@@Kephirus my uploads have actually been quite slow recently because of a surgery… Expect double this next week. My goal is to demonstrate that my human mind can outperform all major AI systems in mass drivel production.
Even if one wasn’t interested in throwing old onions at the wall or searching for witch’s moles…there’s still a lot to learn from this video. Seriously, I always find that with MaLone’s videos, it unlocks things in my brain that help with completely unrelated topics. Not sure why yet, but I’ll take it!
My strategy is to make my videos contain Half the time dedicated to very interesting topics, and the other half of the time to be boring prattling drivel, so that the viewer can both be inspired and then have long periods of time where they zone out out of boredom so that they can process their newfound inspiration
Thanks for this video and your ideas for gamifying gathering. I love crafting, and I appreciate the suggestions by several other commentors(thanks!) To the "resource management is boooring" crowd, if you integrate resource management, even at the exploration level, it leads to opportunity cost or other dramatic scenarios. "Do we get the crafting supplies and leave or press on with our current quest and hope they're here when we come back?" "We can leave now and ensure we have enough light and supplies to safely exit the dungeon, or keep going, and hope we get a payday and not die" "We know how far the abandoned shipment is, but can we carry enough supplies to get there and back through the cursed forest or offroad travel?" "The weather just turned and we lost most of our traveling supplies to torrential downpour/mudslide/beasts fleeing the mana storm. Now we have a survival scenario or a reason to enter an adventure location(Moria, haunted house, etc)." So many interesting decisions and plot hooks and inspiration. That's why being tied to mundane problems, crafting, and economics is more immersive and fun. It makes it easier to expand the scope of effect the PCs have on the world which affects them in turn. Oh, and settlement management goes all the way back to the mid/late levels of AD&D 1st ed.
Transmuting “Worker Placement” board game mechanics to solo RPG might add that layer of satisfaction and in-game resources. It would line up well with the Save-for-Later idea proposed in the video. Everdell and Stone Age seem to be quite popular. But for Solo play, maybe it’s an enchanted ax we let grind away, or a familiar or companion that circles back later to tell you what they’ve gathered. Before listening to all of the video, I was getting lost in the thought of how one might add resource location or extraction method discovery within random encounters. Something that triggers maybe only half the time or less so when it happens it’s a titillating little zing knowing you have some treasure unlocked somewhere. I was also simultaneously in the wind and rain trying to unclog a gutter, so these suggestions are only half remembering what seemed like fun ideas at the time. But maybe they’ll spark something in someone elsewhere
Big agreement on the casualness of exploration and collecting resources. TTRPGs mostly circle around more interesting happenings - where the boring background stuff gets canceled out. One interesting observation: A lot of groups don't track Arrows + coins, which falls in the same mindset imo. The counterquestion might be: Maybe tables that *do* track coins should just add small amounts of collected raw materials whenever you explore and travel.
In my Forbidden Lands game, I treat the town as a separate character. So in some solo sessions, between my group sessions, I play through the town actions, and decide what they gathered and what they want to build. And if I decide that some ogres moved into the quarry and scaring off the workers, I have a quest for my next group (or solo!) session that has tangible rewards.
One thought that I had was to invert the time component. Instead of taking irl time to roll endlessly, play up to tt's strength, and make in-game time the element that you're managing. You would assume that you're going to get ore/logs/stone, and are rolling once to see how long it's going to take to get it. Low-level, poor tools, you're going to take 20min+1d8. But then you also roll for a random encounter once per in-game hour, and you have hunger and stamina to manage as well. And then maybe the logistical problem of weight, and how to get the gathered mats to where they can be used.
First you talk about finding resources, and then you decide you need to be able to buy and sell resources, then you need a medium of exchange so that you can exchange resources, and eventually you're playing a game about economics and not role-playing anymore.
I have been using a system where random loot can be turned into scrap, which is a general resource for crafting and repair. The loss of loot balances the gains for crafting.
