Poll Crafting

[AlmightyTDawg]

Well, in that case, no point in building anything at all. This would be more work that the builders of all the other crafting systems engaged in.

No point in even having the vote. Why keep teasing the ALFA membership when you will set so many standards that no one will ever want to build for ALFA?

Bear in mind those are just my recommendations. I come from a very formalist background, particularly when working in a group setting like this. When I've worked through things here, I've a) tried to figure out the rough specs I should be working to, even in just broad terms, b) demonstrated meeting those specs, c) aimed for reasonable buy-in from interested parties, and d) documented like crazy. But if you just kind of produce something and wonder why people don't fawn all over it (and coming back with the knee-jerk "omg everyone in ALFA is critical!!!11!one" is even worse), well, that's kind of why.

Let's be very clear on this. You can screw up crafting pretty bad if you're not careful. You can also err on the conservative side and make the documentation side of things a relative breeze, and find no one uses it in game cause it's more or less worthless. When it'll probably be the most "hassle" is when it kind of skirts the line. Given the number of insane implementations of crafting there are, I figure everyone understands it's not a binary thing. There are a boat load of things you can tweak along a continuous spectrum.

Any designer's gotta understanding with crafting the in-game ramifications of what they're doing and the combinatorics potentially involved. If there are more or less valuable things that are partly or heavily dependent on resource population models, they've got to hedge strongly against that in their builder guide. If there are particular recipes that might be sketchy, you can either customize the odds/resource system or you can put it in the hands of builders ("don't put the mithral two zones from town, for example").

When I said I don't care, don't think that I don't fully recognize the value of a pre-built, ALFA-standardized auto-static. On the other hand, I also recognize how bad you can screw it up (if you're craft-happy and turn it into a cash cow), and how worthless it can be (if you take very conservative philosophical interpretations of time and tie it to DMG values) in the other direction. It means that somewhere in the middle, just from a design perspective it's a pretty hefty intellecutal challenge. Then you get the uncontrolled feature of how a builder chooses to implement the resource model, which again can take normal things and generate unforeseen consequences. So even when your work's done... there's more still to go.

Different people draw that cost-benefit on their time commitments differently than I do. For me, expanding NWN's domain system was worth the effort. For me, mundane crafting would not be, but I will be happy to work on the design/theoretical side with anyone willing to take it up as a project, and I'm sure I can cajole Standards at large into the same.

[Rick7475]

Well, back when Ulias was around I was toying with the idea of doing a crafting system, but everyone differred to him, so I built a server instead.

But realistically, I have a feeling that no matter what is built, it will be subject to so many reviews, red tape, and negative assumptions, which I see now before you have even seen any of my ideas, its just not worth it.

I would rather do a crafting system than a start-up server, but hells, if this is what I have to go up against, then I'll just settle for playing.

I can count a dozen highly qualified builders that we have lost because of the sheer magnitude of the wall that is ALFA negativity.

[AlmightyTDawg]

I promise anyone who wants to build anything of that sort that I'll tell you what my problems are, what I think their consequences are, and how strong my concern is. I can't guarantee how ALFA as a whole responds, but we've got a functionally simple, practically complex role right now. And that's to keep things in a relative numerical harmony. There are some general principles to do it, and I tend to work decently at examining the minmax of a system.

But to implement a workable system should not mean satisfying everyone. It doesn't even mean having a foolproof system. It just means you have no game-breaker bugs, the overall doctrine/principle is well understood and inline with other systems (harmony), and you have a system for evaluating performance and making tweaks later on down the road.

That said, if you really pull a bonehead on the basic design, you've gotta be willing to be called on it. Just because someone's going to do work doesn't mean it follows that it should be implemented. And that's not personal - it doesn't matter who works on a mundane crafting, DM crafting, population modeling, or any other kind of system. There's just the results - and it's no shame to have something with errors cause it's not easy stuff we're talking about here.

