes, scissors, etc to make rube-goldberg type machines that accomplish ome purpose or other. Again, if this wasa subsystem of an rpg you sould set it up so the player had to earn access to each construction element during the courseof the game. I think either of these models would make great crafting system.

[edited by - sunandshadow on April 22, 2004 1:39:56 PM]

Sorry for taking so long to reply but this thread got out of the first page, so...

I already have that system covered One of the main features of my RPG is that you can craft "epic" magic items using a system similar to The Incredible Machine. Most RPGs that allow these free-form magic systems have reagents that simply "add fire damage", "make it an effect of X radius", "target self", etc, breaking the immersion because they all work with "points" and game terms, which is really stupid if you think about it. If there WAS magic in the real world, a magic item would look like a machine, with the reagents working together to create the desired effect. You can think of it as a really weird in-game scripting language

Ok, where were we... well, the recipe system is cool, but how do you actually create an item from different components in the game? If you can create a spear using a bamboo pole and a silver blade, and putting some feathers at the tip (used in oriental martial arts to distract and confuse the enemy), how would you model their impact on the weapon? I can think of 2 different ways, either you have a generic spear object that contains the bamboo pole and blade objects (and maybe the blade contains a silver object, and so on), or at the moment it's created the script tweaks some stats and choses a different image. You can see that both of them have pros and cons.

About the recipes. So someone who knows how to make a sword has to tutor you, teaching you how to make a sword, and you would start out creating mediocre swords but as you learned more and more, the quality would also go up. It would be cool, travelling half the world just to find a master smith who can teach you the secrets of his superior quality claymores Some of them could be trade secrets fiercely protected by a powerful guild. Anyways, how would these recipes show up in the first place? Maybe with some kind of a research system?

[edited by - Jotaf on May 6, 2004 12:56:46 PM]