Best Of

Something unrelated to the mechanical viability of traders and trading as a progression method but that does need to be addressed: Lusternia's technology level is not at all as limited as the design trades are. Magnagora has gas lamps, steam engines, and post-industrial revolution factories. New Celest has enchanted lighthouses that can be seen across the Basin, and several constructs made purely from water, seashells, and coral. Highwater has blessed gruel that makes the eater more humble. And Hallifax has...well, let's just say Hallifax does things with crystal powers we can't do in real life yet but should be able to. And all of that stops the minute you try to design something.

Thematically, I get it, kind of. You don't have any way to force allegiance checks beyond cartel membership, and no way to confirm that the person constructing the mirror of pellucid ice is, in fact, an elementalist capable of shaping and freezing water precisely enough to make the design, but it leads to odd situations like citizens of Hallifax being unable to include memory crystals or displays in our designs in spite of the fact that the city has those things.

I think one way to solve this within the existing system would be to introduce some new commodities that aren't produced by trades, such as enchanterscrip, aquamancyscroll, resonantcrystal, or engineermanuscript that don't really represent a physical item, but represent a contract or specific piece of knowledge to bridge the gap between different craftspersons. Maybe with an optional step to let characters who realistically WOULD have direct access to the specific MacGuffin craft without them.  If implemented, these should not be counted as basic comms, obviously, but might flag to the review board/Charites to consider unusual commodities to be basic comms and to allow for otherwise forbidden commodity usage. It would either be something sold in the related org's commodity shop (or an NPC specifically for these sorts of comms), or would require someone go to the old guildhall and work with an NPC there to create each one. So, for example, if you want to make microgastronomical mousse that uses cloudyessence to have an aeromancer make incredibly fine bubbles as it sets, you'd include the eggs, the flavour comms, a cloudyessence, and an aeromancyscroll. The scroll will signal to the review board that cloudyessence is allowable as a commodity and that aeromancy has been used to create a dish that a pseudo-medieval chef could not. An aeromancer or aerochem would go to Malimli Fairquillion to create the aeromancyscroll and could sell it or give it to the chef, or alternatively Malimli herself could just sell them, or another NPC in Hallifax somewhere. Then when the item is crafted, an optional check can be added that ignores the aeromancyscroll if the chef has aeromancy active. An aquamancyscroll in the design might let someone build artisan furniture that treats water as a basic commodity with a large conversion ratio (ie: a vial's worth of water to the commodity), and be made by an aqua* by talking to their old guild tutor. Or an enchanterscrip AND a dreamlecture can be used to let dream motes repeat specific images in a smooth surface (think LCD picture frame with a short video clip or holographic orrery), with the scrip being purchased at any highmagic-centric guild NPC or created by enchanters, while the lecture is the same from any mage/druid tutor or actual dreamweaver.

Basically, create special comms that let players break normal design rules to match org and skillset themes.

EDIT: Forgot the second half of this concept. If it's possible to instead have crafting check for skills in non-crafting skillsets, it'd be better if the above rigamarole with new commodities could be skipped by just adding flags to the patterns. A new field, SKILLS, can hold up to 4 flags for required attributes, with allowable flags being specific skillsets, orgs, archetypes, or skills. IE: DESIGN 123456 SKILLS aeromancy to allow only aeromancers to complete the craft, DESIGN 123456 SKILLS elementalism enchantment while the design is in a Celest cartel to limit it to only aquamancers and aquachem enchanters, or DESIGN 123456 SKILLS org:revelry pyromancy dreamweaving:beast spellcraft:ignite to only allow Pyromancer Revellers with the Beast ability in dreamweaving and the ignite enchantment in spellcraft to create it. Anyone else trying to craft the item will get an error message saying they "lack the proper skills to create that." with an optional second line to the effect of "You must (have the <skill> skill active)|(be able to use the <ability> ability in <skill>)|(be a member of the (<org> (guild|city))|divine [Dis]Order of <god>))|(be a|an <archetype>)[, and <etc.>] to create such a thing." (So, like, a Mysraian Cantor Glamourist with tinkering might get "You must be a member of the divine Order of Crumkane, and be a mage, and be able to use the cleanse ability in spellcraft, and have the runes skill active to create such a thing." if the design required all of those things.)