The Curse of Crafting Systems

Like Sysiphus I come to engage in a perennial task to which appears to have no end or solution in sight: Crafting. And yet it is so tantalizing of a topic to try your hand and reach the promised land of... Fun and useful crafting. I am going to devote myself to fall into doom and fail, if you want to accompany me.

To start, let's define it a bit to be on the same page. A Crafting System in a TTRPG is a codified process of actions that taken when the requirements are met it creates something. We can get more vague and general, but in this instance I believe there is merit to getting more specific. The crafting I'm going to refer to is that which creates "items" or "equipment" that can be used by the players in another system of a TTRPG. To give a classical example, making arrows to shoot in combat, making a temporary shelter to rest or a cart to travel.

The action of having something, fulfilling some requirements and then making an action to convert into another, more valuable thing is engaging. It feels incredibly good to be productive in that way. Its one of those feelings so primal and simple in its effectivity that needs no explanation as to why that works. It works for the same reason making an attack and harming an enemy feels good. And this has been obvious for a long time. Settlers of Catan's whole gaming loop is based entirely on it, and it's not alone in the tabletop game space. This is amplified in videogames, where the systems can grow explonentially in complexity, automation and reach new highs.

I've seen that many attempts at bringing Crafting Systems into TTRPGs are influenced in no small part from those games, and a lot coming from experiences where crafting is a supplementary part and often times not the core, focus or anything like it, and trying to apply the same strategy to their role-playing game. The problem becomes obvious quickly, when one sees that not everything translates well from engaging with systems handled by a machine to a table with 4 or 5 people, where one of them has to handle the system. Suddenly chopping a forest by hand to build a ship by doing several step by step processes becomes less appealing. That is time wasted on the table.

This all assumes that the game's focus is not entirely on that loop and mechanics. Which is a fair assumption, since those tend to work much better as a simple tabletop game, I feel like crafting, if present, in a ttrpg, works better as a supplement to support the other structures. But how do we make it not boring and wasting time?

Many options come to mind. The first one is to lean less on the crafting mechanics and give it importance and weight whenever used. No forging a simple sword, you are shaping the Eternal Iron of the Gaol of the Rotten with the Ever Hot lava from the Mount of the Drake, which later needs to be cooled by sinking it into the heart of the Great Beast Lord of the Steppes. You can imagine how each of those steps are just... Regular Epic Fantasy Adventure. In here the crafting steps is (or at least can) be reduced to the reward for doing a task that is, otherwise, just the regular gameplay loop of the system. Go to place, explore it, overcome obstacles, defeat threats, get reward. It's not completely reduced to a list of rewards, though, as you can see you can also embeb the crafting into the actions you make during this gameplay loop. Our magic sword here needs to be plunged into the heart of a beast to be finished. If you specifically say alive, then you have made so that for crafting the players need to change their strategy in accordance to it, namely using the still unfinished sword that is red hot to attack and defeat an enemy.

So why isn't this an obvious, best solution? Well, it has some problems, and the major one is that it just doesn't scratch the same itch. It being relegated to being just important things and an adventure in itself restricts one from the joys of a smaller scale. It's no longer supplementary but the point, and it doesn't work if you need to quest to make your regular, run of the mill bow and arrows. A Crafting System can shine when it is a peaceful minigame where one can plan and rest from the action while still making progress. The previous approach of fusing it with the regular loop with steps as rewards robs it of that. While a fun way to do crafting, it can't be the only way to do crafting or we lose much of the appeal. Other problems is that it can't really be mechanized by the system. Much of the success of the approach depends on the GM and how it runs its sessions, and the creativity, novelty and the process need to be thought by the GM from table to table for it to work. Especially since it also relies a lot in player ambition and want, whcih can't also be assumed in the system. And lastly, it's not much of a system, barely the bones. It relies on the previous structure of the gameplay and needs to be unique, which in the end means you have to put in the work every time and it is not really something the players can plan towards without GM willing to indulge.

What we need is to make crafting of less importance also engaging. And there we come in contact with another system that competes with crafting: Buying. Both get the same result: They give you something you want. It's just that buying is much less involved. You give up something of value, you get something you want. Simple two steps. You can complicate it by making finding where to do it, but in the end it is the simple, almost effortless option to give players a thing they want. Rivers of words could be used getting in further detail on the economy of games in general, but we have to try to be at least a bit focused on the matter at hand. But it does make us aks ourselves an important question: Why craft instead of buy? Given players tend to take the path of least resistance, when do we craft? And knowing that we know what to support with our crafting.

Maybe players have to craft because buying is not an option. The example of the epic sword before is an one such case, as it may be being in the wilderness away from any merchant or city. This can be engaging too with otherwise common or mundane items that can be normally bought, and we find the Survivalist experience. Where much of the joy is in starting with nothing or very little and making things to aid you in the wild, from the wild. Your party escapes from slave mines, just to find that there is nothing but rocky terrain and forests as far they can see or know. In situations like those, a good crafting system makes or breaks the experience. If your game expects or is going to allow for that situation, it would help to have a good crafting for even simple things. Good, not necessarily complex. Managing resources and making the character's abilities matter.

