Well I had this Idea, about this Peasent, who wants to become a knight, and so you, the player, watch him grow to his idea, as he battles more and more monsters he would become more and more powerful, the Catch?
You're not him.
You're his Blacksmith, who builds his weapons and armor, Afterall, where would he be without you?
Not where he is.
So...
What do you think?

So a 2nd person story?

By (what I've received as) general consensus, that's pretty much the hardest story to write. Depends on the gameplay though I guess.

Hah...whoa, never heard of this

That doesn't seem like an interesting game. You watch this peasant become a knight (which is impossible if he was a peasant his entire life) while you make armor and weapons. Sounds like a ruddy-well-lot-o'-fun we 'ave 'ere.

doable, but it depends entirely upon what exactly does the blacksmith. There's a reason most games are not about the side-characters but about the big damn heroes. The heroes are just easier to write for.

If your game is basically a very focused blacksmithing simulation, it can work. If it's more like say, your normal JRPG but with your blacksmith as the main character adventuring... it... MIGHT also work but then that makes your blacksmith the new big damn hero, which I think kind of defeats the purpose and theme here.

Since I love brainstorming, let's see what I can come up with here...

Blacksmithing, the game

Your character's whole purpose is to build bigger and better weapons and armor for your knight. Your performance is measured in the following areas
structural integrity of the weapon: how well does it stand up to punishment, paramount for armor
damage output
protection
comfort to wear/use
ease of use
speed allowance
other attributes that the weapon gives (i.e. a weapon that makes parrying easier might be worth more)
oh yeah, and appearance

I normally would also add "weight" but that often is more of a factor of balance instead of just a raw number. giving someone a weapon that weighs 2 lbs (the average weight of a longsword) that is shaped like a child's tricycle will obviously not be as good as giving someone a well-balanced blade.

for damage output / protection, there are two ways to go about this. you can either have the damage output be categorized in broad categories (i.e. piercing, slashing, bludgeon damage and protection against it) or you can use a default value, and then just have tags that show special affinities towards one or the other. (i.e. +100% against piercing weapon)

so these above are your base line measurements on your performance. But what leads to it?

the material you use (which means material gathering)
the way you mix the materials (which means knowledge in metallurgy)
structural design (which means knowledge in engineering)
skills at tempering
tools you have at your disposal
efficiency at doing so (if your knight needs something next week and you decide to do something that will take your 3 years, that's no good)
empathy for user experience
and last but not least, magic application (assuming magic is part of the game)

So, to get most of these in, you would have the following attributes for your own character
Knowledge of Structural Integrity (helps damage output and structural integrity. More so on structural integrity)
Anatomy knowledge (helps damage output and structural integrity and comfort. More on comfort and damage)
Metallurgical knowledge (effects all of the above, but also impacts how efficient you are with your base materials)
Tempering skills (effects your progress)
Materials at hand
components at hand
Workshop Space (gives you more capacity for more help and more tools)
Tools (helps your efficiency, but also makes certain kinds of techniques possible)
Helping hands (helps your efficiency)
arcane knowledge (helps with magical stuff)

materials here is talking about BASE materials like wood, metals, etc.
components refers to like, a basket hilts, or a particular coating that makes the armor shine which in turn makes the appearance score go up. You can build components from base materials.

development will be broken up into several different stages:
study the needs/requirements
material mixing (mixing the base materials for new materials)
material shaping (getting it into the right shape)
construction (putting the components together)
tempering/sharpening (fine tuning the product)
embellishing (making it look nice)
polish (the last step of embellishing)

keep in mind, not all of this would be lock step. If you feel that a particular part just doesn't work as well as you'd like, you can always take the blade apart and use a different component.

Each "phase" though, will have it's own special bracket of techniques and methods you can use. (Basically, you can treat the techniques as skills)

Add in a time restraint (maybe measured in days), a limit stamina, and you have yourself a basic management game on your hands.

The client
Each client will have their own requirements as to what they need. What I think you can do is have each assignment have a weighted scale on each facet for scoring. Certain parts are going to be more important than others, depending upon the need. i.e. an archer who does horse archery might weigh ease of use and speed allowance higher than say, raw protection, while a knight who rides a heavy warhorse might care more about raw protection. These weights should not be too explicit for the player, but rather should be couched language that the players can find out from the client.

RPG battle mechanics can be applied to way more than just battles!

Your blacksmith can gain stats, skills, equipment, items, etc. He can then use these things, not in battle, but in blacksmithing. Many of the same ideas as RPG battles would apply. Each round the metal would react in a certain way, possibly draining the item's quality (equivalent to a normal RPG's HP, when it reaches 0 you lose the "battle") and the player would have to choose skills to respond to the situation, to complete the item (item completion is equivalent to the enemy's HP, when it reaches 0 you win the "battle") without the item becoming a piece of junk. For completing higher quality items, you would naturally receive better rewards. It wouldn't be a simple matter of strike and get struck, it could easily have all the nuances of a normal RPG battle: status effects, skills with properties that work better in some situations (equivalent to elements), MP usage, "healing" skills that improve the item's quality, etc etc.

