# Manufacture

LLMS index: [llms.txt](/dvw/en/llms.txt)

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Here’s how a simple real-world manufacturing process works:

- Raw materials are grown, dug from the ground, or captured. Examples: wheat, ore, cows.

- The raw materials are refined to get rid of the useless bits. Examples: grain, copper, milk.

- The refined materials are made into components or finished goods. Examples: bread, wire, cheese.

- Components are combined with other components to make new components or finished goods. Examples: sandwiches, circuit boards, pizzas.

- Finished goods are sold to consumers, who use them to destruction.

- Destroyed goods are recycled into refined materials.

In virtual worlds, it’s usually even simpler. Except for animals, raw materials typically emerge in refined form. Components don’t exist: Raw/refined materials are combined (using an abstract formula known as a recipe) to make finished goods. Recycling does not occur, except perhaps when encapsulated in some grand closed-economy scheme.

Needless to say, the excitement derived from crafting approaches 0% in intensity.

There are exceptions. The virtual world A Tale in the Desert [^97], which is set in ancient Egypt, has a full-blown crafting system at its core. Players can collect slate from riverbeds, that can be used to pay for tuition in stone blade fabrication; they can then make a stone blade from slate, which will pay for tuition in the carpentry skill; using wood obtained from trees, they can manufacture a wood plane and create boards; also using wood from trees, they can pay for the tuition necessary to make a brick rack; they can then make a brick rack; grass can be harvested and dried to make straw; they can obtain sand from the desert and mud from riverbeds; using their brick rack, they can finally manufacture bricks.

Needless to say, the excitement from crafting using this far more sophisticated system still approaches 0% in intensity. Fortunately, because it’s so tedious players will manufacture components that they sell to each other; this introduces an element of interaction that makes for some fun (at least it does if people will sell you what you need). There are some gameplay bugs to be ironed out, but designers have high hopes for A Tale in the Desert as a proof of concept if nothing else.

If a virtual world has a craft system of any substance, there are three golden rules to obey:

- All crafts should have gameplay value.

- The range of craftable objects should be great.

- The depth of crafting skills should be deep.

I’ve covered these elsewhere already, but I’ll quickly reprise the reasons for them here. Crafts should have gameplay value because this adds to immersion and interaction. This applies even to basically intangible objects such as “pretty” jewelry: Anything that impresses PCs should also impress NPCs, even if only crudely so by comparison.

The range of craftable objects should be great or people will end up making the same things and flooding the economy with more goods of one type than it needs.

The depth of craftable skills should be great or players will not consider crafting as a career. If crafting is something that adventurers do in their spare time, this is enough; if you want to cater to people who would rather create objects than destroy mobiles, however, they’ll need skill sets potentially as deep as adventurers’.

There may still be a problem when player expectations come up against virtual world economics. The “I’m role-playing a hero and I don’t see why I should be killed” adventurer has an equivalent in the “I’m role-playing a swordsmith and I don’t see why I shouldn’t sell my swords’” crafter. Sorry, guys, but no one is buying the identical swords that NPC swordsmiths are making, they’re not going to buy yours either unless you drop the price.


[^97]: http://www.egenesis.com/