Crafting, Encumbrance, and dealing with "Stuff" in game

[MGuy]

People are going to want to make stuff, people are going to have to carry stuff, and players need to know how these things work. I actually have a lot of notes about crafting. So there are some things I know I'm definitely going to be doing with it. This thread, just like the abstract wealth one isn't intended to be exclusively about what I am doing. I think crafting and encumbrance and what people can do with 'stuff' in their games is important in any ttrpg. I'm sure people have made a lot of considerations about it and this thread will hopefully be able to collect everyone's current thoughts on this subject.

I'm going to start this talking about encumbrance and will come back with my thoughts on crafting later. Encumbrance for me is going to be pretty simple. It's the same thing you more or less have had in rpg games for decades. Equipment slots. Anything not being worn in a slow must be carried. Either in the character's hands, obviously, or they have to utilize a 'carry slot' provided by something they are wearing. Some things are heavy for their size and a character carrying a 'heavy' load is encumbered. A character's might determines how many heavy loads they can carry at maximum before being over encumbered.

[Thaluikhain]

Encumbrance rules always seemed like an annoying headache to me. Yes, you do want to have them, but having to leave some loot behind cause you can't carry it all (or suffer penalties) doesn't seem fun.

[Koumei]

If the game is very much all about this stuff, with the [combat, diplomacy, stealth, chase] sections being relegated to quick background minigames, then yeah, go all out on it. It can be fun to play with a crafting system ala Atelier ___ and Mana Khemia. And Inventory Tetris in Resident Evil 4 shows there can be a fun aspect to that. But that's for when you want these to be the main game.

Otherwise, if it's largely like most existing RPG systems out there, you probably want to make them "There but also optional, and easy to leave out if people don't want to fuck around with those aspects". So the basic idea you've put forward there for encumbrance fits that - if you included it in a game like D&D or Shadowrun or L5R or World of Darkness, it won't detract much from the rest of the game. If you cut it out, it looks like that won't interfere with the rest of the game and create sudden problems.

[PhoneLobster]

I think the ideal for a tacked on crafting system is...

People who know how to use the thing, know how to make the thing. Making the thing isn't meaningfully cheaper or better for game mechanical benefits. But it might get you the exact specific thing you wanted instead of a near match or random alternative. If materials matter at all selling them is no better or worse than using them. And there shouldn't be elaborate recipes everything recipe or requirement related should be so intuitive that it isn't just like winging it you ARE winging it.

Anything founded in something loosely like that should be quick, easy, require minimal explanation and have little to no chance of significantly exploding in your face.

[erik]

The best new mechanic idea I've seen in any of the retro DnD clones was the encumbrance system from Lamentations of the Flame Princess. They don't really care about poundage, just whether items are significant as a unit. So you can carry X items to reach an encumbrance threshold. And if you have enough small items then bundled together (like arrows in a quiver, rations in a pack, papers in a case) then they can count as an item too.

You can also have a max lift load based upon strength, but that only comes up really in feats of strength rather than how much carried stuff slows you down when moving and fighting.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

I've shat out a simple encumbrance system kind of similar to LotFP. Every item is of Negligible, Light, or Heavy weight, and you can only carry a limited number of Light and Heavy items. Perhaps a certain number of Negligible items can become a Light item, but I feel safe in letting GMs determine when that happens as long as it's past double digits.

How many items you can carry depends on your Power, which is fairly tightly regulated and also related to feats of strength. It's also important to note that this counts the Equipment you're wearing, too. I'm still working on the actual weights, but my idea is that most bullshit items are Negiligible weight and nobody really cares about tracking them. So nobody really cares how many Potions or Pokeballs you're walking around with unless you've hit double digits or something. I dunno. Should I get rid of Heavy weight items?

[JigokuBosatsu]

I've always like edowars' "ABCs of Scavenging".

A items are Attachments, purpose built by the Ancients to attach to a Base item; for example, attaching a scope to a rifle.

B items are Base items, things that are already inherently useful; examples include guns, baseball bats, helmets, chainsaws, computers, medkits and the like.

C items are Consumables, typically used with Base items; for example, bullets for guns, batteries for electrical devices, gas for chainsaws…even bandages for a medkit.

