Magic Item Creation

[merxa]

I had some inspiration and wrote up magic item creation rules, I've deliberately tried to strip away dice mechanics (but have left some references for myself), I'm most interested in the flow and interaction in the creation of magic items, the goal being a system that's interesting for both the player creating the item, the other players that are impacted by it, and the gm.

**edit**
removing the 1d6 minute crafting time and setting it to a flat 10 minutes, its a needless roll as the central concern is the short time for the actual crafting. modified how using the wrong ingredients causes failure.
~~

Magic Item Creation

Travis-Tock
While there are many methods of creating magic items, most adventurers these days are only familiar with the Travis-Tock or Snickersnack method of magic item creation, made famous by the eponymous purveyor of the method, Travis Tock, “Guaranteed to return results within six minutes or your money back”.

Creating magic items can be separated into four steps.

Sufficient components
Optional components
Fuel
Craft

Sufficient Components

These are often self evident to the magic item itself, and anyone can attempt to make a spellcraft check (DC 11+item level), critical failure identifies an incorrect component as sufficient. Recipe books exist, and simple items are commonly taught in dedicated academies.

Without sufficient components the creation process will automatically fail.

Optional components will be handled in the lab section of the seminar.

Fuel

Many substances can be used, but most recipe books traditionally demark gold piece value in trade gems. Fuel is a rich subject of research, with far reaching implications.

Craft

Once you have gathered your components and fuel, you begin the craft. Many crafts can be used, but for demonstration purposes spellcraft is used here.

First, know that once you begin the infusion you'll have 10 minutes of sustained concentration. During this time, it is important nothing interrupts your crafting attempt. It is highly recommended you are not moving nor traveling at high speeds, outside large frames of reference, as sudden movements or instability will cause mishaps.

Next, make a craft check (DC 11+item level), critical failure results in a mishap. Failure consumes the components and fuel, and success returns the desired result. Attempts without a sufficient component are made result in automatic failure, but does not consume any fuel, only the false components.

Mishaps
Now mishaps can be difficult to catch, as they most commonly result in cursed items, however, explosions and other externalities can result.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

If players can just find level appropriate sources of magic items. Or just buy them. Why would they ever subject themselves to wasted time watching the wizard player do extra math and bookkeeping, elaborate multi-step recipe shopping, literally burning money, and then having a failure AND a mishap chance so all that could be wasted or actually blow up in their face?

Are they getting better than level appropriate magic items out of this? Does the game FORCE them to do this? In either case, is that a good idea?

You did say that your goal was to make this interesting for the crafting player, the observing players and the GM... but what about this actually does that? Goals don't happen just by having them and then doing an unrelated thing.

[Foxwarrior]

Roll 1d6 for minutes? Do you expect someone to try to craft an item when there's only 4 minutes until disaster and hope they roll low?

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Attempts without a sufficient component are made at disadvantage and result in automatic failure.

I am mildly confused as to why disadvantage is needed if you auto-fail?

[merxa]

Attempts without a sufficient component are made at disadvantage and result in automatic failure.

I am mildly confused as to why disadvantage is needed if you auto-fail?

disadvantage there is to make a mishap more likely, but maybe its better for everyone if the attempt autofails as soon as its attempted instead.

Roll 1d6 for minutes? Do you expect someone to try to craft an item when there's only 4 minutes until disaster and hope they roll low?

This is actually the central innovation in my mind, ultimately creating magic items just takes too long in most generic d&d campaigns. No one wants to stop and wait for the wizard to spends days and weeks building something, even if its for their own character. Too many campaigns have timers, or the players feel like they are on a timer, or they have some in game goal that feels time sensitive.

Campaigns can sometimes have built in 'downtime' between milestones, but it tends to feel artificial to me and then you run into the problem where if some characters don't use the downtime, or don't think they can use it effectively, so it creates a little tension between those who are greatly benefiting from downtime and those who don't benefit.

1d6 minutes feels like a good spot, but curious what your thoughts are on that foxwarrior? its too long to be done in combat, but otherwise very fast, can be done during a short rest, or while someone is using a ritual. Magic item creation is still limited by access to the sufficient component and enough fuel, so I don't see it causing any bizarre economic impacts. 1d6 minutes could also potentially be a (small) dungeon timer.

If players can just find level appropriate sources of magic items. Or just buy them. Why would they ever subject themselves to wasted time watching the wizard player do extra math and bookkeeping, elaborate multi-step recipe shopping, literally burning money, and then having a failure AND a mishap chance so all that could be wasted or actually blow up in their face?

Are they getting better than level appropriate magic items out of this? Does the game FORCE them to do this? In either case, is that a good idea?

You did say that your goal was to make this interesting for the crafting player, the observing players and the GM... but what about this actually does that? Goals don't happen just by having them and then doing an unrelated thing.

Those are all good questions nPLP, i'm curious, do you have answers to these questions? Would you like to share your opinion on these questions?

Overall, some players like creating magic items, and none of the systems we've used were especially good or interesting. In regards to bookkeeping, this method is meant to largely streamline much of the booking that might have otherwise existed. One large book keeping element is tracking time spent crafting (and what sort of quality time that was), then subtracting it from the total time needed. This method throws that out. As for failures and mishaps, I think they are a necessary part of magic item creation rules if creating magic items is going to hold some interest to players and gms, at least in a game that normally decides uncertainly by rolling dice.

Do you have fun rolling dice nPLP?

