TTRPGs With Crafts and Props

[doctorbadwolf]

Edit: somehow this has been interpreted as a dm asking players to craft. It is not that. The question relates to games that have some sort of creation as part of the game design. This is not about a dm running dnd and demanding players make origami.

Are you okay with being asked [by the fundemental design of a specific game] to do crafts in order to play?

Say, creating a paper fold journal that is your character sheet, or building out a map, etc? [Again, as part of the game design, not simply the gm wanting you to. The gm is part of the creation, as well, and it is part of the mechanics of play, not some fluff extra thing]

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I sometimes do crafts for roleplaying, but they’re driven by my own talents & interests. I’m not sure how I’d respond to being told to do a particular craft a particular way.

I mean, what even is a “paper fold journal”?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I sometimes do crafts for roleplaying, but they’re driven by my own talents & interests. I’m not sure how I’d respond to being told to do a particular craft a particular way.

I mean, what even is a “paper fold journal”?

Another temr would be papercraft journal?

It is printed in such a way that you fold it into a roughly A6 ish sized journal.

My game has as an aspect of beginning play that you create a group journal. You also can make a character journal but you can also just use a normal character sheet

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Another temr would be papercraft journal?

It is printed in such a way that you fold it into a roughly A6 ish sized journal.

I’m 58, and I still make functional paper airplanes every once in a while. Some are quite complex, although my self-imposed rule of only using folds or cuts DOES create limitations.

…and I can’t see myself doing a papercraft journal for an RPG.

 

[Deset Gled]

Creating a group backstory in some sort of a shared document sounds fine. Definitely more towards the direction of "group storytelling" than a game, but that's a different discussion.

Having the players do custom folding and crafts feels pretty gimmicky, though. As a player, I would want the content to be what matters, not the form.

In a professionally published game, I could see including pre-printed sheets that look like a journal for this task. And artistic-nearing-cheesy character sheet design isn't a problem for me. But it sounds like you may be pushing that a bit too far for my taste.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Creating a group backstory in some sort of a shared document sounds fine. Definitely more towards the direction of "group storytelling" than a game, but that's a different discussion.

I mean any group character creation is group storytelling. It is literally just making yhe characters and degermining what the campaign is going to be about in vague "starting point" terms by way of knowing what the PCs are into, what factions they support or oppose or are part of, and also determining a little of what happened in the decades before the start of the campaign.

Having the players do custom folding and crafts feels pretty gimmicky, though. As a player, I would want the content to be what matters, not the form.

The plan is to also have a5 or a6 journals with prebuilt innards for this purpose that you can buy, and the online play folks could just do it digitally.

But yeah, if having any kind of craft as part of play is "gimmicky" then...thats fine.

But a big part of the design of the game is the idea that you dont open the rule book during conflict scene play, because what you need is on your character sheets are your group Lorebook. there are more complex parts of the game but they either dont happen until you advance or get into play a bit. The Lorebook is actually used and relied upon. It is part of the game.

In a professionally published game, I could see including pre-printed sheets that look like a journal for this task. And artistic-nearing-cheesy character sheet design isn't a problem for me. But it sounds like you may be pushing that a bit too far for my taste.

Not sure why it seems that way but thats fine.

Either way, the stuff about my game is an example, not the point of the thread.

 

[Byrd]

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[zarionofarabel]

No.

I'm actually not a huge fan of props and music, I prefer to play an imagination game. Give me a description of the thing and tell me what the letter says, props just drag me out of my imagination and in to the real world. Same as minis and a grid, which devastates my ability to stay immersed in my imagination. The most I want is my character sheet and dice, the rest is unnecessary.

I remember watching part of the video from the famous blonde DM girl, the actress that did a haunted house RPG thing that apparently cost a couple hundred grand. It was all playing with toys and walking in the woods. What a horrifying TTRPG experience that would have been for me! Also, what a bloody waste of money!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

But a big part of the design of the game is the idea that you dont open the rule book during conflict scene play, because what you need is on your character sheets are your group Lorebook.

Not trying to be nitpicky, but that’s HERO. Once your characters is made, 95% of what you need on game night is on your character sheet(s), the rest being on the GM’s screen.

As for physical sheets in general? Well, I’ve been doing my HERO character sheets on dedicated computer spreadsheet templates since the early 1990s (they track ALL the math for you during character creation/alteration), and in various word processing programs of Notes apps since the early 2000s for almost every other RPG. Ditto all of my campaign notes.

So far, I’ve only had 2 issues:

1) hardware/software obsolescence when there’s no way to migrate the data

2) accidental deletion (literally just happened to me for some beloved 3.5Ed PCs)

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

(To be clear, I’ve also made campaign setting globes out of colored, folded paper D20s and created PC, NPC, and spell effect stand-ups using styrofoam, pins/needles and craft beads.)