I am working on a system that uses d100 roll under skills to craft using abstracted resources in 6 tiers each. T1 through T4 can also be purchased, but T5 and T6 are crafted only. The reason to craft, though, is really that equipment that is crafted has a bonus applied to its armor penetration or its damage reduction. So, if someone is a melee fighter, then they will naturally want to also pick up skill in blacksmithing. This is also incentivized further in that both of these use strength, and raising your skill in either will also slowly raise strength, gradually increasing the bonus applied to both by this common attribute.
I think the core difference is that TTRPG are about storytelling or about mechanical boardgaming. So eg. D&D has a very mechanized boardgamey combat system. Crafting in TTRPGs often falls into the category of storytelling, while also concerning very boring stories (e.g. finding 5 herbs to craft a 1d4 healing potion). You could make it interesting by giving it very complex mechanics - if that's your style. But the easier way imo is to make it relevant to storytelling. Crafting a small thing like a simple tool should probably be handled shortly in the story, with only a die roll or smth. While you can dedicate big time to find the 3 epic monster bodyparts to craft the holy sword ofsomethingorsomesuch. Which does make for an interesting story. And we do the same dedication with most other stuff anyways. A lot of crafting i've seen just simply isn't interesting, while also taking up a huge amount of tabletime and upkeep.
If I may toot my own horn, I have a solo crafting RPG called Scraps that uses a Tetris/Battleship-like mechanic. I don’t know if that’s your thing, but folks seem to enjoy it 😊
Yes I have actually played your game it is fantastic I especially like the Tetris style inventory management. I would love to see it built out even more to have more abstraction dialogue and Random event generation. But it is a very good game as are many of your games
I don't really directly feel about crafting as currency in the games where I've allowed it as a GM or done it as a player (well, I acknowledge that it can be that in effect). But by motivation, it's a form of immersion. If you have bread and yeast in a game, but can't say your character made some dough, that's a very stunted roleplay experience. Here's an experiment to use with the latest edition of the big dragon game: let any character with Guidance replace it with anything, and let rapid crafting with enough roleplay replace it. You immediately make D&D more immersive.
The big disconnect I have with the idea of crafting in games, tabletop or otherwise, is this notion that somehow the player is the best one for the job. As you noted when going over the IRL process of crafting something, one of the "currencies" involved is this retroactive opportunity cost in having learned the necessary skills to make an attempt in the first place. While it's fine to assume that of a game character as well... reasonable, even... the illusion begins to break down a game starts to push crafting as a reasonable path to anything other than a retirement plan. Yes, let me drop everything going on in my life to farm for and craft 148 iron daggers, then translate the skills learned there into a first-and-only attempt at creating BOONBANE, SIDECLEAVER OF THE QUASIGODS. The stronghold mechanics seem like a good enough middleground to me when the narrative allows for it. Either way, the gameplay experience usually boils down to finding things while adventuring that turn into better things at the conclusion of the adventure. My question is... why do those things need to be mundane (wood, stone, iron) and why does the creator of better things need to be the player or an associate thereof? Can we not just assume that an organization on the scale of a stronghold or town already has the logistics in place to effectively have a near-infinite supply of the mundane? Why must that task fall to the player? Let gold be the abstract to the mundane and have the player source the extraordinary instead. Todd the blacksmith will happily make you an iron dagger for a few silver, he doesn't make sheathes though, so he refers you to Dott at the tannery for that who can whip one up, but wouldn't you know it, she's fresh out of the basilisk toenails needed to craft a truly epic sheath that grants you 1D4 poison damage to blades kept in it. Well, now you've got yourself an adventure!
Video 87 of me liking and then commenting on every new upload to tell the viewers that the Man Alone Podcast is absolutely some of that sweet, unhinged audio/vocal-honey. Psssst. What would be the best item to have a micro-version of? It can’t already exist. I want a micro version of one of those rubber chickens that scream insanely loud when you squeeze them, but I want the volume to stay just as loud on the micro one.
Great question I think I would want a micro version of a fire extinguisher so that when anyone lights a birthday cake I can panic and say oh my God oh my God and then run and get that tiny fire extinguisher and put it out and explain to everyone in the room that yes that tiny flame maybe wasn't scary to you but imagine how it felt to this tiny fire extinguisher
Twilight 2000 has an advantage for the cost of this - because the game is run on a tight time-schedule anyway, so you can really make a time cost be relevant.