In terms of what makes something interesting, I'll readily admit I don't know what a phonelobster finds interesting, if you want to list things that are interesting that might help, listing all the things you don't find interesting might not be as helpful as that's likely a very long list.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

Those are all good questions nPLP, i'm curious, do you have answers to these questions? Would you like to share your opinion on these questions?

Those questions were for you. For your mechanic. They are the sorts of questions you need to answer to have any hope of making this idea viable and not deeply counterproductive.

I notice you don't have any answers at all other than "but players some want interesting magic item creation" (dubious claim but inadequate justification for any specific implementation even if true) and "rolling dice is fun" which is just infant level game design.

But I tell you what I find not interesting. Your failures and mishaps. Mishaps are vague undefined critical failures which makes them pure failure in their own right as a proposed rule. But just the failure chance burning a magic item worth of resources on a (oh was that meant to be fun) dice roll is a bad mechanic.

It's the sort of thing pay to win MMOs do with item upgrading/creation in order to deliberately inspire frustration and anger in a player to force them into a real money shop instead.

Does your item creation mechanic have a real money shop alternative?

When players get mad at flushing resources down a luck based drain do you say "give me ten bucks and I'll look the other way and cough while you roll the dice next time" (and miss out on the FUN?)

If not what IS your plan when players flush resources down the toilet. You refuse to answer/understand basic questions about the place and value within the game economy of your proposal. But you do realise you are using a luck based system to decide character power here right?

Without a cash shop alternative what IS the solution when the players get unlucky and flush all/unusually too many resources down the toilet and get nothing? Because that's another one of those questions for you. You've proposed a system that can output a range of results, what impact does that have when it outputs a bunch of failures? Can it output too many successes? Do you actually think the number and value of magic items the party has doesn't even matter at all?

[Kaelik]

Roll 1d6 for minutes? Do you expect someone to try to craft an item when there's only 4 minutes until disaster and hope they roll low?

This is actually the central innovation in my mind, ultimately creating magic items just takes too long in most generic d&d campaigns. No one wants to stop and wait for the wizard to spends days and weeks building something, even if its for their own character. Too many campaigns have timers, or the players feel like they are on a timer, or they have some in game goal that feels time sensitive.

This isn't an answer. People are just going to not fucking make items if they have 4 minutes and make items if they have 6 minutes, so you might as well just have an item creation time of 10 minutes.

Campaigns can sometimes have built in 'downtime' between milestones, but it tends to feel artificial to me and then you run into the problem where if some characters don't use the downtime, or don't think they can use it effectively, so it creates a little tension between those who are greatly benefiting from downtime and those who don't benefit. You are adding a roll for the sake of adding a roll.

Those are all good questions nPLP, i'm curious, do you have answers to these questions? Would you like to share your opinion on these questions?

I hope some day you stop doing this dumb bullshit.

[merxa]

This isn't an answer. People are just going to not fucking make items if they have 4 minutes and make items if they have 6 minutes, so you might as well just have an item creation time of 10 minutes.

Campaigns can sometimes have built in 'downtime' between milestones, but it tends to feel artificial to me and then you run into the problem where if some characters don't use the downtime, or don't think they can use it effectively, so it creates a little tension between those who are greatly benefiting from downtime and those who don't benefit. You are adding a roll for the sake of adding a roll.

yes, these are good points, no real reason for the 1d6 roll, setting the time to 10 minutes works the same and fits into ritual casting time (not that these rules are explicitly for 5e). The 1d6 roll came from a prior choice that was already discarded.

Those are all good questions nPLP, i'm curious, do you have answers to these questions? Would you like to share your opinion on these questions?

I hope some day you stop doing this dumb bullshit.

Oh no, how will I ever live through the sass? Anyway, despite being an ArchDemon of Rage, I hope you aren't actually always angry all the time. But in an attempt to be sincere with you, I'm doing what I can to engage with nPLP in a positive way.

Those are all good questions nPLP, i'm curious, do you have answers to these questions? Would you like to share your opinion on these questions?

Those questions were for you. For your mechanic. They are the sorts of questions you need to answer to have any hope of making this idea viable and not deeply counterproductive.

I notice you don't have any answers at all other than "but players some want interesting magic item creation" (dubious claim but inadequate justification for any specific implementation even if true) and "rolling dice is fun" which is just infant level game design.

But I tell you what I find not interesting. Your failures and mishaps. Mishaps are vague undefined critical failures which makes them pure failure in their own right as a proposed rule. But just the failure chance burning a magic item worth of resources on a (oh was that meant to be fun) dice roll is a bad mechanic.

It's the sort of thing pay to win MMOs do with item upgrading/creation in order to deliberately inspire frustration and anger in a player to force them into a real money shop instead.

Does your item creation mechanic have a real money shop alternative?

When players get mad at flushing resources down a luck based drain do you say "give me ten bucks and I'll look the other way and cough while you roll the dice next time" (and miss out on the FUN?)

If not what IS your plan when players flush resources down the toilet. You refuse to answer/understand basic questions about the place and value within the game economy of your proposal. But you do realise you are using a luck based system to decide character power here right?

Without a cash shop alternative what IS the solution when the players get unlucky and flush all/unusually too many resources down the toilet and get nothing? Because that's another one of those questions for you. You've proposed a system that can output a range of results, what impact does that have when it outputs a bunch of failures? Can it output too many successes? Do you actually think the number and value of magic items the party has doesn't even matter at all?

