u/Yazkin_Yamakala

I like the idea of crafting in games and have done a bit of research on how other games play it out, and recall back to when I tried crafting in certain games. A lot of really good ideas exist for the idea on how it's crafted, but not much goes into how the item requirements are obtained or gathered to make it feel engaging. Some interesting stuff I learned about:

Apocalypse World tries to create a journey out of gathering what you need, either by finding a specific component, a certain person to help you, or you invest a ton of time or gold during the journey to finally make it. Which is good for 2/3 of what it tries to do (because I hate long time sinks or trying to look for downtime just to try crafting).

Ars Magica is very in depth with its game and basically boils down to very in-depth creativity on every aspect, so you can turn even crafting into its own journey if you wanted to, similar to Apocalypse World, but with less tables.

There's a good bit of monster harvesting books and supplements made for various TTRPGs, a lot of which get extremely specific for the parts you can harvest off of what creatures, what they are used for, and a bunch of lore details on how the parts are either prepared or described. These can be very engaging and great for world building if you dedicate the time to understand them and play with them, but it can lead to a lot of bookkeeping and research required to figure out what can drop what if the supplement doesn't already include that.

What I found most interesting of all comes from Meikyuu Kingdom

It's a JRPG that swaps between kingdom building and dungeoneering. It's very much a rigid and simple game with a set premise, but what I really liked about it is the generalized item drops you get from defeating monsters and looting chests. Unlike most monster harvesting books, the drops are categorized into abstract materials such as wood, iron, meat, info, etc. Crafting as well as some kingdom mechanics take the idea that you need X resource to make it, and if not you cannot do it.

I really like the idea of abstracted material drops. Not only can you fiddle with names to fit into almost any setting, but you can skimp on GM work by having drop tables or lists for each type of encounter players might have. Golems might drop wood, ore, or monster essence. Beasts might drop hide, fabrics, or essences. Robots can drop cybernetics, metals, and energy cores.

You give players a bunch of materials they can use to make stuff, and depending on the setting and how much of what they are getting, you can supplement missing supplies through vendors at a price, include rules to convert one item type to another (Kind of like a 3:1 or a 5:1 ratio), or have scrappy players just use what they can to make any items they can with the available materials. Not only that, but giving players more resources and just a few finished items that top off dungeon loot or help them progress really pushes them to engage with the system if they want to make the most of what's given to them.

Or they can just sell it all and buy stuff, more power to them lol.

What's everyone's opinions on monster drops, harvesting, and general consensus on crafting rules and mechanics in the TTRPG space?

I have tons of experience in ToonBoom and when coming to Moho, there's a lot of lost intuitiveness and confusing aspects that kind of make it frustrating to work with at times. It's a very, very cheap alternative with a one-time payment, but there's still some stuff I wish could be added/changed. If there's anywhere else to provide feedback please let me know.

1. Shape order in the same layer should be more visible. Not only is it hard to select shapes that are behind other shapes, but having a dedicated navigation panel could help with cutting and masking.

   • I also want to point out that shape masking settings should be more intuitive, and not directly linked to the shape above/below it.

2. Masking in general needs a tune-up. Being tied to just the layer group makes it hard to cut parts that need to be cut from layers outside of that group. I know Moho doesn't use a node system, but it was very nice being able to just tell one layer to get cut by or cut into another from anywhere.

3. The drawing tools. They're just really, really bad and difficult to work with. The options for drawing tools and editing line/fill feel very tacked on at the last second, especially things like the fill tool and creating a line that isn't connected but can still be filled. The line exposure tool causes more problems in animation than it fixes. Frame by frame is also affected by this.

4. Vector point editing and animation could use a second pass. Unless I'm missing something, resetting bones and animation doesn't seem to reset vector points, and they remain edited until you can find a keyframe to copy/paste onto where you need it. Being able to just "return to Frame 0 state" would be amazing.

I'm trying to get a kind of core part of a new game to have a "build the case file" system where players and the GM roll on some tables and insert descriptors/sentences to build up the anomaly the players will go out onto the field to face.

My issue is every time I try something, it doesn't feel like it fits. I've tried having the GM roll on a table for the location, anomaly traits, and objective while players add in prompts like eyewitness testimony, evidence left behind, and parts of the location.

I've tried interpretation where players insert a noun/verb/adjective into a random prompt the GM rolls on

I've even shot for a resource where players have limited "tips" they can add to a case that would give them advantages on the field once they encounter them.

Nothing really felt like it was building something the players can go out on and explore/interact with. It's supposed to feel like an SCP case file players and the GM collaboratively build before they go out and solve the mystery, but nothing seems to click at a glance.