Or maybe players craft because it's... cheaper. I previously said that players tend to take the path of least resistance, but that means different things for different players. For one it may mean paying mroe if that means not having to engage with effort and rules surrounding crafting, but another may take pride in saving coin because he procured his own equipment from prime matter and finds joy in the system that allows him to save. If the system is fun and streamlined enough, this type of player tends to appear more.

And lastly, another reason I can think of is self-expression, which is a core part of TTRPGs. There is an innate want on some people to make something, leave a mark on the world, show one's inner vision and write a small blurb of text describing their imprint on the world they just affected.

So, looking at these main drives I could imagine, I think it's clear that crafting needs to be at least to some degree an uncertain challenge with risk, even if the risk is just to not be able to do it. A survivalist experience breaks down if what you need to do is codified and doing it is as simple as saying 'I do it'. More than that, the character's abilities need to be tested to some capacity, and the player's resource management being engaging is hard to do with no risk assessment and only one arbiter. If crafting has no challenge and risk and is just a series of steps with no rolls or chance and the effort is only knowing the steps, then it can become a replacement for buying for all and not only those interested, and many of the steps would be handwaved until you have the direct input->output of buying. It also robs the engagement and pride from the crafter who did it for economic reasons. And finally, variable results are sort of needed for the expressive side. The expression is not only that of the player but also of the character. And much of the joy of doing something for its sake is trying or wishing to accomplish its best.

What comes from this is that some kind of variable result needs to be a part of crafting, preferably influenced by the crafter character. It can influence the quality, the time it takes or simply the simple awe that comes from a good roll and the dread of the possibility of a low roll. Nothing here is reinventing the wheel. Things are more engaging with rolls and risk? Who would've guessed. But it is important to identify and have it in mind, because again: Crafting is cursed. It can become repetitive, a bother, wasted time and wasted text. So we need to find all points of friction. Rolling for something can be one of them. Many things in TTRPG work better by saying "It works" upon the attempt of a player, but I think it is good to recognize that is not the case in crafting.

Speaking of wasted time... That is another thing that crafting needs to address. Who wants to use an hour of table time rolling dice to see how much wood we get to help in finishing our building when that hour could be spent playing the more engaging part of the game? I mean, some people, some times, but it is sparingly. Too far apart as to not think about how to solve it. And perhaps the answer is to... not. There is a reason crafting is still cursed. We have little time to play, and we try to put an intrinsically laid back system that nevertheless requires rules and a lot of attention.

While not a panacea, an option I experienced in recent years on the new gaming spaces that have been opened with online play is doing crafting outside of table time. Literal downtime. Crafting things needs very little GM input if done for regular items. That added with spaces with digital, logged dice rolling makes it so that you can craft whenever, from wherever, using time outside the table. And all under GM supervision, since they can check the process at any time. Finish a session in a small village, the GM says that you have 4 days of downtime to use however you like until next session. And now you can engage with that quiet, laid back part of game with all the time to make it be indeed that, wasting no table time and where you can even do some logistics in excel if you want to calculate probabilities, average yield, time and all that stuff. This ability to 'pay while not playing' that feeds so much of the enjoyment of TTRPGs these days, in this case by engaging with the world outside of a session and progressing there is something worth considering, and if I ever design a crafting system I want for it to at least support this style of play, which needs some things to work: Time per action in game time, a roll per action and preferably a sense of 'number go up' that shows progress on completing something numerically.

As we all love examples, let's indulge in this one for some time. Staying on the classically known fantasy adventure setting, the party arrives at a village to rest and prepare for an arduous travel next session, in 4 days in game. This will be done through the downtime systems and rules specified in the rulebook, with minimal DM input or judgement, as we explained. It is very codified. A player's decision is to not want to engage with the game outside of table play, respectable, and decides those 4 days are used drinking and partying. The system may have a system for that, but for this example let's assume it doesn't and is just having an in character good time. But another player uses the first day to go chopping wood. They roll whatever check is needed and gets the wood. No more logistic needed since they are staying next to it, he can leave the chopped wood at the place and the next day he crafts a cart. Or better said, he starts crafting it. He didn't roll that well and didn't finish it. But he does it the third day. The last day he crafts the leftover prime wood into another thing, which can be just planks, to sell the leftover and gain a little more coin to buy a mule to carry the cart. When the next session starts they have a cart to carry all their supplies for the long travel, or maybe even what the others crafted. Like another's player's meat, which they hunted in their days of downtime. While not strictly crafting, it is very similar and potentially governed by the same system.

But as I said, that is no panacea and not only it's not ideal for every crafting system, it's outright detrimental for many types of games. It does work for what I imagined and envisioned, but I know it's not everyone's cup of tea to go play a resource minigame in a ttrpg, while I know some people who would be delighted in buying a storage in a city, improving it and filling it with a resource progressively over the course of a story.

This is, after all, my first time dipping my toes into the topic, and a view subjective and not very contrasted. So that's why I come ask: What's your experience in crafting systems? Your solutions? Your problems? Do you use them? Do you like out of table downtime, hate it? Give some contrast to my thoughts.