What is Cidri's average tech?

[mark hill]

lol .. biblical era .. isnt that everything from chalcolithic to post-republican rome? :) and to folks who reckon it a true story, it goes back to the very beginning of time itself, while also predicting the future that hasnt even happened yet (in fearless defiance of quantum theory) .. then again, possibly not such a silly definition for the meta-period that covers everything Cidri might have on it :)

I figure most guns around on Cidri right now are matchlocks, they must be (in the 'standard tech' areas) but I strongly suspect the wheel-lock is about to be invented .. like any day now .. some clever dwarf is staring at a wheel somewhere .. trying to form .. *something* in his head .. something about a wheel ..

I noted some matchlock pistols in my wanderings thru historical weapon books, but they are soo crappy, its hard to imagine anyone on Cidri bothering with them considering how much trouble, how expensive to charge, and how weak, the standard guns are .. and whats the point of a belt pistol that takes 3 turns and lighting a match to ready anyway lol .. "freeze! .. Im quick-drawing .. good thing this bad-boy was already loaded! .. just hoold on a minit .. lemme just load the frizzen with the priming powder .. juuust closing the frizzen now .. now Ill juuust put the match in the serpentine-clip heah .. there we go .. sorry about this .. lemme get my tinderbox .." (mucks about with the flint and steel)

Im really wondering about the armour tho .. it could be anything from 1300s to early 1500s .. obviously chainmail is still a thing .. but 'plate' is probably not plate-mail, because theres half-plate (cant help feeling there should therefore be 3/4 plate also)

have you got any non-standard armours in your campaign?

[larsdangly]

It's common to use the term 'biblical era' to refer to the period of the Patriarchs of the old testament. So, ancient egypt, babylonia, the hitites, etc.

[larsdangly]

Originally Posted by mark hill

l

have you got any non-standard armours in your campaign?

I have a ton of non standard armor, weapons and shields in my campaign. Your question is well timed because I'm soon going to post a link to a google docs document containing all my house rule personal equipment. Don't get too excited: all of it conforms closely to the 'trade offs' that define how ST, DX penalty, MA, protection, damage, etc. all relate to each other. But, they are a way to add local color to your game, fill in some gaps in the available options, etc. I'll post a link here, probably within a week or so.

[mark hill]

ok .. so youd say, from the end of chalcolithic to the so-called bronze age collapse? (around 1400 BC, when the siege of Troy went down) or maybe when the Hittites went extinct? (around 1100 BC)?

its very tricky dating the stuff in the Bible .. the fact that the first testament has Nebakanezer in it, strongly suggests it was writ after the so-called new babylonian empire (obviously) .. yet other bits like the Noah story, seem to be a ripoff of the flood story from the Epic of Gilgamesh, which was first writ *at least* 2000 BC and is very probably a far older story than that .. Moses at least we can pin to real history .. the Ramses he speaks to can only be Ramses the second :)

Your armour system sounds very interesting! Ive also got a complex system myself, but it would be awesome to check out a complete parallel development! :) with any luck theyll be totally alien to each other :)

One thing I dont like about the standard TFT armours, which you may have noted .. the weights dont seem to match up with historical reality too well ..

[larsdangly]

I'm not really trying to re-imagine any of the standard armors in my house rules for gear; I stick to the canonical properties and just interpolate or extrapolate a little as needed to describe things not in the standard game. E.g., it seems possible to have fine chainmail; what should its cost and properties be like? Can there be fine half plate, just as there is fine plate? What would a legionaries Lorica Segmentata be like? Stuff like that. But in the end none of them give you some advantage not found in the standard rules.

[mark hill]

oh yes I see .. for our crew, fine versions of the standard armours were cost x10, hits stopped +1 .. that was maximum improvement

did you ever try a 'parts armour' system?

or base penalties more on weight vs ST (the way TFT handles other kinds of encumbrance) rather than by armour types?

any excursions into higher or lower tech levels?

[JLV]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

My Cidri has a core technology level like the mid Renaissance (ca. 1500), but I have lots of 'pockets' that resemble earlier (sometimes much earlier) human history, from neolithic through biblical era, through classical mediteranian, through dark ages and early middle ages. And I have pockets that are effectively late renaissance, with matchlock guns. Incidentally, the blunderbuss is a standard weapon, and real blunderbusses were generally matchlock or wheel lock guns. These pockets are usually reachable with some difficulty, but if it seems like they would naturally consume or be consumed by the core culture I'll stick them in an impenetrable jungle or across some difficult mountain range, or on a distant island.

