Parley Hatch
2abfe4abd1
Working title 'tgame' is provisional. Top-level samples/ and docs/samples/ are gitignored; visual/art pipeline lives outside this repo.
90 lines
5 KiB
Markdown
90 lines
5 KiB
Markdown
# Materials Taxonomy
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Working draft. The vocabulary that everything else hangs off of — expedition drop tables, recipe authorship, refining stations, Stockpile filter chips, component overlay sprite library. Polish later.
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## Categories
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### Raw materials
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Gathered direct from expeditions, unprocessed. The "what your gatherers come back with."
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| Type | Examples |
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|---|---|
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| Ore | iron, copper, moonsilver, mithril, obsidian |
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| Wood | hardwood, softwood, ironwood, ebony, lacquerwood |
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| Hide / leather | deer, bear, drake, exotic |
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| Botanicals | moonpetal, nightshade, sunroot, healwart, herbalist greens |
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| Bone & teeth | skeleton bone, drake fang, ghoul fang, ancient ivory |
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| Liquids | oil, sap, swamp-water, blood, alcohols |
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| Stone & rough gems | rough sapphire, jade, lapis, ruby, granite |
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| Cloth fibers | flax, raw silk, cotton, wool |
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| Beast parts | feathers, claws, horns, tails, eyes |
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| Magical raw | fae dust, soul shards, ectoplasm, manacrystal |
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| Gnomish steampunk raw | brass scrap, copper wire, gear blanks |
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| Necromancy raw | shadowsilk, grave-dust, soul-essence, bone fragments |
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### Refined materials
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Single-step crafted from raw at a refining station. The intermediate stock you build crafts from.
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| Type | Refined from | At |
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|---|---|---|
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| Ingots (iron, mithril, brass) | Ore | Forge |
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| Timbers (seasoned hardwood, lacquered wood) | Wood | Carpenter's Shop |
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| Cured leather (light, heavy, exotic) | Hide | Tannery |
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| Distillates / tinctures / powders | Botanicals, bone | Alchemy Table |
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| Cut gems (faceted, polished, cabochon) | Rough stone | Jeweler's Bench |
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| Spun thread (silk, woolen, gold) | Fibers | Loom |
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| Glass (clear, stained, leaded) | Stone + flux | Glassworks |
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| Worked bone | Raw bone | Carpenter's Shop / Jeweler |
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### Components
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Multi-step sub-assemblies, ready to slot into a final craft. Multiple refined inputs.
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- **Hilts** — tempered hilt, ornate hilt, gem-set hilt
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- **Pommels** — silver pommel, jeweled pommel, runed pommel
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- **Vials** — clear vial, stoppered vial, runed vial
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- **Stocks / clockwork frames** — steampunk crafts
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- **Settings** — jewelry mounts
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- **Stringings** — bowstring, wire, sinew
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### Consumables / catalysts
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Spent in crafting, no output mass. Influence quality and effect.
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- Fluxes, mordants, catalysts (additives)
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- Inks, quills (scribing)
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- Fuel — charcoal, oil, lamp wicks (per-craft consumption, often abstracted)
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### Trophies & curiosities
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Special, often unique or quest-tied. Lives in the Special tab of the vault, not the Stockpile.
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- Recipe scrolls — single-use to learn a recipe
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- Lore relics — for Scholars to decipher
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- Patron tokens / faction sigils — affect reputation
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- Bestiary trophies — display in Library, sometimes valuable to specific patrons
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## Supply chain depth
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General pattern: **Raw → Refined → Component → Final Item** (3-step pipeline). Variations:
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- Some items skip a step: Crude Pickaxe = Refined Iron + Hardwood Timber, no separate Components needed
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- Some items add a step: Legendary weapons may require sub-sub-assemblies (e.g., enchanted runed pommel = runed pommel + magical infusion + scholar inscription)
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- Quality bands compound through the chain: a Masterwork weapon often requires Fine+ components, which require Fine+ refined materials, which require Fine+ raw
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## Quality at every stage
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Every tier supports the same five quality bands (Crude / Common / Fine / Masterwork / Legendary). A Crude Iron Ingot is interchangeable with another Crude Iron Ingot but stacks separately from a Fine Iron Ingot. Quality cascade rules (whether a great Engineer can rescue a Crude component) are still TBD — see [03-crafting.md](03-crafting.md).
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## How materials enter the game
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- **Expedition drops** (primary) — raw materials, occasional refined, rare components from special encounters
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- **Patron rewards** — sometimes specific refined or component items as part of payment
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- **Scholar research** — can convert lore relics into refined materials of unusual provenance
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- **Beast taming** — Beastmasters may tame creatures that periodically produce specific raw materials over time
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- **Market** (when bazaar ships) — buy from other players
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## Open questions
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- Do we want a "scrap / salvage" mechanic — break a finished card into components for partial refund?
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- How aggressive is the Crude → Common → Fine quality progression? Should Crude be common from low-tier zones and Fine be rare even in high zones, or does the floor rise with zone tier?
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- Should some materials have unique properties beyond quality (e.g., moonpetal is *fundamentally* a magical reagent, regardless of quality), or is everything reducible to type + quality?
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- Steampunk and necromancy material pockets — are they geographically gated (only found in specific zones), or do they crosscontaminate (e.g., gnomish brass scrap shows up rarely in mainline forests because gnomish travelers passed through)?
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- Cataloging: how many distinct material entries do we author for v1? Probably ~30 raw, ~25 refined, ~20 components for a playable starting set.
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