D items are Details, basically bling added to an item for personalization, or a psychological boost if you prefer; things like hood ornaments, lucky rabbit’s paw, a favorite sticker and the like.

E items are Extras, basically non-standard customizations to make Base items better; an example would be adding nails to a baseball bat.

Intended for post-apoc gaming, obviously, but I think in any game where classes of loot/materials/etc. are well-defined, you can work with a scheme like this.

[Mechalich]

How many items you can carry depends on your Power, which is fairly tightly regulated and also related to feats of strength. It's also important to note that this counts the Equipment you're wearing, too. I'm still working on the actual weights, but my idea is that most bullshit items are Negiligible weight and nobody really cares about tracking them. So nobody really cares how many Potions or Pokeballs you're walking around with unless you've hit double digits or something. I dunno. Should I get rid of Heavy weight items?

The idea of Heavy items is probably conceptually useful even if characters are not expected to carry any of them regularly. The odd situation where the party has to carry something large and awkward - ex. a human body - an appreciable distance occurs with some regularity in games even if its not something anyone would deliberately set out to do.

[OgreBattle]

Theres a Japnese tabletop rpg where gear is a mini game like resident evil where you fit items of different shapes into a grid. Encumberance happens when you go over the grid borders.

[PhoneLobster]

Theres a Japnese tabletop rpg where gear is a mini game like resident evil where you fit items of different shapes into a grid. Encumberance happens when you go over the grid borders.

And people called my draw it on a stick figure inventory management scheme weird.

[Blade]

I don't really see what an encumbrance system bring to a game. (Unless your players love micromanagement)

If it limits the amount of gear you can carry, it means forcing players to focus on the same "optimal" gear and leaving aside other stuff that could be fun to play with.

If it limits the amount of loot you can carry, you're better off abstracting loot and have rules for "this is how much you get for the loot"

[PhoneLobster]

Maybe you've just never seen the true extremes of a pack rat player.

One day you just glance over and realize they've been just casually carrying around a shipping container worth of heavy metal armaments and 12,000 balls of string and enough furniture for a small palace in their 3 pages of individual small print entry 3 column wide inventory list....

Players and game mechanics should focus on optimal gear. If gear matters it shouldn't be an infinite pit of dumpster diving through a bunch of trash items on a turn by turn basis.

You do want a limit on how many items you can use at once, and also limit how many you can carry at once and a have a limiting real but hopefully sensible cost for transferring items between the two. If the game MUST include storage rings of manhwa cultivators then those should have their own rules and limits as well. Not every character should walk in with utterly unlimited unmanaged anything goes inventory space.

If you just let players keep a list of every "possibly fun" item they like then someone in an average sized group of players will Guybrush Threepwood every single item they ever rub their face against in game.

And then one day they say "well in that case I will hit it with that 3 Ton ruby ballroom chandelier from five adventures back, what do you mean where would I even carry that, It's like in my backpack or something".

The problem is that D&D's encumbrance system has been historically balls and that largely seems to have set the standard. Hell. We shouldn't even call it encumbrance. That's like, a separate thing the necessary rules on limiting character inventory meltdowns should be called something like "inventory management rules".

Because actual encumbrance rules are for weaklings. (no really weaklings shouldn't be allowed to carry heavy stuff...)

[Blade]

One day you just glance over and realize they've been just casually carrying around a shipping container worth of heavy metal armaments and 12,000 balls of string and enough furniture for a small palace in their 3 pages of individual small print entry 3 column wide inventory list....

So what? What does it actually change in the game? How does it make it worse?

I actually find the concept of the rogue who always has the exact item he needs at the right time to be funny and more interesting than telling the warrior "I know you have a '+2 against undead sword' but you didn't bring it here"

[PhoneLobster]

So what? What does it actually change in the game? How does it make it worse?

It bogs the game down in administrative wastage and rewards the player who exacerbates and tolerates that administrative wastage ahead of players who focus on interesting items key to their character concepts.

In fact it's basically a fairly perfect example of a player attempting to find an exploit to leverage control over the game play in a bad way instead of exerting control over the game in a good way.

