From: beregar
Date: 2002-01-13 00:50:19
I'm not sure about what kind of item creation system you are planning but I'd suggest that knowledge of item creation should be based on "blueprints". A Blueprint is something that explain the player character how to construct an item. It does not need to be something on paper or a book but it could be something that another player can teach to other.
So players could in essence only create items of which they have some knowledge. Scroll type blueprints could also be valuable source for an adventure. I think these blueprints should only give basic structure of the item and players could expiriment with different materials. Blueprints, however, could describe items for different races for example "katana" blueprint could be common knowledge for some Brahjian type tribe where as "warhammer" could be for dwarves.
A blue print is something that a player can memorize sort of like a truename except that it remains in memory forever, or perhaps it starts to fade if person doesn't use that blueprint very often. I also propose that players should be able to write down blueprints as well as directly teach blueprints for other players. This way they could rememorize them from books if they have forgotten how to do something.
I also think that blueprints should be of different quality (detail level) and the better the explanation in blueprint, the better is persons knowledge in the items construction. If person already has a blueprint and he gets better version of same blueprint by some means, that new blueprint should override the excisting. Blueprint should give a significant bonus or penalty to item's creation depending on how detailed it is.
I suggest this system mostly because it is clean and effective solution for item creation and to make skills for individual items unneccesary. Of course items should still fall under category of metalworking, pottery, carpentry etc and when constructing an item they should make appropriate skillchecks.
About durability. I wonder if it is possible to efficiently calculate volume of an item. This way we could actually add properties like durability, fire resistance, cold resistance etc etc to material itself without having to place them in items because they would be automatically calculated based on shape and size of an item. I believe this wouldn't stress much hardware as calculations need only be once, when the item is created, and after that they are saved in item object's properties. Those properties could be of course modified by quality of the item. So, do you think this would be possible?
Beregar
From: darshan
Date: 2002-01-13 23:59:52
In-Reply-To: 164
I was thinking something vaguely along the same lines. There is no point in making separate "Create Weapon" skills for dwarves and hilosyphs, so we'll have one skill; yet we can't allow anyone to do anything with it, so the knowledge of specific weapons must come from within the player who uses the skill. This is what I was getting at in the "player startup knowledge" (or something to that effect) thread.
But the way you put it made me realize another point: since the knowledge of building specific kinds of items is stored in the player's head, it could be said that it's pointless to have separate skills for creating different kinds of items since the knowledge is all in the same place. I don't like this possibility very much, but then again my brain always gets easily stuck in a groove when something new comes up.
From: yorkaturr
Date: 2002-01-14 14:19:41
In-Reply-To: 164
In response to Darshan's considerations about it being pointless to have different building skills for different items: I don't see a problem here. Naturally, the blueprints would be categorized in rather specific groups. These could be weapons, tools, architecture, armor etc, and depending on both the material (metal, wood, bone) and the category of the blueprint, the actual skills required would be easy to pinpoint. For example, a bone helmet would require armorcraft and bonework skills and a wooden staff would require woodwork and weaponcrafting.
However, I do see a problem in defining the levels of the blueprints. By levels I mean how good a blueprint is, and how it affects the outcome. This is highly arbitrary, but certain rules must be applied in any case. I can see a number of possible ways the blueprint would affect the outcome. My suggestion is that the blueprint would affect the quality of the outcome in relation to the applicable skills. An example would be that a character finds a crumpled piece of paper on which a dwarven crossbow is described. It is highly inadequately documented, and can be described as a "poor" blueprint. Let's say that the blueprint's quality is 25 out of 100. Now, our character is excellent in working with wood, and he's a top-notch bowyer as well, let's say the character's skill is about 90. This would make the maximum quality of the crossbow something like (90 + 25) / 2 = ~58. Please note that the numbers are just mentioned for convenience, they should not or need not be visible or even on the scale I mentioned. Suggestions?
From: beregar
Date: 2002-01-14 15:57:26
In-Reply-To: 164
Well, I'm not sure if blueprints should be in itself categorized with a material as, I think, material should depend on the creator's choise. This doesn't mean it would make skills like boneworking and such unneccessary as item creation would still require a material check when applying the material to item... or was this what you said? :)
As yo your blueprint level suggestion, I was thinking along similar lines so it looks good to me. We have to test those numbers carefully though. This is because not only blueprints and skills affect the outcome, but also things like mental stress and perhaps tool quality affect to it too. We have to be allow players quite easily and quickly create standard items but to make it more difficult and time consuming to create more complicated items, otherwise we won't have that many smiths or any other craftsmen.
Beregar
From: darshan
Date: 2002-01-14 16:28:02
In-Reply-To: 164
Blueprints for ordinary items might not actually need an
inseparable material specification. I see no problem with
craftsmen deciding for themselves what to build things out
of. My original blueprint concept adjoining the modular building system did have the material specification as a
central aspect, but it can't be applied here, because it was designed to enable the sharing of construction work among many builders - which is certainly not a sane thing to do when you're just making small items.
