4ed Tech Levels?

[cosmicfish]

Quick question: why did 4ed change the tech levels? I really liked the old TL system 0-16, and feel that the change to 0-12 really makes it hard to differentiate between ultra-tech cultures in 4ed.

For example, a while ago I created a game universe with the following (grossly abbreviated) technological divisions:

TL6: planetbound cultures
TL7: orbital cultures
TL8: slow interplanetary cultures
TL9: slow interstellar (beginning FTL) cultures
TL10: backwoods/periphery/frontier cultures
TL11: majority of cultures
TL12: "advanced" technologies with limited availability (like US military)
TL13: "recent" precursor tech, available rarely as intact artifacts
TL14: "distant" precursor tech, available only as fragments for study
TL15 & 16: ancient precursor tech from races who have "moved on", available only as plot points.

How can I convert this to 4ed? I am loathe to abandon the setting, but it does not seem that 4ed supports these divisions, especially between the higher levels. This may not be important for some campaigns, but in mine it is central - the game revolves around the investigation and pursuit of precursor tech and culture.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

The impression I get is that the current TL system is limited based on technologies which sorta kinda maybe might possibly be real some day under some unusual set of circumstances. There's no basis in reality for assigning most of what was in higher TLs in earlier editions (FTL, force fields, etc.) to a TL because it simply can't exist. It all falls under "superscience," and it's up to the GM to decide, based on the needs of his own campaigns, which bits of impossible technology are advanced/recent precursor/distant precursor tech.

[lexington]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

Quick question: why did 4ed change the tech levels? I really liked the old TL system 0-16, and feel that the change to 0-12 really makes it hard to differentiate between ultra-tech cultures in 4ed.

For example, a while ago I created a game universe with the following (grossly abbreviated) technological divisions:

TL6: planetbound cultures
TL7: orbital cultures
TL8: slow interplanetary cultures
TL9: slow interstellar (beginning FTL) cultures
TL10: backwoods/periphery/frontier cultures
TL11: majority of cultures
TL12: "advanced" technologies with limited availability (like US military)
TL13: "recent" precursor tech, available rarely as intact artifacts
TL14: "distant" precursor tech, available only as fragments for study
TL15 & 16: ancient precursor tech from races who have "moved on", available only as plot points.

How can I convert this to 4ed? I am loathe to abandon the setting, but it does not seem that 4ed supports these divisions, especially between the higher levels. This may not be important for some campaigns, but in mine it is central - the game revolves around the investigation and pursuit of precursor tech and culture.

You just need to define what appears at each TL.

I suspect that TL12 - TL16 would all be TL(11+1)^ (that is to say different versions of TL12 to with access to different superscience) in 4e terms. And of course there's no reason you can't keep the TLs you have right now, Ultra-Tech says continuing beyond TL12 is okay.

[PK]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

Quick question: why did 4ed change the tech levels? I really liked the old TL system 0-16, and feel that the change to 0-12 really makes it hard to differentiate between ultra-tech cultures in 4ed.

The main reason is that it's simply B.S. for GURPS to set down rules for what tech will and won't exist at TL13+. We have no idea. Just about all of the stuff at that level from 3e is what GURPS now calls "super-science", or TL^, which is arbitrary. Frex, you can have force-swords at TL9^ as easily as you could have 'em at TL12^.

If you want to keep a distinction between higher TLs, feel free. GURPS certainly doesn't tell you not to do that! But outside of specific setting books, you'll never see GURPS/4e take a stand on what TL13+ is, has, or looks like, because it's so far out there that we can't even make reasonable wild guesses.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

Quick question: why did 4ed change the tech levels? I really liked the old TL system 0-16, and feel that the change to 0-12 really makes it hard to differentiate between ultra-tech cultures in 4ed.

For example, a while ago I created a game universe with the following (grossly abbreviated) technological divisions:

TL6: planetbound cultures
TL7: orbital cultures
TL8: slow interplanetary cultures
TL9: slow interstellar (beginning FTL) cultures
TL10: backwoods/periphery/frontier cultures
TL11: majority of cultures
TL12: "advanced" technologies with limited availability (like US military)
TL13: "recent" precursor tech, available rarely as intact artifacts
TL14: "distant" precursor tech, available only as fragments for study
TL15 & 16: ancient precursor tech from races who have "moved on", available only as plot points.