I actually find the concept of the rogue who always has the exact item he needs at the right time to be funny and more interesting

I was never that big on the loony tunes.

than telling the warrior "I know you have a '+2 against undead sword' but you didn't bring it here"

Either your somehow at all limited inventory system has enough room for a highly specialized sword in your spare slot or whatever, or your adventure structure gives enough warning for it not to be a problem, OR...

...Or such an item is just a shit item. There can be a place for highly specialized context specific options even when option selection has you know, any limits.

IF however the only thing keeping your +2 vs Undead sword relevant is infinite inventory then I'm going to suggest your +2 vs Undead sword is a pretty shitty item.

[OgreBattle]

I don't really see what an encumbrance system bring to a game. (Unless your players love micromanagement)

Treasure haul games are like that. You're laden with gold artifacts, there's a rickety bridge to cross. You might scheme a way to cross without dropping loot, risk the bridge breaking, fall into the bridge and lose the gold so you choose to follow it downstream or abandon it and go on with the gold rod still in your trousers.

Death Stranding, getting overburdened with loot you pick up along the way then some cyber cavemen start throwing electro spears knocking stuff off as you haul ass. Then you sneak back to steal their truck, running them over and filling the truck with their goods. You drive the truck back but it starts raining, the clear path is now full of monsters so you risk crossing the river which may swallow your truck up. All of that is heavily dependent on encumbrance and mobility.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Jeez, PL, could you not describe my in-character behavior so well, please? I am that guy who has spent 5 minutes looking at my inventory sheet trying to figure out how I could Rube Goldberg my way out of whatever situation I was in.

I think historically, shitty encumbrance rules have soiled the whole mechanic for most people, so they just ignore it and have a video game-like hammerspace up their asses where they store every item they've ever laid their grubby hands on. Forcing players to maintain shorter inventory lists means they can go through them quicker in the heat of the moment and is more likely to make the PCs prepare for upcoming adventures. Now, if that preparation is "I throw all my +2 swords in the trash because I'm only bringing my +4 sword", then that's not very interesting. But if it's "I'm not sure whether or not I should bring some bombs or a hammer in addition to my +4 sword I use all the time anyway", then that's probably what we're going for.
Plus, if you have a limited inventory for most players then you can just bake pulling items out of your ass into the Rogue class itself, so it's amusing and thematically appropriate. The Fighter who carries ten thousand swords is only an anime trope that gets made fun of anyway. Geralt only has two, and he does his job just fine.

[MGuy]

A game is a game because you create artificial obstacles for yourself or others to hop over. Sure when you're operating within those limits it might be fun to posit 'what if this particular obstacle wasn't here' but the obstacles are the point of the game. They are there for you to engage with. So the point of any limitation or obstacle is that you intend for players to engage with it. Choosing to bring equipment that is important or handy for your quest is a bit of a game in and of itself. Whatever you want players to engage with will be something you're going to have to ask yourself about when you're designing your game. I make my design decisions primarily on what I am interested in. There are things I don't want players to engage with, like fiddling with pocket change, and things I do want players engaging with, like managing their character's personal life. There are even degrees of engagement that differ based on my arbitrary whims. I want players to have to pick and choose their gear but I don't want them tracking it by the gram.

[MGuy]

So I was going to make a longer post for this thread over the weekend or even just a few days ago but unfortunately I ended up getting tied up by getting a bit sick and dealing with a slew of birthdays (including my own). Ahh well. I'm not in a hurry here so I figure I can see what leaks out of my brain here and fix it up later if I need to.

So on to the business of crafting. There are a few ways I've seen crafting handled in quite a few games. When I was searching for good ways to handling crafting rules, most of the games I looked at had nothing. Very rarely the system was too granular. The rest were just kinda bad in one way or another. I think a few months ago I realized that I didn't even know what I ultimately wanted out of a crafting system. I had a feeling but just having a feeling isn't very useful. I had to go deeper and I used the same method I used for making most of my design decisions. I asked myself a lot of questions about what the purpose of the thing is and what I wanted from it personally.