I wouldn't worry about general negativity - but not all criticism is bad either. I've always argued that when on forums, you have to apply a filter between the people who are just making comments, and the people who are saying something substantive and working to a solution. That ALFA needs more/better static material, by now, should not be in huge doubt. That it should not measure up even in base rewards against DM'd activity has never really been in doubt. The basic canon measure that not all, most, or possibly even many adventurers should be coin-earning crafters is probably a reasonable starting element. Pick up from those and go if you're interested, I say.

[Ronan]

Well, Almighty basically said everything I was planning to earlier. I've got more time now, but my internet connection at home is so poor its pretty difficult for me to respond to anything. It should be fixed on friday, I'm told. Since I don't know when I'll be able to make another post, I'll make this one a long one.

Now, you guys voted me in as your Tech Admin. Granted I wasn't running against anyone, but I'm still here. You all know that if I'm recalled, if I don't run again, or if I'm not elected again I'm not going to suddenly stop doing tech work for ALFA. If I put in a crap-tastic crafting system which causes people to boot me out of office, I'm not going to pick up my ball and go elsewhere. If I do leave ALFA it will be because its direction diverges from my interests, and my interests are in creating an immersive version of the Forgotten Realms which fosters RP. I really like the Forgotten Realms (though likely not as much as Spider Jones does), and I hate to see it compromised, especially when its not necissary. I don't think you can create an immersive version of FR with inter-connected servers spread out all over the map, and I don't think you can do it with most or all of the crafting systems on the Vault. If you disgree with me your certainly welcome to remove me from office or not re-elect me. I'd probably get more work done then anyway.

So if I support an automated crafting system, it will have to be faithful to FR's economy and lore. And thats not as bad as it sounds, since smiths and artisans do make decent money in many places. Nothing like magical crafters or adventurers, but they certainly earn a lot more than your silver-piece-a-day dirt farmer. This works from a game balance standpoint as well: pure crafting should just not be as rewarding as pure adventuring. I don't think this needs much explaination, pure crafters don't accidentally step through illusionary floors into pit spikes which kobolds have covered in feces. They sit at home and hammer on a forge. Worst case, they mistakenly smash one of their fingers with the hammer.

This does mean that normal resources will not be hard to find. You won't need to go looking in orc-infested caves for iron ore. Most ore would be purchasable from human, dwarven or gnomish miners. So I can't really see how purely mundane crafting would be a group activity. Other, less mundane, materials are different. Dwarves are greedy little gits, and they aren't going to sell precious mithral to some clanless adventurer. D&D (see the Arms and Equipment guide) and FR have quite a few special materials who's properties range in power. These materials could very well be used in the way NES suggests, though crafters would have to be prepared to spend a lot more time looking than finding (they are too valuable to be at all common). And that works well, since looking in the wilderness inevitably means something tries to eat you, so grouping up is a good idea.

On exploitability... This is pretty much completely a function of the system's design, but some exploitable elements are almost assured. Maybe more or maybe less than other forms of static content, but they will be there. We can work to minimize them of course, and overall I don't think exploitability is much of an issue if the design is a good one. It CAN be a large issue if the design is less ideal, but overall I can't think of any reason crafting would be more exploitable than other forms of static content (is anything truely as exploitable as a melee mob with NWN1's pathfinding?). One can wealth gain without xp and our wealth standards, but xp could potentially be awarded for crafting as well. It could be tracked, and perhaps only allow advancement in an expert class. There are really many possibilities.

The biggest argument that I see against crafting is simply the time needed to implement it, create documents builders can follow, and the vast effort needed to maintain consistance between servers and build teams. My answer to this is pretty simple: If someone wants to do it, I'll let them, and help out in small ways. I'm not really interested in crafting or ever playing a crafting PC, and I don't think its very central to D&D or FR. So don't expect me to finish or debug crafting scripts. From this poll, that seems to be the opinion of the average ALFAn as well. Most think crafting would add something to the game, but don't necissarily think its pressing issue.

