Hey! Thanks for saying that. One thing about my stuff so far is that I barely get any feedback from beyond my friend and extended friend circles. And that tends to be positive, so it's good to hear different perspectives. I already had the blog posts and all planned, but procrastinated on them. Your comment gave me the push to sit down with it again and get it going.

I'll keep on iterating over how I present my ideas. And you're absolutely right, especially in this hobby, there's plenty of people who would rather read than watch yet another video (especially in the chosen style - I had hoped the CRPG style of quest dialogue might be a good enough bridge there). Honestly, I am pretty psyched about anyone who engages with what I make. I find it utterly mind blowing that people care enough to do so.

I think the system could work! Maybe even in conjunction with a little crafting thing I put together a few months ago for my own campaigns, if your player absolutely wants to go the route of crafting the item. You can see that over here https://mastodon.social/@Imperor/110867336560022638 - just off your description you could join both systems. Let them gather the materials and go through the crafting process and then throw in some extra positive results tied into the story with maybe some god of Smithing seeing their sincere wish to create the shield but blundering through the process. So for their persistence and dedication to their craft, the god imbues the shield with yet another effect on top of what they might get out of the crafting process.