Why Craft Anyway?
“But Angry,” you’re probably saying, “so what? Does D&D need another progression system? Why not just put everything into the class progression? Equipment progression makes the game more complex. The GM would have to dole out equipment and keep everything in balance? And crafting on top of that? That’s even more complex. And crafting is only interesting to the player who’s doing it. Why make the rest of the players sit through that?”
Well, you raise a good point in your pissing and moaning, you whiny naysayer. Not your actual points, mind you. You’re wrong there. But what you’re at least asking the right question: what would it add to the game?
I know people want a crafting system. Well, I know players want a crafting system. They tell me all the time. And I want a crafting system. So, there’s a demand. But, if we’re going to add a system to the game, we do need to understand why anyone would want it. And it’s especially important for you to understand it if you’re not the sort of person who wants it. Otherwise, how will you deliver a game that appeals to anyone who isn’t you?
So why? Why do people want a crafting system? Why do people want anything? Because there’s some kind of reward. And there’s two basic kinds of rewards: extrinsic rewards and intrinsic rewards.
Let’s start with intrinsic rewards. Intrinsic rewards are those that are valuable for their own sake. They have some inherent quality that makes them desirable, in and of themselves. Now, we’re going to consider a crafting system to be a system whereby a player can acquire or customize their character’s equipment. And, when I say equipment, I’m referring to both permanent stuff like swords and armor, and temporary items like potions and consumables. But, I’m also going to add the caveat that it has to be distinct from your class abilities. And that distinction is important.
See, Pathfinder has gotten around the crafting problem – the problem being the crafting system in D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder are so needlessly complicated, costly, and unrewarding that nobody uses them – Pathfinder has gotten around the crafting problem by just inventing classes whose class abilities are skinned as crafting. D&D did a few of those two. Classes like the Alchemist and the Artificer are just spellcasters whose spell list is called crafting. It’s not quite the same thing. And the reason is because of the intrinsic rewards of crafting.
See, crafting allows for a level of customization that lies outside the choice of a character archetype. It’s a different axis of character customization. Kind of like how skills and feats used to do that. Except that many feats were only useful for certain classes and the generalist feats weren’t that great. And skills are married to class and background. And unlike background choices, which are very limited and simply serve as a modifier to an archetype, customized equipment is completely unique. There are lots of fighters in the world. And lots of dwarven fighters. And many of them are guild artisans. Because those are archetypes. That’s the point. But only one dwarven fighter artisan in the world chose to make this particular sword or axe or whatever.
From a level of pure creative expression, the open-endedness of crafting is part of the appeal. Choosing your race, background, class, and build is just answering a series of multiple-choice questions with a very limited number of options. But building your own custom equipment loadout is different. Oh, sure, there’s still only going to be a limited number of choices. There’s only so many different types of armor and weapons and so many modifiers and abilities you can add, but there’s a vast explorable space there in the sheer number of options. If you have 15 different weapon choices and each weapon has, say, two different slots for modifiers, and there’s 20 different modifiers, that’s 6,000 different weapon variations. Or 5,700 if you can’t double up on the modifiers. If you have the same number of armor choices and then add in all sorts of other equipment, you quickly balloon up to hundreds of thousands, even millions, of possibilities.
Beyond the creative expression aspect, there’s also a discovery aspect. See, I referred to the total number of options as a vast “explorable space.” And that’s because, even if every option is spelled out on a list and you just mix and match components to create your weapon, there’s still the opportunity to explore. Mixing and matching combinations of abilities and special powers – at different power levels – and combining different equipment matchups with different class abilities for different synergies? That offers a lot of potential to fool around and tweak and tinker. Exploring the system and finding really cool combinations that work for your character? That’s a form of discovery that a lot of players enjoy.
Purely intrinsically, you satisfy players who are seeking a way to express themselves in their character and the players who like to explore the game mechanically and figure out the best ways to do things. And that’s not even mentioning the players who just want the experience of playing a craftsman or self-sufficient adventurer because that’s the fantasy they are after.
And that, of course, plays into the extrinsic rewards. Those are the rewards that are valuable because of what they do. In this case, custom equipment is rewarding because of whatever it allows you to do. A flaming sword is cool because it does bonus fire damage. Armor that protects against poison is valuable because it nullifies poison. Duh.
Now, normally, in D&D, those sorts of extrinsic rewards are limited to class abilities – which means that choosing a class actually locks you into a subset of all possible abilities and powers – or the magic items that the GM chooses to dole out. Or roles randomly. But if you’re able to select your own custom equipment, you have the power to select your own abilities and to do so without being limited to a class list. That means that you’re better able to prepare for challenges, cover some of the weaknesses in your class or race, or enhance your strengths.
All told, allowing players to somehow build custom equipment offers a great degree of creative expression, a chance for discovery, and the ability to prepare for upcoming challenges. And, call me crazy, that list sounds pretty close to what I might call the core engagement of a role-playing game.]