If ALFA was a company, I wouldn't put many or any man-hours towards its completion. But its not, and talent and motivate cannot be directed at will. I didn't think T-dawg's domain work was important either, but its getting in with the 1.68 patch (and in the future I hope it will be easier for 3rd-parties to contribute to ALFA as a whole, the hakupdater's quirkiness currently makes this a bit difficult).

Rick, Blackwill, or whomever, if you put a team together that makes (or uses, there may be something totally suitable on the vault for all I know) something which meshes with ALFA, I don't think anyone will have a problem. You can mathematically compare the gain-rates of crafting vs. other forms of static content under our standards. If they come out significantly less, I don't see how anyone could really object. Builders may not want to be bothered adding crafting resources to their servers, but then maybe they won't have to.

[alynnrobinso]

Just a question....

Would crafting for hobbies and/or fleshing out of PCs be done via DM or on some kind of automatic system? For example, the things that PCs might make for themselves or as gifts for friends or whatever, not necessarily as a source of income.

Just curious about the implementation ideas, since it could be different from 'economic' crafting, and that seems to be what the discussion is centering on.

Thanks!

[Rick7475]

Well, I have some ideas on how it could be done, both on paper and with scripting. I could do it over 6 months or ealier.


Who is currently the lead person on crafting, or is there anyone?

[Fionn]

I think that I am technically, but most of our work was on *magical* crafting and standards. Mundane crafting was never going to be a cash cow if you go by DMG, and so we kinda lumped it in at a portion of the magical rate IIRC.

This had little to do with resource placement, recipies, etc. If you have plans for such, and plan to deal with Ronan an TDawg's concerns, *PLEASE* let me/us/ALFA know. It may be better to handle this as a small group to avoid 'Teh Wall' of negativity ;) Just don't pull a Ulias' *grins*

[Blackwill]

Just a question....

Would crafting for hobbies and/or fleshing out of PCs be done via DM or on some kind of automatic system? For example, the things that PCs might make for themselves or as gifts for friends or whatever, not necessarily as a source of income.

Just curious about the implementation ideas, since it could be different from 'economic' crafting, and that seems to be what the discussion is centering on.

Thanks!

This is mainly about mundane crafting a whole. If you want to make an items now in ALFA for own purposes or as a gift you can contact your local DM. This is centered on a system that should then do both "hobby" and "professional crafting".

BTW, Rick, Ronan, give me a few more days so I know where I stand.

[Fionn]

We're never going to have a crafting system that allows you the freedom the toolset does to make custom appearances, names, descriptions etc (or at least not likely). Any custom item you are making for a friend would almost certainly be a one-off issue, and done in the toolset. This requires a DM to import, even if you make it yourself.

No reason you can't RP whittling by the campfire every night. I can even make a useable 'knife' that emotes *whittles*. Assume most of these are either discarded or give to children. On occasion, ask a DM to import a Walking Stick (MW Quarterstaff) with a custom appearance and description.

Scripted crafting serves a completely different purpose IMO. It allows you to create large quantities of pre-defined goods. While we may support MW Weapons & Armor, this would not be the custom work I picture from your "as gifts for friends or whatever, not necessarily as a source of income".

[Blackwill]

We're never going to have a crafting system that allows you the freedom the toolset does to make custom appearances, names, descriptions etc (or at least not likely).

Custom appearances shouldn't be a problem.

[Rick7475]

LP made scripts to customize armor, we can make scripts to customize crafted armor and weapons, shields, and so on.

In fact, I would even go so far as to replace the some of the customization the NPC's do (that is what LP's script did) with players that craft instead. Simple customizations, such as adding cloaks, or other none armor (or non-crafting elements) can be done by NPC's, but major changes (such as a sword blade appearance or hilt, or shield painted design or armor plating) can be down by player crafters.

Naturally, there can be a lot of discussion on this, but let's just see what we can do with the new toolset before we rule out anything.

