Craftsman

[Rai]

Crafting has not been implemented successfully in any game Ive seen thus far. UO almost had a decent system, but there wasnt many interesting things to craft. There needs to be rare componants, limited componants, such an assortment that if a craftsman wanted to smith a sword this is how he would start:
A hilt either forged himself or found, this hilt can have \"sockets\" (for lack of a better term) crafted into it by a skilled craftsman, he must then choose a blade, either by folding one from rare or magical metal, or to have found one already, also have a wrist gaurd with benefits; but do not limit it to just one way of making items, people should be able to design weapons and armor with specific benefits, or rare benefits from rare drops.
Food and beer should possibly have an important role in the game also. And the craftsmen should be able to invent and create new foods by combining ingrediants from different lands. Foods need a real benefit though, possibly faster stamina regain, or quicker hitpoint recovery. But make sure they are different from potions and alchemy; food should have a longer effect than potions and not as strong of an effect.
Componants should be easy to come by, and put rare componants on named creatures, like Snuff the Red Dragon: drops between 10 and 20 red scales used to craft red dragon scale armor that has mystical benefits.
That is all for now, Im sure Ill rethink it and write replies.

[kinshadow]

Well, any craft can be as complex or as simple as you want to make it.  For instance, in RL I have been an apprentice blacksmith for the last 3-4 years (off and on).  \'Smithing (especially in a fantasy setting with all its possibly exotic materials) can be made extremely complicated if the author wants to take into account metals, alloys, forging methods, tempering, etc.  Each step in the forging could alter properties ofd the blade (sharpness/damage, how it keeps it edge, hardness/hp of item, etc.)

Other skills can go on the same way, from baking to basket weaving.  I guess my point is I am wondering what level people would want.  Perhaps a two sided system: You either chose to let the game decide (ie I just want a damn sword, tell me what I need) or you chose the individual methods (Here\'s what I have, here\'s my skill, what do I get?) to get the result you want.  More expensive processes (different ores, forges, tempering agents, etc) could work as effective gold sinks.  This would also create a more diverse player made item market.

[[shem]]

Well, any craft can be as complex or as simple as you want to make it. For instance, in RL I have been an apprentice blacksmith for the last 3-4 years (off and on).

kinshadow

what game is RL?

[kinshadow]

Originally posted by [shem]
what game is RL?

ROTFL! RL is an abreviation for \'real life\'.  I am a real (as opposed to role-played, DND, UO, EQ, blah, MMOG, blah) apprentice blacksmith.  Its just a fun/recreational thing.  We make swords, armor, trinkets, etc for local SCA groups and the Texas Reniesance Festival.  We do some side art work and what not, but most of the stuff we do is either personal or contract (profits go to improve the forge/workshop).  I got into it in college (Texas A&M) and occasionally drive back to work on projects.

Blacksmithing itself has many levels of complexity.  If I want to make a sword, I figure out how much time I\'ve got.  If I\'m real lazy, I just draw it up in Auto-CAD and have Alamo Steel laser cut the damn thing.  All that\'s left is sanding, edging, and screwing on some hilt.  If I have time, then I bang the thing out of a hunk of iron.  This takes a LONG while and real depends on what tools you have available (size/temp of forge, metal I\'m working with,etc) and the type of project (knives made out of rail-road spikes are a lot easier than a 1000 layer katana properly cooled ).  

Thus, any good  crafting system should try to capture this \'level of complexity\' into player-created items.  Really cool things (ie Mithril Broadswords with special balancing for ambidextrous characters, blah, blah) should take a good amount of skill, a good amount of time, have a higher chance of failure, and be worth the effort put into them.  Like-wise, no-benefit short swords should take little time/effort/money and be easy for a beginning \'smith to pump out for friends and cash.

[[shem]]

ahhhhh, good points btw

[Culsoron]

Wow, a real life blacksmith making swords, that will be helpful in the making of the in game blacksmithing rutines. Again, wow ! I have bearly touch a sword, and I dont know much, but I agree with whatever the blacksmith says !

[Pegasus]

Maybe i can contribute some good ideas to the discussion(and eliminate some problems with those).

What if unique/rare/magical items (or however you want to call those) can only be made by players.
In many games there are certain creatures who drop (by a certain chance) a rare item - this results in camping the location of the mob spawn most of the time.  

Furthermore the crafter could have his name embeded in the sword (so that its recogniseable).

To make it more complex (and to prevent one geek from crafting his whole life to have other people beg on their knees to get special items) players would have to decide in what category they want to specialise. For instance you could only do ranged weapons or close combat weapons (etc.)

Also if you specialise in a category you are already skilled in (for instance an archer would do bow crafting) you would get better results.