50:40 I think really the big thing You have to consider is that games like Rivals and Fortnite are meant to be games of still and if you make a purchasable item give you a mechanical advantage you’ve made it not about skill but about pay to win.
@@nobodyinparticular5639 yes I understand that, all of the purchases are cosmetic. I wasn’t suggesting that the purchases should give a power advantage in that game, I was saying that me personally I would never buy anything in a game that only changed how I looked.
play adventurer conqueror king. Best crafting in ttrpgs. You invest time (each class gets an hourly "wage" you can spend to craft), a "material cost" which is in straight gold pieces, and a substance cost which has to be sourced from a related monster part. So really you invest time depending on class level, gold, and you have to hunt for monsters.
THIS IS ACKS!!! I just put this together in my head, thank you so much and I immediately picked up a copy of this very much looking forward to it thank you thank you thank you!
I'm about ready to start my own solo play, and home game. I'll be playing a level 1 necromancer on one side of the world. They'll be playing the normal ax1 sinister stone of sakkara on the other side of the world.
🤣make me a quarterstaff…Show me which broom you need anymore…I don’t even like crafting in a video game. I tolerate it just to get the in-game stuff I need to do the stuff.
@@ckristianzafranco wow you’re right… I’ll speed up and be more forceful. The next time I improvise an entire hours worth of content on the spot. Go watch an AI channel if conciseness is your thing.
Dude you are on fire as of late, so manny uploads with different topics/rants!
@@Kephirus my uploads have actually been quite slow recently because of a surgery… Expect double this next week. My goal is to demonstrate that my human mind can outperform all major AI systems in mass drivel production.
Even if one wasn’t interested in throwing old onions at the wall or searching for witch’s moles…there’s still a lot to learn from this video. Seriously, I always find that with MaLone’s videos, it unlocks things in my brain that help with completely unrelated topics. Not sure why yet, but I’ll take it!
My strategy is to make my videos contain Half the time dedicated to very interesting topics, and the other half of the time to be boring prattling drivel, so that the viewer can both be inspired and then have long periods of time where they zone out out of boredom so that they can process their newfound inspiration
@@amanisalone well, they do say balance in all things is important 😄
Thanks for this video and your ideas for gamifying gathering. I love crafting, and I appreciate the suggestions by several other commentors(thanks!)
To the "resource management is boooring" crowd, if you integrate resource management, even at the exploration level, it leads to opportunity cost or other dramatic scenarios.
"Do we get the crafting supplies and leave or press on with our current quest and hope they're here when we come back?" "We can leave now and ensure we have enough light and supplies to safely exit the dungeon, or keep going, and hope we get a payday and not die" "We know how far the abandoned shipment is, but can we carry enough supplies to get there and back through the cursed forest or offroad travel?" "The weather just turned and we lost most of our traveling supplies to torrential downpour/mudslide/beasts fleeing the mana storm. Now we have a survival scenario or a reason to enter an adventure location(Moria, haunted house, etc)."
So many interesting decisions and plot hooks and inspiration. That's why being tied to mundane problems, crafting, and economics is more immersive and fun. It makes it easier to expand the scope of effect the PCs have on the world which affects them in turn. Oh, and settlement management goes all the way back to the mid/late levels of AD&D 1st ed.
I agree with Ben and not just bc of the beard
Transmuting “Worker Placement” board game mechanics to solo RPG might add that layer of satisfaction and in-game resources.
It would line up well with the Save-for-Later idea proposed in the video.
Everdell and Stone Age seem to be quite popular.
But for Solo play,
maybe it’s an enchanted ax we let grind away, or a familiar or companion that circles back later to tell you what they’ve gathered.
Before listening to all of the video, I was getting lost in the thought of how one might add resource location or extraction method discovery within random encounters. Something that triggers maybe only half the time or less so when it happens it’s a titillating little zing knowing you have some treasure unlocked somewhere.
I was also simultaneously in the wind and rain trying to unclog a gutter, so these suggestions are only half remembering what seemed like fun ideas at the time. But maybe they’ll spark something in someone elsewhere
Big agreement on the casualness of exploration and collecting resources. TTRPGs mostly circle around more interesting happenings - where the boring background stuff gets canceled out.