What do crafting systems do?
Firstly crafting systems allow players to make stuff. Obvious I know, but this is where we start. I highlight the fact that is allows players to make things because you do not want to bother using these rules for NPCs much. Most things players will encounter in your game will already be made and I don't think there would be too much value in trying to figure out how the things get made.

What does crafting do at the table? Other than eat up table time, it's a special kind of 'shopping' players get to do, to create whatever. Typically crafting is cheaper than buying things and allows for players to add their own personal customization to their loadouts/equipment. The rules also serve to inform players what they 'can' make. In the games I saw crafting systems in a lot of them don't seem to assume that players are going to make things that aren't listed unless that system explicitly says so. Even then there are guidelines (of course) as to what a player can make that might not necessarily be listed.

What do you want out of crafting? First let me zoom out for a bit. I want each part of my system to be engaging. I want each part of my system to 'add' to the core gameplay loop in some way. I want each subsystem to be something that players can decide to invest little into. I want each part of the system to reflect what the players have accomplished in the game.

So zooming back in I want a person to 'feel' like a craftsman through this system. I want them to collect materials from their environment and turn that into custom gear. I want that custom gear to reflect the adventure the character has been on. The places they've been and/or can access. I want the players to make interesting decisions with the customizations they make to their gear.

When I say 'feel' like a craftsman I'm of course meaning the feeling of playing a game like Monster Hunter, and similar games, where the gear you get is largely a result of successful outings and what you create determines how you approach challenges. Also in some ways it can determine how easy it is to overcome those challenges.

I also like things like dragonmech, an old 3rd party 3.5 product you can actually look up on these boards. Much like the spell building systems you can find in a number of rpgs (or kind of how psionics worked) I like the idea of being able to get a bit creative with the effects of things you can build and customize through tech. I'm looking to do a sort of industrial magitech esque setting so it would be lovely to get something where you can get a bit inventive with the properties you can apply to your equipment.

This would go along with what you'd expect from a crafting system otherwise. Cheaper mundane gear, fiddling with lists of materials, etc. Importantly this would largely be a downtime activity with the exception of simple things and perhaps consumables.

How are you going to achieve these goals?
Compromise.

That's going to be an important part because, while I'm not afraid of having to do more work than would be necessary. There are definitely a few easier ways to just have crafting be a thing without it being a big deal. What I want though has to be limited by the fact that I can't work on this for infinite time, even if it's a very slow boiling back burner project to begin with. Some things I'd like would be a nightmare to try to balance if I am not careful with the content I add. There are other concerns but I think I've made my point.

I have to approach each part with my mind set toward brevity. So I want there to be different ingredients that change depending on area/creature the players get to/conquer? Well to do this I'm going to break ingredients down into some basic types and give them two modifiers. There are (currently) 5 tiers of the game, which will serve as the first modifier. The basic types will be limited to 10 or 12 which will make it easier for players to remember at least the basic bits easily. What I have down so far are pretty general descriptors like Mineral, Liquid, Meat, Essence, etc. I've played around with the list here and there but I stay at the same numbers. Lastly would be the special modifier. Things like elements, luxury, alchemical, etc are added on as the last modifier. I've kept the number of these down to about 12 as well though I am a bit more lenient with this part and might allow even as many as 20 in total, though probably not more than that.

I suspect this will give enough different sets of ingredients that I think I'll be satisfied. It should be at least enough to distinguish between going to the volcanic region versus atlantis along with an urban crawl versus going to the web pits.

The next part will be figuring out how to allow players to combine different tech/magical effects to create usable custom equipment while hopefully keeping some semblance of balance. This is will not be an easy thing and something that I'll have to talk about in more detail later. There are a lot of pitfalls here. Having certain combinations be 'so' good that they are essentially considered a requirement is probably my biggest concern. Addressing it though is going to take a lot of time.

The rest of what I expect crafting to have is simple. Crafting a regular thing is very similar to just buying it at a discount. A player will exchange their downtime to get that discount and of course having the necessary materials (along with an asset/tools that allow them to work the materials) will get them an even bigger discount. I'm leaning toward having my game essentially guarantee large amounts of downtime, treating it with the same care as one would combat and exploration. Entire campaigns should take place over years which will allow me to avoid a common bug in the crafting system: Not having time to do craft.