Obviously this would require pretty heavy scripting, but I assume you were expecting lots of scripting and don't mind it, or else you would have picked a more RGSS-friendly idea.

LockeZ, that's basically my entire concept behind my "princess maker" style game idea.

For example, I just went and googled some basic forging techniques
- Drawing, lengthens steel by making the other dimensions shorter
- Shrinking, shortening steel by thickening
- Upsetting, thicken and shorten but only by one dimension
- Punching, make a hole

now granted, the above technique don't really map that well to direct "skills" (unless you want to build an engine where you can actually build the forging object on the fly) but you can probably take some variation of this and make each type something that alters the "enemy" properties somehow. i.e. one technique will increase the hardness, but reduce the cutting power, another will bring down the temperature, making the metal more malleable (which you might need to make some of the more difficult objects), but at the same time, weaken the material, etc.

of course, I'm no blacksmith. I think someone who actually HAS done this stuff migth be a better guide as to how to convert blacksmithing into a game mechanic.

But expanding up Lockez idea, here's how the basic framework can work:

Each "battle" would be treated as creating a component. You decide the component you want to build, and how much component you must bring, and the battle starts in that fashion.

Player HP would be changed to "material HP", which basically represents how much material you got left to work with. Every time you need materials to do something, you spend a little bit. (Thus deducting HP) sometimes, you're going to screw up. In those cases, you can either fix it or abandon it and remake that component. Fixing it does not cost additional HP, but adding more material or re-starting does. (a re-do is basically you "running away" from battle and then restarting the battle) Your mana will become your stamina. Everything you do takes stamina. When you run out of stamina, you're done the for the day. Whatever progress you have left you must continue another day. Stamina cannot be regained except through rest.

The materials inherent hardness acts as it's "defense". The more durable the material, the higher it's defense is. Whatever HP you have left at the end of the battle gets added back into your pool of materials.

I figured since I knew a little about Blacksmithing and I wanted to finally start posting, I would offer my pointers.

I like the concept of what you are looking for.
And while forging techniques are nice, they are only part of the process.

With Blacksmithing, you have to heat and quench metal. What does this mean?
Heating is essentially as it sounds, heating the metal until it is malleable enough to use techniques on.
Quenching is when you put the heated metal into water.
This creates problems for Blacksmiths because you can stress the metal to point of becoming brittle (overworking the metal).
And you can quench too early (metal becomes brittle)
Its finding the balance between heating, working the metal, quenching that makes great blacksmiths.
And YES, you have to do all 3, the metal has to be "reset" in its (geek speak coming) atom formations of squared off molecules.

How would you work this in to the game?
During the creation process, the blacksmith has to control the temperature to which he heats up the metal, and has to know how he can work the work the metal before it becomes brittle. Too much heat(loses lots of HP), it melts away, too much working(loses smaller amounts of HP), it becomes brittle and breaks. Beginning items could be really easy with the control of heat/working/quenching, where late game items, you would have to really know your craft.

Fixing metal, you had right, you can add more material to whatever you are working on.

Some cool things about Blacksmithing.
When you are drawing 2 or more metals, they become stronger than the combination of the 3. WHAT?
They join together where metal touches metal and become new alloys.
Ex: Metal 1 is 5 Str, Metal 2 is 10 Str, Metal 1 and Metal 2 Drawed together can be 16-17.
The Katana is great example of this.

I do have questions though:
Does the Blacksmith follow the Hero or does the Blacksmith stay in one town?
Where do the materials come from? Does the Blacksmith mine them himself, or sell goods to buy them?
Does the Blacksmith explore at all, or just work?

^ He's first post was a wise one indeed ^

Also i like the idea of this game, however you'd need action somewhere, like you be the black smith, then the warrior

Thanks for Input guys! :3
Hopefully this game will have a Beta... Next... I dunno... September?

Perhaps you could do something like HL: Blue Shift, where it's still about the main character, but you have to fight things to get to them to help etc.

hmm... so where does the fixing metal part come into all of this? As in, what phase would this happen at? Do you just like, heat both metal first, and then work it together or something?

I'm trying to think of a way that allows the actual end results of the work be calculated instead of be based off of guessing at combos.

I can't believe I didn't mention this in my earlier post:

PLAY RECETTEAR.

Seriously. It's basically your idea, except with an item shop instead of a blacksmith. And it's perhaps the most fun indie RPG I've played in years.

@elliott20

Some thoughts on how it may work.
Lets say we have the Sword of Galatia
Its a Mithril Sword with an Iron Handle wrapped in leather, balanced perfectly for the avid warrior.
Weight is 8lbs
Requires 6lbs of Mithril, 2 lbs of Iron, and 2 feet of Leather

I imagine a timing mechanism of sorts (mini game style) for the pounding and folding.
Ex: Your arm moves back and forth, you have to pound at the right time, or you miss and have to wait to try to pound again.
The sword itself also has some HP to it, say 100. every over-heat, missed-pound/fold, over working time, reduces that HP.
Go over you time and the metal becomes more and more unusable, loses X amount of HP per X amount of seconds, if you go over by 30 secs, the metal has to be reconditioned HP automatically becomes 0.
Anything above say 80HP is Decent BlackSmith work, above 90HP is Great BlackSmith work, above 97HP is Master BlackSmith work.

