Crafting Systems

As previously mentioned, I've been playing TTRPG games for quite a while, and developing/modifying them for the past six or seven years. In that time I’ve seen a lot of different approaches to the same ideas by different homebrew developers. Interestingly, I've noticed that there are an unusually high number of homebrew rules for crafting systems, usually as the designer first projects. I figured this would make for a good springboard to start talking about tabletop development.

The most common approaches I've seen are those that appear to be inspired by the crafting systems you might encounter in a video game. That is to say, you need specific resources which are combined to create items. At this point, we've already run into what I would consider a design problem with how tabletop games play out. While the distribution of resources is something that a computer can handle automatically in something like an MMO, in a tabletop game it’s ultimately down to the dungeon master to describe what there is for players to interact with and facilitate their actions with the world. This means that for each player that wants to craft, say, a healing potions, we enter a flow of asking where to find some arbitrary resource, asking to collect said resource, repeating for other required resources, and then asking to craft the item. The actual process of all this is difficult to fit naturally into the flow of a game, particuarly when you have players interrupting your train of thought by asking to make fungus harvesting checks because you stupidly put a mushroom covered log on the battlemap for decorative purposes, meaning you need to take a 5 minute break to go consult your list of mushrooms to figure out what color mushroom you want to distribute in this area (and while you're doing that, you get a sinking feeling about the herb-shaped plants on your next map).

I'm not saying that I think crafting rules can’t work in a tabletop game, but rather that any crafting system must be designed so that it plays to the strengths of the tabletop medium, rather than the weaknesses. The best implementation of a crafting system I’ve personally seen was during a Dark Heresy campaign where we came up with a plan that required our tech-magos creating a t-shirt cannon (it made sense at the time). The DM thought for a moment and made the following ruling: “This guy in the market sells boxes of junk. If you want to craft something, do a tech check and I’ll tell you how many boxes of junk it costs to make it based on how well you roll”. This was a blast to play with because it skipped straight to the actual crafting and describing what we were making, rather than the gathering of the resources. Boxes of junk became a sought after resource in that campaign because depending on how we rolled on our checks, it enabled all sorts of alternate solutions to problems, with the DM adding special rulings as the specific crafting idea required it.

What I like about this approach is that it's easy to remember for players, and easy for a DM to iterate on. Need a scope for a weapon? One junk box. Need to set a trap? One box of junk for a triggering device, and a weapon for the damage we wanted it to deal. You could even try implementing different sets of generalized resources to fit your campaign, or be more detailed in what the materials they gather look like when gathering them (while not restricting their use in crafting). Have a setting where you think a custom potion brewing system would be cool? That’ll be 3 units of alchemical materials. Want to craft a sword in your downtime? That’ll be two boxes of crafting parts and access to a forge. Oh you got those crafting parts when you asked the DM if you could loot that dragon skeleton four weeks ago? Sounds like you have a sword made of dragon bones.

The “Box of Junk” approach is great in that it plays to the strengths of a tabletop game. It turns inventory management into a creative alternative that can be used as needed. A DM can easily say that the crafting resources are scarce if the players are trying to mass produce a particular item in abundance, and alter the difficulty of some crafting checks as needed. A skilled dungeon master might even say that something a player really wants to craft can only be found using a resource from a specific location or creature, creating a plot-hook for their next adventure.

One of the interesting things is that when we compare this to other crafting systems based on video game systems, we can see some similarities in how both systems accomplish the same goals. I think a fun exercise would be to consider what the implications would be of implementing a game mechanic into a different medium "as is". The box of junk approach wouldn't work as well in a video game, due to the computer not having the creative capacity to handle the varying requests, and the recipe system from a video game requires too much work to run effectively at a tabletop game.