TL5 Low tech or..?

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

The ^ would or at least should never be used for developments that do not violate the laws of physics as _we_ (meaning us guys here at TL8) but rather are found on the early side of their "normal" TL boundary.

TLs in general and variant notation thereof are for the use and aid of GMs and Players and should never expressed in terms of what characters in a setting would think of the item.

The problem is that the "^" TL didn't exist when GURPS Steampunk and GURPS Steamtech came out.

So you have a real world drugs like Acetylsalicylic Acid (1899) listed along side drugs like Atavismine (Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde) that certainly don't follow our TL8 understanding of biology or chemistry both listed as TL(5+1).

Similarly the Dewar flask (1892) sits in the same TL as the Luminous Cane: TL(5+1) The problem the Luminous Cane requires TL on par with our TL8 to work as described, so TL(5+1)^ seams more in line with what is going on there.

Then you have the items that existed in the real world but to work as presented would require violation of the laws of physics as _we_ understand them. The Electropathic Belt TL(5+1) is one such example.

The Coal-Gas Fuel Cell TL(5+1) was patented by Edison but in the real world didn't go anywhere. Then there is the Ethereal Engine also at TL(5+1) which cannot work based on our TL8 understanding.

Sadly GURPS 4e hasn't fix things and still tends to use TL(x+y) to denote superscience rather then TLx^ or TL(x+y)^

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by maximara

Sadly GURPS 4e hasn't fix things and still tends to use TL(x+y) to denote superscience rather then TLx^ or TL(x+y)^

Where does GURPS 4e do this?

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by maximara

Sadly GURPS 4e hasn't fix things and still tends to use TL(x+y) to denote superscience rather then TLx^ or TL(x+y)^

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Where does GURPS 4e do this?

The issue is that "TL X+Y" is used in many areas where the tech path diverges from our reality. I've seen "TL (1+1)", "TL (1+1)^", and "TL 1^" both listed for Daedalus's/Icarus's wings, and both "TL (4+1)" and "TL 4^" for DiVinci's ornithopter flying machines. Cases can be made either way.

Divergent TLs are good in some ways - such as describing the city of Bedrock as TL 0+7, resembling the 1950s but with tech derived from extrapolating a different tech path to retain the basic Stone Age tools of a hammer, chisel, vine ropes, and muscle power - but the case of "where does 'divergent' become 'superscience'?" is harder to pin down.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by maximara

The problem is that the "^" TL didn't exist when GURPS Steampunk and GURPS Steamtech came out.

This is true but why is the necessity of conversion an insoluble issue for you? Aspirin is straight TL6 now as just one example of how simple that conversion could be..

[maximara]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

You need to remember that the TL changes when the features common to it come into regular and widespread use. So, little one-off canals don't make for TL5, or you could say Ancient Egypt qualifies because the pharaohs built (and intermittently maintained) one that connected the Nile to the Red Sea.

Actually that is not how TL works in GURPS:

"Tech level” (TL) is a general rating of a society’s highest achievement in technology (or a certain type of technology)." (sic) B511

Key phrase there is "highest achievement" This is expanded in the "Variations Within a Tech Level" side box:

"The equipment listed for a TL does not appear all at once as soon as a society enters that TL. Instead, items appear gradually after that date. Shortly after a TL begins, devices from the previous TL will be common – along with experts in skills associated with those items. A player could easily justify a PC with a personal TL one step below that of his society, or with one or two skills that are several TLs out of date. Shortly after a TL begins, devices from the previous TL will be common – along with experts in skills associated with those items. " (sic) B511

"Realistic societies rarely have the same TL in every field of endeavor; they tend to be advanced in some fields, backward in others. [...] TL8 (Communications TL7, Medical TL9)." (sic) B511

If you look at GURPS 4e's TLs you can see how blurred the line between various TLs is and it gets worse the higher the TL.

Right now we are seeing the early version of things GURPS puts into the TL9 category (Robot cars, Smartguns, Human genetic engineering, tissue engineering, and cybernetic implants)

It doesn't help that the existence of fuel cells is put in TL8 when the first one was invented in 1838 (TL5) and NASA used them in the Gemini and Apollo programs (TL7).

[Flyndaran]

I'm afraid that that's wrong. We aren't in TL 9, because of works-in-the-lab recently invented items. We're TL 8 for all the ubiquitous tech.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I'm afraid that that's wrong. We aren't in TL 9, because of works-in-the-lab recently invented items. We're TL 8 for all the ubiquitous tech.

You seemed to have ignored all the relevant quotes from the Basic Set especially these:

"The equipment listed for a TL does not appear all at once as soon as a society enters that TL. Instead, items appear gradually after that date."

"Shortly after a TL begins, devices from the previous TL will be common."

This is exactly what we are seeing.

As I have previously pointed out there are examples of commercially available technology being available before the years GURPS gives us.

Here is the transportation category with when the the various TL7 devices first appeared:

Nuclear submarines (1954); jet aircraft (1928: rocket jet; 1939: turbojet; 1944: jet fighter) ; helicopters (1907: Gyroplane #1; 1923: autogyro; 1940: combat helicopter); manned space flight (1961).

Weapons & Armor TL7 also has an issue:

Ballistic body armor (1840 and this is ignoring the various examples of bulletproof chest armor of the 1500s); guided munitions (1944); combat jets (1944); nuclear weapons (1945).

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by maximara

Transportation canals (irrigation canals go back ever further) go back to the middle ages (TL3)

As I recall from what the guide said when I took a ride on the Canal du Midi (a serious bit of late TL4 civil engineering), one thing that makes a difference with TL5 canals is apparently decent clay sealing of the beds. The Canal du Midi is prone to losing water at a rate that'd kill the even bigger 18th century British canal network. (The problem is reduced but not eliminated by the fact that the particular species of trees that grow alongside it shed leaves that rot down to form a passable waterproof seal.)

Sometimes, the big difference over a TL boundary isn't the visible structures but the incremental advances that aren't visible to a layman but which make all the economic difference.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by maximara

Actually that is not how TL works in GURPS:

"Tech level” (TL) is a general rating of a society’s highest achievement in technology (or a certain type of technology)." (sic) B511

Key phrase there is "highest achievement" This is expanded in the "Variations Within a Tech Level" side box:

"The equipment listed for a TL does not appear all at once as soon as a society enters that TL. Instead, items appear gradually after that date. Shortly after a TL begins, devices from the previous TL will be common – along with experts in skills associated with those items. A player could easily justify a PC with a personal TL one step below that of his society, or with one or two skills that are several TLs out of date. Shortly after a TL begins, devices from the previous TL will be common – along with experts in skills associated with those items. " (sic) B511

I think there's likely some amount of misinterpretation in place, perhaps due to lack of emphasis (because emphasizing every other word in a sentence is probably too much). Notice that it says the TL is a general] rating of a society's highest achievement in technology. Not a small group's, but the whole society's.

Consider the Cutting Edge Training Perk: "You’ve received instruction in one specific technological
skill above your personal TL; e.g., a TL7 test pilot might have
Cutting-Edge Training (Piloting/TL8 (Aerospace))."
The fact that there is in fact a corporation that can already build TL7 airplanes does not mean that the society of which the corporation is a part is TL7.

As for 'highest achievement', that means that, for example, if a society is TL12 in bioroids and TL8 in genegeneering (the Slow Gengineering tech path on BIO33), it still counts as TL12 in Bio-Tech, as it does in the opposite case (the Slow Nanotech path).