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Old 09-09-2017, 11:40 PM   #1
Tigrah2k
 
Join Date: Jul 2017
Location: Michigan
Default Low Tech Crafting

I've been looking through the Low Tech books, and the core books, and the crafting section seems more geared for TL 8+. Are there any official or unofficial rules for low tech research, design, and crafting that I can be pointed to?
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Old 09-09-2017, 11:53 PM   #2
Kelly Pedersen
 
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Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Saskatoon, SK, Canada
Default Re: Low Tech Crafting

Your primary resource on low-tech crafting is Low-Tech Companion 3: Daily Life and Economics, mostly Chapter 5, "Manufacturing". It's got rules for crafting a wide variety of stuff, how to make items of higher or lower quality than the default, and other useful stuff.

It doesn't really cover research or design, but I think the invention rules in the Basic Set would actually cover that reasonably well. You've just got to mostly ignore the costs for different complexity levels of inventions, and use a slightly more subjective definition of the complexity levels.
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Old 09-10-2017, 01:57 AM   #3
Polydamas
 
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
Default Re: Low Tech Crafting

For GURPS 3e there is also GURPS Architecture by Matt Riggsby http://www.mindspring.com/~wombat3/archt.html Just keep in mind that it is 20 years old.

Also, realistic low-tech crafting of anything as complicated as a sword tends to involve teams of specialists. The guy who forges the blade is not the one who hilts it or polishes it or gilds it or makes the scabbard or carries it and 143 of its closest friends to the nearest port. So in many games, you may not want to be too realistic.
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Old 09-10-2017, 01:59 AM   #4
faitfull
 
Join Date: Jul 2015
Default Re: Low Tech Crafting

Kelly Pedersen is right. Low-Tech Companion 3: Daily Life and Economics offer rules to help with low-tech crafting.

be warned however, it is somewhat time comsuming to get around it all in practice, and if the group have a mage that can help the crafter, it can go to ridicules levels of effectiveness.

It is almost like a minigame in it self. Be ready to use a calculator to find the material cost and time to build stuff. (and make friends help out to lessen the time needed inside the game)

A houserule we had in our group (had a fighter dwarf that was also a crafter) was that I was not allowed to sell stuff I made. It could quickly break the game money wise.

We had the best quality equipment avaible with the material available. So very effective to grant all the fighter types different version of very fine plate armour and very fine weapons.
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Old 09-11-2017, 08:27 PM   #5
hal
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Buffalo, New York
Default Re: Low Tech Crafting

Quote:
Originally Posted by Polydamas View Post
For GURPS 3e there is also GURPS Architecture by Matt Riggsby http://www.mindspring.com/~wombat3/archt.html Just keep in mind that it is 20 years old.

Also, realistic low-tech crafting of anything as complicated as a sword tends to involve teams of specialists. The guy who forges the blade is not the one who hilts it or polishes it or gilds it or makes the scabbard or carries it and 143 of its closest friends to the nearest port. So in many games, you may not want to be too realistic.
I rather liked his rules back in the day. Even used them myself a couple of times.

If you ever have the time available and want to have some fun? Go to Harn Forums for their free downloads. The stuff they have there is rather interesting - including millers mining and other fun stuff.

If you want, download the free "FAMILY TREES" article that was written years back. It helps a GM build a family tree for player characters. I use it because it also has a life expectancy attribute for a random character such that when used with HARN MANOR to generate a manor and its family, you have a ready made "simulation" of births and deaths within the manor.

In all honesty, the low tech rules for crafting is "free form" enough that it could be used with just about any game system and any "economics" system - not just for GURPS. If you know that horseshoes cost X in materials, then you know that the rest of the cost is for the wages right? And when you can't figure out the costs properly, you can then realize that it takes roughly 12 lbs of coal to work 1 lb of iron. its little stuff like that that I've always enjoyed with GURPS or any other role playing game - a venue for researching historical fact. ;)

So, grab the architectural rules - because they're rather nice in my opinion.
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