my problems with crafting, and a solution
I've looked at a fair few crafting systems for TTRPGs now. Here's the problems as I see them, and at the end, I'm going to offer a dead simple crafting system that you can use in any game.
PROBLEM 1. Players want three things out of a crafting system, and all the crafting systems I've seen, they just don't satisfy all three. Here's what players want:
- An additional framework on which they can make their decisions about where to go, what to pick up, and what to fight. Even if they have an ongoing quest, they can still decide between which path to take to get there, and which enemies they need to kill vs just sneaking past. Systems that hide the possible results from players fail to satisfy here, and that's surprisingly easy to do. If your system has tables of crafting materials to roll on, I don't like its odds here.
- Getting the specific treasure they want. Especially, but not exclusively, in games with high niche protection (like character classes), a lot of randomized treasure will be useless to the party. Systems that make it practically impossible to craft, usually by making it too expensive/time-consuming or limiting the outputs too much, fail to satisfy here, and I'm looking at you, D&D. If the players have to do the thing before they can be allowed to craft an item that lets them do the thing, then it fails to satisfy here, too, and that's common for ones that aim for a sense of verisimilitude by using "essences," or asking players to argue for the validity of their ingredients.
- The ability to express character or player skill. Some players enjoy the opportunity to demonstrate that they know what explosives are made out of. Some enjoy the fantasy of playing a self-sufficient or inventive character. Systems that don't allow improvisation (too rigid) fail to satisfy the first type of players, and systems that don't give good craftsperson characters any kind of mechanical boon fail the second type.
PROBLEM 2. They are BORING!!!!! They might have a repetitive procedure for gathering materials (commonly, a skill check, to satisfy those second players I mentioned), or force you to negotiate it at the table (hope you enjoy wikipedia diving! Genuinely though, if you do like doing that at your game tables, that's cool, but my system isn't going to be for you). They might expect the GM to create adventures on the spot, or somehow contrive a reason it's hard to acquire something that should be easy to acquire, just to maintain a proper pace. They might just involve a lot of math.
So! Assuming you agree with most of that, try this:
SCRABBLECRAFT
You get it already from the name, right? Here's some unnecessary babble, to help you work out the details you might not immediately realize you want to work out for your own version.
Kill a monster or visit a place, take the letters in its name if it makes sense that you can gather stuff from it. Different characters can gather different kinds of stuff -- the stuff they need for their craft, whatever that is. Usually there's Alchemy, Blacksmithing, and Cooking. The ABCs!
You might divide Smithing into Arms and Armor, maybe include Construction, Textiles, Clockworks. Maybe Magic Runes, even. Voodoo Dolls. If you're really feeling adventurous you could replace your entire magic system with this as well.
It takes a dungeon turn to gather in most dungeon situations. If you're foraging then it takes however long that usually takes. Couple hours? I reckon the only places limited to just once would be mines, personal herb gardens, places damaged by warfare. Otherwise you can spend the time again and get the letters again.
Under some conditions maybe only 1d6 letters are available (players' choice of which). Seems a little mean, though.
Carry 5 letters in an inventory slot.
Or maybe it's 2 for smiths, 7 for alchemists and cooks? I don't think I care about this level of granularity personally. Likewise I would not bother having them expire, but if you wanted to, you could roll on a d[alphabet] table each day.
To craft something you need to spend time: It's either a week, a rest period (lunch, short rest, watch, whatever you use), or 1 turn in a dungeon, and during that time you can't do anything else meaningful, but you can abandon the project any time if you want. Name the thing you're trying to make, and then ask the GM. GMs, if it's okay for them to have, pick one of those time frames. Spend the letters. Make the thing. Easy.
You probably also need tools, but I'm not super interested in requiring specific tools for specific things. Instead, I say, if you have "alchemy tools," you can make alchemy things -- though, I think it's fun to detail what alchemy tools are, because you can also use them for other things, like smashing all the glass and putting the shards on the floor as a trap. And the nature of some kinds of tools means you're not going to carry them around. I'm sure you can find some neat tool descriptions.
Really skilled craftspeople can be upgraded mechanically in two ways. 1) They get to paraphrase the source names (they could already do this for the output names: "flight potion" and "flying potion" are both fine). Ex: The GM might have called it a VENOMOUS FROG but an expert alchemist could extract POISONOUS FROG instead. It's fine, I promise. 2) They get to trade letters with other craftspeople. Ex: SILVER SWORD is missing a W, an expert smith could take a W from a cook and make it work. I encourage you to think about how that happens just because it's charming. Either of these upgrades can, at your pleasure, be made into once-per-however-long abilities, and scaled up also.
One knock-on effect of this system is that certain items can be made really reliably from certain places and monsters. You will get all the letters MITHRAL from the MITHRAL MINE, so if you want to make MITHRAL CHAIN MAIL then great! (For rare ingredients like mithral, you might make it so all the letters MITHRAL have to stay stuck together. Or not. I'd pick one special ingredient for the whole adventure personally. Maybe one per craft if I'm feeling froggy.)
You can tell what else you need (_______ CHA__ __IL), so you know which places are going to have what you need, by their names: LIMESTONE CHASM gets you everything, BLOOD GULCH will only get you L, etc. Of course you don't always know the names of places you go to. But often you will.
The GM doesn't need to prepare or even improvise any materials or side quests or recipes. Their jobs are: Answer whether it makes sense to be able to gather stuff; give things names; figure if they're okay with the thing existing; reckon whether it takes minutes, hours, or days. Potentially they'll have to invent what an item does, but I don't really fuck with systems that have really complicated items. Ask the player, if you're stuck. They know what they're trying to do. They spent the resources, they carried them in their inventory instead of other things: they've paid the toll, so just make it happen.
You can literally add minor treasure by rolling on a d[alphabet] table. What's in this goblin's pocket? The letter T. Idk if I'd actually do that though.
Shops? Yeah, check out what inventory FIZZLEBAUM'S HERBS AND SALTS has in stock. Each one costs a copper. Outstanding.
You can give out recipes if that's something you're into, by giving out alternative names for things. Yeah, everybody knows about FIRE-BREATH POTION, but did you know it's also called FLAMEGIN? That's quite a bit shorter.
Scrabblecraft falls a bit short for the players who want to get deep in the weeds about realistic crafting of course. But it still provides skill expression opportunities, they're just different. It's a word-games type of skill expression, plus that classic resource-management shit we all love. I feel like it's so quick and so directly gameable that you'd be foolish not to use it. I mean how can you possibly get from "I want" to "I'm doing" to "I have" any more efficiently than this?
As ever, if you use this, I'd love to hear about how it goes. (I never drop my contact info in these posts because I want you to experience the admittedly very trivial journey of finding it yourself, if you were wondering. The joy of exploration, and all that.)