All this is done with next to no rolls.

This is all I'm going to type down for now. I'm still working on just the list of materials whenever my attention falls upon crafting in my game so far. I plan on getting more specific with the gear in the game a bit more when I've got a satisfying amount of gear written up, which won't be any time soon.

[PhoneLobster]

You are starting to get into territory that is outside of what I have tried.

Basically because I looked at crafting recipes and said no. That was the line I didn't want to cross. I didn't want characters to be collecting a selection of what amounted to multiple currencies that they needed highly specific combos of to shop with.

It was just too fiddly to work with, and didn't feel like it would have anything near the pay off I wanted. Anyway, sometimes there just isn't room for more stuff like that in a system, I was already doing several creative things with currency and economics, throwing in something else that elaborate just didn't seem wise.

And so while I made choices about customizable items, special materials, materials availability, workshops, and what item crafting was for. Those choices and others are almost certainly going to be different because they were made in ways to facilitate a simplification and avoidance of crafting recipe shopping.

For a start I set my whole thing up on the assumption that it should be no big deal if you just ignored crafting outright and bought all your items in regular shops or the good old free pockets of your defeated opponents shop.

If you make this a big thing based on multi-component crafting recipes, I'm fairly sure it's going to have to assume that characters will be getting crafting components and that using them is pretty much required to receive standard expected items for your level/whatever.

And while shopping with simpler single currencies is something I think most non-ridiculous player groups don't have a problem with and you don't need rules or guidelines to try and prevent them from doing really really dumb wealth distribution antics. It's going to be a bit harder with multiple limited crafting component currencies and the possibility that only some players will have the skills/downtime allocation to be the nominated crafting shopper/s.

And in the end I am unsure whether the thing that makes someone "feel" like a crafter is rooted in recipes and component discovery. I think that could be a thing they do, but I think the thing that is the core of the experience is in getting (and providing) items that are different, useful, and in some way represented as important, unique or special.

To me that means a system that worries more about diverse item profiles as it's end point than diverse recipe profiles at it's start point. That and setting/GMing details rather than mechanical ones.

[MGuy]

I think that having a thing that a player has to 'learn' adds to the feel of whatever they are doing in a game. So if crafting is a thing that players can do I believe that having to learn, as a player, how to do it reinforces that feeling that they are doing something unique. I don't think that the 'root' of feeling like a craftsman is necessarily in ingredient collection or whatever, but that is the vehicle that I intend to deliver that feeling through. Everyone will be getting items. While I could do something as simple as make crafting a cheaper way to get an item it won't 'feel' any different than just spending currency to get it. I could just make a secondary currency like craft points that they can just substitute regular currency for but that won't 'feel' different than just paying for it with the standard currency. I believe that a few extra points of engagement are necessary to make the player 'feel' like they are doing something other than paying for the things they make.

[OgreBattle]

Crafting is usually fun as a function of “the things I found during my last sessions build up to making my character stronger”

I think it’s more interesting as a stand-alone mechanic in single player video games because you’re playing solitaire and not taking up other people’s time to gather the parts.

Fo tRPG’s I can picture the ‘opposite’ of assembling different things into one hint, where you have a ‘macguyver kit’ that can be ‘crafted’ into a tool needed for the current mission.

[Zinegata]

I don't really see what an encumbrance system bring to a game. (Unless your players love micromanagement)

Treasure haul games are like that. You're laden with gold artifacts, there's a rickety bridge to cross. You might scheme a way to cross without dropping loot, risk the bridge breaking, fall into the bridge and lose the gold so you choose to follow it downstream or abandon it and go on with the gold rod still in your trousers.

Death Stranding, getting overburdened with loot you pick up along the way then some cyber cavemen start throwing electro spears knocking stuff off as you haul ass. Then you sneak back to steal their truck, running them over and filling the truck with their goods. You drive the truck back but it starts raining, the clear path is now full of monsters so you risk crossing the river which may swallow your truck up. All of that is heavily dependent on encumbrance and mobility.