I'm curious if you'll answer any of my questions? Do you enjoy rolling dice?

anyway, one interesting way to answer your questions about a cash shop is to say, no there isn't necessarily any cash shops, but this is how items are made. So perhaps the players decide to begin the first ever magic cash shop? I suppose I could spend some time and graph out some hedonic wage curves, capital deprecation in our make believe setting, and well, extrapolating potential demand in this make believe setting that we haven't even mentioned... well, either way cash shops should probably be priced in a way that if we assumed they were making items under the same metrics, they would charge an appropriate premium. And I suppose it is that premium which first engages a player in the world right, if the premium is especially high maybe they will indeed attempt to setup shop and uncut the competition? or just use the rules instead? At least, a cash shop probably shouldn't be cheaper, I certainly wouldn't want to write rules that punish people for using them, right?

I'm not sure if you think it is a controversial statement to say people want interesting crafting rules, what if i say, some people want interesting crafting rules, is that okay with you? Playing a game should be entertaining, right? Lots of people like lots of different games, but I feel ok with saying in general people want the game they are playing to involve choices (or chances) and for those choices (or chances) to have consequences. It does indeed become more dubious to generalize for all people playing all games, does such a wide swathe really all desire to have some element of risk or failure in the games they play? It is interesting you speak about gambling, an example of an activity that involves games becoming so addictive that people will suffer personal hardships playing them. I certainly don't want to write any magic crafting rules that will do that to someone.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

I'm curious if you'll answer any of my questions? Do you enjoy rolling dice?

Are you, unironically not only unable to have determined my opinion on this from what I just wrote, but ALSO unironically at the level of game design where you think "rolls fun good" is a justification in it's own right for a mechanic that includes a roll?

anyway, one interesting way to answer your questions about a cash shop is to say, no there isn't necessarily any cash shops, but this is how items are made. So perhaps the players decide to begin the first ever magic cash shop? I suppose I could spend some time and graph out some hedonic wage curves, capital deprecation in our make believe setting, and well, extrapolating potential demand in this make believe setting that we haven't even mentioned... well, either way cash shops should probably be priced in a way that if we assumed they were making items under the same metrics, they would charge an appropriate premium. And I suppose it is that premium which first engages a player in the world right, if the premium is especially high maybe they will indeed attempt to setup shop and uncut the competition? or just use the rules instead? At least, a cash shop probably shouldn't be cheaper, I certainly wouldn't want to write rules that punish people for using them, right?

You know what that rambling paragraph of nonsense tells me? You don't know what a game economy is, and you don't even seem to know what I meant when I was talking about real money shops in MMOs.

Though it certainly IS interesting that you A)Claim that no game currency for magic item shops exist yet, or B) They do but they are probably wildly over priced or not you can't decide, or C) You think the primary response of players noticing a significant price increase for purchasing rather than making magic items would be a decision to stop playing the rest of the game and go into the magic item production and sales business.

I mean. Could your understanding of this be worse?

It is interesting you speak about gambling, an example of an activity that involves games becoming so addictive that people will suffer personal hardships playing them. I certainly don't want to write any magic crafting rules that will do that to someone.

I didn't speak about gambling. You did. Your mechanic makes players into gamblers. They spend their in game currency and the time they spent playing to earn it, on a spin on an item upgrade wheel which can net them nothing or worse than nothing. They put the currency into the item shop and sometimes it spits out the item they bought.

This is NOT an addictive mechanism. The rewards and other factors are the addictive mechanisms that MMOs use. The chance to lose everything spent in return for nothing when trying to buy better items is a mechanic used to induce frustration.

I am pointing out that the primary result of the primary mechanical component of your proposal is that it has an opportunity to induce frustration in your players.

Oh. But it rolls a dice. So you know. Must be fun and engaging and a net good idea?

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

You know what's fun and engaging? Powergaming. How can I abuse this system for power and/or profit? That's what people really want out of crafting systems. That and the ability to amass tons of staple adventuring items like potions and wands and whatnot, but that's more out of necessity than enjoyment. Making a +12 Keen Triple-Sword Nunchaku of Flaming is more desirable than making an arbitrary number of health potions.

[Koumei]

Here are two ideas on how you might be able to make item creation fun or interesting. No guarantee, but it's possible:

1. Everything needs a bunch of weird ingredients, so you're basically going on adventures (the thing the game is ostensibly about) in order to craft items. It doesn't necessarily have to be "Great, now we've killed the monster, get the preservation bags and my saw. We're going to harvest its organs." You can have rare ores and water from magical springs or whatever. The fun bit is where the players research where to find natural ironwood trees and veins of cobalt, then rush out to those locations, negotiate with (or slaughter) the other creatures there, and then extract the ingredients from the land and cart it back. Then the actual creation part is "You have X, Y and Z? Great, you get the item. Done. Enjoy your increase in personal power."

2. Similar to the above, except with only basic recipes being generally known, and you need to experiment with weird crap in order to find variants - you know that "A Magic Sword +1" needs the sword, diamond dust, arcane ooze and the burning of Earth Elemental coal. But you also know that you can substitute in a different dust, goo and fuel source. And maybe there are clues, with ingredients having descriptors and there being a general pattern of "if all the ingredients are [Fire], you can probably assume you'll create a fire thing". Basically, the Atelier ___ system. In fact just copy whole-cloth from one of the Atelier games, complete with bomb armour and bread swords.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

Here are two ideas on how you might be able to make item creation fun or interesting. No guarantee, but it's possible:

Those are two things which are interesting. In their relevant one player console games that do all the accounting for you.

Do they fit in what we can only assume is otherwise a fairly typical table top RPG. HOW do they fit into a typical table top RPG?

