Design and Realisation - The Elevator Pitch

Today we were trying to cement the idea of our abstract, and I have a clearer idea of what exactly it is I am trying to create. It won't be long until we start working on the games design document, and I am eager to see how wrong I was!

The Elevator Pitch

We were encouraged to use an iterative method when we came up with our small pitch of our game, to write a first draft, critically analyse it and re-write it with these critiques in mind. Unfortunately, I have been toying with this idea long before the academic year started again, and I found it somewhat difficult to 'critique' and a lot of what I re-wrote was a rewording of the same idea, it didn't seem to build on ideas or cut much out.

"The player has recently taken over as manager of the towns crafting guild which has for many years been used by adventurers and royalty alike. Using various crafting skills to progress the quality of the items they craft, the player must create a myriad of items fit for the most noble knights, to bulk producing cheap clothes to peddle to the townspeople. The influence you gain over certain guilds can help you shape out your path to victory, open up trade routes with neighbouring towns, or to gain political power and overcome the cruel tyrant king who has only given you 21 days to pay up."
(Referenced from Games Design Document)

I feel as though the above passage accurately represents the kind of game I am trying to build without going too far in-depth. It keeps the idea short but unfortunately a little bit vague. What exactly are "Various crafting skills?" What kind of guilds are we looking at? There have been several proposed ways to complete the task at hand but what really is the end goal? These ideas might not make too much sense for now, but will be explained further into the design document. As an elevator pitch, it isn't perfect, but I am pretty happy with it.

The Mechanics

Lastly, perhaps a little bit unrelated but I feel I really need to write this down before I forget, I have come up with 3 different play styles within the game that align with the respective factions and provide a varying difficulty.

Selling to the towns people - This basically means crafting in bulk. Clothes that they require. Small furnishings. Things that the average person would not care if it is overly durable or overly high quality, they just require the item and the demand is high because of the big population. This would be an easier difficulty.

Selling to adventurers - Adventurers will require durability, one of the three main stats for your crafts. It's fine and dandy buying a cheap iron sword but if it will break within three hits then the adventurers guild will become very unhappy with you. Aim to craft items with as fewer moves as possible to give the item a higher durability. Quality can be introduced here, as it would be nice to have above average equipment, but is second place to the durability

Selling to royals - This will rely almost entirely on Quality. Of course, the craft has to be successful and craftsmanship is important, but durability is not as important as the finishing touches to the item. Use as many turns as is required to pump the most out of the games mechanics and create the highest quality items that you can!