Crafting

The crafting system provides two sets of rules, one for crafting mundane items, and one for crafting artifacts. Together with the artificially imposed crafting minimums the system does not offer much in the way of interaction or cooperation to crafters.

This page presents an alternative system. Unless otherwise noted, no part of the original crafting system is maintained.

Crafting projects are executed in five stages, grouped into two phases. Each stage is necessary, but need not always be a challenge. As a guideline, the progress rolls for each stage have the same Difficulty, Required successes, and Minimum Duration­. The Interval is handled differently: the Production interval is the Base Interval, the interval of the Insight, Design, Prototyping and Calibration stages is one magnitude shorter (so a base interval of 'Months' means 'Weeks' for all the non-production stages).

Furthermore, some projects have aditional requirements such as workforce, materials, or components that are difficult to acquire.

The first three stages are the Design Phase:

1. Insight: During the insight stage the crafter gathers inspiration and insight into the purpose of the thing they are aiming to make. This requires expertise and insight into the uses of the thing, and requires a progress roll of (Intelligence + Relevant Ability). As a special case, Craftsman Needs no Tools may be used to speed up this stage if a crafter is leading or assisting.
2. Design: The design stage is spent mostly at the drawing table. Making calculations, determining materials to be used and the aesthetics of the product. The design roll a progress roll of (Intelligence + Relevant Craft). As a special case, assistance can be provided by experts based on (Intelligence + Relevant Ability instead) of (Intelligence + Relevant Craft).
3. Prototyping: The prototyping stage is used to make mockups of the final product, to discuss aesthetics and finishes, and to determine the best production methods for intermediate products. The prototyping roll is a progress roll of (Perception + Relevant Craft).

Stages in the Design Phase can be progressed in parallel, as long as the succses in the stage do not exceed the successes accumulated by the preceding stage. Superfluous successes on the roll are simply lost. For example, a project with 4 successes in the Insight stage can have at most 4 in the Design Stage, and a project with 2 successes in the Design stage can have at most 2 successes in the Prototyping stage.

The last two stages are the Production Phase:

1. Production: The creation of the actual product is the done in the production stage. This is where the heavy lifting of material processing, fabrication, and assembly is done. The production roll is a progress roll of (Dexterity + Relevant Craft).
2. Calibration: During this stage, interaction with the intended user of the product is of the greatest relevance to make final adjusments for the purpose use of the product. Domain expertise is the greatest factor during the calibration of the final product. The calibration roll a progress roll of (Perception + Relevant Ability). As a special case, Craftsman Needs no Tools may be used to speed up this stage if a crafter is leading or assisting.

Stages in the Production Phase can be progresses in parallel in the same way as the Design Phase; the Calibration phase's accumulated successes may not exceed the Production phase's accumulated successes.

Cooperation is an intrinsic part of the crafting process. Several crafters and experts can work together on a project. During each stage, one of the collaborators takes the lead and makes the relevant check, the other collaboratores can add dice to this check through the normal cooperation rules. The Insight and Calibration stage are of particular interest for non-crafter collaborators, since these checks are best made by domain experts.

A progress roll is a variant of the extended roll. A normal extended roll features three factors: difficulty, required successes and interval. A progress roll adds minimum duration and failing rolls substracting from the acquired successes.

A progress roll is made by roll against the given difficulty once in each interval. A cumulative progress score is maintained by adding all treshhold successes and subtracting all treshhold failures (that is, subtract the difference between the difficulty and the rolled number of successes). Upon a botch, the project suffers a setback of some kind at the discretion of the Storyteller — this could be a delay, a shortage of materials, the introduction of minor flaw, or some other setback.

If, at the end of the minimum duration, the number of required successes has been accumulated, the project is finished on time. If the required successes have not yet been accumulated, a new roll is made after each additional interval.

For example Alice makes a progress roll of difficulty 2, requiring 4 successes over 3 intervals of a week. Her player starts of strong with (8,8,7,5,4,2) netting 1 success, followed by (0,9,8,8,4,1) for another 3 successes, but the final roll is (5,5,4,3,2,2) setting back the project with -2 successes, giving her a accumulated 2 successes. Alice knows that the project is delayed, but she can continue building. She ends up needing two additional weeks by rolling (7,7,7,6,4,4) and (9,8,7,5,3,1).

The different aspects of a progress roll represent the following things:

Difficulty: the complicatedness of the project (that is, the level of needed expertise). For example, building firewand requires a high level of expertise, but is not necessarily complex or a lot of work.

Required successes: the complexity of the project (that is, the amount of different components or 'moving objects') For example, making the riggings for putting a mule in front of a cart requires many different parts to be made.

Interval + Minimum duration: the amount of time needed by virtue of materials requiring cooling, paints that needs to dry and dumb effort that needs to be exerted. For example: building a simple hut requires wooden planks to be cut, and foundation to be put in place, both of which take time.

• Wooden shelf:
  • Difficulty 0, Required successes 3, Base Interval Hours, minimum 1
  • Additional requirements: Wood
• Plate-and-Chain:
  • Difficulty 1, Required successes 5, Base Interval Days, minimum 3
  • Additional requirements: Smithy, Materials
• Barn:
  • Difficulty 1, Required successes 2, Base Interval Weeks, minimum 1
  • Additional requirements: 10 man workforce for raising the frame, 2 helpers for building the frame
• Small Keep:
  • Difficulty 2, Required successes 10, Base Interval Years, minimum 4
  • Additional requirements: 100 man workforce for moving earth, stone

• Hearthstone Amulet (rating ●):
  • Difficulty 2, Required successes 25, Base Interval Months, minimum 1
  • Additional requirements: Magical materials
• Automaton (rating ●●●):
  • Difficulty 4, Required successes 60, Base Interval Seasons, minimum 5
  • Additional requirements: Magical materials
• Manse (rating ●●):
  • Difficulty 3, Required successes 30, Base Interval Years, minimum 1
  • Additional requirements: 100 man workforce for moving earth, stones, etc., Magical materials, Demesne

During the design of this new set of rules, we kept the following in mind:

• We do not want to much exceptions (that is, the new rules should cover all normal use cases for crafting)
• The rules should support the building of mundane items and buildings, artifacts of different types and Manses
• Interaction with the world and the circle should be an intrinsic feature
• The rules ought to create options for meaningful cooperation, even with non-crafters
• To prevent extended solo downtime crafters are capable of making good estimations of required crafting times, with delays and extensions kept to a managable scale

• If possible, the rules should be scalable to units of crafters