The atelier idea? I'm pretty sure that breaks on contact with multiple actual players and the limitations/costs of table top rules admin. You would be better off playing atelier.

The monster hunter clone idea is better, but also sort of worse. At least the first half of it revolves around killing monsters. The second part. Picking up environmental drops, also like in monster hunter is boring as hell and only adds to accounting. Just like in monster hunter.

And accounting is an issue here. In all cases here, presumably without the aid of digital assistance from custom tools, you want to be able to have many many complex recipes and giant bags of many different ingredients.

What you are talking about is a sort of bingo sheet (but with extra rules compared to regular bingo) so broad and tall that it could block out the sun.

There are tricks you could use, including actual digital tools, to make it a little less bad. But, those then have their own costs, are giant distractions, and don't help with the fact that once a player cannot administer a rule without artificial aid they can no longer really personally grasp it's function and implications.

And I know, already someone somewhere who doesn't math and refuses to comprehend pen and paper based RPG accounting methodologies will be coming up with something dumb like "but each recipe is only 4 ingredients long so the bingo sheet isn't very wide!" BZZZT four wide is very wide when the list is that long and also unless its the same four ingredients the list isn't 4 wide, it's all the ingredients in the game wide by all the items in the game tall.

Players will try to shop from that. Once. Then just sort of... try and avoid ever touching it again or making eye contact with you when you try and make them.

[Zaranthan]

anyway, one interesting way to answer your questions about a cash shop is to say, no there isn't necessarily any cash shops, but this is how items are made.

Perhaps PL somehow tripped an equivocation in your head about the "players" spending "cash", so let me try to spell it out a little better:

The system you proposed has a chance that even if the player has done everything right, they might just roll a 1 and it all goes splat. PL compared this to similar crafting mechanics used in video games, where you click the craft button and there's a chance that maybe you get your item and maybe you just watch your money go splat. His point was that this is not some sort of carrot-and-stick mechanic that people actually WANT to engage with. It's malicious design intended to increase the player's frustration and provoke them into spending money to buy upgrades.

Not in-game currency that they spent time slaying dragons to collect. Actual real-world United States Dollars. Stop playing the game and whip out your credit card. It's predatory behavior to abuse people with gambling addictions.

The characters in the narrative are not setting up a "cash shop" unless you have some sort of fourth wall breaking game where you and your buddies sit around a table and move money around because you're all bored of playing poker or something.

[Koumei]

The atelier idea? I'm pretty sure that breaks on contact with multiple actual players and the limitations/costs of table top rules admin. You would be better off playing atelier.

Yeah I knew that when I typed it up, but didn't specifically say that, because I want more people to come to the conclusion "independently" that they should play Atelier games. That series is close to Disgaea in the hierarchy of "niche game series I'm obsessed about where any given entry in it is basically the same game but I still go through as many as possible".

[erik]

Collecting ingredients is the kind of lizard brain fun I enjoy in video games and find abhorrent in table top games. A video game at least has some inventory management built in. If I have to make and maintain a filtered spreadsheet for a ttrpg then it can fuck right off. If the rest of the table has to watch someone else screw around with an inventory table for any significant amount of time it can fuck even further off. Fuck off to the moon.

The main thing I care about for item creation in a ttrpg, after making sure it doesn’t consume actual role play time, in, is whether it is balanced.

I told my players in my 3.ptome game they can just take an item creation feat and put ranks in a craft skill and we will hand wave the item creation and just give them an extra item appropriate for their level. It seems to work.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Noooo! No balance! Only powergaming!

[Zaranthan]

As someone who compulsively doodles up spare character sheets, poring over my list of salamander toenails between sessions would scratch a particular itch. Definitely wouldn't want anyone doing that at the table.

I will definitely be stealing your item crafting system, though. That might be a strong excuse to cut down on the power of my wishlists.

[Thaluikhain]

Eh, I can see collecting monster parts as a creative way of making monster treasures different. Saying that you can make magic stuff out of them justifies why people would want them, even if it's too fiddly for players to bother with. Unless you've got one player that's really into it and the others aren't.

Actually, could you just go to your local alchemy section of he supermarket and buy a bunch of ingredients someone else has cut out of monsters? Or if you've killed 12 XYZ monsters and go 12 XYZ spleens, trade with someone who has 12 ABC gizzards?

[erik]

Noooo! No balance! Only powergaming!

I should clarify. It’s important to know what is balanced so I can do the things that are strongest. Since nothing is every perfectly balanced.

[merxa]

I'm curious if you'll answer any of my questions? Do you enjoy rolling dice?

Are you, unironically not only unable to have determined my opinion on this from what I just wrote, but ALSO unironically at the level of game design where you think "rolls fun good" is a justification in it's own right for a mechanic that includes a roll?

I am not, maybe quote a prior sentence you believe espouses your view? Please keep it to one sentence, preferably a simple declarative one, but if your view requires some conditionals so be it.

You know what that rambling paragraph of nonsense tells me? You don't know what a game economy is, and you don't even seem to know what I meant when I was talking about real money shops in MMOs.

Though it certainly IS interesting that you A)Claim that no game currency for magic item shops exist yet, or B) They do but they are probably wildly over priced or not you can't decide, or C) You think the primary response of players noticing a significant price increase for purchasing rather than making magic items would be a decision to stop playing the rest of the game and go into the magic item production and sales business.

I mean. Could your understanding of this be worse?

