It doesn't take a rocket scientist honestly to say that players think outside the box. It is something great to have happen in a small campaign world that won't last past the end of the story line. In a situation like this, no one cares if the mage incinerates a village. Oh, of course someone will but ultimately... it will all disappear when the game finally ends. So will that revolutionary idea of using a zeppelin built by that crack pot that came to be so vital to the party plan. All knowledge is still going to be eternally locked within the ancient tomes and dusty towers of the sages.
The thing is... this is not the case. Not if the game world persists from one campaign to the next. Unless the year is reset to an early/same point as the previous game, the previous characters erased from society or a different part of the world... the old characters might encounter the new characters... altering events and such. Paradox and players who have dealt with time travel and what ifs tend to either embrace them or hate them. No matter what, the idea of having to run the same threat for the party to fight is pretty lame. You can only retread the same path so many times.
No, the only solution is that time has to progress if the world is a persistent one. Someone remembers the fiendishly genius plan of the mage riding into battle in an iron golem. Someone remembers that airship that carried the party from one part of the world to the next. Someone recorded the battles and took inspiration from the ingenuity. Someone remembered what the villains did.
NPCs learn just as much as the players. Albeit, a bit slower because you, the GM, was trying to portray the world as a stock high fantasy world. Those economic trends started by the players might take hold elsewhere.
No... I originally thought about how many ways magic could be used to duplicate or surpass modern technology. There are the classics like a guilder with a trinket that has a continuous gust of air spell put on it strapped to it to get a simple one man flying machine that has no duration. That only costs a mere 12,300g at market value... heck... 6,100g if you got an inside track on enchanters and crafters. It might take a glider or two to get the steering and propulsion... might even finagle out a bit better speed, considering you are no longer gliding and have enough thrust to make it difficult for a man to be able to move (Read the spell)... but hey, flight for less than a fourth the value of wings of flying... I'll take it. I don't care about the fact that I can't hover or use it in a dungeon... in the open world... better believe I am going to use it to get around. Low and behold... the D&D equivalent of a jet engine.
Or the creation of a pair of magic items that when put together creates a nuclear reactor... albeit, one is a custom created magic item. But when you can create an combo that will push a vehicle at 90' per round... no matter what the weather condition. The item says ANY vehicle at this speed... no matter how big. Of course, the biggest ship is a Galley in the basic rules. Actually, under the new Pathfinder rules... the ship speed is doubled by the item rules... to 180' per round... but we will assume that we are using a sailing ship... 90' or 120'. Still. This fast... without wind. Okay, it may not be nuclear power... but hey, 14 mph is not that bad really for a single turbine engined ship. This comes in at the beefy cost of 120,000g (60,000g if you have the crafters able to do it)... but if you are looking for something that can maneuver in foul weather and out run pirates... the ship will pay itself out in the long run. I'll take that... means less rigging for the GM to snare up or set fire.
These are extortionately expensive compared to another +5 sword or armor or that magic trinket but these are the items that change worlds.
Why do these items cost so much? Oh, because they are hand made, nearly unique items that use ancient and arcane Techniques barely understood and with reagents that don't make sense but contain powers beyond recognition and are rare. This is how it will always be.
But what if the scientific theory that so drove mundane science was turned towards the arcane?
To use an Alpha Centauri quote...
"We hold life to be sacred, but we also know the foundation of life consists in a stream of codes not so different from the successive frames of a watchvid. Why then cannot we cut one code short here, and start another there? Is life so fragile that it can withstand no tampering? Does the sacred brook no improvement?"
Why must magic be forever trapped in the chains of always being something so arcane. Mages, through the very act of intellect, are able to manipulate the very essence of creation and turn it against their enemies. Their books are filled with piles equations, runes, formula, and such. Potion masters can distill and trap divine power into a potion form. Wands and staves do the same.
It may take centuries... but scholars might be able to unlock the very secrets of how mana flows... freeing it from the very trappings of the shadows of past and mystery. Perhaps they could see the secrets of what makes deities what they are... how they perform their abilities. Psionics unlocked... yeah, it might be the equivalent to the age of enlightenment or discovery before real breakthroughs happen... thus pushing through the very edge of what a typical game might go... but if a campaign world has managed to make it long enough... and the players still enthusiastic... it just might make it that far. After all... elves live a 1000 years... why not? Not ever elf desires to stay trapped in a single age like the elves of Tolkien.
Magic items are better understood... the equations better known... the materials standardized. Costs drop. Especially if there is a demand or a state controls the sources to create it. Hey, the dawn of the magical industrial revolution and an age of imperialism is just around the corner.
I might ramble more on this later.
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