Tool/Weapon Materials

[Teflonknight]

I am thinking about creating system agnostic (maybe) crafting system. It is intended to be the system that I wish that tapletop and online RPGs, as that is the part of the games I am usually disappointed in. This is then a two part request.
Part One: Does someone know of a comprehensive list of materials used in weapon and tool manufacturing throughout history (real world for the time being)?


Part Two: Which RPG has the best, most customizable, most robust crafting system? I haven't had a lot of experience with crafting as part of role playing. For me this is more of a recent interest.

I apologize if this has been done before. I did a search and didn't see anything.

 

[Janx]

One stick + 2 Iron make an iron sword.

Just kidding.

I think the challenge with your question is that pretty much all weapons (of a given type) are all made the same way, with similar materials and tools. The variance being quantity, artistry and exact shape.

 

[Celebrim]

Part One: Does someone know of a comprehensive list of materials used in weapon and tool manufacturing throughout history (real world for the time being)?

One of the EnWorld posters created a pdf for a crafting system with a pretty comprehensive list of possible materials. The name of it escapes me at the moment but its on RPGNow.

Part Two: Which RPG has the best, most customizable, most robust crafting system? I haven't had a lot of experience with crafting as part of role playing. For me this is more of a recent interest.

There isn't one. The aforementioned pdf is one of the better attempts, but its much better on parts than it is on labor. It ultimately fails on a test to produce consistent pricing.

Of minor annoyance to me is the fact that D&D specific systems tend to inherit D&D's gamist pricing structure and economic models, which ultimately just fall apart when you approach the game from a more simulationist prespective. For example, in D&D labor tends to be priced in silver peices according to the 'NPC economy' (which has the assumption, nothing that happens outside of a dungeon is importat), while materials are priced according the gold based 'PC economy' (which has the assumption that it needs to make a balanced monetary sink for disposing of massive amounts of treasure).

Crafting is of major interest for me, but so far I've been daunted by the amount of work involved in making a good system.

 

[Morrus]

Not so much crafting in the broader sense, but I'm writing an ingredient based herbalism and alchemy system; not for D&D though. I use categories of ingredients - herbs, animals, gems, metals - with varying strengths and element/effect keywords.

 

[Janx]

From a weapons standpoint, as I mentioned before, it's almost all the same parts:

Wood (handles)
leather (wrapping hilts, binding stuff)
iron/steel (blade/head)

Pretty much all weapons weigh less than 10 pounds (a made up stat, but mostly true as even heavy claymores are only 6-8 pounds)

So that means we're talking less than 10 pounds of iron/steel needed. That's presumably not a lot og metal to get one's hands on. probably 1-2 ingots (I have no clue how much an ingot weighs but I am imagining the block of metal forged into a sword we see on various sword movies like Highlander)

The amount of wood used in a weapon is neglible. At best, an axe handle is a branch cleaned up a bit (and a branch is scrap when it comes to lumber processes). probably 1 SP gets you what you need. Then there's carving/shaping time.

Leather is also a negligible resource. Probably 1 SP gets you a cow side. Then you're cutting lace or something out of it (and more likely to use scrap for lace making). A couple hours of work tops.

metal is the key ingredient. I doubt it's expense in D&D terms, but smelting, making steel out iron, is probably a few days or more of work. After that, whacking a steel bar into a sword blade probably takes a few more days. Then sharpening, assembly. Sharpening is almost the hardest part I think (Having made a sword before).

I think darn near every bladed weapon is a similar process of steps (axes, swords, knives) just varying scale of size and materials. Such that it might not be wholly interesting to break it up by exact amounts and costs.

Now adding fancy stuff like magic, that might be useful and interesting.

 

[Teflonknight]

Not so much crafting in the broader sense, but I'm writing an ingredient based herbalism and alchemy system; not for D&D though. I use categories of ingredients - herbs, animals, gems, metals - with varying strengths and element/effect keywords.

I assume that this is for What's O.L.D. is N.E.W.? It was actually the herbalism/alchemy mock up sheet you posted that got me thinking about this in more detail.

