Coal missing from High-Tech?

[nick012000]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

The solution is obvious: Kromm must write GURPS: Fossil Fuels. It will cover the heroic struggle of man to extract and exploit the petro-chemical wealth of Mother Earth. Big Bad John will be on the front cover, caught in the act of hurling Hugo Chavez into the La Brea tar pits. BBJ will look suspiciously like John Wayne. Oh, and fat baby angels will be grilling wet ribs on a floating propane grill, hanging in air above the fight scene.

Will there be Tar Pit Zombies, dinosaurs preserved by tar and animated by the dark sorceries of the oil magnates to defeat their foes? ;)

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by nick012000

Will there be Tar Pit Zombies, dinosaurs preserved by tar and animated by the dark sorceries of the oil magnates to defeat their foes? ;)

Actually, tar pit zombies would be primarily mammals: sabertooth cats, dire wolves, the occasional equine and camelid, etc. From what I understand, the tar pits came into being after the dinosaurs had went extinct; what's being pulled from the tar pits are commonly stone age mammals that have since gone extinct.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Please find the page or two of content to cut, that will displease the minimal number of people.

You wouldn't need even a full page to include coal on the table.

[Jonas]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

You wouldn't need even a full page to include coal on the table.

Well it could just be counted as Errata, or an e23 release might be the easiest. If you tossed in more in depth exploration, extraction, and refining rules (both normal and dirty tech wise) for fossil fuels and seasoned with text on synthetics could make a nice pocket supplement for a number of modern to near modern games. At least for GM's who like a bit more crunch, or who's PC's are actually involved with the production on one level or another.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

You wouldn't need even a full page to include coal on the table.

What table? The problem is that fuels get headings, longhand descriptions, etc. above their stats lines. There's no table per se.

[The Colonel]

How widespread was coal as a fuel?
Does it feature at all in non-European cultures before the colonial period?

[Ulzgoroth]

Wasn't coal use in China referenced by Marco Polo?

[Kromm]

The earliest known uses of coal were in China. Coal was also used extensively in India. In fact, I don't think coal was economically important outside those regions until it caught on in 19th-century Europe.

[William]

Could be useful to drop in this thread a few notes on how much coal various vehicles needed to get around, especially trains and steamboats. Maybe other questions as they come up at the relevant Tech Levels in people's games. I imagine that would answer the need pretty well. :^)

16 pages, and what do you get?
A register of crunchy bits to play with, and yet:
ain't heaters in adventures big points of the tale
unless you're all competin' for monopoly rail.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by safisher

That is probably the best way to put it. I had some notes on coal, but looks like it never made it into even the rough draft. Of course, the playtesters did not catch it either. My focus was trying to include the most common/interesting tech that would appear in an adventure in which details in the book would be useful. I either forgot about coal, or decide it was not sexy enough. As it is, I would have been required to cut something in that section, and I'm not sure what it would have been.

I'd swear I remember a discussion in the playtest. IIRC it more or less concluded cutting alcohol for coal and vegetable and/or whale oil was a bad idea despite how rare it is historically, given how popular the stuff is in post apocalypse settings. So not sexy enough.