I do that too -- inspired mostly by the original Wilderlands from Judges Guild -- where they had areas more or less isolated by difficult terrain that had dinosaurs and neolithic cultures and the like. (Of course, all those Godzilla movies I watched as a kid might have had something to do with it too! ;-) )

[KevinJ]

Predominantly Late Medieval to early Renaissance with some ancient and even neolithic zones or cultures.

Magic might completely retard technology if magic had more non-combat/non-adventuring spells.

[Anomylous]

I've always assumed that Cidri tech has advanced very differently from how our own did. Lack of gunpowder and an implied lack of fossil fuels mean no full-scale Industrial Revolution like we had. And yes, the presence of magic definitely changes things as well - but there are still clever people advancing science and technology, not to mention the fact that the Mnoren probably left a lot of useful knowledge lying around.

So, in my vision of Cidri, printing presses can be found in most major population centers. Sextants, slide rules, and optical equipment like telescopes and even simple microscopes are rare and expensive, but exist. Biology and medicine are generally well-understood, up to maybe the equivalent of an early- to mid-20th century level (that's how Physickers can be so darn effective!). Newtonian physics, calculus and statistics are known, but generally considered very esoteric fields of study. Dwarven forges practice some fairly complex metallurgy, no doubt aided by magic in order to achieve the requisite temperatures. Sailing ships rivaling the clippers of the 1800's can sometimes be seen in metropolitan harbors.

That said, the average citizen's life, in the most civilized countries, won't look that different from maybe 1500's Europe, the heyday of Rome, or Song-dynasty China. Out in the rougher areas, I'd guess the "average tech level" to be Iron Age / medieval - as soon as primitive tribes come in contact with more technologically advanced types, they'll start trading for useful stuff like metal tools, and generally won't stay primitive for long, if our own history is any guide. Exceptions will either live in very remote areas, or have a serious ideological opposition to outside influences, or both.

[JLV]

Originally Posted by Anomylous

I've always assumed that Cidri tech has advanced very differently from how our own did. Lack of gunpowder and an implied lack of fossil fuels mean no full-scale Industrial Revolution like we had. And yes, the presence of magic definitely changes things as well - but there are still clever people advancing science and technology, not to mention the fact that the Mnoren probably left a lot of useful knowledge lying around.

So, in my vision of Cidri, printing presses can be found in most major population centers. Sextants, slide rules, and optical equipment like telescopes and even simple microscopes are rare and expensive, but exist. Biology and medicine are generally well-understood, up to maybe the equivalent of an early- to mid-20th century level (that's how Physickers can be so darn effective!). Newtonian physics, calculus and statistics are known, but generally considered very esoteric fields of study. Dwarven forges practice some fairly complex metallurgy, no doubt aided by magic in order to achieve the requisite temperatures. Sailing ships rivaling the clippers of the 1800's can sometimes be seen in metropolitan harbors.

That said, the average citizen's life, in the most civilized countries, won't look that different from maybe 1500's Europe, the heyday of Rome, or Song-dynasty China. Out in the rougher areas, I'd guess the "average tech level" to be Iron Age / medieval - as soon as primitive tribes come in contact with more technologically advanced types, they'll start trading for useful stuff like metal tools, and generally won't stay primitive for long, if our own history is any guide. Exceptions will either live in very remote areas, or have a serious ideological opposition to outside influences, or both.

I think the GURPS splatbook for Banestorm provides a nice snap-shot of what the average technology and innovations might be like. You could skip the "technological issues" created by the victims of Banestorms arriving willy-nilly and substitute discovery of Mnoren artifacts to explain those anomalies on Cidri quite easily. Which then lets you set the tech levels at anything you like for almost any reason you choose to give.

However, I would like to remind folks that back when TFT was originally drafted, the "gonzo" version of Fantasy Roleplaying was still in full swing with things like Expedition to the Barrier Peaks being accepted as totally normal in the FRPG genre. It wasn't until self-contained universes like Dragonlance and whatnot started popping up that people wanted some sort of internal consistency in their worlds in terms of technology and civilization -- think of it as "the novelization" of FRPGs as opposed to people just winging it and having a blast (even Forgotten Realms was predicated on being accessible by gates from this world -- which would have led to all kinds of tech "bleed over" when it first came out; that was only changed after the "steam tunnel incident" to avoid any possibility of a recurrence).

In the event that Stygian Fox ever releases their Distant Realms campaign world (originally kickstarted back in January 2016 and supposed to deliver in December of that year, so it's a tad "late"), you'll find another world based on the idea that it can be reached via gates from this one.