I freely admit, what you say, what you say you said, and what I understand of it, it's often rather murky to me. But if you were truly talking about running a game where I had some 'cash' shop between me and the players, you weren't being serious right? Beyond a bunch of teenagers trying to bribe their new gm with free pizza and soda, I'm really not familiar with this setup -- is it common? Are you part of a community that gives gms real money out of game for in game benefits? If not, then it is hard to understand why you would even bring it up or what relevance it has to... well anything, besides maybe gambling but you seem to insist you weren't making any references to gambling...

But to try and answer, the passage about setting up an in-game magic shop was a thought exercise -- I engage in lots of thought exercises as they help me imagine and think through possibilities and outcomes, perhaps I should label passages as thought exercises if that will help you? But the basic conclusion is, if creating magic items costs X and Y, and buying magic items will typically only be priced in units of Y, then the purchase of magic items should be some Y value that is higher than the Y value for creating the items especially if creating the item isn't 100% certain. Lets take a very simple case, say creating magic items only costs Y, but there is a 5% failure chance. How much should a shop charge for this item? They should charge at least 1.05Y, otherwise they are guaranteed to lose money over time, and the 1.05Y doesn't account for other costs of running a shop (nor does it cover the opportunity cost to do the labor or sales).

Is that more clear? I'm actually fairly well versed in economics, so we could have a larger more technical conversation if you think it would be helpful for our little make believe world we are discussing.

It is interesting you speak about gambling, an example of an activity that involves games becoming so addictive that people will suffer personal hardships playing them. I certainly don't want to write any magic crafting rules that will do that to someone.

I didn't speak about gambling. You did. Your mechanic makes players into gamblers. They spend their in game currency and the time they spent playing to earn it, on a spin on an item upgrade wheel which can net them nothing or worse than nothing. They put the currency into the item shop and sometimes it spits out the item they bought.

This is NOT an addictive mechanism. The rewards and other factors are the addictive mechanisms that MMOs use. The chance to lose everything spent in return for nothing when trying to buy better items is a mechanic used to induce frustration.

I am pointing out that the primary result of the primary mechanical component of your proposal is that it has an opportunity to induce frustration in your players.

Oh. But it rolls a dice. So you know. Must be fun and engaging and a net good idea?

We haven't really gotten into what the failure chance should be, just the very controversial assertion that there should be a failure chance. As an aside, I had this thought the other day, if we were every to play a game together, I'd offer up this simple game: Whenever one of us declares an in-game action and we don't agree it is absolutely certain to succeed, instead the person who wants to perform the action rolls a d100, and prior to rolling that person also decides how likely that are to succeed -- they just pick a number between 1-99.

Anyway, failure chance. Sometimes characters fail at what they attempt, right? Failing at tasks can be frustrating, especially if it feels like it happens too often, but never failing also seems problematic, doesn't it? If you don't find it problematic, then why are you talking about a game that typically involves rolling dice? What is the purpose of these dice rolls to you?

addiction is a large subject that can be talked about lots of different ways, but rewards by themselves are not intrinsically addictive unless the reward is a substance that can cause physical and/or psychological dependence. So Skinner very convincingly showed that when giving out rewards (for operant conditioning) the most addictive scheduling is random interval scheduling (ie your reward comes out after you press the lever 1d6+3 times), this beats out random time interval (your reward comes out every 1d6+3 minutes independent of how many times you press the lever, although interestingly this scheduling tended to create the most 'superstitions' behavior), and these beat out the fixed interval schedule (reward always comes out every 6 lever pulls) and fixed time interval (reward always comes every 6 minutes). This is why most slot machines and other electronic gambling machines, and 'gatcha' systems, loot boxes etc, use the random interval schedule, it is by far the most effective method to drip out rewards that will encourage most people to continue pulling for more rewards.

Now, I suppose someone could take these definitions and claim fighters rolling iterative attacks per round is a type of random interval scheduling, and we're creating a terrible addictive system, but that claims seems a little precious doesn't it? I think one big distinction is the fighter can do things to increase their chance of succeeding, so choices can be made that increase or decrease their lever pulls (attack rolls) needed to be rewarded (hit and do damage). In contrast, gambling typically depends on people making either the non-optimal choice sometimes, or for the rules of the system itself to be statistically against the player, so that, over time (see the law of large numbers), the gambler puts in more money than they extract from the system. I also don't want to write rules that are that exploitative, using crafting rules should be a net gain.

Now whether using crafting rules should be a net gain over purchasing items, that feels unclear or highly debatable, likely with lots of people on both sides. If say crafting is not a net gain over purchasing items, but instead a net loss, then the rules seem to be punishing, ie you're a sucker for using these rules when you can just buy an item instead. That suggests to me that should not be the equilibrium, all else being equal. If say purchasing magic items wasn't always certain or a possibilty, or certain items weren't always readily available, then perhaps even at a net loss, crafting items would still find a niche use at times.

For those who worship balance, making the two equivalent seems like a laudable goal, but the two activities aren't fully commiserate unless you pretend they are. In particular, if crafting requires a sufficient component the opportunity cost of gathering it is not self evident. I think all of us here are used to modern capital markets where practically anything and everything can be priced against the us dollar, and even in our modern world odd things can happen in markets. In our make believe fantasy setting, capital markets are just not that prevalent nor efficient. There could be lots of items that are too rare or difficult for most people to get so have no liquid exchange market for them -- if you know a recipe for your arrows of petrifaction requires cockatrice urine, we could try to work out how well an industrial farm would go over in our fantasy world, but I think the starting assumption is this won't be in stock at every magic walmart you walk into -- but admittedly this is very setting dependent.