How can I convert this to 4ed?

Pretty darn easily. Just go through the book and move gadgets off the shelf.

Let me give you an example. I set my TL at 11.

Antimatter generators will fundamentally be TL 12, but my military is experimenting with antimatter as an energy storage technology.

Cosmic Power Cells: TL 13

Broadcast Power: TL 13

Computers: At TL 11 the largest and best computers are complexity 14 which means that they have a volitional AI with an IQ of 20+. They call it "The Emperor". A precursor relic the size of a loaf of bread with similar intelligence like ORAC from Blake's Seven is TL 15

Swarmbots: My culture doesn't use swarm bots because we have safetech tendencies. I give microbots to TL 11 Precursor cultures and nanobots to TL 12. Going in for nanobots has a tendency to be followed by extinction, so there are a number of occasions where we colonize a planet and then some some surviving swarms run amuck on our hapless colonists.

Psychosonic Instruments: Prototypes exist at TL 11. Used in covert operations.

Gravity Ripple/Neutrino Communicators: Available to the enemy at TL 11, but not to humanity. That will make them more mysterious.

And so on.

[Gizensha]

Originally Posted by Rev. Pee Kitty

The main reason is that it's simply B.S. for GURPS to set down rules for what tech will and won't exist at TL13+. We have no idea. Just about all of the stuff at that level from 3e is what GURPS now calls "super-science", or TL^, which is arbitrary. Frex, you can have force-swords at TL9^ as easily as you could have 'em at TL12^.

If you want to keep a distinction between higher TLs, feel free. GURPS certainly doesn't tell you not to do that! But outside of specific setting books, you'll never see GURPS/4e take a stand on what TL13+ is, has, or looks like, because it's so far out there that we can't even make reasonable wild guesses.

Doesn't Ultratech give rough and ready guidelines (basically - double efficiencies and/or halve costs, if I'm remembering right) without speculating on what forms that tech might take?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Gizensha

Doesn't Ultratech give rough and ready guidelines (basically - double efficiencies and/or halve costs, if I'm remembering right) without speculating on what forms that tech might take?

That was 3e. The new UT doesn't do that.

[lexington]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

That was 3e. The new UT doesn't do that.

Yes it does. Page 7.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by lexington

Yes it does. Page 7.

What? The last paragraph of the "Even Higher TLs?" box?

That says " TL13 devices might be like TL12 devices only weigh one-half or two-thirds as much, and so on,".

That's well short of even "rough and ready guidelines" by my reckoning. It's just barely a vague suggestion.

Now 3e had general rules making non-weapon or armor devices drop in weight and cost by 50% for the first 2 TLs after introduction. That's what I thought Gizensha was asking about.

[Mailanka]

I'm going to disagree with those that claim that it's because GURPS can't possibly predict what happens beyond TL 12, because it assumes TL 12 is a real thing rather than an entirely fictional construct. You could, for example, divide the existing Ultra-Tech along 8 TLs (for example: Caseless Rounds are TL 9, ETC is TL 10, ETK is TL 11 as is Gauss, Gravity Guns are TL 13 and so on). The good Reverend and TBC argue that you can't peg where Super-Science will show up, but Ultra-tech clearly gives it a shot. Personal Forcefields are TL 12, as are disintegrators, but so are Pulsars, and I think disintegrators could easily be at a higher TL than Pulsars and Grasers. I'm not saying GURPS should double the granularity of its TLs, I'm just saying it could.

Put another way, all the TL divides are completely arbitrary, like most rules in a game. This isn't a bad thing, but once you understand this, you realize that "realism" flies out the window in favor of "playability" and symmetry. To my eye, it looks like the old system arbitrarily cobbled together TLs inspired by whatever themes the author saw (and, I suspect, the Traveller TLs, which was based on 16 TLs because everything in Traveller was hexadecimal), rather than any kind of elegant system or cohesive theme. With 4e, I suspect they decided they wanted 4 TLs per "era:" Low Tech has 1-4, High Tech has 5-8, and Ultra-Tech has 9-12. It's smooth, it's symmetrical, it gives us enough maneuver room. It means that the most advanced society possible in GURPS is as far beyond us as we are beyond the renaissance, and that works well enough, I think.