[Fionn]

We're never going to have a crafting system that allows you the freedom the toolset does to make custom appearances, names, descriptions etc (or at least not likely).

Custom appearances shouldn't be a problem.

Hopefully NWN2 allows full access to the color pallette, but the client we currently have does not. This is discounting patches that add additional content not included in the original script.

We *can* account for all that for the very few PCs that wish to craft and occasionally wish to make unique gear for IC friends. I just agree with Ronan that it's far more trouble than it's worth to build and maintain. OTOH, we can simply allow players to toolset their own items and send it to a DM.

I'm assuming most of what will be crafted is MW gear and expensive/rare armors/weapons. We can certainly allow some choice in appearance (and mabye even name) - this is not the same as what the toolset can do for 'special' items.

[Nerine]

*booming voice* Listen to the wisdom of Nerine...

I’ve played on quite a few NWN PWs over the last few years and have thought a lot about this for my own PW project, I have the distinct impression that crafting for most is just something to do while the DMs sleep. I like the flexibility crafting gives to players but I also agree fully with comments made earlier that PCs are adventurers and thus very unlikely to have any IC reason to craft mundane items – Enchant or bless specific items yes but spend hours stitching the soles onto boots … nope.

Also I’m not a fan of visual customisation of existing weapons - clothes & certain armour types okay but not weapons – realistically that would require a major reforging or whatever of the item and would just not be practicable.

I’d rather see merchants extended to also produce custom (appearance) MW or low level enchanted items at a lower price if the materials are supplied by the PCs (maybe even for free – read ‘as payment’ - if they supply a lot of the material in question). This will still give PCs something to do without having to watch Conan try to thread a needle. Instead we have a barbarian hunting for a particular hide that a shaman can cut into a cloak and bless or a rogue seeking out quartz crystals that a shady craftsman can make into lightning traps – a lot more believable in my over inflated oppinion. The questing/harvesting bit of crafting remains in place without any of the big "Hoy! Stay IC!" issues.

Everything else can (and I think should be) be crafted by a DM.

Oh… and I’ve found (myself included) that a lot of the hunger for crafting can be avoided with a good selection of *takes a breath* low reward, reasonably safe, periodically repeatable static quests – which on the whole ALFA has been very poor at – and I’m chastising myself too as since becoming a DM here I’ve added none.

So my vote doesn’t really fit the poll – as usual, but to summarise…

1. Add more repeatable static quests.
2. Allow PCs harvest materials.
3. Have the merchants do the crafting.

The scripts are not difficult, I'm writing them for my own PW project at the moment but can be ALFAised if you mangy lot ever manage to reach a decision.

[Creslyn]

Nerine's idea seems to be the best one put forth so far.

[Ronan]

Little "gifts" with custom descriptions, names an appearances are actually do-able. NWN1 allows items to have their names changed, and NWN2 will allow it with descriptions. This is something that I think players would use, and it may take a lot of load off of DMs. Don't just think of items here, but also books.

One issue here is the sanctity of said items. Currently all custom items are provided by a DM. So a DM knows that if a PC has a harper initiate pin, it was given by a DM. If we allow a PC to craft a harper initiate pin, we've got a problem. Fortunately there are workarounds for this, such as a stamp of the item's maker which only DMs can see (NWN2 will provide dynamically generated descriptions). With appraise checks already getting built-in for all items, we can even prevent someone someone's "golden goblet" crafted out of wood from appearing expensive.

Anyways, I'll expect a post in NWN2 technical detailing the specifications of this system once you guys get it more nailed down. Unless someone has a very good reason otherwise, I'll expect it to be based off of 3.5's crafting skills (so Conan can try to thread a needle all he wants, but he'll suck at it like he should unless he's invested ranks).

NPC crafting with raw materials certainly seems like a good idea, but I think the framework behind that is so similar to allowing PC crafter that offering both makes the most sense. The crafting options in both instances can be based off of the relavent craft skill.