Trying to achieve equivalence I think ends up with a system similar to what erik mentioned, where the flavor of crafting is done away with and it sort is just like having a magic shop on hand to give you whatever is considered level appropriate gear. Rules for crafting should feel different, at least a little, from purchasing an item. One thing my short rule set is trying to encourage or suggest is that anyone with a crafting skill can make magic items, so its intended to be a rather low investment.

Now in the situation where crafting is a net benefit to purchasing them from the local shop, I think flavor-wise, this is where I would want to end up. The net benefit shouldn't be so incredibly amazing that those who use the 'in-game' shop don't feel like suckers either, but encouraging a more explorative and interactive experience with the game world seems like a good goal? Purchasing items from a shop could also require exploration and interaction, but that seems a little less interesting, not uninteresting, just not as rich of a field as crafting could be.

Lets do another thought experiment. Lets say the game world had my skeleton of magic crafting rules as well as a second widely known method, so we have the travis tock method as well as the PL special. The PL special works very similar to the travis tock method, except crafting an item takes 1d6 days, there is no chance for mishaps, and failure on the roll only means time is lost but no materials so it can be attempted again.

Now people will want to use the PL special method as much as possible -- it has minimal risk and only takes extra time. However, I suspect PCs would engage in both crafting methods depending on other circumstances and desires. I suspect there would even be times where PCs would pay a shop the risk premium needed to get an item within minutes instead of days, especially if there's enough material to attempt the craft more than once. Still, having these two methods exist should create significant downward pressure on the overall cost of magic items, common items will closely approach the at cost price as shops make bulk amounts safely, but for niche items, and for those in game with the disposable wealth, the near instant delivery would be, I dare say, fairly common. This is all dependent on how common the failure/mishap rate is, as well as how abundant materials are -- ie if when you go questing to gather your sufficient material, do you often only collect enough for one go or do you often gather enough for several attempts? Players, and their characters, will all have different risk premiums, and how these work will greatly inform in game choices.
~

One discussion that is cropping up is inventory management and spreadsheets. I also don't want to encourage this behavior -- playing ledgers and logistics instead of dungeons and dragons can sometimes be fun for some people, but overall people don't want to sit down and play a ttrpg if it involves moonlighting a second job as an accountant. This crafting method is meant to avoid that effort -- a player knows their character wants boots of flying -- they can immediately make a check to know what item they need to make it, and that item can be determined on the spot. Remember, as a sufficient component, it could be but one of many recipes for that item. Once in game a recipe is established, a note or entry should be made to stay consistent (ie we don't want a situation where the ingredient was a sufficient component at one time but now it isn't). And if multiple characters make the roll, you can always provide multiple sufficient component recipes.

It seems part of the spreadsheet issue comes up when the reverse scenario occurs: the party has just killed a chimera, and surely the chimera must have some parts within it that can create some sort of magic items. This could be handled a few different ways, if the party has a wishlist, you can just roll against it and say this or that part can be used as the sufficient component -- as for why they may have not known that prior, there's plenty of explanations that could be provided, perhaps their direct experience with the chimera corpse reveals this, or it simply didn't occur to them prior they instead came up with a different sufficient component.

You could roll in some way to determine if the chimera has any sufficient or only optional components, you could put together some rules that abstract out the chimera as a creature type and CR and have that automatically determine what sort of items of what sort of power can be made with parts from it. You could fully abstract this and just give 'monster' components a GP value, and in the crafting you have the GP conversions for both the sufficient component and fuel although this option does away with the flavor the most and edges towards the assumption there are robust and liquid markets for all these components.

In a rules heavy system built from the ground up, you could start out by ensuring every item comes with a recipe or two, and every monster has a little section of what parts can be used for what magic craft and maybe even a suggested retail price. Of course you wouldn't want monsters to be the only source for components, so some additional effort would need to go into creating non-monster components to populate the game world with. and indeed, in this rules heavy system, this could result in a large, intimidating spreadsheet, this would be alleviated somewhat by the spreadsheet already existing, but still this would likely lead to people tracking monster items and labeling what can used for what item.

Some of this is a little bit of a negotiation between everyone at the table, no one really wants to track a bunch of recipes for items they will never use. Instead the intention is for the PC to communicate the item they want, and the GM gives them a clear hook on how to get it, saavy GMs will try to make these hooks multi purpose so the party isn't just out foraging for the sufficient component, but might be foraging in an area they are also searching, or the foraging area is in a direct path to where they happened to be heading, or the component happens to come from a monster they know their enemy keeps etc.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

But if you were truly talking about running a game where I had some 'cash' shop between me and the players, you weren't being serious right?

I was pointing out how stupid it is to have a negative mechanic traditionally used to drive players into a cash shop and effectively asking, what are you driving them towards? Because you certainly will drive them away from this proposal into the arms of something else, the question you need to ask is where they will flee to and will it still be in your game?

But to try and answer, the passage about setting up an in-game magic shop was a thought exercise --

It was an off topic wank because you didn't get it. just like... the next two paragraphs wanking over price margins and claiming your economic credentials.

When you make it clear, you still don't know what I was talking about when I said "game economy".

What I meant, is what I've clearly been asking you about and you keep avoiding. The game economy isn't the way the game simulates an economy. It's the way players gain and spend resources for game relevant benefits. And yours wants to introduce a strong random element and whenever asked how it effects the number and quality of game relevant benefits IT HAS NO ANSWER and just says "Playing a shop management game that includes calculating inflation would be fun!".

but never failing also seems problematic, doesn't it?