Heating would go from:
Iron: Cool->Orange Hot->Red Hot->White Hot->Melted
Mithril: Cool ->Orange Hot->Melted

Combining metals could work as such:
Mithril Heated to Orange-Hot, Pounded twice, Folded twice, quenched, Reheat to Orange-Hot, pounded twice, folded twice, set Aside to cool, not quenched
As the Mithril cools, Heat Iron to Red-Hot, pound 3 times, fold once, roll to shape, heat to Red-hot, quench to Orange Hot
Combine the two halves, Mithril Sword and Iron Handle. If the Iron handle is too hot, the Mithril will start to melt away thus ruining the sword.
once combined, heat to Orange Heat, pound once, flip, pound once, quench.
All this must be done with 90 secs.

So in this Example, we miss 2 pounds, and go over by 2 secs.
Our sword would come out with approx~86HP, or Decent BlackSmithing work.

This is of course a little more advanced, but the idea is the same for all. A time limit and some factor/factors that could adversely affect the outcome of the item.
Easier Items would be less affected by missed pounds/folds, and time limit constraints would not be as hard.

I think the Blacksmith should always have some goal of what he is making, unless he is researching new alloys(another mini-game).

I can totally see PGEE's concept as an iphone app. To be sure, as of right now, this game concept is still a little sparse to fill out a whole game by itself, but I think it's a great start.

Yes, this would make a very good niche game. Kinda like WarioWare.

of course, this can also be a great addition system to an larger game. i.e. say you're making a much larger RPG, the kind that measures play time in triple digits. this could be part of the crafting system. It's a pretty good bet that you can get insanely skilled at this and that if this was the system in say, an MMO, you will have people whose entire character funds are funded by this one skill alone.

I would argue in his system though that the threshold for "decent" should vary between items. Your run-of-the-mill longsword that is massed produced for foot soldier use is probably not going ask for too much other than not breaking after 2 swings.

But the base idea is entirely sound.

you have base products that demands a certain amount of materials. materials, however, can be substituted for different materials of the same category. so, in the example above, the base item would be the long sword, but then you can use whatever metals you want for it. They just come out at different performances. i.e. mithril might be harder to work with, but if done successfully would produce a blade that is both tougher and sharper.

also, shaping would have to be a test too. I'm not sure how exactly that would work, but I can imagine some very basic shaping contest that is akin to how people do photoshop smudge edits or something.

I would have to agree with you Elliot. I could see this becoming something.

I will try to explain why i chose the decent/great/master scheme first.
I think using a hard numbering scheme for decent/great/master would do well.
The materials you are using to create the item would define how bad the mess-ups count. The metal defines its own set. The time defines it own set. The working defines it own set. It shouldn't matter what you are making, as long as you meet the requirements of each individual set within it. Does that make sense?

Therefore, making a mass produced Iron Sword of decent quality would not compare to Sword of Galatia of decent quality. They are not the same item, they don't use all of the same materials, but they each have to follow the rules defined by those materials they do use.
Better quality materials makes better quality items, even if they are decent. A decent sword won't fail, it just won't last forever.

Think of decent/great/master as how well the items will do and how well the Blacksmith made them, they go hand in hand. The better the quality of his items, the more he can charge, the more business he will get, etc.
Making the decent/great/master a hard number was so that you have a goal to meet.

If the Blacksmith could make 50HP swords, they would be really crappy, only to be sold to soldiers, and you can add in another rank called soldier grade, but here is what will happen:
Ex: Mass Produced Iron Sword
Weight is 8lbs
Requires 8lbs of Iron, 2 ft of leather

Iron heated to red-hot, folded three times, pounded twice, quenched.
45 secs to make.

Really easy. Level 1 Blacksmith sword.
Here is the problem
For level 1 Blacksmith, everything is easier, therefore,
missed folds are -3hp
missed pounds are -3hp
time over is -3hp for every 2 secs.
Our level 1 Blacksmith could miss up to 16 times and not go over time and still make a soldier grade sword.
But for a decent sword, he could only miss 6 without going over time.
See the difference. The 80 is attainable and makes the level 1 Blacksmith still have to work some.


And now to the other.
I could see this making a complete game on its own, but would require a lot of work to do so.

But this would work best as an addition to another game, as a profession.

Please note this is still greatly a concept, the amount of work it would take to make this a reality would be almost as much as making a 10-20hr game. You would need an entire database of creatable weapons, armor, materials, etc. And then creating the mini-games for the pounding, folding, rolling, etc. Not to mention artwork, scripts.

ahh I see, that makes more sense.

But actually, the databasing is why I suggested using algorithms to calculate the various item attributes. Basically, the base item defines the algorithm used, and then based on the materials used, you modify the final decent/great/master fields.

That way, you can just combine them to make a lot more items instead of having to DB a bunch of unique combos. Of course, you would still want to make unique combos and what not.

If you add in the ability to mix metals together to make new alloys (and the new alloy becomes the new base metal, I guess... is that right?), you can make the number of combos go even further.