Quote:
Originally Posted by Hans Rancke-Madsen
I know GURPS takes the historical date of an invention as proof that it couldn't have been invented earlier
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No, it doesn't. A TL is a shorthand for an assembly of technologies. Those assemblages happen to be loosely based on historical precedent, so we don't have to worry about whether or not they're possible, and since they're more or less based on what happened in Europe, they're easy to describe to a Western audience ("What does TL2 mean?" "Like what the Roman Empire had." "OK, I see."). It isn't completely
impossible for a given invention to appear earlier; it just means that what you're dealing with is
not the same TL. An alternate history gets an alternative TL listing, like the "TL3/advanced in a technology" Bill cites.