Pretty much anyone who has played an RPG is familiar with the story formula this genre uses to orient the player into their role of "warrior". In a single player RPG the player's character might be destined to become the greatest warrior in the world. Or, the character might be placed into an environment of competition where other newbies, whether npcs or players, are rivals for the title of 'best', and more immediate rewards like praise from authority figures and prizes which increase the character's power. Often this process is iterative - a player grows to become the biggest fish a small pond, then is sent to a higher-level area where they are once again seen as a raw recruit who must prove their worth and grow in skill and toughness to be accepted into some army, faction, or activity with entrance requirements.

But instead of that well-established route, what if the player isn't primarily supposed to be a warrior, but is instead supposed to be a craftsperson? What kind of story can we create to explain why it's important and cool to grow as a craftsperson? Can we present the player as uniquely skilled or full of potential for crafting? Can we use npcs to give the player simple but meaningful crafting-related tasks to accomplish? Is it logical to show the player gaining social ranks and faction reputation by crafting instead of combat?

One interesting example of a crafting-centered game world is A Tale In The Desert. This MMO has no combat. The game begins with survivalism (build a boat to get from starter island to the mainland), presents the importance of crating in terms that what the player is really building is Civilization (one little bit at a time), and links creativity and understanding of how to use the world's resources to the path to becoming a god (the ultimate craftsperson, since they created the world and, the world being still primitive, will create new wonders in the future). The crafting tech tree becomes the main progress meter, replacing character levels.

Another interesting example is the Harvest Moon series (and some other similar farming/breeding sims). In this type of game the story formula is that the player is presented with the ruins of a once-great farm, or town, or ecosystem. The player's first job is to clean up and salvage what scraps they can from the ruins to start earning some income and making small improvements. The eventual goal is to first live up to the glory of the past, then go beyond that, taking the world to it's maximum prosperity and complexity. While not quite the same as ATITD's story, they share the theme that the true value of crafting is in it's creation of Civilization with the player at the top of the social structure. The Harvest Moon games present the ultimate goal/prize as a marriage and children, in keeping with the series' use of the bildungsroman genre. Other farming or breeding sims may have a completeness goal (breed one of every possible thing) or a fame goal (become the best breeder in the world). This seems to combine easily with a more standard warrior story, particularly in monster breeding games like Pokemon and Azure Dreams, and in card-collecting games like Shandalar (old Magic The Gathering sRPG). The danger, though, is that the breeding skill may be seen as only a tool to creating a stronger combat team/deck.

Spore is a rather different example, showing warrior-mentality roots like those of 4X games. It starts with survival, but the prize is biological power, and the goal expansion - from individual, to pack of animals, to tribe of primitives, to nation, to global civilization, to interstellar civilization. At every stage you have rivals you need to either eliminate or absorb; the ultimate goal/prize is maximal expansion, filling the galaxy with your custom-developed life form. Rather than being at the top of the social structure, you are the social structure. A similar progression is seen in SimCity, where you have an environment of a set size and your goal is to expand to fill that environment to its carrying capacity. Spore makes an interesting contrast to the game E.V.O. The Search For Eden. In both games the main thing crafted is the self, and all other life forms are rivals who are eaten to gain biological wealth which is then spent up upgrading biological power and abilities. But E.V.O is not a 4-X game, it's a platformer with a bit of puzzle solving (the levels are puzzles and sometimes they cannot be completed without finding the correct self-configuration). The end reward is similar to both Harvest Moon and Spore - as the winning animal species you sort of marry the planet and your children are Earth's intelligent life, which equates to maximal expansion in a story sense even though there hasn't really been any expansion gameplay.


So... can anyone think of any different story formulas which would work well for a crafting-central game? Or interesting variations on the ones I've described above?

I've played some good tycoon-type games which were about crafting. Plant Tycoon, Fish Tycoon, a Sushi Chef sim, etc. That just doesn't happen to be what I'm interested in designing here, because Tycoon games don't have much story and I really prefer a game where I control an avatar who lives a story. I'm not sure what I want to make really qualifies as an RPG either.

What I want is:
- an MMO
- with some sort of interactive story
- some sort of crafting tech tree
- some crafting activities carried out by realtime sim gameplay
- an inventory system
- and a world marketplace.

Presumably it would also have combat, both for drop-hunting and for capturing and battling pet monsters, and also pvp duelling. My concern is to make sure combat does not overshadow crafting within the story. Becaue I keep playing these MMOs which try to give me the identity of a warrior, and I'm not interested in being a warrior. The world isn't actually about killing or being killed, and violence is rarely the best path to progress in life. RPGs regularly ask the player to do things that would be a really bad idea in the real world, like slaughtering intelligent beings. It's hard to get immersed in the story when it's basic assumptions aren't agreeable. It would be both more realistic and more interesting to build a game world where the player advanced in the game by persuasion and craftsmanship. So that's my challenge here - re-envision a story about a player entering a new world and making progress within that world, replacing the typical RPG obsession with fighting with something else. Create for the player an identity of "creator" instead of "killer" and make that identity be something fun and satisfying that players will be motivated to develop.

Variations on Story Formula

Mentioned:
o Isolation to civilization
o Survive to thrive
o Restore
o Confined development
o Tycoon (business expansion)
o Tournament / Competition

Addition:
o Hobby - where the story is about a person who crafts, but only as a hobby and not as a profession. In the context of an MMO, each player's avatar can retain their identity in real life and develop an additional story in the framework of the hobby.

o Teamwork - A setting where the object to be created requires team effort. The story is comes from the dynamics of the team. This type of story can have a design phrase, a practice phrase and an execution phrase, where the team first designs, practices, then perform the plan within limited time.

o Improvement - A setting where the objective is to maintain or improve on something that is already good. The player begins with an example that is already good, the challenge is to make something even better.

