Crafting - Dynamic Model.

[LoD]

Crafting is one the greatest implementations that the game has seen over the years, but one of the things that I've always found lacking was diversity.  And I don't mean diversity in terms of the number of items that can be crafted, but the diversity in an individual's potential.

As I understand it, anyone at CRAFTING SKILL "X" will be able to make LIST OF PRODUCTS "Y" without any variation or difference between the two.  What I'd like to put up for discussion is a more dynamic way of distributing these crafting recipes to create a little more variety.

We've all run into the same problem before, where Stonecrafter Bob is trying to peddle his wares, when Stonecrafter Joe shows up with an exact replica of those wares in his bag to sell.  Wouldn't it be more exciting if there was some variety to what crafters could make?

How would this system work?  This is what I envision:

For the purpose of this example, let's use a made-up crafting class; Claymaker.  

Let us say that all Claymakers gain the ability to create the basic "pieces" necessary for later crafts (i.e. similar to pieces of bone, long wooden poles, etc...)  All further crafts would be taken from tiers of ability; General (15-20%), Moderate (20-50%), High (50-80%), Rare (80-90%).  None of these numbers have any relation to the game, but I wanted to define them for the purpose of this concept.

Anyone starting (or branching) the Claymaking crafting skill would be granted 10 random recipes from the General category.  To keep this short, let's say they learn 3.

General Category
a willowy, clay elf figurine
an oval clay bowl
a hardened clay spoon
a hardened clay cooking spoon
a crimson swirled clay pendant
a colorful, clay beaded bracelet
a hefty clay water jug
a miniature, crimson painted clay falcon
a miniature city of red painted clay
a small, blue painted clay locket

This is just a smattering of some of the recipes that could be included, but enough to present the concept.  So let's take a look at (3) random PC's that have created or branched Claymaking recently.

PC Claymaker #1
an oval clay bowl
a hefty clay water jug
a small, blue painted clay locket

PC Claymaker #2
a miniature, crimson painted clay falcon
a hardened clay cooking spoon
a willowy, clay elf figurine

PC Claymaker #3
a colorful, clay beaded bracelet
an oval clay bowl
a miniature city of red painted clay

Each of these players would be able to offer someone an item that the others might not.  It would create a sense of diversity and variety amidst the crafts, and place a need on people who have learned to make specific items that are in high demand.  There would be fewer "all-purpose" crafters in the game.

Crafters would also be able to learn and teach different receipes between fellow crafters.  Claymakers could swap recipes and have a chance to learn new ones simply through the process of making items.

Learning New Crafting Recipes

There would be a chance while crafting for your character to learn a new recipe.  On successful crafts, there would be a low percentage that your character might pick up one of the remaining recipes from the same category of the finished product.  Drawing from our previous example of the General Category, let's see how this would work:

>inv
You are carrying:
a small lump of clay
a small lump of clay
a small lump of clay

>craft lump lump
You could make an oval clay bowl.
You could make a hefty, clay water jug

>craft lump lump into oval clay bowl.
You begin molding the clay with your hands.

You mold the lumps of clay into an oval clay bowl.
You've learned something from this craft.

>craft lump lump
You could make an oval clay bowl.
You could make a hefty, clay water jug.
You could make a hardened, clay cooking spoon.

Displaying Known Recipes

Since this approach is meant to provide a character with a more specific list of items their character knows how to make, I'd like to also see a command that displays the recipes that character knows within each of the craft skills.  It might look something like this:

>show claymaking recipes
You know the following Claymaking recipes:
an oval clay bowl (clay)
a hefty, clay water jug (clay)
a hardened, clay cooking spoon (clay)
a small, blue painted clay locket (clay, dye, vine)

It wouldn't indicate how much or what kind of clay, dyes, vines, or other materials were needed to complete the craft - but give the player an idea of what they should look for to complete the recipe.

This all may take a lot more coding that someone is interested in doing, but I think that a system like this that encourages more variety, learning, and possible teaching between fellow crafters would make for an interesting and unique environment that adds another level to the game.

-LoD

[Lazloth]

Learning New Crafting Recipes

There would be a chance while crafting for your character to learn a new recipe.  On successful crafts, there would be a low percentage that your character might pick up one of the remaining recipes from the same category of the finished product.

I think the 'analyze' skill may be more applicable than random branching.

-

I don't know, I'm not a huge fan of this idea.  Geographic location will dictate variety by virtue of materials available (or cost of foreign goods); a claymaker, to further your example, should not have a big problem knowing how to paint one design on the lump of clay versus another.  S/he'd learn how to make it malleable, how to shape an opening or size it at a fairly early stage.  To me (in my non-crafting real world head), there's not much difference between creating a clay pot, a clay plate, a clay cup.

You, as a crafter, may run into frequent competition within the same market for similar goods, but again I don't see that symptomatic of a real problem.  If you have a trademark item (eg., you're some "master crafter") and want to retain the monopoly, don't share the recipe.

That's not to say the crafting system can't use additional tweaking - I personally wouldn't focus on the "subguild"/single branch line to variegate though.

[Dalmeth]

It occurs to me that the simplest way to establish an effect similar to this would be to simply add a variety of useful items to the crafts list and make sure a few of them can be sold at a decent price.  Then your problem of homogenous products is solved.

I do tend to think that most craft skills early on have just a couple money makers that people can make and the markets get flooded with them, but I find that the majority of the system LoD suggested is too complicated for something which could regulate itself.  However, the idea of making an object so much that you branch into a more complicated version of that object is worth looking into.

[Halaster]

I like the concept of the idea, which is to have all the recipes individually learned.  Someone would start with some and then have to IC'ly learn the rest.

Tiernan and I talked about this a few months ago, with an idea very similar to yours, LoD (WHAT ARE YOU SOME KIND OF MINDBENDER?), and we agreed "That's a swell idea .... you gonna code it??", and it was dropped there, heh.

[LoD]

Tiernan and I talked about this a few months ago, with an idea very similar to yours, LoD (WHAT ARE YOU SOME KIND OF MINDBENDER?)

Maybe.

and we agreed "That's a swell idea .... you gonna code it??", and it was dropped there, heh.

That's what I figured.  I wasn't proposing that someone go and code this specific idea, but entertain the idea for a different model of learning crafting recipes to create a little diversity and variety between crafters.

-LoD

[creeper386]

I agree with the idea as a part, but it really seems to me that the craftable items would need to be much more varied and much more of them then it seems to be now. It may just be me but although there are tons of craftable stuff, I don't really feel there'd be enough to support that sort of idea.


But I do like the idea of recipes being individually learned to some degree, but I also think that it'd make crafting more difficult then it is. And for someone that is OOCily new to crafting it can be quite tough, unneccessarily so sometimes.