I'm running a stone age campaign and I want to encourage my PCs to progress as players and to progress their civilization. Thus I want to implement an Inventing system. I think that the craft system would detract from them too much with it's high GP and XP costs and besides should making a new tool to build a shelter cost 300XP? I think not. however I need to find some ideas or rules to implement this, got any ideas?
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I would say modify the craft rules. After all, you only need X amount of raw materials, why can't they get those materials themselves? 40gp worth of wood might require them to chop down X amount of trees, for example.
You just designate how much raw materials they can scavenge from the surrounding environment to limit how much they can make (at least in that area), or just simply impose a longer crafting process. Some possible options for skill checks surrounding harvesting raw materials include Survival and some of the various Profession skills (woodcutter, miner, and so on). Just base how much they gather on how high the skill check is, and that they can only make X amount of attempts per day/week.
I've given it some thought, but only enough for a preliminary idea. It's experimental so far, but tell me if it helps.
Also, normal crafting (ie. excluding magical) shouldn't take XP points. That's just freaking retarded.
Why invent when you can club someone and steal their fire?
This sort of thing is always incredibly hard to simulate. In real life, invention is a combination of long periods of necessity and random flashes of insight which get developed over time through trial and error, and usually by a large group of people, not necessarily working together. You almost never know what the finished product is going to be ahead of time.
In RPGs, a player is more likely to sit down and say, "My character wants to invent metal tools." Okay. The player knows the advantages of metal over stone and bone, and has at least some idea of how to go about making them. The character has to figure out where to find useful ore, and be able to generate enough heat to not only extract metal from it, but shape it into tools.
Having gotten that far, he'll then discover that copper and tin are fine for some things, but don't make particularly good weapons or heavy-use tools. Then he's got to hit on the idea of mixing those metals in certain ratios to invent bronze. Now he's really got something!
A game system like ARIA might be able to model the process of invention by a culture or a civilization. I'm not sure it can be modeled for a group of 1-4 people.
neat campaign. I would make craft a generic skill modified by intelligence. `Crafter`would be a feat that characters would take. They would get a bonus on their craft check and their items would last longer. You could also rule that they cannot truly ìnvent`something new without the crafter feat.
After that, it would be a matter of DC. possible benchmark:
A:Create an existing item found in the tribe DC 15
B: Imrpove on an existing item or practice found in the tribe DC 25
C: Create a new item,idea or material DC 30 (that still fits within the stone age era)
D: Create a new item, idea or material that fits within the Bronze Age era DC 40
E: Create a new item, idea or material that fits within the Iron Age ear DC 50.
The greater the DC the creater the cost and time needed to create the item. A: 2 days
B: 1 week
C: 1 month
D: 5 years
E: 20 years
Obviously the upper reaches of this would retire the character, but then again, if you truly wanted characters to run around in armor made of steel, it wouldn`t be set in the Stone Age.
With the moving out of the neolithic age point, that's a good idea and I've incorporated it already. The PCs start in a society that is a low tech level nomadic tribe and there are other societies that are at higher tech levels up to late bronze and bordering on iron. Thanks for giving me some quest ideas though. I think I might put in some quests for kidnapping or extorting some professor type NPC.
Going off what Damon said, I would go with some kind of "tech tree". E.g., if the PCs want to develop some better shelters, then you can make a series of missions for them to solve before they succeed (like one mission might be finding the proper materials, or tracking down another tribe that has the technique you want, or trying to survive attacks from monsters while building the new shelters, etc.).
I tried going off a tech tree but it didn't seem to go terribly well. I find it too limiting and it's hard to allow PC creativity with having strict prerequisites for new tech.
You might want to pick up Clash of Stone. This might be what you are looking for.
You might want to pick up Clash of Stone. This might be what you are looking for.
That looks like something I could really use, thanks.
I tried going off a tech tree but it didn't seem to go terribly well. I find it too limiting and it's hard to allow PC creativity with having strict prerequisites for new tech.
I wasn't really thinking of having strict prerequisites created by the DM. In this case, I'd probably ask the players what they want to work on, and have them propose some actions towards that goal. Then you can play out the scenario and give them some "points" based on how useful you think the result was.