The variations mentioned are not mutually exclusive. They can be combined.

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Besides variations of story formula, I think some other important focuses are these:

o variations on the way interactive story exists in an MMO (i.e. what events and experience is shared? what is not? what is duplicated for each player?)
o variations on the motivation of crafting (i.e. why are the characters interested in crafting?)
o variations on the object being 'crafted'
o variations on the skills required for crafting
o variations on the range of objects that can be crafted
o variations on the social status of craftspersons
o variations on the access, dependency, and function of the crafted object
o variations on the duration from design to completion for the object being crafted
o variations on the level of cooperation and communication among players
o variations on the emphasis on player vs character skills

One idea I had a while back was for a game I called Goblin Inventor. The premise was that in a fictional steampunk kingdom they have a yearly inventing competition, and every year for last 10 years you’ve tried to enter but been laughed out of the place by the other inventors. But this year they’ve decided it would be funnier to let you compete after all, and so now after years of humiliation its time to take your revenge and prove you are the greatest inventor in the world!!!

But in order to complete your ultimate invention you need 7 rare gold parts that the other inventors have just so happened to have used in their inventions this year. The game play consists of you exploring the kingdom and labs of other inventors while collections parts, plans, and assembling an array of wacky inventions to overcome traps, obstacles and enemies.




Other story ideas around a crafts person I could see working are:

- There is a game on steam called recatear or something like that; in which you play the owner of item shop in a fantasy world. You can buy items to sell from other shops, but you can also hire adventures and journey into random dungeons to collect items to sell in your shop.

- A reboot of the old snes game actraiser could be good. You play an angel trying to restore life to monster filled land by helping towns in various areas grow from nothing, and transforming into a hero to journey into monster lairs to kill the most dangerous of beasts.

There is a game on steam called recatear or something like that; in which you play the owner of item shop in a fantasy world.
Recettear has two main gameplay elements.
1 - Managerial: what to buy, what to sell. At what prices.
2 - RPG. The RPG part is classic (warrior-like). The player can hire adventurers and send them in dungeons so they can gain levels and new skills.

The treasures of the dungeon can be sold or used to create new items.

I think the best story element of this game is the debt (or mortgage) that the player needs to pay. It is a nice and simple story engine who compel the player to continue the game.
Maybe you can use something like it. But I am not sure how to implement it in a multiplayer game.

Good ideas here, getting me thinking both about what I do want to do and what I don't want to do. (I find that figuring out what I don't want to do is often very helpful, so sometimes I may strongly disagree with a particular suggestion yet it ends up being very helpful in the design process.)

First, I don't want the player to begin as an apprentice in a particular trade. Why? Well, if the role of creator is to be equally interesting as the role of "best warrior in the world", it seems to me that the player cannot be limited to one profession out of several. The craftsperson should be able to create pretty much anything in the world, given enough time and study. So, I don't want professions in this game at all, I want one broad crafting tech tree with some complicated interlinkage. Ideally, whatever goal the player wants to pursue within the game will then motivate them to develop their crafting in all areas. And, advancing one area will cause new options to become available in other areas, so the player will switch from one area to another instead of staying with one and getting bored.

Second, I don't want crafting to be about making money or running a business. I think this is one place where most MMOs go wrong. Crafting should be valuable for what is created, which should directly benefit the player. The goblin inventor game idea accomplishes this with an adventure/puzzle game approach because the value of the inventions is that they solve puzzles and overcome obstacles to advancing the plot. A Tale In The Desert also accomplishes this, in a context that works a bit better in an MMO. The player crafts for themselves storage, including a house, and infrastructure to craft more advances items. The amount of infrastructure the player has crafted is basically equivalent to the player's level in the game. This more or less requires a survivalist start to the story, since logically the first things the player would do would be craft themselves a backpack (inventory) and collect common, easily-obtained crafting materials. The player would then craft themselves some rough clothing, and the lowest level of housing. It would still be helpful to have one or more NPCs guide the player through the basics of crafting, so rather than starting with the player being marooned, it might be logical to start the player with a cultural 'ritual of adulthood' where the player is tossed out of their tribe to see if they can survive on their own. Not 100% sure about this though.

Then in your MMO, I wonder what the main driving force will be for the player? What rewards, what gains will there be for him?

Because, that is probably a very important part of the design: the driving force for players to play the game!

So far you have functions as I can see, but no real gain or reward system.

Being able to craft a slightly more elaborate jar is not much of a reward, if I am honest.

In A Tale In The Desert the driving force is partly to be able to build oneself an elaborate palace, garden, sculptures, monuments, or other visible "signs of wealth/greatness". In many MMOs players are highly motivated to earn appearance customizations, such as mounts, clothing, hairstyles, tattoos, and changing default colored items to custom colors. Many games also rely on the player's urge to collect complete sets of things (whether this means capturing and breeding pets or buying plushies from the marketplace) and possibly show off their collections to other players. Awarding titles to players for their achievements would work well too. I would use all of these things as rewards for the crafting portion of the game. I'm open to other suggestions for rewards too. But, this is more of a design topic, where my actual concern was to design a story presenting to the player their role as a craftsperson and why this is cool and relevant to the game world they are in.

Edit: I decided I wanted to ask, what do you see as being the player's motivation in a regular MMO? I tend to quit them before I get to max level because I run out of motivation, so I'm not sure what motivates others to play and play.