Have you ever wished that your server's economy could be more diverse?
What about giving your players a better reason to trade amongst themselves?
Or have you ever thought "Boy I wish the crafting system in Minecraft allowed for more diversity."?
Well, boy oh boy, do I have the plugin for you.
Introducing: Rise of the Artisan.
I persoanlly have always wanted a better reason for player cooperation in SMP. But with everyone being on the same level in the sense of crafting ability, this isn't really too possible. This plugin was inspired by a post on the Plugin Request forums here on bukkit.org by MasculineBulldog and subsequent posts on that thread by Zarius.
How the new system will work
The basic idea is this: you decide that you really enjoy blacksmithing, so you decide that is what your craft will be. You figure you will probably need a forge for smelting your metals, becuase, let's face it: a puny furnace isn't going to do you much good if you want quality!
So, how does one go about making a forge? As for now, it is a multiblock structure (to be exact the current design is 3x3x3) It is built of a minimum number of stone bricks (stairs, slabs, or full blocks all work, woo customization!) some empty blocks, and at least one lava block. In the current system, the lava block is placed last and this performs a check to make sure you have made a valid structure.
Once you've got your structure built, you're on your way to making quality weapons and armor! First off, right click on any block of your structure, and up will pop a familiar interface. "Wait, this looks just like a normal furnace, why'd I have to build this stupid thing?" you might ask yourself. Well, You won't just get plain old iron ingots from this forge. Oh no, you get white hot ingots. Sure, they look the same, but what you do with them is different. You can proceed to do a few things with these.
You may temper the metal to make it stronger and have better effects on the wearer/user once you have your end product. (The tempering process has not been completely thought out yet... Suggestions are always welcome! I'm by no means a blacksmith or a historian on antique blacksmithing techniques.) Once done with the tempering process, you now have a better iron! Sure those savages next door can still make iron using their embarrassing furnaces, but in the end, you've got a better sword/chestplate/whatever-you-made. And the "enchantments" show it.
"Enchantments?" you say? Well, in a sense, yes. Your end product will have very weak enchantments on them, free of any exp use. Usually these will only consist of level one, or rarely level two enchantments. But, as you work on your craft, you will become better and better and produce higher and higher quality items. This results in getting better buffs on your products.
TL;DR Make armor/weapons with small buffs on them using your forge or your craft's relevant structure, and improve your craft level to improve the buff on your items.
Of course, there will be many more crafts than just blacksmithing. Leatherworking, enchanting, and jewelry are just to name a few.
Here are a few pictures to show what I mean by multi-block structures and how a forge could look. The look of the furnace is very customizable, you can make it out of many different blocks (allowed/disallowed blocks can be changed in a config).
I apoligize if this description lacks beauty with its formatting, but It's 10 after 3 in the morning at the moment, so I somewhat hastily wrote this so I can get some sleep. :) I hope you are as excited for this idea as I am, and please feel free to comment any ideas/suggestions/questions and I will do my best to get back to you about them!