Never failing is an option for some mechanics. And is used in large swathes of these games all the time. If you haven't noticed that... well... a lot of basics seem to fly right over your head.

Now whether using crafting rules should be a net gain over purchasing items, that feels unclear or highly debatable, likely with lots of people on both sides. If say crafting is not a net gain over purchasing items, but instead a net loss, then the rules seem to be punishing, ie you're a sucker for using these rules when you can just buy an item instead. That suggests to me that should not be the equilibrium, all else being equal. If say purchasing magic items wasn't always certain or a possibilty, or certain items weren't always readily available, then perhaps even at a net loss, crafting items would still find a niche use at times.

For those who worship balance, making the two equivalent seems like a laudable goal, but the two activities aren't fully commiserate unless you pretend they are. In particular, if crafting requires a sufficient component the opportunity cost of gathering it is not self evident. I think all of us here are used to modern capital markets where practically anything and everything can be priced against the us dollar, and even in our modern world odd things can happen in markets. In our make believe fantasy setting, capital markets are just not that prevalent nor efficient. There could be lots of items that are too rare or difficult for most people to get so have no liquid exchange market for them -- if you know a recipe for your arrows of petrifaction requires cockatrice urine, we could try to work out how well an industrial farm would go over in our fantasy world, but I think the starting assumption is this won't be in stock at every magic walmart you walk into -- but admittedly this is very setting dependent.

Oh look you ALMOST engage with the issue right there... but instead wank around saying nothing of any content for 292 words.

You don't get to acknowledge a serious unresolved conflict in your rules design and just say. Yep look at that! Most people certainly might care which way that turns out! Well, I don't though haha. Carry on without change!

However, I suspect PCs would engage in both crafting methods depending on other circumstances and desires. I suspect there would even be times where PCs would pay a shop the risk premium needed to get an item within minutes instead of days, especially if there's enough material to attempt the craft more than once.

you cannot even craft your own functioning hypothetical.

In that scenario here is what players do. They sell ingredients and buy items. Everything is done through that oh so slow several days crafting, by NPC professionals. Why? Because you didn't understand that you weren't comparing 2 options. You were comparing FOUR. You even slip up and make this explicit by talking about paying the risk premium to shop at the 6 minute store.

So no. Players go for the lower no risk premium price and off load the time costs of the supposed dilemma of a 3.5 day time cost to the store. There are items for sale the entire crafting mechanic happens off screen and doesn't really exist.

Great design result there. Really feeling that unique feel of a crafting mechanic.

if when you go questing to gather your sufficient material, do you often only collect enough for one go or do you often gather enough for several attempts? Players, and their characters, will all have different risk premiums, and how these work will greatly inform in game choices.
...
One discussion that is cropping up is inventory management and spreadsheets. I also don't want to encourage this behavior

These sentences were found right next to each other.

This crafting method is meant to avoid that effort -- a player knows their character wants boots of flying -- they can immediately make a check to know what item they need to make it, and that item can be determined on the spot. Remember, as a sufficient component, it could be but one of many recipes for that item. Once in game a recipe is established, a note or entry should be made to stay consistent (ie we don't want a situation where the ingredient was a sufficient component at one time but now it isn't). And if multiple characters make the roll, you can always provide multiple sufficient component recipes.

Holy shit.

We have new WTFs. So. Players can roll to find out recipes. OK. More importantly this information then comes from... nowhere. Because as long as someone rolls no one ever has to look up the fucking information anywhere! (No wonder you think rolls are self justifying) and actually also it REALLY comes from nowhere because you need to make up recipes on the fly because you are writing down the giant look up table AS YOU GO.

This is just "mwah" chefs kiss. Put an LSD laced cherry on top and its the perfect cake of nonsense level rules design.

...This could be handled a few different ways, if the party has a wishlist, you can just roll against it and say this or that part can be used as the sufficient component -- as for why they may have not known that prior, there's plenty of explanations...

Oh... you... weren't done with the WTFs...

And then you finally make it clear, this is really all a no rules at all situation.

OK. Right.

Use less words next time. A lot less. And maybe use the correct ones instead.

[merxa]

so... do you or do you not like rolling dice? I'm just fishing around for you to answer one question of mine, perhaps I picked the wrong question for you to actually answer... I'm sorry if committing to an answer about whether you enjoy rolling dice or not is somehow stressful or upsetting to you... we can just drop the question I guess, of course for a game that does involve rolling dice, you probably should at least answer it for yourself personally even if it is done privately, far away from our judging eyes.
~

My initial ruleset presented -- it would probably fit onto one page -- it's mostly presenting a procedure on how to provide crafting to players in a d&d-esque game. Since then, I've definitely written more words, and I am trying to discuss actual events and experiences of how someone and/or the game world would interact with crafting rules. And sometimes I throw out suggestions and try to work out their implications, this seems like the space to do that in, doesn't it?

I greatly prefer a more simulationist game style, which means PCs, NPCs, they interact with the same rule set, so if my hypothetical threw you off, I guess that is likely why.

I want to be charitable to you nPLP, but so far what advice have you provided to me? Telling someone to use less words and the correct words isn't exactly advice, certainly not actionable advice -- perhaps if you told me a heuristic I could use to judge if I used too many words, or if I happen to have used the wrong words that could constitute advice, but your current rants don't rise to the 'advice' threshold, at least it doesn't for me. But I'll do what I can to read what you write, and perhaps your advice will seep through, somehow.