One interesting observation: A lot of groups don't track Arrows + coins, which falls in the same mindset imo. The counterquestion might be: Maybe tables that *do* track coins should just add small amounts of collected raw materials whenever you explore and travel.
Ah! I see you have dismantled this suggestion in the video later on :D
In my Forbidden Lands game, I treat the town as a separate character. So in some solo sessions, between my group sessions, I play through the town actions, and decide what they gathered and what they want to build.
And if I decide that some ogres moved into the quarry and scaring off the workers, I have a quest for my next group (or solo!) session that has tangible rewards.
Good video! I enjoy you crafting the definition of crafting versus other types of crafting.
1 :21:00 "Games that already do this...." Fallout RPG.
One thought that I had was to invert the time component. Instead of taking irl time to roll endlessly, play up to tt's strength, and make in-game time the element that you're managing. You would assume that you're going to get ore/logs/stone, and are rolling once to see how long it's going to take to get it. Low-level, poor tools, you're going to take 20min+1d8. But then you also roll for a random encounter once per in-game hour, and you have hunger and stamina to manage as well. And then maybe the logistical problem of weight, and how to get the gathered mats to where they can be used.
First you talk about finding resources, and then you decide you need to be able to buy and sell resources, then you need a medium of exchange so that you can exchange resources, and eventually you're playing a game about economics and not role-playing anymore.
I have been using a system where random loot can be turned into scrap, which is a general resource for crafting and repair. The loss of loot balances the gains for crafting.
I am working on a system that uses d100 roll under skills to craft using abstracted resources in 6 tiers each. T1 through T4 can also be purchased, but T5 and T6 are crafted only. The reason to craft, though, is really that equipment that is crafted has a bonus applied to its armor penetration or its damage reduction. So, if someone is a melee fighter, then they will naturally want to also pick up skill in blacksmithing. This is also incentivized further in that both of these use strength, and raising your skill in either will also slowly raise strength, gradually increasing the bonus applied to both by this common attribute.
Why don’t I like crafting on the tabletop?
Imagine playing *My Summer Car*, but with dice rolls.
Sounds less like a game, and more like WORK.
I think the core difference is that TTRPG are about storytelling or about mechanical boardgaming. So eg. D&D has a very mechanized boardgamey combat system.
Crafting in TTRPGs often falls into the category of storytelling, while also concerning very boring stories (e.g. finding 5 herbs to craft a 1d4 healing potion). You could make it interesting by giving it very complex mechanics - if that's your style.
But the easier way imo is to make it relevant to storytelling. Crafting a small thing like a simple tool should probably be handled shortly in the story, with only a die roll or smth. While you can dedicate big time to find the 3 epic monster bodyparts to craft the holy sword ofsomethingorsomesuch. Which does make for an interesting story.
And we do the same dedication with most other stuff anyways. A lot of crafting i've seen just simply isn't interesting, while also taking up a huge amount of tabletime and upkeep.
fair assessment
If I may toot my own horn, I have a solo crafting RPG called Scraps that uses a Tetris/Battleship-like mechanic. I don’t know if that’s your thing, but folks seem to enjoy it 😊
Yes I have actually played your game it is fantastic I especially like the Tetris style inventory management. I would love to see it built out even more to have more abstraction dialogue and Random event generation. But it is a very good game as are many of your games
@ That’s very kind of you, thank you very much! I do intend to revisit and make an extended edition soon ^^
I don't really directly feel about crafting as currency in the games where I've allowed it as a GM or done it as a player (well, I acknowledge that it can be that in effect). But by motivation, it's a form of immersion. If you have bread and yeast in a game, but can't say your character made some dough, that's a very stunted roleplay experience.
Here's an experiment to use with the latest edition of the big dragon game: let any character with Guidance replace it with anything, and let rapid crafting with enough roleplay replace it. You immediately make D&D more immersive.
