The Ossiranth Chronicles

I've been developing my trade skill system a bit today. As the game has no classes for players, only abilities which fall under certain class categories, I thought it would be a good idea to have the trade skills do the same. Instead of "Tailoring", players have the "Weaving", "Sewing", and "Dying" skills, which fall under the Tailoring skills (Actually, I lumped them in with Leatherworking skills and called it Needleworking, just as I lumped mail and scale armor in with Blacksmithing).

It's getting a bit unwieldy though. At the moment I have 15 different professions, which consist of 7 crafting professions, 3 service professions, 4 artistic professions, and the general Gathering profession. Each of these has their own subskills (some of which overlap), of which there are 52 or so total. Each of these subskills are intended to be their own minigame of sorts.

That seems.........like a puzzle game maker's absolute worst nightmare. 52 minigames for crafting and other skills which must somehow be fun and entertaining. Like playing Peggle, only in a way that is related to that skill, and also doesn't get you sued by one of the dozens of puzzle game companies.

I might have to try and cut this down a little, except I have absolutely no clue what to cut out. Maybe some of them could be added in expansions like Architecture. (That's right. Player housing. Built and financed by players. Wait till you see my plans for Engineering. :O )

Also, each player has a set of Knowledges. These represent the sum of everything the character knows, and grant bonuses or prevent catastrophic failure to each of the subskills. Geology gives bonuses to Masonry, Sculpting, and Gemcutting. Anatomy gives bonuses to Butchering, Skinning, and Surgery. And so on. Each of them gives different bonuses to different actions and gives hints in the minigame on how to be more successful. In order for me to pare it down, I'm going to have to condense these as well.

Game design can be a pain.