Re: (TFT) Thoughts on "Industrial Disease"

[ErolB1@aol.com]

In a message dated 1/21/2008 4:46:02 PM Central Standard Time, 
raito@raito.com writes:

> 
> Quoting ErolB1@aol.com:
> 
> > o Cost effectiveness:
> Quite correct. But look at the tables in ITL. Assuming that supply and 
> demand
> are in equalibrium, most middle-class persons would be capable of owning 
> magic
> items. 
> 

Sure, magic items are *affordable* to middle class persons, but is it *cost 
effective* for those persons to own magic items? The two terms have different 
meanings. 

> > o Economies of Scale:
> Also correct. 
> 
> > o Malicious Magic:
> I disagree. It's very possible to have beneficial industrial magic. 
> How's about
> Light items used as streetlamps?

Yes, it is possible for beneficial magic to be "industrial." My take however 
is that malicious magic produces a greater push toward trying to treat magic 
as a technology. 

> 
> > o Control-freak planning and obsession with details:
> Cat's out of the bag on that one, if you use standard TFT. Ingredient lists,
> spells, books, and labs are pretty well laid out. there's little art in the
> game mechanic. 

So much the worse for standard TFT. 


> 
> > o Rigidly defined & detailed inputs:
> I disagree. Detailed recipes only result in industry if the ingredients can 
> be
> farm-raised, or are common in some way. 

Detailed recipies create strong incentives toward making ingredients 
farm-raised or otherwise common. IMO its much better to avoid creating the incentive, 
than to create it and then try to fight it. 


> 
> > o Excessive Unreliability:
> I'm not sure what you're saying here. 

If magic it too unreliable, it creates strong incentives for trying to make 
it more reliable. The usual way of doing this it to try to treat the 
unreliability as an engineering problem. Or, if making magic more reliable isn't 
possible, the incentive is to abandon magic as not being worth the hassle - in which 
case it becomes a *failed* technology. 


> 
> > o Magic so good that it creates a class distinction:
> I agree, but see cost effectiveness. 
> 
> I keep magic from being industrial by the culture of the milieu of my world. 
> 
> Specifically, there is industrial magic going on, a lot of it. But it's not
> well-known that this is so. It's part of a very large conspiricy. 
> 
> If the players try to set up industrial magic where the people, the 
> market, are,
> they'll suffer pretty badly. If they go where there aren't people, they 
> have no
> market (and yes, Gates exist, and we're back to them suffering). 

You have what I consider to be an unrealistic and "magical" economy, then. 
(Cue real-world economic debates and flame wars about how economics work.) 




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