The big disconnect I have with the idea of crafting in games, tabletop or otherwise, is this notion that somehow the player is the best one for the job. As you noted when going over the IRL process of crafting something, one of the "currencies" involved is this retroactive opportunity cost in having learned the necessary skills to make an attempt in the first place. While it's fine to assume that of a game character as well... reasonable, even... the illusion begins to break down a game starts to push crafting as a reasonable path to anything other than a retirement plan. Yes, let me drop everything going on in my life to farm for and craft 148 iron daggers, then translate the skills learned there into a first-and-only attempt at creating BOONBANE, SIDECLEAVER OF THE QUASIGODS.
The stronghold mechanics seem like a good enough middleground to me when the narrative allows for it.
Either way, the gameplay experience usually boils down to finding things while adventuring that turn into better things at the conclusion of the adventure. My question is... why do those things need to be mundane (wood, stone, iron) and why does the creator of better things need to be the player or an associate thereof? Can we not just assume that an organization on the scale of a stronghold or town already has the logistics in place to effectively have a near-infinite supply of the mundane? Why must that task fall to the player? Let gold be the abstract to the mundane and have the player source the extraordinary instead. Todd the blacksmith will happily make you an iron dagger for a few silver, he doesn't make sheathes though, so he refers you to Dott at the tannery for that who can whip one up, but wouldn't you know it, she's fresh out of the basilisk toenails needed to craft a truly epic sheath that grants you 1D4 poison damage to blades kept in it. Well, now you've got yourself an adventure!
I absolutely love tech trees and crafting in video games. I've always abstracted it so much in RPGs so much that it's no fun at all.
Video 87 of me liking and then commenting on every new upload to tell the viewers that the Man Alone Podcast is absolutely some of that sweet, unhinged audio/vocal-honey.
Psssst. What would be the best item to have a micro-version of? It can’t already exist. I want a micro version of one of those rubber chickens that scream insanely loud when you squeeze them, but I want the volume to stay just as loud on the micro one.
Great question I think I would want a micro version of a fire extinguisher so that when anyone lights a birthday cake I can panic and say oh my God oh my God and then run and get that tiny fire extinguisher and put it out and explain to everyone in the room that yes that tiny flame maybe wasn't scary to you but imagine how it felt to this tiny fire extinguisher
Twilight 2000 has an advantage for the cost of this - because the game is run on a tight time-schedule anyway, so you can really make a time cost be relevant.
Wow it pays to stay up late ! New video !
Dude holds his pen like a monkey but still has better handwriting that me
Just what I needed the day after Christmas
50:40 I think really the big thing
You have to consider is that games like Rivals and Fortnite are meant to be games of still and if you make a purchasable item give you a mechanical advantage you’ve made it not about skill but about pay to win.
@@nobodyinparticular5639 yes I understand that, all of the purchases are cosmetic. I wasn’t suggesting that the purchases should give a power advantage in that game, I was saying that me personally I would never buy anything in a game that only changed how I looked.
Dragon Quest IX did crafting right. I want my trpg to do that.
play adventurer conqueror king. Best crafting in ttrpgs. You invest time (each class gets an hourly "wage" you can spend to craft), a "material cost" which is in straight gold pieces, and a substance cost which has to be sourced from a related monster part. So really you invest time depending on class level, gold, and you have to hunt for monsters.
THIS IS ACKS!!! I just put this together in my head, thank you so much and I immediately picked up a copy of this very much looking forward to it thank you thank you thank you!
I'm about ready to start my own solo play, and home game. I'll be playing a level 1 necromancer on one side of the world. They'll be playing the normal ax1 sinister stone of sakkara on the other side of the world.
so distracted by the keyboard layout, where is O,P,L?
I program them onto the top right hehe
*looks at thumbnail* "Yeah it has been a minute since I've watched an AvE video."
🤣make me a quarterstaff…Show me which broom you need anymore…I don’t even like crafting in a video game. I tolerate it just to get the in-game stuff I need to do the stuff.
It may not really be helpful to the discussion but I highly recommend Subnautica. It is probably my favorite crafting and exploration game.
Astroneer!
YYYYES! MUHAHAHAHAHA AWW.....
This video could have been half the length if you talked faster or didn't hesitate when speaking so much.
@@ckristianzafranco wow you’re right… I’ll speed up and be more forceful. The next time I improvise an entire hours worth of content on the spot. Go watch an AI channel if conciseness is your thing.