(TFT) How come magic gets industrial disease?

[Stan <srydzews@ix.netcom.com>]

Rick,
  Regarding the industrializing of magic -- the TFT rules rather encourage this sort of rationalization.  Everything is laid out so very nicely, to make item X you need 3 of item Y and 57 ST/day.  The situation positively encourages black snake ranches and professional apprentices to the point where it almost impairs verisimilitude NOT to have them around.

It's interesting that in <that evil game> first edition, I always would see similar behavior regarding potions (for which the ingredients are laid out in the book) but not for other items, where the rules for making them are wishy-washy and vague.  Of course this is an illustration of the 'crunchy bits limit fiat' effect.  Potions are trivial enough that allowing rationalized production is not too terrible, but allowing this for 'real' items does have a down side.

One possible approach, that eschews wishy-washiness but doesn't give away the whole candy store all at once: at the beginning of a campaign, the GM simply takes the magic items list and plugs in different ingredients for items.  The players do NOT get to see this list.  Rather, when one if them acquires or researches the formula for making an item, then they get to know the ingredients.  

A corollary to this is the fact that knowing the formula to an item also tells you how to make immunity to that item.  This provides an incentive the mages to keep these things secret, rather than handing out the whole list to anyone with a few hundred silver.

And (heh) to further encourage secrecy, perhaps if someone makes a new *formula* for an existing item, immunity items vs. the old formula won't work against this one.  Hm, that may be going too far.  It's a thought, though.

Of course, all this is a half-way measure.  People still know at least some of what items are possible, and will be interested in the most useful ones.  But it at least prevents the gross analysis of the scheme as a whole that we have now.  Fragmenting the knowledge and making it seem more like a bunch of secrets rather than common knowledge makes it all feel that much more less technological.
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