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Old 04-20-2018, 06:45 AM   #1
Minuteman37
 
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Default Tech Level Confusion

What's the difference between TL10 and TL8+2?

Are +TLs meaningless for future tech levels?
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Old 04-20-2018, 06:49 AM   #2
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Default Re: Tech Level Confusion

The difference would be up to the world creator to define. However, it means reaching technology through alternate means. For example, through magic. Some settings where "Magic" might define higher tech is Warhammer 40K, where astropaths and psykers are used in place of technology.
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Old 04-20-2018, 07:15 AM   #3
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Default Re: Tech Level Confusion

GURPS posits a "standard" technological path all the way through TL12. You can see this path in the Basic Set on pages 511-512, or you can see a more detailed explanation of the future TLs in Ultra-Tech. If you deviate from this standard path, that's a divergent TL.

For example, the standard TL10 assumes something like cheap fusion or controlled antimatter generators for power. Imagine if, in TL8, it was discovered that the moon's surface has unusual properties for generating power. All you have to do is import a bunch of moon rocks, and you get all the power you need. Now moon-power becomes the basis for power-generation, and perhaps for space-flight and weaponry as well. Your TL begins to diverge from the standard path. By TL8+2 civilization based on moon-rocks is spread through the whole solar system.
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Old 04-20-2018, 07:36 AM   #4
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Default Re: Tech Level Confusion

The X+Y notation indicates alternative paths to equally effective technologies. Equipment at TL x+y shares the same stats as equipment from TL z, where z = x+y, but the underlying technological basis is different, which consequently requires slightly different skills to build, maintain, and operate.

For example, in a steampunk-themed campaign, perhaps the nominal basis of computing technology is mechanical computing. Computers operate on the basis of assemblies of tiny gears and itty bitty steam engines with heat provided by ultra-coal or something. The GM rules that the basis of this technology diverges from our own at TL 5, and computers in this campaign are identical to TL 8 computers in performance, so they're TL 5+3. Someone from that campaign trying to fix one of our computers or one of us trying to fix one of their computers is at a penalty as described in the sacred texts.

Now, this notation does not attempt to further describe differences, let alone justify them. It simply indicates what kinds of cross-variant-technology skill penalties come into play for alternative technology paths. It's a language for describing such things within the rules of the game.
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Old 04-20-2018, 07:39 AM   #5
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Default Re: Tech Level Confusion

Quote:
Originally Posted by Minuteman37 View Post
What's the difference between TL10 and TL8+2?

Are +TLs meaningless for future tech levels?
Quote:
Originally Posted by GodBeastX View Post
The difference would be up to the world creator to define. However, it means reaching technology through alternate means. For example, through magic. Some settings where "Magic" might define higher tech is Warhammer 40K, where astropaths and psykers are used in place of technology.
Actually "Magic" (or Superscience) might not define a TL as high as you would expect.

For example, take Etheria where limited manned interplanetary exists. This is normally TL9 but the world is actual TL(5+1)^ (etheric spacecraft, TL5^) or 3 to 4 TLs below what would be "normal".

Azoth-7 is even more gonzo in terms of TL as they have manned interstellar space flight (normally TL 11) but are TL(4+2) with some TL4^ space and weapons.

IMHO TL(x+y) works best for TLs below what we are at or near now (aka TL8-9), when a setting was created, or goes for a retopunk vibe.

So Lensman is TL(6+x) because the transistor wasn't invented. Fallout is TL7^; TL(6+1)^ because the transistor wasn't invented until 2023 (Fallout 4) and there are many superscience elements in the setting.
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Old 04-20-2018, 07:41 AM   #6
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Default Re: Tech Level Confusion

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Originally Posted by Minuteman37 View Post
What's the difference between TL10 and TL8+2?

Are +TLs meaningless for future tech levels?
Answering second question first: Yes and No.

They are useless really for your own use, that is as GM you can define future tech as you want. But when discussing future tech of your universe with other people it is useful to specify how it diverges from the "GURPS standard" TLs.

But the "games technical" difference comes up only really in dimension hopping campaigns, where someone with a TL 10 version of a skill will get extra penalties on a TL 8+2 world.
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Old 04-20-2018, 09:15 AM   #7
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Default Re: Tech Level Confusion

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Originally Posted by Minuteman37 View Post
What's the difference between TL10 and TL8+2?

Are +TLs meaningless for future tech levels?

The difference is that the TL 10 would be the technology of the reference society for your campaign, and TL 8+2 would be the technology of some other society the campaign has to deal with. For example, you could have a standard space opera TL for for your reference society, but you could have a breakaway society that decided for some kind of ideological reason to put all their efforts into mastering biological engineering so that their ships and guns are all cyborg masses of living flesh, steel and electronics. Honestly x+x is only meaningful when you have interaction between between two different cultures with different approaches to technology. If every character is going to be from Steampunk land, then their tech level might as well be called 6 or 7 because there's nothing else to compare to and the penalties never come into play.
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Old 04-20-2018, 10:40 AM   #8
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Default Re: Tech Level Confusion

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Originally Posted by Minuteman37 View Post
What's the difference between TL10 and TL8+2?

Are +TLs meaningless for future tech levels?
The difference is that the two types of tech are similar up through TL 8, and then diverge in a way that renders them different but broadly comparable in overall capability. In GURPS, a TL 10 society uses gear from ultra-tech as written, a TL 8+2 society... doesn't (what it does do is up to the setting writer).
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Old 04-20-2018, 11:35 AM   #9
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Default Re: Tech Level Confusion

When I made up TL(5+1) in the original GURPS Steampunk, the idea was that steampunk fiction of that era offered an image of "modernity" or "advanced technology" in a nineteenth-century context that didn't have all of our technologies, and in particular, that didn't have electronics; instead it had purely mechanical computers inspired by Babbage's Analytical Engine. So "more advanced than the real Age of Steam" but not in the same way; the "5" said that it diverged during the Age of Steam, and the "+1" that it went further along that divergent path.

The people this was intended for were primarily player of GURPS, who live in OUR world and are accustomed to think in terms of electronics (and more recently of digital electronics). The notation was intended to remind them that they weren't dealing with vacuum tubes, transistors, or ICs, but with gears and levers and such. Or, medically, with less toxic heavy metal compounds rather than with fungal based antibiotics.

Now, since we haven't gotten to TL9 yet, we don't really know what TL9 is like. Is it going to have incredibly advanced computers thanks to some new way of making ICs that lets Moore's law keep going? Real functional nanotech? Massively genetic engineering as a routine part of daily life? We don't know; it hasn't happened there. So in a sense ALL Ultra-Tech is TL(8+N) to use; it's extrapolating from TL8. We don't know what the real TL9 is. But given that, you could just as well call any of them "TL9" (or higher).
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Old 04-20-2018, 11:49 AM   #10
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Default Re: Tech Level Confusion

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Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
The difference is that the two types of tech are similar up through TL 8, and then diverge in a way that renders them different but broadly comparable in overall capability. In GURPS, a TL 10 society uses gear from ultra-tech as written, a TL 8+2 society... doesn't (what it does do is up to the setting writer).
Actually it might. It would be perfectly possible have two different societies, one using jump drive, fusion power and gauss weapons and the other using warp drive, solar power and laser weapons, each using Ultra-Tech technologies but different ones. Ultra-tech is a grab bag.

Last edited by David Johnston2; 04-20-2018 at 12:47 PM.
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