I find in MMO's that I enjoy the resources gathering and then item crafting alot. The problem with the crafting systems on those games is that they tend to be fairly rigid, your can only make items based on recipes, with maybe some additionally materials to increase effects.

What I would like to see is a system that allows invention/experimentation. For example: If I want to make an arrow I can choose different materials, each material has it's own properties. So in this case I choose to make the arrow head out of obsidian. Obsidian can splinter into very sharp, small pieces, that means that my arrow is brittle and is basically a one use ammo. However because it splinters and is very sharp, it will cause continued pain and distraction. Game mechanically (4E because that is what I am most familiar with) it would cause ongoing damage and the target would grant combat advantage. Stone would be easily accessable (therefore cheap) but not very good, steel would be better, more durable but would require more work to get.

Eventually you could add some magical effects. I decide to add explosive fire to my obsidian arrow, so now the splinters will burst into flame.

This is my current thought process. I am having trouble finding and comprehensive list of materials used in crafting, etc: stone, wood, bronze, brass, iron, steel, obsidian, etc.

 

[Janx]

I find in MMO's that I enjoy the resources gathering and then item crafting alot. The problem with the crafting systems on those games is that they tend to be fairly rigid, your can only make items based on recipes, with maybe some additionally materials to increase effects.

...snip...

Eventually you could add some magical effects. I decide to add explosive fire to my obsidian arrow, so now the splinters will burst into flame.

This is my current thought process. I am having trouble finding and comprehensive list of materials used in crafting, etc: stone, wood, bronze, brass, iron, steel, obsidian, etc.

Bear in mind, in MMOs (or Skyrim or Minecraft), the gameplay can easily accomodate that for one player or many players to sit through. That might not be as fun for a party of players to sit through while one PC experiments with this. Though perhaps it can be handled off-camera between sessions.

Another thing to consider is that at the PC scale of economy in a (stereoptypical campaign), all of those materials are cheap and easily available (say as arrow heads). So there's a lot less of scanvenging for parts to make arrows than just walking into the archery shop and buying a quiver full of flint "firespark" arrows.

I'd also posit, that while imaginative, these extra effects aren't likely to happen in real life, measurable ways. excepting some corner cases (like wood), arrows are going to hit and do about the same amount of damage unless we model arrowhead vs. armor type vs hit location in a more detailed way.

What might be more D&D-istic however, is to use fantasy materials to justify these additional effects.

This also lets you control their rarity as they are inherently exceptional materials, so splitering/damaging arrowheads are made of a
rare crystal shard material. Fire starting arrows are made of a special type of flint from the Firespark mountains.

 

[Morrus]

MMOs can use time as currency for gathering ingredients. They can make you spend an hour gathering herbs, but a tabletop game can't make you sit through that hour.

 

[Teflonknight]

The idea behind this is definitely not force the players to do MMO style resource gathering or to sit there while someone decides what to make. I guess it boils down to being able to create custom equipment that has some mechanical features and is not just a re-skin of an existing item.

 

[Janx]

The idea behind this is definitely not force the players to do MMO style resource gathering or to sit there while someone decides what to make. I guess it boils down to being able to create custom equipment that has some mechanical features and is not just a re-skin of an existing item.

Sure, I think that goal can be supported still.

If I was going to do it in my game, crafting items would be set as activities to declare when "time passes" which generally would be between adventures (aka offline with the GM over email or something).

I wouldn't use mundane materials to get these effects because they are mundane, cheap (in the scope of a PC's wallet) and they don't have these effects in the real world.

I would invent new, rare materials, as many as I can think of for different effects, that could be used instead of (or as an alloy/additive) mundane materials.

The result is the same. Somebody can get arrows that cause a little extra damage on subsequent rounds. or a percent chance of catching fire (or however powerful you want to make them). it might even be that these items are needed for crafting serious magic items (ala 2E creation rules). So a flaming sword requires being made with that firespark flint as an alloy in the metal.

Or somebody can just make a masterwork sword with the stuff, and settle for that percent chance of igniting the target on a hit.

Effect gained, without dragging down actual game time.