Except there's no reason why adventurers can't simply rely on a loot caravan to carry all of their stuff in the first place. That's what real armies did in history, so why can't adventurers simply hire a caravan or magically control one? Having scenarios where they have to protect the caravan is the exception, not the core gameplay mechanic.

Most games, I would wager, are better off simply setting out encumbrance rules for combat. Because it's obviously dumb if a fighter has his entire collection of 16 swords - one for each elemental weakness type - strapped on his back just because his strength allows him to carry that many. Define how many primary weapons, secondary weapons, and consumables they can actually use in a fight and have the players define their usual "loadouts". It's not just a strength issue, but also a space issue.

If the party eventually realizes their loadout is flawed and they needed a fire sword instead of an ice sword, then they either need to spend some time back in the caravan to switch out, or learn to work around the problem with their existing gear.

Don't get me wrong - Death Stranding is a good game. But its entire premise is that you're basically a delivery boy, and the world is specifically constructed to make the world hostile to normal delivery in the first place. Only make encumbrance a major part of your design if "Fantasy Delivery Boy" is the core concept; otherwise it's added unnecessary complexity.

[Dean]

Except there's no reason why adventurers can't simply rely on a loot caravan to carry all of their stuff in the first place. That's what real armies did in history, so why can't adventurers simply hire a caravan

The explanation for that is in the games premise: that there are adventurers. The premise that there are adventurers is the historically anachronistic assumption that there are individual people so badass you hire them instead of 100 dudes with spears. That also means there is historically anachronistic opposition like manticores and ogre mages and trolls and all sorts of threats a soldier is absolutely not fighting for the 2 silvers they get as a paycheck to be here. The world is chock full of things that would totally grab a caravan of gold that wandered by without an adventurer present to stop them from doing it.

I agree that sending your gold back home on a wagon should have a chance to get there, sending it with more guard should increase that chance. But it seems super normal that doing so would be just another way to spawn encounters for the hero where they have to go and kill the Troll that took your gold.

[MGuy]

Crafting is usually fun as a function of “the things I found during my last sessions build up to making my character stronger”

I think it’s more interesting as a stand-alone mechanic in single player video games because you’re playing solitaire and not taking up other people’s time to gather the parts.

Fo tRPG’s I can picture the ‘opposite’ of assembling different things into one hint, where you have a ‘macguyver kit’ that can be ‘crafted’ into a tool needed for the current mission.

Some table time is fine. Downtime is a big part of the game I intend to create. Where combat is going to be it's own tactical minigame, exploration is going to be more hex crawly minigame, downtime is going to be a minigame of its own. I expect characters to spend actual time planning out and pursuing personal goals in it and everything. Developing contacts/connections, maintaining their assets, self care, and crafting stuff are all the kinds of things I expect players to be doing.

[MGuy]

I don't really see what an encumbrance system bring to a game. (Unless your players love micromanagement)

Treasure haul games are like that. You're laden with gold artifacts, there's a rickety bridge to cross. You might scheme a way to cross without dropping loot, risk the bridge breaking, fall into the bridge and lose the gold so you choose to follow it downstream or abandon it and go on with the gold rod still in your trousers.

Death Stranding, getting overburdened with loot you pick up along the way then some cyber cavemen start throwing electro spears knocking stuff off as you haul ass. Then you sneak back to steal their truck, running them over and filling the truck with their goods. You drive the truck back but it starts raining, the clear path is now full of monsters so you risk crossing the river which may swallow your truck up. All of that is heavily dependent on encumbrance and mobility.

Except there's no reason why adventurers can't simply rely on a loot caravan to carry all of their stuff in the first place. That's what real armies did in history, so why can't adventurers simply hire a caravan or magically control one? Having scenarios where they have to protect the caravan is the exception, not the core gameplay mechanic.

There are a lot of things armies do I don't expect players to do. For my game though, there is nothing wrong with the players hiring a caravan to carry their stuff (provided they can pay for and protect it). That's actually a good thing. It shows progress that at some point the players won't have to worry about lugging all their gear to and from whatever dungeon because they'll get a wagon, then an entourage, then a flying ship so that they are not even walking to their destination. So to the question of why players can't hire a caravan I'd say, "at some point I expect them to".