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Originally Posted by TheOneTrueClockWorK
So, I've been working on a high/dark fantasy, TL3 world for some time now. I'm grappling with a decision regarding armor style and would like some advice.
My game uses the Low-Tech armor rules. I really like the look of plate armor and brigandine, which are both TL4. I can easily work these into the game by saying that the region has TL4 armor. However, I also really like transitional armor, which is also more TL3, and I'd like both styles of armor to exist in the world, in the same region, in a way that makes sense.
My first thought was to say that only a few armorers in the region have the skills to create TL4 armor, so it would need to be created by one of them, or imported from a TL4 area. But, my issue with this is the question of "why hasn't that knowledge spread to the rest of the area's armorers?" It would be easy enough to say that TL4 armors are still really new, but that wouldn't explain why old ruins have magically animated suits of armor guarding them.
The other idea is that, because the story is based around civilization recovering from a great interplaner war, perhaps these armors are simply revivals of old armoring techniques, from a once-TL4 world gone back to TL3.
What are the thoughts of the wise forums?
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After-the-end is a well established setting for fantasy - much of Tolkein uses it and arguably big chunks of the European mythiea remember what the continent was like after the fall of Rome and the start of the migration era: a poorly governed wilderness full of warring tribes and mysterious ruins.
You can have your TL4 come from various places - actual precursor kit recovered from ruins (an ideal source of articulated plate in a campaign where it is otherwise lacking), material from not-Constantinople (somewhere where the old world never quite died) and from others trying to revive the old tech level. This can give you plenty of variety. Tech, of course, spreads slowly due to the system of guild mysteries - each master only teaches a handful of apprentices in his lifetime and they learn in person and by rote (the tech to standardise anything is basically non-existent). Further controls can be applied by restricting access to raw materials and processing - without good quality iron supplies you will have difficulty setting up a place in which armour can be made, let alone developed and poor smelting technology will leave you struggling to make large pieces of plate that will do what you want from them.
Decide if you want the price of equipment to be based on how good it is, or how hard it is to make (the two are not necessarily related). Decide whether you want classic fantasy with people running about everywhere in metal armour or whether the gambeson might not turn out to be the standard form of protection as it seems to have been in some parts of history.
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Originally Posted by maximara
Take the Gothic arch for example. Well within the reach of the Romans to do at TL2 and more conservative in its use of stone then the arch the Romans did use...so what social forces were in action that it wasn't developed?
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<pure guess> Might Roman stonemasons have been less skilful? Their engineers might have been using techniques that would take centuries to recover once lost, but perhaps there was nothing as skilled as the master masons that built the great cathedrals.