Its no false statement to say that we play fantasy to escape for the modern day but we also bring the modern day with us when we play.
Look at your players... look at what is offered. Only in the most grittiest of low magic games does what I am about to talk about not occur. What am I talking about? Modern conveniences in a fantasy game.
But this isn't a problem, is it? After all... most of us like to have some of the things we have grown accustomed to, right? Of course!
Magic swords and armor is one thing... but what happens when your players get... smart? Creative?
You can't really have a simulation type game when I am flying on a griffin. Or flying in general. Or an archer who levitated up to a place no one can get to for that firing position on the advancing army. You know the one that the druid helped carve out of the hill side to provide cover? Or the druid who is casting fire from her eye balls while skittering about as a squirrel.
Like wise... have you ever had a player look at you and ask if he can make a golem? If he has the money... why not... right? Sure it is an iron golem... this is a higher level game, right? Okay... cool. Now, he asks... can he ride inside it? He is still controlling technically. He just hollowed it out inside to have a place for him. If you say yes... congratulations... you have just recreated what modern technology has barely even started to attempt... you have created power armor.
Most splat books have mechanical things you can build... some of them are... fanciful. Like gilders or submarines or zeppelins. After all, everyone loves airships almost as much as they love having a tall ship to sail on. I have not met a player yet that doesn't actually want a sailing ship... as long as it isn't a galley. There is the siege towers and the armored wagons.
Don't tell me your players have NEVER wanted to do this at one time or another. I mean, the armored wagon with a ballista on top? Tanks never get old... no matter how old the player is. If given the option, I have heard the youngest players to the old battle vets in their 50s jump at the idea if the GM will allow it.
Players think they are really creative. Honestly... at times... they are. They find the most broken uses for magical items and situations. No manor house is too safe... no castle secure. To the veteran player, asymmetrical warfare is second nature and no Romanesque legion of doom will ever make them falter.
If you are not careful, your players will try to acquire an airship, flying boat, or zeppelins and launch glider borne raids on castles from miles away in the dark of they night... if they don't just cast fly... but spells are limited... the glider is cheap.
What prevents the glider from being more effective? First off... we are in a fantasy game... how the hell did I get a glider? I dunno.. the same place the flying boat came from? How about the Ornithopter? We won't ask about the submarine? Obviously... in our high fantasy game... we have rudimentary ideas of how lighter than air and heavier than air flight is done. Well, it is magic after all and after watching the great wyrm red dragon burn our village last year... I can see how motivation towards perfecting a flying machine might have a bit more impetus to being done.
Well... mages won't help us advance. Are you sure? Look at your average dungeon party load out... yeah... they do. All it takes is one or two who feel like advancing the world to actually do so. To teach instead of just hoard.
But that is the thing... people assume that high fantasy worlds are perpetually locked in a pseudo-medieval Renaissance time frame. There will never be a ship better than the carrack or caravel and most still use galleys. Gun powder won't be available most of the time... most GMs won't allow it out of fear that guns will replace their beloved weapons. Everything has to be crafted by hand... nothing is interchangeable with anything else... and nothing will ever improve. Behold plate armor... our god and savior.
Our lands are farmed by hand... with primitive ox and plow... trees felled by great men who go into the dark forests... so on and so forth.
BS.
Give the players the reigns to a settlement for a bit and watch the magic. Especially if they have the average wealth that adventures carry in liquid assets.
Depending on their environment, the settlement will reflect it. I have seen players build vast mountain fortresses with water powered everything (there was a river near by). They shaped the very rivers itself (Yay for magic) to make it more efficient. To quote the player... log flume rides get you around in a jiffy. Yay for engineers.
Another player in the mountains literally quarried out the very mountain itself, terracing the land to create vast amounts of farmland (again, yay magic). The people themselves lived in a vast underground city but thanks to magic... was very well lit and ventilated... only going out via the fortified exits to tend the fields or to help add additional heavy fortifications and towers to the perimeter of the territory thanks to all the stone being quarried out for additional farmland and living space at a slow but steady pace.
I could go on but won't... it is just what people will do when they really get going.
They will pour vast amounts of money into the economy... based on what is in the area. Iron mine? Of hell yeah... you better believe that there will be a forge, a smith, and if the more industrial minded people are playing... a smelting facility. Rocky area? Quarry and prospecting. Wooded area? Lumber mills. Grasslands and plains? Agriculture and brewing. They will jump head long into the economics game if allowed to create a sustainable income.
An income not dependent upon a GM's whims. Oh, don't give me the old 'just raid their stuff' excuse. They will guard that. Initially with their own hands... later as their economic influences increase... with guards. As much as we would like to honestly say that monster will get progressively more deadly or the bandit lords more effective... There is a limit to what a player can believe.
After all... how many times will they believe that a beholder attacked their caravan or that the 12th bandit lord of the north has arrived? No... if you do that... you will see convoys that will make Mad Max shiver in fear start to arise. The type that you see the signs of their arrival hours before they are seen. One player literally got so tired of a GM screwing with his caravans that the size and defenses of his caravans were starting to rival the size of late WW2 Atlantic convoys. Complete with massive armored wagons with balistas with companies of troops, mages, clerics, and scouts riding in the wings and flying scouts looking on high. Short of a dragon, they could handle nearly anything... and in one theoretical encounter just to test it... short of an elder dragon... the volume of fire that could be concentrated was staggering. It was a small army just to guard the player's important trade routes from a dickish GM.
This is what paranoid players resort to. Remember though... most of the world DOESN'T do this. Most merchants are able to get from point a to point b unmolested. It is how ANY trade is accomplished.
No, players want to establish a stead income they can count on... sure, the adventuring gives them the money to spend on frivolous things but the engineering types... the accountants and civil engineers that I game with... no... the stead income is investment money that can be used to build empires...
and to cheat the technology system altogether.
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