Sincerely,

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

so... do you or do you not like rolling dice? I'm just fishing around for you to answer one question of mine, perhaps I picked the wrong question for you to actually answer... I'm sorry if committing to an answer about whether you enjoy rolling dice or not is somehow stressful or upsetting to you... we can just drop the question I guess, of course for a game that does involve rolling dice, you probably should at least answer it for yourself personally even if it is done privately, far away from our judging eyes.

Are you an actual child?

[MGuy]

I have similar questions to PL and I really don't feel like slogging through the mountains of text between you and PL. I'm going to probably tread over territory you may have covered and hope that I can get a shorter answer, or a quote that answers it. I'm having a difficult time figuring out what you're trying to definitely do vs seeing general thoughts about the subject. I talked about my thoughts on item creation in general in another thread I started some time ago. I can also touch on some of my thoughts on the very questions I ask if it is important but as I said I'm trying to figure out specifically what you're wanting to do.

So question number 1: What makes this worth doing?

In a game where you are expected to find gear fairly regularly, and if not that get rewarded with enough coin to turn into appropriate gear (assuming that you can do this conversion) why would I want to spend time messing around with this system? What is the risk, cost, reward set up you're going to pursue for this to make it engaging or can players only benefit from participation without risking anything of note? Are the assumptions I made about procurement of wealth and gear off and if so do you have another dynamic in mind?

Question 2: if there is a good reason to participate in this system why would I ever not do it?

If something like this provides actual power for the players and there is every reason to participate in it then that creates a situation where every party is going to want a craftsman. Is that what you want? If so then can everyone automatically do it or is someone in the party going to be heavily encouraged to be the designated craftsperson?
If the above assumption is not true and parties can get through the game at no notable loss of effectiveness ignoring this system then what is its purpose?

I did see that you're trying to avoid spreadsheets and the like so my third question is: what is this meant to feel like for the player?

Is crafting an item just like an on demand solution to a specific obstacle? IE the party is going for a swim do you can insta craft your water wings. Is it an alternative shopping system? Meaning it is essentially the same as shopping but you utilize different resources? I assume it's not like a more involved crafting game where recipes and collecting specific materials is important because that would land you firmly in spreadsheet territory.

[erik]

Well, it seems like merxa is either impossibly dumb or just trolling. I don't really care which. But some people expressed interest in this proposed system so lemme see if I can break it down.

These terms are discussed with d20 terminology or references, so I'll presume it is intended as a home rule for D&D games.

Necessary and Sufficient component
This sounds like a material component. Typical D&D mostly hand-waves inexpensive components or makes them easily available for a standard currency cost. This could totally be like a spell component pouch, or a lab. Spell components were designed as a joke and don't have a developed system for their acquisition. If you make players actually track spell components it's adding a lot of complexity to inventory tracking. So either nothing novel here, or a nuisance.

Optional components
Ehhh... same as material components, I guess, except they don't matter. Either these are goo-gaws that players will just pay gold for to get some extra effect, or it is yet another layer of complexity added to inventory tracking. Again, nothing novel, or a nuisance.

Fuel
This appears to just be the straight up gp/xp cost of crafting an item. Fair enough, nothing novel here, except with the inclusion of the super short time limit... suddenly you may have to have tremendous wealth and resources available at an instant. That's a weird change to the game.

Crafting check
Sounds like a standard d20 skill check. Not a great mechanic to use unless you want to make this something that you can take 10 on and auto-succeed pretty easily without much fuss. That would be fine. If you are using a system where some frequency of failure is unavoidable, players tend to hate that, especially when it wastes their finite wealth. So if that is happening then either the mechanic will be avoided (just make someone else assume the risk and costs of crafting and buy from them), or it will be baked into the cost (okay, still better to pay 55% cost than buy at a store for 100%)

Crafting time
Making the amount of time needed to create an item 1d6 minutes is just a mistake. The only things you want to track in minutes are combat effects or things when combat is imminent. 1d6 minutes is too long to do during combat to expect to have a meaningful effect, and too fast to bother caring about rolling the duration outside of combat. It's just dumb. And honestly, what can you craft in 1d6 minutes? It takes me longer to prepare most meals and that is with ingredients already processed.

I'm going to assume this crafting minigame isn't using the reasonable expectations of just buying a lab or spell component pouch and calling it a day, since that's pretty much how crafting already worked. So if a system is going to have an involved minigame where it takes a lot of player resources to track, like special inventories, paying attention to what every single creation requires, what can be harvested from each creature... what then? Well, then this is basically going to take as much resources as the most major minigame of D&D, spellcasting. If that's the case, then it better be a really major part of the game. Like, as big a deal as combat. So you're playing an entirely different game at this point. This isn't a tiny add-on rule set, it's a total genre shift. I don't see item crafting as something that merits such a huge investment of attention.

Something that this general concept of could maybe fit well for is a competitive cooking game. Where players are all about their special recipes and techniques for preparing dishes and go about gathering rare ingredients to do battle with their culinary masterpieces. If you do something like this then you want to have more involvement than just a plain crafting check however. If you want something to be more tactical then you will want choices. Different methods of how you prepare your foods, specialties. Optional Ingredients become secret family recipes where maybe you can apply ingredients for non-standard effects. Your Fuel resources would be spent on your kitchen equipment, ingredients, and assistants. Crafting Time as offered is dumb and unsalvageable. I would change it to Time Management, which would probably best be divided by short, medium, and long actions, and the higher level you go the more actions you can juggle at a time. It could be a fun tie-in to D&D to have characters whip up a totally second character based upon their standard character, but using totally separate character creation rules and game.