Ok, just a couple general questions for any admin/coders (or even players who are in the know) of how you implement the access to the crafting system (if you have one) on your particular mud.

Do you limit access to crafts at all, or can crafts be chosen like normal skills at creation?

How do you limit them if you do?

If you do NOT limit access to them, how do you keep a balance on the ones which you feel everyone shouldn't have use of, or want to limit?

Our crafting skills are either given by the class you're in or, in the case of some like Tailoring, Cooking, etc, are purchased.

--matt

While not actually using a crafting system (after all, the builder academy doesn't need one...), I have a couple of opinions and suggestions:

Most people (in rl) can learn a skill, given sufficient devotion to learning it. If you spend a lot of time weaving, cooking or banging on iron with a hammer, you'll eventually get good at it, especially if you have a decent teacher, or someone to ask for advice. In a mud context this means (to me at least) that everyone should be able to do everything, just not very well. Heck, I can personally make a knife (and have!) with just a piece of iron, a piece of wood and two nails, given the right equipment (hammer, anvil, forge, saw, etc.). It just won't be very good (it was extremely crappy, but it was double edged, and pointed :P). However, to learn how to do a thing well, you'd have to do it a lot, and learn, as I stated before.

One approach to this would be to limit the total knowledge a character can possess. If for instance character X has learned skill Y to a high degree, but then starts focusing on the unrelated skill Z, X's skill in Y will decrease, because of the loss of attention. Thus, you could have 'jack of all trades' craftsmen, who would be able to do crappy versions of any kind of thing, and specialists within the different fields (fletcher, weaponsmith, cook, etc.) who would be able to make special items (bows and arrows that actually hit something, daggers that didn't break the second time you used them, food that made you full longer and added a slow regenration of mana/hit/move or similar.)

The use of 'unrelated' above is actually the most important part. If focusing on a specialized branch of a general skill, like goldsmithy/jewelrymaking, you don't necessarily lose so much of the general skill knowledge.

And if you make skilltrees like that, you might also include some special skills, like metallurgy, herb knowledge (for the potion maker) and other advanced stuff.

Just my 2 you-know-what...

Well, some crafts are so common-sense that you can start the character with them at their request while others are reasonably limited. One good way to determine that is by having players submit a background/history for their character. If their background suggests that they'd possess a particular craft, then it's reasonable to give it to them. So, if they're from a desert region, it's unlikely they'd know how to make a fishing pole or identify forest flora.

Keep in mind that if your economics are guild-based, it stands to reason that the guilds would endeavor to keep their crafts exclusive to guild-members only. So even if their background suggests that they've got a possible exposure to such crafts, they still might not know them due to the guilds' unwillingness to let just anyone know the tricks of their trade. So, while a character may have grown up in forest, they still may not know which plants have healing abilities because the apothecary's guild doesn't reveal that kind of information.

Take care,

Jason